by rivka
on January 20, 2008
D and I were both very excited at the thought of turkey burgers, but you can’t make turkey burgers when the grocery store is out of turkey. hmm.
After a few moments’ hesitation about what to make my very hungry and over-studied cohabiter, I settled on mexican. Now, before you get too excited, this isn’t Diana Kennedy, from-under-the-adobe-flap Mexican (though I love Kennedy’s cookbooks, especially this one, and need to make some of her recipes soon!). This is Americanized Mexican food with just a few twists to make it more authentic. And you know what? It’s pretty damn good. Because we’re kosher, we do either the meat inside or the cheese on top. But please, don’t hold back. A little cotija cheese and sour cream never hurt anyone.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 20, 2008
By now you all know that Sunday morning breakfast is practically an institution in this house of mine. Usually, it involves some form of yeasty, delicious bread, from apricot couronne to challah french toast to the fall-favorite, spiced pumpkin bread. This morning, D and I and our house guest Eric somehow managed to sleep past the crack of dawn, and when we rolled out of bed at 10, making bread for breakfast was totally, like totally, out of the question.
Sprawled horizontally on the couch, I started thinking about recipes that take little-to-no effort. Baked rice pudding instantly came to mind: I remember marvelling at how fantastically easy it was to make such a flavorful and luscious (and not all too unhealthy!) dessert. Inspired by the laziness of my rice pudding adventure, I decided to try the same technique with oatmeal. Granted, oatmeal doesn’t require the stirring and monitoring that rice pudding does — just zap it in the microwave and voila! you’re good to go. But nuked oatmeal lacks the crust that I was so craving this morning (being without my bread and all.) Baking oatmeal would likely create a crisp exterior, which, when cracked, would yield soft, plump oats. And all it would involve was mixing everything together, transfering to a pan, and tossing in the oven. The whole thing sounded really promising.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 17, 2008
I am a total sucker for cornmeal. Perhaps it’s a texture thing: cornmeal is both grainy (in a good way) and soft. It’s responsible for creamy, buttery, polenta, and for crumbly, steaming-hot cornbread. Substitute 1/2 a cup of flour for an equal amount of cornmeal in your go-to pancake recipe, and I guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you like cornmeal, that is. D conveniently hates cornmeal. Isn’t it funny how things work out?
Even the confessed cornmeal hater didn’t hate the cookies I made last night. In fact, D said “they’re good, they’re just not cookies.” (Cookies=chocolate chip cookies, for those in need of some translation.) Admittedly, these aren’t soft and chewy like tollhouse or the delightful blue chip variety that Deb made this week, but they’re not meant to be. Cranberry cornmeal cookies have a texture more like shortbread: buttery and not overly sweet, with an irresistible melt-in-your-mouth quality. And cornmeal sets them apart from your average icebox cookie. For one thing, it turns the cookies a pleasing shade of yellow. It also gives each bite a coarseness that can’t be achieved with regular or whole wheat flour. Finally, lemon zest and cranberries team up with cornmeal’s flavor so harmoniously that the final product is a song in your mouth. Have cornmeal and I won you over yet?
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 13, 2008
Our apartment building overlooks a charming little street packed with bars and restos that’s bustling both by day and by night. While it’s wonderful to live where things happen, sometimes that means 3am powows and lots of “hoot….rah! hoot…rah!” from drunk frat-boy types. Last night’s “visitors” were loud and rowdy, and I got precious little sleep. Needless to say, it was a slow, slow weekend morning chez nous. And slow weekend mornings call for some serious kitchen therapy.
Enter the clafoutis (pronounced cla-FOO-tee), a cross between a pancake and a custard (or, as D. put it, “kind of like a crepe but a little more runny.” Yum.) Simple to prepare, beautiful once cooked, and rather fun to eat, a clafouti is where comfort food and luxury meet. It’s often served as dessert, but I love it for breakfast on those days when you need more than a spoonful of sugar to wash the previous night down.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 8, 2008
Bet you never thought you’d see “healthy” and “butter” next to each other in the same sentence!
Last night, after heating up some broth for a very sick D., I moseyed back to the kitchen to figure out dinner for myself. The fridge was pretty cleaned out, save some pretty blood oranges, 6 grape tomatoes, and a bit of leftover fennel. But fear not, dear readers! A few ingredients really do go a long way. I feel a little bit like Rachael Ray when I say this, but a delicious and healthy meal really is only 30 minutes away. [click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 5, 2008
All my culinary kudos are going to Alice Medrich these days. She does that thing none of us want to do: she makes the same darned thing over and over again, each time tweaking the recipe until it comes out just perfect. All that toil translates: Alice’s chocolate pecan pie is to die for, her chocolate cheesecake in The Joy of Cooking is the best I’ve had, and her new-ish book Pure Dessert tops my wishlist.
The recipes in Pure Dessert tend toward the less-chocolatey, and use complex flavors like sesame and olive oil. Those I’ve tracked down and tried have been nothing short of perfect, and the whole wheat sables I made this weekend were no exception. Within a minute of leaving the oven, they were crispy but not hard to bite, and nicely sandy without being too crumbly. You can hardly tell that half the flour is whole wheat, but the wwflour gives these cookies a really wholesome flavor, rounded out by cocoa nibs and a bit of grated chocolate (my addition). Yes, these are the anti-chocolate chip cookie, so they probably won’t please traditionalists in your house (they didn’t make D’s eyes light up, that’s for sure) but they’re truly wonderful cookies, best enjoyed under a blanket with a piping hot cup of tea. Many thanks to The Wednesday Chef, where I finally found this much-desired recipe!
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on January 3, 2008
Few things showcase the rustic nature of fruits and vegetables better than a galette. Essentially a freeform tart, a galette has a hand-folded crust that is folded half way into the center, leaving some of its innards exposed. A galette is by definition slightly asymmetrical, but more beautiful for its imperfection, in my opinion.
I most like galettes with thinly-sliced fillings. If slices are more like chunks, it becomes quite unweildy and difficult to eat. However, packed with thin slivers of apples, spices, and brown sugar, or layered with red peppers, yellow squash, onions, and goat cheese, a galette is both easy to eat and oh-so-delicious.
[click to continue…]
{ }
by rivka
on December 29, 2007
A while back, Deb of Smitten Kitchen fame blogged about the shortcomings of Martha Stewart’s chocolate pretzel cookie recipe. “Dry, bland, and not chocolatey enough” and more colorful adjectives described a cocopretzel that just didn’t cut it. She suggested trying to make pretzels out of Dorie Greenspan’s very flavorful and buttery chocolate rollout cookies, which I had been planning to make later that day. I figured what the hell? Chocolate pretzels they would be.
Needless to say, nothing is ever that easy. Dorie’s chocolate rollout cookies are awesome cookies, but they make lousy pretzels. In the oven, they flatten out and spread a bit, losing their pretzel shape, and once cooled, they’ve got the texture of great cookies, not crunchy, crispy pretzels. Pretzels: 1. Rivka: 0.
[click to continue…]
{ }
