Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last August I decided to try David Leite's chocolate chip cookie recipe. This extremely well-researched recipe was published in the New York Times last July and was supposed to be a recipe for the "perfect chocolate chip cookie." I love reading about food almost as much as I love eating it (and maybe even more than I love making it) so it pains me to be anything less than 100% enthusiastic about this recipe.

Except I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped to be. Don't get me wrong, it's a good recipe and I take a lot of the blame for the shortcomings in the batch that I made. I found the cookies drier than I prefer which was likely due, at least in part, to overbaking them (and I almost consistently underbake cookies). But overall the recipe was just too fussy when considering the results. It included both cake flour and bread flour and the fancy chocolate chips that it called for cost me well over ten dollars. Maybe I'm being cheap, but that just seems absurd.

But, there were some really good tips within the recipe. Letting the batter rest for 36 hours helps the cookies to develop flavor. And sprinkling the tops of the cookies with sea salt before baking is genius. So, I decided to use these tips with my cookie recipe of choice that comes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.


This is a pretty simple recipe and the cookie dough comes together in less than 10 minutes (using my stand mixer it takes me about 5 minutes). While resting the dough for 36 hours in the fridge improves the flavor, it is definitely not necessary for a tasty cookie. I do, however, recommend letting the batter chill for at least 20 minutes in the fridge. For some reason that seems to improve the texture of the cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, many of the changes inspired by David Leite's article in the New York Times.

Despite my horror at paying over $10 for chocolate, I do think using somewhat high quality chocolate chips can be a nice touch. I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips. Cook's Illustrated rated them very highly in a recent taste test and I picked them up for $2.50 on sale at Fred Meyers.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (I used the vanilla sugar I've made. I noticed a slightly more vanilla-y taste in the cookie dough, but no difference in the baked cookie)
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 12 oz bag chocolate chips
• sea salt for sprinkling on the tops of the cookies

Combine the flour, baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt in a bowl, set aside.

Measure out the 1 tsp vanilla and put into a ramekin, set aside.

Put the butter and sugars in a large bowl and cream using an electric mixer. The thing I love about creaming the butter and sugars is that it is easy to tell by the color of the mixture when it is ready for the next step -- it noticeably lightens in color. This takes about 3-5 minutes. Once the butter and sugars are creamed, add the eggs one at a time and beat until well blended.

Gradually mix in the flour/salt/baking soda mixture until well combined. Stir in the vanilla and chocolate chips by hand.

If you are going to rest the chocolate chips in the fridge, cover very tightly with plastic wrap and let set in the fridge for 36 hours.

Once you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop by tablespoons onto ungreased baking sheets and sprinkle lightly with sea salt. Bake until the edges are browned, the overall color is light gold; if the cookies have been chilling this takes about 15 minutes (in my slightly cool oven). If not, this takes about 10 minutes.

Aerogarden Update

It delights me how far me aerogarden has come from the first couple of weeks. It's hard to get a good picture of the aerogarden now, but it's pretty much out of control:

The purple basil and dill are over two feet tall and the mint and thyme are dense.

I had to cut back several of the herbs so the Italian basil and parsley could get some light. Post harvest:

Again, I'm not sure that these photos are capturing the volume of herbs that I have, but I need recipes! Any ideas out there?

Tres leches cake

Tres leches cake is kind of like that girl in your high school class that seemed really normal—even on the boring side—and then turns out to be really rad and your favorite person ever. I'm not talking about any girl in our high school class in particular, Katie, just making an apt metaphor. (Although I do know that there is a rad girl from our high school class who reads the blog and then doesn't comment. I'm just saying...reading the blog and then not leaving a comment every once in a while is a bit like going to mass and then not leaving some change in the basket.)

I made this cake for my mother's birthday, among many other things, and it was excellent for a few reasons. First, this cake really wanted to be made the day before—and I really wanted to not have to deal with cake the day of the party so we were kind of a match made in heaven. Second, what it lacks in decor, and the other sorts of pizzazz generally associated with cakes (frosting, filling, etc), it makes up for in moist and delicious flavor. Third, related to the second point: you don't have to decorate it. All glory, no hassle—maybe even more glory because it doesn't look like much, so people are very pleasantly surprised.

Tres leches cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart

1 stick butter, melted and cooled
6 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 c. whole milk
12 oz can of evaporated milk
14 oz can of sweetened, condensed milk

Put the oven to 350º. Grease a 9" x 13" pan. You will serve the cake in this pan because it won't be able to survive without its support—very co-dependent.

In a large bowl, beat your egg whites, baking soda, and salt to soft peaks. As I've learned from macarons, this works best if the egg whites are at room temperature.

Now, slowly add the egg yolks. Once combined, slowly add the sugar. Once that's combined, add the butter in—Martha suggests folding it, but I forgot and just used the mixer. The sky didn't fall and I wasn't struck by lightning. Add the vanilla. Finally, add the flour, in 4 separate additions. Ms. Stewart also suggests folding this in.

Spread batter in pan. Bake 20-25 minutes, until the top of the cake is a nice shade of brown.

While the cake is baking, in another big bowl, stir together those three milks.

When the cake has been removed from the oven, use a skewer to stick many, many holes into it. Because you beat all those egg whites the cake is pretty spongy already, but you are now perforating it to make it even more absorbent. Why? Because now you're going to pour all that milk onto the cake. And the cake is going to like it.

Then you're going to let the cake cool down a bit, you're going to put it in the refrigerator overnight, and you are going to like that cake back.

Since there are already three milks present, I say: why not whip up some heavy cream and serve it on the side? I also served it with a fresh strawberry coulis and kind of wanted a sprig of mint, but not enough to go out and buy some fresh mint.

Lemon Strawberry Icebox Cake

I was first introduced to icebox cakes in college when a roommate made one for a potluck. It was kind of magical -- thin wafers were layered with whipped cream and placed in the fridge for 12 hours. Overnight the wafers and the cream meld to become a no-bake cake of sorts -- pretty exciting and ridiculously easy. I was reminded of this recipe when reading smitten kitchen a while ago, but despite the magic involved I didn't make it because massive quantities of chocolate and whipped cream seemed way too rich. But I do love lemon and strawberries, so when I spied some Meyer Lemon cookie thins at Trader Joe's the other day, I decided to adapt this recipe more to my liking. I used lemon, strawberries and some really good whipped cream with Greek yogurt, lemon zest and vanilla bean.

This definitely isn't the prettiest thing I've ever made (and I'm not usually good at making pretty things, so that says a lot.) I have absolutely no idea how Deb from smitten kitchen got her layers so perfectly even! And while it is still more rich than the typical dessert that I go for, it was definitely enjoyable. I'd say the best part of this recipe is how fun it is and totally open for experimentation.


Lemon Strawberry Icebox Cake
adapted very liberally from smitten kitchen from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Here is sort of an embarrassing warning: this dish is really susceptible to absorbing any smells that are in the fridge. Luckily, my more grown-up fridge is relatively odor-free, but not so in college when my roommate made this dish...

Ingredients

• two 9 ounce boxes of Trader Joe's Meyer Lemon Cookie Thins (or any type of thin wafer)
• 2 cups heavy cream, chilled
• 1 cup Greek yogurt (I used low fat, but think nonfat would work just as well)
  
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice (I got 4 tsps out of 1 large lemon)
  
• 3-5 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla bean (if you can find if for cheap...otherwise, skip it entirely or use some vanilla extract to taste)
• 1 pound strawberries

Prep:

• Cut 2/3 of the strawberries into paper thin slices (I used a mandoline, but not necessary -- just easier). If necessary sprinkle with sugar. Set aside. The remaining strawberries will be used to decorate the cake.

• Measure out three tablespoons sugar and put into a large mixing bowl
  

• Zest the lemon and put into the bowl with the sugar.

• Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrap out seeds. Put the seeds in the same bowl as sugar and lemon zest. Discard the vanilla bean casing or use for vanilla sugar. Mix these three ingredients together to evenly disperse the seeds and zest.
• Juice the lemon and measure out 4 tsps. Put in a ramekin and set aside.
• Measure out 1 cup yogurt, set aside.
  
• Measure out 2 cups heavy cream, place in large mixing bowl with the sugar mixture
  

Whip the cream and sugar mixture until soft peaks form. Add the lemon juice and quickly whip until fully incorporated. Add the yogurt, a 1/2 at a time until evenly dispersed throughout, taking care not to over whip the cream. Test and add more sugar if you'd like

On a flat plate or serving dish, arrange wafers side-by-side in a seven inch circle trying to minimize any open space between the wafers (including in the center of the circle). Spread a 1/2 cup of the whipped cream mixture. Spread some of the strawberry slices on top of the cream. Repeat with the remaining wafers, cream and strawberries until there are about 9-10 layers. Cover with the remaining layer of cream, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 12 hours.

When ready to serve, take the cake out of the fridge, cut the remaining strawberries in half, and decorate with the strawberries halves. Enjoy!

Crock-Pot Carnitas

Your post on ice cream was wonderful. Not only because it looked amazing, which it did, but also because it gave me a sense of how you cook. I love the idea of you improvising like a jazz musician and even though you said it often does not turn out the way you expect, I'd imagine that eventually you will consistently turn out awesome food using this creative process.

It was also interesting because we have wayyyy different styles of cooking and mine is a lot less creative. I usually read a recipe multiple times before making the food and lately I've started taking notes on the recipes before I start cooking. I note what prep I'm going to do first, which bowls I can put the prepped food into, etc. It's kind of anal-retentive, but I'm increasingly aware of how important it is for me, otherwise I'm bouncing around the kitchen like a ping-pong ball with no real direction. I took this note taking approach for the recipe for carnitas I recently made, though it was so easy it didn't really require the extra notes. I did, however, write out my notes in the form of a "to do" list below.

I definitely don't want to neglect talking about how good these carnitas are because not only are they easy, they are also really good. Tender, tasty and a perfect taco filling. I loved them with cilantro, onion, guacamole and mango, but, of course, the combinations are endless.


Crock-Pot Carnitas
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated non-slow cooker version of carnitas

Ingredients

• 1 (3 1/2 - to 4-pound) boneless pork butt
• Salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 medium onion
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 2 cups water
• 1 medium orange

To Do:

• Measure: herbs (1 tsp cumin, 2 bay leaves,1 tsp oregano), 2 tsps salt, 1/2 tsp pepper; put directly into crock-pot
• Juice: 1 tablespoon from lime and put directly into crock-pot, discard rind. Halve and juice the orange as well and putting both the orange juice and the orange halves into the crock-pot.
  
• Measure: Two cups water, put into crock-pot and stir all above ingredients together.
  
• Cut: Onion into 3/4 inch rings (put directly into crock-pot); cut pork butt into 2-inch chunks (note: the original recipe suggests trimming the fat to 1/8 inch thick. I didn't do this because trimming the fat too much can lead to dry meat. I just picked out any large pieces of fat before I used the meat.) After the meat is chopped, put in crock-pot.
  

Cover the crock-pot and cook for 7-10 hours on low, until the meat is tender. Once the meat is done, remove it from the crock-pot and set aside in a bowl. Remove the onion, bay leaves and orange halves; pour the remaining liquid into a medium or large-sized pot and place on stove over high heat for 8-12 minutes until the liquid has reduced to a half cup.

If you want smaller pieces of meat, you can at this point use a fork to separate the meat into smaller pieces. Pour the reduced liquid over the meat and toss. To get somewhat crispy meat, put the pork on a wire rack that is placed on top of a baking sheet (this is so the liquid and fat can drain off the meat without making it greasy). Place this on the lower-middle baking rack and broil for about 10 minutes total, flipping once midway through.

Remove from oven and let cool slightly. The tasty meat can probably be used in a variety of different ways...I used mine in tacos with finely chopped onion, cilantro, guacamole, mango and lots of lime juice.

Wish I Were in Spain Crackers

I think my posts on this blog make it clear that I am sometimes overly enthusiastic when it comes to kitchen projects. (See: making my own almond flour. See also: buying 8 pounds of strawberries at once.) Being ambitious, a fairly good daughter, a fairly broke graduate/law student, AND, in particular, the daughter of a woman turning 60 this past week, I find myself in the middle of a big project. Again.

I've offered—and been taken up on said offer—to cook for my mother's birthday party this Saturday, which maybe 25 people will attend? That's more than a few people. And, while I've cooked for TONS of people before when I was in the Asia House/Pyle Inn co-op at Oberlin, I always did it with a partner or, even better, an entire group of friends. This is me, all on my own, very, very lonesome. (My mom did offer to help, but that seemed to go against the point of me offering to do the work.)

I'm not too worried, and actually feel like I should be a little bit more worried, especially since I've never cooked anything that I'll be serving (this sounds a bit like your typical problem, Katie)—but I've got a good shopping list, an excellent schedule, and lots of motivation (like: I don't want to humiliate myself in front of my mother's friends). The menu is:

• Olive, anchovy, manchego crackers, to be served as appetizers with store-bought dip and vegetables
• Zucchini boats filled with ricotta-basil mousse
• Wild rice pilaf
• Roasted beet salad with tarragon vinaigrette
• Lager and lemon-grilled chicken and tofu
• Rosemary and kalamata bread
• Tres leches cake with strawberry coulis

Sounds good, right? I'll tell you how it goes. The crackers, at least, are a success. They are salty and rich and taste like southern Spain in your mouth. I used Manchego, but you can also use other strong cheeses, maybe a sharp cheddar, but that's not quite so espanish.


Wish I Were in Spain Crackers
Adapted from Party Food, a book which my aunt was going to throw away and I dragged to Tucson from Belgium. Totally worth it for these crackers.

2 oz can of anchovy fillets in olive oil, drained
1/2 c. canned black olives, also drained
1 c. Manchego cheese, finely grated
1 c. flour
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into small pieces
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp water

Using a food processor, throw everything in. (If you live somewhere damper than a desert, you might not need that tablespoon of water. Try it without and if the doughball doesn't form, throw it in.) Pulse until it forms a ball. Flatten ball of dough into a thick disc and let chill in the refrigerator, at least 30 minutes.

Turn oven to 400º. Have baking sheets ready, but they don't need to be greased. There's a STICK of butter in the crackers.

Divide dough in two, keeping one half in the fridge until you're ready for it.

Roll out half the dough—this is going to take a surprising amount of flour. The dough is smooth and easy to roll, but also easy to stick to any surface, so you'll need a lot of flour to be able to lift it from that surface onto a baking sheet intact. Roll it out thin, remembering that the crackers are going to puff up a bit during baking. They won't, however, spread out, so you can put them fairly close together.

Cut rolled-out dough into whatever shape you feel confident in creating. I started with triangles and switched to squares.

Sprinkle crackers with cayenne pepper, if desired. It might be helpful to know if you're going to be spreading anything on these crackers or eating them straight. If eating them alone, you might want to go a little easy on the cayenne.

Bake 10 minutes. Let cool. Homemade crackers!

Señor Palmer, or the Yerba Materita

So, I'm on this infusion kick and thought: why limit myself to vodka? Why not work with an alcohol that actually has some flavor to start with and that I actually like? Enter: tequila.

I wanted to get the smokiness of yerba maté into tequila. If I had had a smoky mezcal, I totally would have used that. But, as the infusion was going on, I started to doubt myself, most often after checking the infusion-in-progress and smelling it. The smell was not promising. A little gnarly. No matter, I thought, I can still serve it to my friends (high fives later, Chloe and Kylie), but maybe it should be mixed with something.

And so was born the Señor Palmer/Yerba Materita. Which name do you like better? I kind of like Señor Palmer because then you think of an Arnold Palmer: iced tea and lemonade (and a healthy pour of bourbon doesn't hurt that mixture in the least, if it's a bourbon sort of occasion). At the same time Señor Palmer is the kind of thing you'd expect to read on the menu of a chain Mexican restaurant, and that's kind of lame. But the Yerba Materita doesn't really get all these connotations across and it's not the most margarita-y drink...A dilemma, I tell you.

Let me tell you about this beverage: it's refreshing and lemony/green, it doesn't really taste like tequila—this part is a little bit dangerous. It doesn't have that over-sweet stickiness that margaritas sometimes leave. I would even venture to say that it perks you up a bit while also making you prone to giggling—a perfect combination of effects to make you and your friends be at your collective funniest ever. I hesitate to toot my own horn twice in one week, but this drink is fabulous.

The Señor Palmer

750 ml bottle of tequila—an excellent tequila is not necessary here, but I do think it's better with a reposado than a silver tequila (as is almost everything, right?)

10 bags yerba maté tea or, if using loose maté, as much as would be needed for 10 servings. I used the yerba maté available at Trader Joe's, which is kind of mild.

later: a bottle of margarita mix

Stick the tea in the tequila. As you can see, the tequila isn't very dark in color. I let mine infuse about 10 days, by which point the tequila was definitely browner, more the shade of an iced tea.


Remove tea from tequila, maybe by straining through cheesecloth if you're using loose tea?

Mix 1 part tequila to 3 parts margarita mix. Rim glasses in salt. Serve on the rocks and accept all compliments.

The infusion ingredients. What's that thing hanging above the maté?
My Virgin Mary toast imprint, obviously. I haven't actually imprinted any toast with her image
because I think that would make me feel blasphemous.

Brown Rice

Brown rice is awesome. It's tasty, (relatively) healthy and cheap. And it is the main ingredient in my current favorite dish, the Mushroom Casserole from 101 Cookbooks (the dish is also pictured in my Easter Post). Until a year ago, however, I was too intimidated by it to make it at home. I've never liked cooking rice in general -- too much potential for burning, bad texture, and a messy pot to clean up. And for some reason that I'm not entirely sure of, brown rice seemed particularly intimidating.

Then about a year ago I found a recipe for oven-baked brown rice from Cook's Illustrated and I realized just how easy it can be to prepare. While it takes an hour to bake, it only requires about 5 minutes of active time and consistently turns out great rice. It's the easiest thing ever -- I love it and if you like brown rice, you will too.



Brown Rice
From Cook's Illustrated, The New Best Recipe

I pretty much followed the original recipe in terms of the ingredients, but adapted the steps a bit to dirty fewer pans :).

• 1 1/2 cups brown rice (Cook's Illustrated says this can be long-, medium-, or short-grain rice. This time around I used short grain, but am partial to the jasmine brown rice at Trader Joe's)
• 2 1/3 cups water
• 2 teaspoons oil or butter
• salt (here Cook's Illustrated suggests a 1/2 teaspoon -- I tend to use a generous 1/2 teaspoon.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place the rice, salt and oil/butter in a baking dish (I use a 2 quart Pyrex casserole dish with a lid, but an 8 inch square baking dish should work well)

Bring the water to a boil. I use my tea kettle for this, but I think heating the water in the microwave would also work well. Once the water is boiling, pour onto the rice. Stir thoroughly, but quickly as to get the dish into the oven as soon as possible (if using butter, make sure it completely melts at this point!). Put the lid on or cover very tightly with two sheets of foil. Then pop the dish into the preheated oven for an hour.

Once the hour is up, remove the dish from the oven, take off the lid and fluff the rice with a spoon or a fork. Recover loosely with the lid or the foil and let the rice sit for 5-10 minutes. The original recipe suggests letting it rest uncovered for about 5 more minutes, but this hasn't been necessary when I've prepared it. Enjoy!

Strawberry ice cream and angel food cake

I imagine that, for a jazz musician, there comes a point where you know enough about everything—your instrument, chord progressions, keys, melodies, harmonies, whatever else—that you're playing a piece of music and you are brimming with so much confidence and inspiration that you say: let me take it from here, I can handle this.

Sometimes I feel like that in the kitchen, like I understand the flavors, technique, ingredients so well that, even though I'm not quite sure where it's going, it'll be fine. And, most of the time, I am dead wrong. Most of the time, this kind of thinking presents me with a good opportunity to remember that recipes exist for a reason—namely, to tell me how to make excellent food. Not that the food that comes out of my experiments is inedible. It's just wholly mediocre and decidedly not-excellent. EXCEPT FOR THIS ICE CREAM.

Let me tell you what happened. I went to the grocery store last week to buy some cheap vodka and tequila for infusions. And strawberries were on an incredible special: 4 pounds for $4! I bought 8 pounds...this may have been a little ambitious. I knew I wanted to make a strawberry coulis to freeze in anticipation of my mother's birthday (next weekend!) and I knew I wanted to eat some strawberries, but 8 pounds, my friend, is many, many strawberries.

So, I decided to make some ice cream and I decided that, even though I've never made strawberry ice cream, that I wasn't happy with any of the recipes I could find. Because, you know, I've made other ice creams (beet, olive oil, tequila—not mixed together), so I kind of get it: you make a custard, you chill it, you put it in your ice cream maker. Easy peasy. Right? Surprisingly, yes.

Here's the fantastic thing: this ice cream recipe uses enough egg yolks to provide you with enough egg whites to make an angel food cake. It's as if chickens have been evolving to make jumbo-sized eggs with the perfect yolk/white ratio for precisely this situation.

Strawberry ice cream
3 cups whole milk, or any milk/cream combination you like
3 cups chopped strawberries (this will be divided: 2 cups for step 1, 1 cup for later)
9 jumbo egg yolks
1 cup white sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

First, infuse the milk with strawberries. This is how gelato is normally made, and it gives the flavor more intensity. So: put milk and 2 cups of the strawberries in a pot together and bring just to a boil. Turn off heat and let steep about an hour.

Strain the strawberry milk. You can squish the strawberries to get all the liquid and flavor out of them that you can.

Now, in a bowl, combine the yolks, sugar, and salt. Bring that bowl over to the oven with you.

Your strawberry-infused milk should be in a pot. Put burner to medium heat and, while stirring, slowly add the sugary yolks.

This is the tricky part because nature wants to work against you. You want to make a silky-smooth custard but those eggs! They want to separate into clumps and become strawberry-flavored scrambled eggs! The way to avoid this is to decide, right now, that you like stirring the liquid in this pot and that it will be an honor and a pleasure to stir it until it becomes thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Stir the custard until it is, in fact, think enough to coat the back of a spoon. By this I mean: when you bring the spoon out of the liquid and run your finger across the back of that spoon, the track your finger leaves stays there. (A confession: sometimes I get bored with how long it takes to get to this point so I turn up the heat a little bit and promise to stir even more constantly.)

Through a strainer (because even the most zealous stirring can't escape a bit of solidified egg or two), pour your delicious custard into a bowl. Stir in vanilla. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day: bust out your ice cream maker! Remember that extra cup of chopped strawberries? About 20 minutes into the ice cream making process, throw those in and let your maker incorporate them into the ice cream.

Serve with the angel food cake you used all those egg whites on! Oh man, wait a minute, how do you make that angel food cake?

Angel food cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

1 cup flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
9 jumbo ROOM TEMPERATURE egg whites (or however many it takes to get 1 3/4 cups egg whites*)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350º, put a rack in the middle of your oven, prepare a tube pan by which I mean: make sure it's clean. Don't grease it. (Really!)

Sift the flour and sugar together FOUR times. At least.

In a large bowl, start beating the egg whites until they get a little frothy. Are they really room temperature? They should be, because it makes your life, as the person beating the eggs, much easier. Why? Because the heat, or lack of cold, helps denature the egg protein, making it easier for that protein to get long and non-kinked. Or something like that. If any scientist is reading this (I mean YOU, Chemistry Department), please disregard any science I mention.

Once frothy, add the salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla to the egg whites. Put your electric beater on high and beat until you get to a stage in between soft and stiff peaks, but closer to stiff. Don't get lazy: the air you are putting into these egg whites is the ONLY thing that will be holding your cake up, since there's no leavening. It needs as much air as possible.

In 6 additions, sprinkle the flour/sugar mixture over the egg whites (you could even sift each addition over the egg whites) and gently, gently fold to combine. Gently.

Once all flour/sugar has been incorporated, gently spread the batter into the tube pan.

Bake 35-40 minutes, until cake is golden brown and, when touched, springs back.

When cool, run a knife around the edge of the tube pan and, even though ungreased, your cake will come free.

Handy cooling method: set the cake on a bottle.

*If using 9 egg whites doesn't get you 1 3/4 cups, add another one. Throw that extra egg yolk into the custard—whatever, right?

Easter Dinner

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doomed to make the same cooking mistakes over and over. While there are some things I'm able to learn (for example, how not to burn caramel) there are others that I find myself repeating no matter how much I swear this will be the last time. One thing that always causes me a bit trouble is the combination of new recipes and cooking for other people. This Easter dinner was no exception.

Nicki came over for Easter dinner this year. For anyone reading this who doesn't know, she is a friend of ours from high school. Neither one of us has family in Portland and I was really happy when she decided to come over. And don't get me wrong, despite what I'm about to say it was a lot of fun and she's an excellent sport about things like having dinner being pushed back and eating new recipes that I'm trying out.

I have yet to consistently master the art of having guests. Part of it is a time thing -- I can hardly ever accurately judge how long it will take me to make something that I haven't made before. I'm constantly underestimating the time something will take, so people are left waiting or, in the case of Nicki, receive a somewhat frantic text message asking to push back dinner by a half and hour. I think, though, this is a fairly easy fix. I just need to keep reminding myself to do more prep the day before. Things like cake often even taste better if they're made the day before.

But there is another problem that is going to be harder to fix. I frequently become enamored of making new recipes for my friends. I'll read a recipe, fall in love with it and decide it will be the best thing I've ever made in my entire life. This was the case with the asparagus strudel from the Silver Palate cookbook that I made for Easter. I was so confident that it was going to be tasty, it didn't occur to me that maybe I should just stick to something I had successfully made before, something I knew would be tasty. And it definitely didn't occur to me, until about half way into making it, that maybe I should have tried it out before serving it to someone, especially because it involved philo dough and I am not super experienced with philo dough. Though ultimately I missed any major disasters, it was definitely not the most tasty thing I have ever made and I would have preferred to serve Nicki something delicious (luckily the brown rice and mushroom casserole and lemon cake turned out fine). Also, it looked a bit like a very large burrito:



I'm kind of stuck because I don't know if I'll ever want to stop trying new recipes out on my friends and family, but at the same time it is going to be hard to get over the feeling that I should always serve people really good food. New recipes, despite my best efforts, are not always going to be super tasty or even kind of tasty. Any ideas on my dilemma? I realize the best solution is probably just to get over it.

The pictures below are pictures of the dinner...as you can see they are a bit out of focus and disorganized and probably representative of my mental state at the time.



So, the asparagus really isn't worth posting the recipe on, especially as I'm going to work on the recipe, perhaps converting it into a tart. It has a lot of potential -- fresh herbs, leeks and asparagus -- super tasty stuff -- it just needs a little adjustment. I will however, be posting on my favorite method for cooking brown rice within the next day or so. This method is awesome. Also, I'm sorry for being so negligent lately, it is the last few weeks of the semester and I'm a little panicked!

Chicken in milk

I like a roast chicken quite a lot. It's not very difficult, it's hard to mess up, and yet it's still kind of impressive. I saw this recipe on thekitchn a few weeks ago (so did Laura, who left a comment about it a few posts ago). It originally comes from Jamie Oliver's website and, while I've never cooked any of his food before and only seen a few shows, I generally fall into the camp of American women who thinks a British accent can get you a long way towards attractive and, therefore, have a generally good opinion about him and his cooking.

With this recipe, I went against my traditional habit of assuming things won't be great—keeping expectations low, right?, in order to be very pleasantly surprised when those expectations are exceeded. But, the perfect storm of internet hype, British accent, and fame made me expect very great things from this chicken: I wanted the pucker of lemon and the softness of milk, the crisp of browned chicken skin with the moist of chicken meat. I wanted to taste spring in the sage, complemented by citrus, but be satisfied by the slight heaviness of milky sauce. I wanted to cut into the chicken and have a small genie fly out to grant me three wishes.

Alas.

It's a good chicken: the meat was moist and fell away from the bone; the sauce was nice; it made my house smell ridiculously good. For you, now that your expectations are lowered, it may even be a fantastic chicken.


A few things I'd change from the original recipe:

• Salt. I seasoned the raw chicken with salt and browned it in the butter/olive oil before putting it into the oven, but still think that when you throw in the lemon zest, garlic, milk, cinnamon stick, and sage it wouldn't hurt to throw maybe a teaspoon of salt in too.

• The 1/2 cinnamon stick. Cinnamon is pervasive and strong and most of the time I like it very much. But there were no other flavors in the pot—lemon, butter, sage, garlic—that seemed to really go with the cinnamon...I think the problem is that I know Jamie Oliver is English and I don't equate English food with a spicy and fragrant thing like cinnamon. I admit that it isn't very culturally open-minded of me to put Mr. Oliver in an English Box, thinking I have knowledge about what should be in the English Box, and refusing to let him show me something outside of it precisely because I think he resides squarely in that box. Or it could be that I'm reading a lot of cultural theory this semester and it's slowly taking over my brain.

• The lid. Thekitchn post pointed out that Mr. Oliver fails to tell you what to do with the lid, even though he asks you to use a pot with a lid that fits, implying that a lid is necessary. I followed in thekitchn's footsteps and kept the lid on for 1 hour and off for the last 1/2 hour of cooking. I think that if I had had the lid off the entire time I would have had a more condensed sauce, but mine ended up very liquidy—well, it is a liquid, obviously, but runny. I mean to say runny.

It's a good chicken, it will impress your friends, it will make you full, there is nothing bad about it. You should try it and not expect much—and then have your mind blown by how delicious it turns out.

Berry hand pies

Katie, if your birthday were to ever happen when we were in the same physical location, I'd offer to bake you something. (How subjunctive is that sentence? Take THAT, Spanish and your Romance language crew! You're not the only ones who can talk about things that probably won't happen.)

This is an easy promise to make because we are almost never in the same place, but that doesn't make it any less genuine. If, however, I were going to bake you something, I'd work hard to make it gorgeous and delicious, knowing that you could just as well make something for yourself. I felt a touch of the same sort of intimidation when I offered to bake to celebrate my friend Natasha's birthday.

I gave Natasha a choice between tres leches cake and handpies. Guess what she picked. (I'm going to make tres leches for my mother's 60th birthday later this month.) But! It turns out that a handpie is just a turnover by another name. Or an empanada. This realization made me a little bit sad, took the edge off my handpie excitement—and then I realized a-rose-by-any-other-name-blah-blah-blah, pie is delicious, portable pies are delicious too. No problem here.

Be warned: the recipe is a little fussy. Especially the dough part, which I'm going to do a separate, sciencey post about later. (Geeky, right? But USEFUL, trust me.)

On filling and sealing handpies: clearly, I haven't mastered the sealing part. What are you going to do? Things bubble, goo comes out, and maybe it's kind of nice to see the pie's guts before you eat them. I recommend a filling that's not-so-juicy. When filling your little handpies, put in less filling than you think is appropriate. It will look scant and this will make you feel like a miserly piemaker. No worries! It'll fill out in the baking process. Or maybe the dough shrinks a bit. Maybe a bit of both. Anyway, you need to be able to close the handpie and lots of filling makes this impossible.

Life cycle of a handpie: ingredients,
empty circles of dough, filled and unbaked, baked.

The dough I got from Smitten Kitchen here.

The filling is all my own, and on the not-sweet side of things. Add more sugar if you think that's an appropriate thing to do. I used frozen berries because they're easier to find and cheaper.

Berry handpie filling, in honor of Natasha and how 27 was a good year for her

1 bag frozen mixed berries
1/2 bag frozen strawberries
zest and juice of 1 lemon
4 tsp tapioca powder (not pearls)
1/2 cup sugar

Mix all these things together. Let them sit while you do something else, like wash the dishes. Then fill your pies, sealing them by brushing cold water on the parts that will meet when folding. Cut slits in your pies, brush with egg wash, chill in your refrigerator for about an hour on sheets lined with parchment paper.

Heat your oven to 375º and bake for 20 minutes.

This dough and filling made many, many handpies. Keep in mind that the strawberries may need to be cut in half to fit into smaller pies. Most of my pies were about 5" in diameter before getting folded in half. Big strawberries make mysterious bumps in your handpies—I can't say I'm completely against that, especially when you discover that the bump is a strawberry.

Why tapioca? It's a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated and it helps take away some of the juiciness. I suppose you could also use cornstarch.

Handpies in formation. Do you see how flaky that crust is?
Are you so excited about my upcoming pastry dough post??

All's well that ends well: vodka infusions, part two

Basil-cucumber-peppercorn on the left, limoncello on the right.

Before you say it, before you even think it: I know. This looks like two jars of pee. Moving on.

The vodka infusions turned out excellent. The limoncello is sweet and strong and delicious. The basil-cucumber-peppercorn is bitter, medicinal—kind of bracing. I realize that isn't the most attractive description, but imagine it in a bloody mary and the idea becomes more appealing.

Anyway, I'm sold on vodka infusions. I learned some more tips on thekitchn.com this week, and the best one is that vodka infusions aren't snooty in the least: you don't need good vodka, just high alcohol content. This makes me even more excited to try new combinations. Maybe some ginger in limoncello. Maybe some fruits. Who can tell!

Limoncello

Peel two lemons, trying to get as little pith as possible. Add to alcohol, I used about 10 ounces here but think you could use more and get the same intensity. I also added about half a cup of simple syrup. I've been told that putting an entire vanilla bean into the mix isn't a bad idea, I didn't try it because I didn't have one lying around and didn't find one at any of the stores I normally go to. Let sit for a few weeks. Make it cold, then sip.

Basil-cucumber-peppercorn infusion

I cut an English cucumber in half, sliced that half, and put it in a jar with the skin still on (if I were using the non-English cucumber, I probably would have peeled it). Then I threw in some leaves of fresh basil, probably about 1/2 cup, not packed. And about 2 tablespoons whole peppercorns. Let sit for a few weeks. Done and done.

When infusions are done sitting, get out your funnel and your cheesecloth. Filter the liquid through cheesecloth.

Conchas

In terms of food, there are many wonderful things about living in Portland. Awesome farmer's markets and the tons of great (and affordable on a student's budget) places to eat are some of my favorite features of living here. Tucson, however, has one clear advantage over Portland -- Mexican food. One of my favorite Mexican foods, conchas -- a type of pastry -- are nearly impossible to find here (though to be fair, seeing as I've only moved to Portland within the past year, it's entirely possibly I'm missing out on a great source). Unlike other ubiquitous types of Mexican food, the pastries can be really hard to find, especially freshly prepared. And while Mexican pastries in general, and conchas in particular, might not be considered as flashy as other types of sweets, they have a terrific subtly sweet flavor accented by vanilla, cocoa, or cinnamon.

Conchas are a type of sweet bread. They are spongy and light -- not as delicate as a croissant, but sweeter and lighter than a typical dinner roll. The bread itself is only slightly sweetened, but is topped with a crunchy sugar topping. The lightly-colored sugar topping is prepared separately, put on the dough (it looks a bit like fondant), and then a pattern is cut into this topping. The pattern sometimes resembles a shell or "concha" which is where these pastries derive their name. The conchas pictured below are just getting ready for a trip to the oven:


When I recently found a recipe for on All Recipes, I was so excited I didn't stop to critically evaluate the recipe. The really light and fluffy bread-like things I've made before all require at least an overnight period for the dough to rise. This recipe required two hours, total. Unfortunately, this didn't occur to me until after I pulled the first batch out of the oven and noted it looked denser than I was hoping and the breads had formed what appeared to be something of a crust.

I was pleasantly surprised when I bit into one -- it was a lot closer in flavor and texture than I was expecting. An acceptable substitute, though not quite there -- just too dense (if you're a concha connoisseur beware -- this probably isn't the recipe for you). It didn't occur to me until after I finished to check my Diana Kennedy cookbook and of course, she has a really delicious sounding recipe for conchas. And her recipe requires over 20 hours for the dough to rise and rest. I'm hoping to get to her recipe soon, but in the meantime, I'm definitely going to enjoy these. They're wonderful with a cup of tea.



I pretty much followed this recipe. My only adaptations were to use the vanilla sugar I made last week in place of the regular sugar and to add one drop of food coloring to the topping mixture so that the breads were covered in lovely pale colors.

Zucchini Stuffed with Ricotta

Like most people I talk to who live in the Northwest, I'm becoming more and more impatient for the arrival of warm weather. This longing for summer is definitely effecting my food choices; I've been gobbling down preseason strawberries and eyeing the imported peaches at Trader Joes. And though I by no means adhere to a locavore diet, I am mindful of the negative impact that shipping food long distance can have on both the environment and the tastiness of the food. So, it is with some guilt that I post on zucchini, well before "zucchini season" in Portland. Maybe it's because I craving summer or maybe it's because I just love stuffed zucchini, but I couldn't resist these treats and the chance to use more herbs from my aerogarden.

I adapted the original recipe from Savuer so that I could use the herbs I have on hand. That is one of the great things about this recipe -- it's highly adaptable. Another change I made is that the originally recipe did not call for the zucchini insides (which are scooped out to make room for the filling) to be used in the filling. This seems like a waste to me. I only added 1/4 cup of the zucchini insides to the filling, but next time I'm going to try adding more. Another great thing about this recipe is that it keeps well -- I ate leftovers for several days and they only got better and better.


Zucchini Stuffed with Ricotta
Adapted from Sauver

• 6 medium zucchini (about 2 lbs.), halved lengthwise
• about 7 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil (this seemed like a lot to me and I ended up using about 3-4 tbsp instead)
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 medium tomatoes, cored, seeded,and chopped
• 2 cups ricotta
• 3⁄4 cup freshly grated parmesan
  
• 3⁄4 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 1 tbsp. finely chopped chives
• 4 tsp. fresh chopped mint
  
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper,
  to taste
  

After slicing the zucchini lengthwise, scoop out the insides -- leaving about a quarter inch of zucchini along the sides. A melon baller or small spoon works well for this task. Sometimes this can be a difficult job -- if the zucchini is not easily scooped out I recommend broiling the halves for about 3-5 minutes to help with the process. Take 1/4 cup of the zucchini insides, chop them and set aside. Brush the zucchini halves with olive oil and arrange them on a foil-lined baking sheet.

Heat 2-3 tbsp. of olive oil in a medium-sized skillet (the original recipe recipe recommends a 10" skillet). Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook until translucent. Toss in a couple pinches of salt. Add the chopped zucchini and tomatoes and cook for about 4-5 more minutes until soft. Turn off the heat and set aside.

This is a good point to turn the oven onto "broil." Make sure that the oven rack is about 7 inches from the top.

While the onion mixture is cooling, combine the ricotta, 1/4 cup of the parmesan, 1/4 of the bread crumbs, the chives, mint, thyme, and egg yolks in a medium-sized bowl.

The next step is combining the onion mixture with the cheese. When adding the onion/vegetable mixture to the cheese mixture, take care to drain excess liquid that may have been released from the vegetables before adding them to the cheese. After combining the onion mixture with the cheese, season with salt and pepper. Make sure not to skimp on the salt!

Now it's time to broil the unfilled zucchini halves. Sprinkle salt on the zucchini halves and broil them for about 5 minutes (if you needed to broil them earlier in order to get the insides out, reduce the broiling time to about 3 minutes so the zucchini don't get too soft. Or skip this step altogether).

Once the zucchini are out of the oven, fill each half with the ricotta mixture. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese and bread crumbs. If you like, drizzle with the remaining olive oil, though I did not find this step necessary. Broil for 10-15 minutes, until softened and a pretty golden brown color.

Enjoy them warm or let cool to room temperature. Like I mentioned before, these reheat wonderfully. Though I've never tried it, I imagine you could make the filling a day ahead of time (though I would probably wait to add the egg to cheese mixture until just before cooking).