Coffee cake

I made coffee cake yesterday in between brewing. The basics:

Pre-heat oven to 350.

1) Into the mixer (not exact): 1tsp salt, 1tsp baking powder, 3/4tsp baking soda (or vice versa), 2 1/4 c flour, 8T butter cut into 12 pieces, 1 1/c c sugar. Beat it up a bunch.

2) Then, add 1/2c sour cream or plain yogurt

3) In a different bowl mix 1c sour cream or yogurt, 4 eggs, some vanilla (eh, pour a reasonable amount, I like vanilla).

4) Mix the wet into the dry

5) Pour it into a greased 9x13 pan.

6) In a bowl mix something like (I really made this up) 3/4c flour, 3/4c sugar, a bunch of dark brown sugar (maybe 3/4 cup?), 8T butter cut into 12 pieces, and then some brown spices like cin, all spice, cloves and a bit of fresh nutmeg. I did some double-knife action to cut the butter into the dry goods.

7) Bake for about 40 minutes. Watch the butter pooling and bubbling and almost deep frying parts.

8) Nom nom nom. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want some?

8) Watch the butter pool on top

36 Hours in New Orleans

We actually spent seven luxurious days in NOLA, but if I blogged about all of it, it would get boring. Or at the least, I would get bored halfway through and might never get to some of the highlights. Instead, I'm going to boil down my recommendations for a 1.5 day food-centric excursion through the Crescent City, based on things I ate during this trip. I stayed in the French Quarter, so everything in this list is basically easily accessible from there. Someday I'll get back and roam a little more widely through other parts of the city.

Arrive. Eat an order of beignets and have a coffee at Cafe du Monde. It doesn't matter what time you arrive - any time is the perfect time for beignets. Enjoy the busy atmosphere, the old school uniforms that the servers wear, and the shower of powdered sugar that you will inevitably be wearing once you're done.

Lunch: stand in line at Central Grocery. It looks unbearably long, but it'll move fast, and you'll wind through what might as well be a museum of food oddities, but is actually a market. If there is only one of you, get a half a muffuletta. You probably won't finish the whole thing, but if you only get a quarter, you might long for one or two more bites. Also get a root beer in an old fashioned bottle. And some Zapp's potato chips if you like the salt to cut through the olivey goodness of the sandwich. Take your lunch to Jackson Square and eat it on the grass. They're closed Sunday and Monday and are only open til 5 on the other days, so plan accordingly.

Snack: walk into the Central Business District and grab a crepe and an espresso beverage at Merchant. Or a frozen yogurt at Pinkberry, because you can't go wrong with frozen yogurt. Or a Pimms Cup at Napoleon House Bar if you don't want to leave the Quarter and you want a refreshing drink surrounded by excellent atmosphere.

Dinner: start with the spinach salad at Muriel's. It's warmed slightly by the apple bacon vinaigrette, and topped with a perfect combination of sweet spiced pecans and thinly shaved sweet onions. I usually dislike raw onions, but these were thinly shaved enough that they just blended in with the rest of the salad rather than overwhelming it. Next, I'd have the butternut squash soup from Restaurant August. Butternut squash soup is everywhere, but this rendition was especially creamy and luxurious, just the right temperature, and garnished well. For an entree, I had so many crazy rich good dinners that it's hard to choose, but I guess the prime rib at Besh Steak wins, for being over the top and still excellent. It is probably the largest portion of meat I have ever been served. The veggies on the side were also lovely, though the potatoes were way too buttery. For dessert, I'd go back to Muriel's and its bread pudding, because bread pudding is a must in NOLA, and this one was rich and comforting and the portion size was right.

After dinner: dueling pianos and hurricanes at Pat O'Briens. Even the sixth rendition of Sweet Caroline sounds fine after a couple of hurricanes.

Super late: at 2:30am, a hard cider from the Dungeon poured into a plastic cup and drunk on the streets with all the revelers was pretty great.

Breakfast/Brunch: The corned beef hash and eggs at the Old Coffeepot plus the grits with roasted corn from Zea's plus some boudin and a pastry from Cake Cafe plus an cappucino shakerato (refreshing and strong despite its silly name) from Merchant would be my ideal combo while I recovered from the night before.

While you wait til you're hungry again, roam the shops in the French Quarter. Check out the Mardi Gras and Katrina exhibits at the Presbytere museum (it sounds like a weird juxtaposition, but it totally works). Sit on the benches and watch the boats on the Mississippi. Visit the excellent Aquarium. Browse through the cookbook shop on Toulouse.

Lunch: be more adventurous and leave the Quarter. Ride the St Charles streetcar to S Carrollton Ave @ Willow Street, and walk a block to Boucherie. I liked this place so much I would order the whole meal again without having to supplement from other places: get the duck confit po boy with roasted garlic, bread and butter pickles, arugula and creole tomatoes if you're a carnivore, or the curried vegetable stuffed roasted beet with red jasmine rice and beet hoisin if you're a vegetarian, and split an order of fries. We didn't sample cocktails here, but a sazerac is one of those quintessential things you should try in NOLA. The thai chili chocolate chess pie was fine - I wish my people had been willing to try the krispy kreme bread pudding, though.

Hop back on the street car and take it to Avenue Pub. The selection is great, and you get $2 off a pint between 4 and 6pm.

Dinner: you might be too full for another super rich meal, so sample a bunch of appetizers like the eggplant caviar and olive tapenade, Crispy Smoked Quail Salad with Pears and Bourbon Molasses Dressing, and fried pork cake with poached egg, spinach and warm lentil dressing at Bayona. Check out their beautiful courtyard and toast a successful trip. If you're too full for dessert, order the petit fours plate to go, and eat them in your hotel room after you've digested properly.

Enchiladas!

Inspired by Mary's post of Gluten Free Goddess' Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas, we threw a bunch of stuff in tortillas last night, topped it with canned enchilada sauce, and called it a day:

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Toss some potato and sweet potato in olive oil, spread on a baking sheet, toss in oven til tender.
3. Thinly slice an onion and saute in olive oil. When it's soft, add a can of black beans, then throw in potato and sweet potato, and a small can of olives.
4. Coat the bottom of a 9x13 pan with a layer of enchilada sauce.
5. Bathe tortilla with sauce by moving it around in the pan, then add some filling plus some cheese, roll up, and leave in pan. Repeat til you're out of space, adding more enchilada sauce as needed to keep tortillas moist-ish.
6. Bake at 350 or so until the cheese melts.

I have a lot to say about our weeklong trip to New Orleans. Hopefully I'll get to it soon!

Chard and Sweet Potato Soup

Chard and sweet potatoes are my go-to winter vegetables. I love them both, and they are plentiful. I usually put them in a coconut milk curry, but my coconut milk consumption is getting a little out of hand. So, when Lynne Rosetto Kasper featured a newer, lighter soup based on these veggies on her podcast, I thought I should try it. I am pickier than I'd like to be when it comes to soup. I almost never like soups with chunks of things in them, possibly because I want every bite to have every taste in it, and if there are more than a couple things, it's impossible to get them all on a spoon. I also have trouble getting just the right salt level, and so soup often seems too bland or too salty for me (plus, Tim and I have different salt preferences). I do love a creamy, pureed soup, but again, often not as healthy due to cream ladenness. I like this one - there aren't too many competing flavors, and the bit of cheese at the end gives it extra earthiness. The lemon juice also balances the saltiness.

Anyway... here's what we made:

original Splendid Table recipe

Sweet Potato and Chard Soup, our version:


Ingredients

1 yellow onion, chopped
1 Tbs. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed with the side of the knife and roughly chopped
1 large yam, about 12 oz.
6 cups water
6 tsps better than boullion
1 bunch Swiss chard, about 12 oz.
salt and pepper
a dash fresh lemon juice
croutons
gruyere cheese
additional olive oil

• In a medium sized skillet, sauté onion with a pinch of salt in the olive oil, stirring often on medium low heat until it is soft and beginning to color. Add the chopped garlic, and keep cooking on a low flame, stirring often, until the onion is golden brown, about fifteen more minutes.
• Meanwhile, peel the yam and cut it in 1/2" dice. Wash the chard, slice the greens off the stems, and cut the leaves into 1-2" pieces. Thinly slice the chard stems. Combine the yams, chard, water and bouillon concentrate in a soup pot and simmer gently, covered, for about twenty minutes.
• Add the sautéed onions to the soup, and simmer another ten minutes. Add fresh ground black pepper and  lemon juice to taste.
• Ladle steaming hot soup into deep bowls, drizzle the top of each serving with some fruity green olive oil, top with croutons and grated cheese.

where we ate: xmas 2011 edition

thanks to my pesky ear infection, we laid low and close to home for most of this vacation. lucky for us, close to home still yields a ton of great food choices.

arrived on 12/22 after 17 hours in the car, so no energy to do a lot of anything, and no real desire for anything heavy (especially after happy hour milkshakes at steak and shake back in Ohio). We ordered some sushi from Itto's, an old standby that's two blocks from my parents' house: inari, tamago, caterpillar roll, veggie maki of some sort, and some goma ae, my favorite preparation of spinach.

12/23: went on a grocery expedition and ran other errands, with a stop at Char Dog, aka Wiener's Circle: you know it's a neighborhood institution when it has its own wikipedia entry. My favorite local pad thai for dinner from Noodles in the Pot.

christmas eve: My parents go out to breakfast together every Saturday morning. This weekend we joined them, along with my sister and her boyfriend. We went to Marmalade, a new-ish spot run by a former chef at M Henry, another of their favorite breakfast spots. The menu here was inventive, with lots of sweet and savory options. I ended up with the euro breakfast: Butternut squash, applewood smoked bacon, leek, and scallions wrapped in a crepe; accompanied by two eggs, any style, house potatoes, and cranberry cognac chicken sausage, finished with a red wine reduction. This is my favorite way to eat: little bits of everything, all well-balanced and harmonious. Tim had an eggs benedict variation of some sort, and ordered the chorizo on the side so that I could snack on it. Saturday nights growing up, every weekend since I can remember, we have had Chinese food. Our restaurant of choice has changed over the 30+ years of this tradition. The first place I can remember us ordering from was called Paris Inn, which was a couple doors down from a movie theater, and also about a block from our jewelry store. Our current go-to location is Jade East. Sweet and sour chicken, char siu chow fun, chow mein, and fried rice, every week, without fail. This food tastes like nostalgia to me. I can't get enough.

christmas day: lots of cooking! I am very lucky that both of my siblings are accomplished cooks, with similar tastes. brunch: baked french toast with berries and fresh whipped cream, peach cobbler, geoff's breakfast hash (potatoes and bacon and other good stuff), soyrizo with rice, spinach crustless quiche, chicken sausage, cantaloupe, grapefruit, mimosas. Dinner: turkey, slow braised (slow cooker) brisket, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, braised and glazed brussels sprouts, arugula salad with roasted beets, (and walnuts and ricotta salata), cranberries, rice, cheddar garlic biscuits, key lime pie, banana cream pie.

12/26: leftovers for breakfast, because who can pass up good post-holiday leftovers. Edwardos stuffed spinach pizza with our friend Jeremy while we caught up on watching our friend Jason on Jeopardy and played a couple of games of Scrabble. A healthy dinner of popcorn and milk duds while watching Hugo (what a sweet movie and what beautiful effects! now I must read the book).

12/27: Salt and Pepper diner for some excellent pancakes - somehow, everyone in my family prefers thin, chewy pancakes to light and fluffy ones. I didn't realize this until this year, when we randomly got on the subject of pancakes. I don't remember eating a lot of them growing up, and I definitely didn't eat them thin and chewy when mom made them at home. We did go out now and then for Dutch Baby pancakes at Grannys or Original Pancake House, but I am still intrigued that we all independently arrived at this pancake style as we've gotten older. Tim wanted to trek out to a brewery that he's been eyeing for years, so we hiked out to Indiana to check out Three Floyds. Beers: Robert the Bruce, a dark brown Scotch Ale; Black Sun, a coffee-y stout; a four beer sampler; and an Arctic Panzer Wolf (their website says: "9.5% ABV 100 IBUs. A massive IPA that will leave your palate its hapless victim". Scorched earth is our brewery policy"). Also fries for both of us, a bowl of homemade ramen in dashi broth with pork belly and a soy-infused egg for me (all pub food should be this good!), and mac and cheese for Tim. I drank one beer, and promptly slept all the way back to Illinois once we got in the car. Walked a bit of this food off at zoolights at Lincoln Park Zoo, and finished the night with two episodes of the new Sherlock Holmes on the bbc, and some ribs from Carson's, which has been around since right about when I was born. They pale in comparison to Dinosaur BBQ and some other favorites of mine, but they do the job.

12/28: Mom made breakfast! French toast, chicken sausage, bacon and fresh fruit. This was a filling breakfast, and I am also a little burned out on eating, so lunch ended up being baguette, cheese and fruit. Ventured out for one final meal in the neighborhood, Vietnamese at Simply It (which is a silly name). Tim had a vegetarian pho named Erika (no idea why) and I had Bun Bo Xao va Cha Gio: marinated beef, rice noodles, egg rolls, and a bunch of veggies on the side (bean sprouts, lettuce, onions, cukes, pickled carrots), all accompanied by a chili fish sauce. We couldn't leave town without a cupcake, so the last stop of the trip was Molly's, where I got a mixed berry and a cookies n creme (split both with sister's boyfriend) and Tim had a butterscotch caramel.

And that brings us to now. Tim's asleep since he's driving 17 hours tomorrow, while I capture all the culinary goodness of this trip. Aside from Marmalade and Carson's, all of these foods can be acquired within a square mile of my parents' house. I get so spoiled when I come back here.


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Countdown to the holidays

We'll be headed to Chicago soon, which means trying to use up all of the perishables in our fridge. Back in the day, that meant a lot of 'stir fry everything together' and 'make a frittata with whatever's in the produce drawer. These days, there are so many online sources to help us be a little more creative - here are a couple of my favorites:

gojee.com has some of the prettiest pictures, presented in full-screen format. You can search for recipes by ingredients on hand by typing one into the 'i crave' box, or many into the 'i have' menu. You can also tell it what you dislike so that its search engine will avoid things that you wouldn't make. I can't tell how good it is at finding things that use many/all of the ingredients instead of just one out of what you've added. Adding chicken, milk, carrots and cheddar, I did find an apple chicken chili that sounds intriguing, and uses three of my four ingredients. gojee searches blogs (I haven't bothered to figure out how - another piece of evidence that the internet is making me dumber - I haven't explored anything about how this site works), and links you directly to the blog where the recipe is featured (in this case, Kitchen Trial & Error). so, it also helps me to explore the nets and find new blogs to bookmark. You can tag your favorite recipes, and share things via social network.

bigoven.com lets you enter up to three ingredients from its drop down menu, and gives you real time updates about how many recipes it has found that include all of your ingredients. there are 91 recipes (out of a database of 200k+) that include chicken breast, milk and carrots, including Thai Green Chicken Curry. The recipes are submitted by users, and other users rate and review them.  You can save recipes for later,  favorite them, or share them via social network. there is also an i-app, but I haven't tried it yet.

To save recipes I love, I'm still pretty happy with the paprika app on my iPad, but now I have to go back to work, so no posts about it right now.

I know, many people have probably been using these apps/sites for awhile. Other favorites out there?

Bacon Bourbon Jam

Someone was selling Bacon Jam at the farmer's market yesterday, and smartly sampling it as part of the marketing strategy. It was sweet and spicy, smoky and bacony. It was also $8 for a smallish jar, which meant it was time for me to try experimenting with my own, low-budget version. The interwebs yielded two good base recipes (and food porny pictures): boozy bacon jam from spoonforkbacon and bacon jam from not quite nigella. From there, I tweaked based on what was hanging out in my kitchen, and also for my preference for sweet over spicy. If I did it again, I would probably make it a little less sweet - probably less maple syrup, and maybe not the balsamic - but overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

Bacon Jam

Ingredients:
1 pound Boar's Head (naturally smoked) bacon, strips cut into about 3 pieces each
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 large onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 shallot, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground szechuan peppercorns
¾ cup sweet bourbon (i used maker's mark)
2/3 cup strong brewed coffee
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons maple syrup
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. In a dutch oven over medium heat, render the bacon for 6-8 minutes (it won't be done yet). Remove bacon and set aside.
2. Drain all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat from the pan; add butter. Once butter has melted, add onio, brown sugar and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onion is soft, 10-15 minutes.
3. Add shallot, garlic and spices and sauté for an additional 3 to 5 minutes.
4. Return the bacon to the pot and stir until well combined. Add the bourbon to the bacon mixture and cook the liquid down for 3-4 minutes.
5. Add the remaining ingredients, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally. If it looks dry, add a bit of water.
6. Remove the mixture from the heat and allow to cool for 15 to 20 minutes.
7. Skim off any fat/grease that has formed at the top and discard (patient version: allow to cool, refrigerate overnight, then skim off the congealed layer of fat... I tend to go with the impatient version).
8. Pour the mixture into a food processor and process to desired consistency.
9. Serve warm or store in an airtight container, in the refrigerator, until ready to use.

Possible uses: stirred into mashed potatoes or over a baked potato, blended with cream cheese and caramelized onions for a tasty dip, or simply eaten on crackers. I swirled some into a cheesy potato soup last night. it isn't very photogenic, but it's very tasty.

i forgot that this thing existed

 Okay, so it has been a year and there have been no posts. We have been cooking, I swear. Today, however, I haven't cooked anything, but I wanted to put something here to remind our few intrepid readers that we're here, and maybe we'll even start posting again. 

One of the best meals we had recently was also probably the best wedding food we've ever had. Our dear friends Rochelle and Eli were married in Portland Oregon on November 12 (and they both hyphenated their last names, just like we did! hooray!) - the whole wedding was themed around sustainability and appreciating your community, including its foodways. Their caterer must've gone to the farmers market that day and picked up all of the foods - it tasted incredibly fresh, and was simply prepared to let the ingredients shine.

I don't even remember what all of this is, but it included green salad, gnocchi, mixed greens (maybe some kale, chard, other stuff), a veggie melange of roots and such, and some chicken. and maybe there was soup. and all of the desserts were homemade bundt cakes. and all of the table centerpieces were local produce. we were the parsnip table! over the course of the meal, we liberated veggies from all of the other tables so that there was a giant cornucopia on table parsnip. If all wedding caterers were this locally focused, weddings would be that much more memorable. 

Winter food

It's been a while, but I thought I should say something about the coming spring...

Heron Pond has finished off their carrots (none at the market) but chard, kale and other greens are starting to come in really well.

What's even better though... The winter farmer's markets have been every 2 weeks and we've barely kept up with carrots and other tasty treats. Previously, there's always been a couple of weeks where we've had to go to Shaws or something, but, the Portsmouth farmer's market is opening May 7. That's awesome, hopefully all the fab-o farmers with amazing greens keep showing up.

This week I picked up an amazing looking bunch of chard, 2 bunches of carrots, some eggs, and a scone.

We're thinking of starting the K8 & Tim CSA--which means that we looked at the Dairy CSA from Brookford farm and it works out to $10/week in dairy goods. Similarly, their pork CSA works out to $8.33/lb for pork. We were considering doing each, but, if we allocate a similar amount of money and just buy what we want in local dairy and pork we'd probably get even more value (thinking of 'we like it'/cost as our measure of value).

Food is awesome, local food is better. Spring is coming, better eat all the jam that's left from last year!

1/4 of the year?

Wow... An entire season has gone by since the last post here.

Brief summary: We've moved from the summer bounty to the root veggies of winter, the last hardy brassicas from outdoors, and some greenhouse greens.

This week's share:

4lbs of potato

2lb of carrot (how will we last?)

1 stalk of brussels

Dino Kale

1 kholrabi

turnips (left there)

3 parsnips (I'm gonna make parsnip chips)

2 heads of lettuce

It might be the last brussels of the season, so sad. The kale is also likely to be the end of the season, also very sad. We cooked them both up last night just after bringing them home and dang tasty.