Grains

I just bought the beautiful cook book Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce and I am in love with it. First I just admired the photography, and then I began reading each of the recipes and falling for not just the recipes but the language too. The way she describes each recipe brings personal warmth and respect to food and the art of cooking. I am a bit of a voyeur, and something about reading about another persons' kitchen always sets me right off the deep end. 

I am obsessively learning about wine these days because I am suddenly in charge of the list at the restaurant I work at- a big undertaking. I have so much to learn! One of my favorite parts of the process is learning how to describe what I am tasting. This requires me to slow down and actually think while drinking- a challenge. I am not usually a slow-down kind of girl. But in learning to taste wine, I am learning to taste everything. It's obvious, but each ingredient in a dish is there for a reason. Being a speed-eater, I am guilty of not even tasting half of what I eat. This is sad and must stop. In Good to the Grain, Kim Boyce describes the flavors of each grain and what they can do for a dish. She uses words like "nutty", "milky" and "grassy". I love these words. I want to taste them. Maybe if I slow down, I will.

On Sunday, I decided to try one of her recipes. I used a different fruit filling than she did, but I am mostly interested in how she's using all these nutty grains anyhow. I made corn flour galettes filled with blueberries and raspberries from the yard. The corn flour added a wonderfully gritty (in a good way) texture and a sweet, earthy flavor. I was so happy with the result. Had it been my usual a.p. flour crust, I might have skipped thinking about what it actually tasted like until I got to the fruit, but with the corn crust I stopped to consider what I was tasting. Today I made waffles and threw in some spelt flour, just to see what would happen. They were golden brown in color, still crisp and light, but also had a malty, honey flavor. Grains! They don't have to make food heavy and taste like cardboard.
I'm hooked. Next I will be trying her quinoa porridge, perfect for freezing Portland summer mornings.

Black Pepper Spice Cookies with Glaze

I wanted to make Tartine's glazed gingerbread when I woke up last Sunday morning. It was cold and rainy (shockingly) and I knew I needed to make a treat for teatime at a friends. The problem was that I didn't have ginger or cloves- two of the most important ingredients! So instead of gingerbread, I made black pepper spice cookies with plenty of salt and a light glaze. They were amazingly soft and satisfyingly spicy, salty and sweet. I burned the hell out of one batch and we are still can't stop ourselves from eating them. But then, we are pigs.

Make the dough one day in advance for best results, or bake it right away and it's still great.

Black Pepper Spice Cookies with Glaze

3 3/4 cups AP flour
1 T cocoa powder
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
4 tsp cardamom
1 1/2 tsp Jamaican allspice
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
2 T honey

Glaze
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 T water

Beat butter until creamy, and then add sugar and mix until smooth. Scrape bowl with a spatula and then add the egg. Next in, molasses and honey. Mix until blended, and scrape down the bowl again. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, spices, cocoa and baking soda. Slowly add this into the wet mix. Beat on low until a ball forms. At this point, you can either refrigerate the dough overnight or chill it for 20 minutes like I did. I'm sure its better if you let it sit overnight (it makes a world of difference with chocolate chip cookies).
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Flour your work surface and roll out dough to about 1/3 inch thick in the shape of a rectangle. You may now cut out cookies as I did, or gently roll over the whole thing with a patterned rolling pin. And if you have a patterned rolling pin, send it to me immediately and never expect to see it again! Cut the pattered dough into tiles that are 3" by 4", or whatever size you prefer. I made both teardrop cookies and circle cookies, and then I rolled over them with a fake ear of corn for texture. You can roll whatever textured items you may have laying around the house over the dough! This comes into play when you glaze the cookies and the glaze nestles into the pattern quite beautifully.
Place a sheet of parchment paper over your cookie sheet, and bake the cookies for about 7 minutes. I did one batch for 10 minutes and the bottoms were burned. The next batch I baked for a mere 7 minutes and they were slightly underdone. When they cooled down, they were perfect.
While the cookies bake, whisk together confectioners sugar and water for the glaze. After you take the cookies out of the oven, let cool for a few minutes and then brush the glaze over the cookies. Do not freeze these, though I don't know why you would even try.

Serve with coffee, or on the rim of a Guiness float with vanilla ice cream!

I can't wait to make them again.

Cassoulet!

All the work was worth it. Even the part when I was trying to rip one of the duck's legs off and I grabbed its neck and a trapped air bubble qucked out. Even when I was pulling tendons out of the braised and very hot lamb shanks and they snapped like rubber bands.

Yes, it was worth it, because cassoulet is by far the most delicious dish ever.

The beans, velvety. The meats, tender and just gamey enough. The crumb layer, crisp and full of butter. Thank you Julia!

I did accidentally drink a whole bottle of champagne during dinner and so I don't remember dessert. But it looks good, doesn't it???

Sweet and Salty Cake

The salty caramel:




The Ganache:


The Cake:









The recipe for this cake is from the Baked bakery in Brooklyn. They call it the Sweet and Salty Cake, and I'll call it The Cake That Dirties Every Dish, and also A Cake I Actually Like. Admittedly, I don't like cake very much. It's usually dry, usually has dreadful buttercream frosting, and often commits sins like putting chocolate with raspberry or lemon with raspberry or anything with raspberry. Give me a well made red velvet cake and you know I'll be happy. And every so often a really good chocolate cake is really good. Heck- I love angel food! But those are all exceptions to the rule.

Anyway, the sweet and salty cake is not like other cakes. It's dark and chocolaty, moist and somehow light (light only referring to texture of course- this little number includes a pound of butter and a pound of chocolate just in the frosting. Then there are the 3 layers of salted caramel and the cake itself... It's really intense and I recommend eating it for a breakfast of regret).

You can read the recipe here because I am not going to retype it. The S&S already took one (be it really fun) day of my life, but I'm not giving it another hour of my life by typing up it's memoirs. Ok- honestly I'm making it again today. I just don't want to copy the recipe when it's all over the internets already.

Make it on a day that you have literally all day. I so often make things that don't have recipes- or I just ignore the recipes and do it my way- that I really enjoyed such a complicated and specific task. The one ingredient that I changed up was exchanging vegetable shortening for lard. I can't help myself- vegetable shortening gives me the creeps! Plus, why not put a little pork in your cake? It only compliments the nature of this sweet and salty creation.

Puff Piece

I decided I wanted to make hand-pies the right way, and that meant learning how to make puff pastry. It was time consuming but actually not very hard. This is because I am the lucky owner of a vintage butter shaver. This tool enables me to shave butter into tiny slivers while it is still frozen- and it remains frozen. Frozen butter is essential to any crust that you want to be flaky. Every ingredient should be cold, some say even the flour should be chilled (control freaks/perfectionists) for a truly flaky texture. If you have a Cuisinart then you can use that instead of the butter shaver and probably save a lot of arm energy (the ancient tool I have requires great strength and stamina, two things I regrettably lack). But anyway, I made the dough properly, learned all about folding and turning it, and then rolled it out and filled it with strawberry rhubarb preserves that I made last spring! I felt like I was cheating on spring by having rhubarb so early, but since it was legit from last spring I am forgiving myself for jump-starting the season. I also made little sugar and cinnamon twists for the little babies that live down stairs from me- they loved them.

I did not do a photo essay the way that this awesome baker did, but you should take a look at her blog and watch the little video to understand the puff pastry process- and then you should DO IT! I did it on a cold day when I could rest the dough outside- keeping it cold is important! I'll say it again! Keep the fucking dough cold!

Anyway. Aside from baking pastries for babies and thinking about summer, I've been working a lot of private parties for groups of doctors. This is something I find very interesting because I feel like I am getting insider information. For example, last night I learned how many injections must be made into the areola after breast augmentation surgery to keep the nipple looking real. Last week I learned about depression. I often want to ask questions during the lectures, but have learned that they don't like that. They want to eat their salads and look at slides of the uterus, without comments from the waitress or supporting staff. But last night, the lecturer, asked ME questions, and I had to tell him to stop. He was in the business of facial reconstruction, and he was looking at my face. I told him he was making me paranoid, and he said he that he gets that a lot.