Envision whirled peas. And weddings.

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Chelsea

There are two stories to be told here. One is the story of a wedding. Well, a wedding reception. Well, a backyard barbeque eight months after the wedding that was my way of providing the couple with a reception. The other is the story of a van. Both occur in mid-July. Let’s start with the latter.

I had completed my first year as a bona fide college student and was, like any bona fide college student, enjoying the summer in between shifts at my first job. I was changing into a tank top in the back of my friend’s car at the Santa Clara beach boardwalk before heading out to the beach when I saw a van parked a few spots down. Okay, so it wasn’t a van, it was a vintage old style VW bus, complete with tie-dye paint job, beads in the window, and Grateful Dead stickers everywhere. But there was, as I discovered after straightening myself out and exiting my friend’s car, only one bumper sticker. It read “Envision Whirled Peas.” Read out loud, of course, it emerged as the hippie/peacenik/ flower child ultimate mantra. Peace + food + word play = my day was made. Maybe my week.

But back to the wedding story. Ah, weddings.
The love, the beauty, the glowing smiles…

On the eve of my own wedding anniversary, a hot, beautiful day three years ago, I bring you a tableau of another. A reception, at least, where my role was slightly different:
The heat of the kitchen, the stress of catering, the need for perfection…
I’m being overdramatic. I’ve never catered a wedding before, and I still haven’t. I simply cooked for our dear friends K. and T. this weekend. I made a whole collection of things (full list is here), but I want to tell you about the crostini.
Thanks to A. and her delectable food sense, I made a pea, lemon, and mint puree to spread on crostini. She called it “whirled peas.”

I defrosted one 16 oz. bag of petite peas and jangled them into the food processor.
Joining them: the zest of about ¾ of a lemon (one spot didn’t look so nice),
the juice of half that lemon,
probably ¼ cup of mint leaves,
coarse salt,
freshly ground black pepper.
This fragrant mixture received an ample dose of olive oil (½ cup or so? I didn’t measure) as I whirled it in the food processor for a good minute or two. I wanted it as smooth as possible, but I still wanted it to be impossibly bright green.

As the time for the party approached (our first guest’s feet were practically climbing the front steps!), I sliced a slim sourdough baguette on an angle and, shielding each slice with a glug of olive oil, broiled them until they turned golden and crisp. While the little toasts cooled, the lovely and accommodating K. helped me pick some nasturtiums from our front garden to top our creation. Even a simple backyard barbeque needs a fancy-pants appetizer option!
I spread a generous helping of minty, citrus-y bright “whirled peas” onto each crostini before gently pressing the calyx of each flower gently into the emerald spread. They looked like flower arrangements – miniature edible gardens that looked and smelled of springtime and fresh birth.

K. and T. loved them (and seemed to love everything about the evening – a hostess-and-wanna-be-caterer’s dream!), but I was a bit nonplussed. The flavor was minty and fresh, but seemed to be missing something. Perhaps tang. Peas are naturally sweet, and mint paired with some sweetness reads as more sweetness. I wanted something to tell my tastebuds this was a savory bite. The pepperiness of the nasturtium was too mild to do the job.
Because I have plenty of leftovers, I am considering adding some lime juice, perhaps some basil and a zinging shaving of Parmesan, and turning this into something more like a pesto. Whirled peas pesto. Say it out loud with me… “world peace” pesto?

Envision it: One little crostini, two happy people, global cooperation and betterment.

Aren’t weddings fun?!

Stay tuned for results and additions!

Experimentation

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Chelsea

N. and I rarely finish an entire loaf of bread. Oh we try, but invariably those loaves of whole wheat, and sliced sourdough, and the occasional rye, end up shoved to the back of the freezer or refrigerator with only a slice or two left in them. Then they just sit there. For months, sometimes. The same, as of late, is true of bagels. In spurts of enthusiasm toward the noble meal that is breakfast, we buy half-dozens and dozens of bagels from various bakeries and munch our way through four or five before the lonely outcast remainder is slowly pushed behind Tupperware containers and plastic-wrapped leftovers.

Well no more. I have been meaning to make bread pudding for some time now, in an effort to put to use the heels and scraps of bread that litter our freezer shelves, but I couldn’t find a recipe I liked and, in one of my odd and unfounded deductions, had somehow decided it was a difficult thing to make. Yesterday, with no experience and only a handful of recipe ideas from the internet (google: “bagel bread pudding”; you’ll be surprised by the number of people who have tried it!), I liberated our stash of lonely, forgotten, individually bagged cinnamon raisin bagels and invited them to a custard party.

Here’s what you need:

3 cinnamon raisin bagels

3 eggs

3 cups milk

½ – 1 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you want it. I wanted dessert AND breakfast, so I only added about ½ cup.

½ tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1-2 TB spiced rum (optional)

Here’s what you do:

Tear or cut the bagels into bite-sized chunks (or a little bigger), and settle them in a single layer in a square glass baking dish (8×8 or 9×9).

In a medium bowl, mix all remaining ingredients together and whisk well to blend. This is the custard.

Pour custard mixture over the bagel pieces, top with a plate or pan (something to push the bagel pieces down into the custard), and refrigerate for at least an hour.

After at least an hour of chilling under pressure, move the pan to a preheated 350F oven and bake for around 45 minutes, or until the tops of the bagel pieces are browned and slightly crisp.

Thanks to the cinnamon, the pumpkin pie spice, and the rum, after about twenty minutes our house filled with that holiday-season smell. You know what I mean. After 45 minutes, I peeked in the oven and saw that the top pieces, the edges that poked out over the custard, were dark brown and crispy, and when I touched them lightly the whole beautiful pudding jiggled slightly and then sprang back into shape after my touch. The top had puffed up as the eggs cooked and expanded, and when I took it out of the oven I could hear it hissing and whining softly as air released.

I couldn’t wait very long before digging in… so I did. Bagels exiled to the back recesses of our freezer will never go to waste again. The custard was soft and sweet, but the real stars were the bagel chunks. They had soaked up a lot of liquid and had the consistency of very firm, chewy French toast. They were moist and soft but still had pleasing texture, and I could have eaten the whole casserole dishful right there in the kitchen, leaning over our petite table. But I resisted. Because I wanted some for breakfast this morning too…

Dreamy.

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Chelsea

It’s been over a month since our Breakfast for Dinner party, but I was doing some photo editing and discovered that I’d taken pictures of a dish that never got featured. Well, okay, that’s not quite accurate. The truth is, I made this dish for the party, tasted a tiny slice, and when saliva flooded my mouth and my cheeks got warm with appreciation of the spicy cheesy love, vowed to go back for more. Somehow hours passed, and when I made it back to the table only crumbs remained.

This meant that a week later, I felt it was necessary to make it again. It was that good. It was a Jalapeno Cheese Grits Casserole featured on a birthday episode of Bobby Flay’s show “Boy Meets Grill.” It was also one of the more perfect sounding combinations of ingredients I’d heard in a while. Months before the party, I knew I was going to make this. I made very few changes, but I did eliminate the Tabasco sauce and halve the jalapenos. I like some heat, but not so much that I can’t tell what my food tastes like. I also grated extra cheddar cheese on the top of the casserole once I’d spread it into a baking dish. Cheese is the reason I could never adopt a vegan lifestyle. More than bread or bacon, cheese might just be my favorite savory food item.

Out of the oven, this casserole was tremendous looking. The top browned and crusted and gained some topography as not-quite-smooth sections became crannies and crevices. Under this slight crunch of an exterior, the inside sliced through like fresh mozzarella: moist, creamy, a little firm. On the palate, it was tremendous tasting. It was cheesy and spongy with bits of crispness, and a heat that hit the tongue and the back of the throat, not during the chewing process, but after the bite was swallowed and you thought you were safe. Just a pleasant heat, easily washed down with luscious, buttery tender chunks of pot roast and a good dark beer.

As good as it was fresh out of the oven, I admit that my reasons for making this dish again so soon after our party were really all about the leftovers. What’s better than jalapeno cheese grits casserole, steaming and flecked with chiles and strings of cheese? Jalapeno cheese grits casserole cut into fingers just out of the refrigerator, and fried in a pan of sizzling butter. Yes, I fried them.

They spit and hissed as things warmed through and the cheese started melting, but I dueled them with a pair of long-handled tongs and everything worked out just fine. The key, it seems, is to leave them alone longer than you might want to before flipping. I managed for a good two or three minutes per side over medium-high heat, and this magical dark toasty crust formed all over. It looked like the fragile crusty edge of the white on a fried egg when the butter gets too hot. It tasted like a southern fried dream.

In which I attempt an Extravagant Apology

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Chelsea

With all resolutions already broken (is lasting until April/May admirable or shameful?) and all high-flying expectations for weekly updates dashed (how does Pioneer Woman do it?), all I can do is shamefully offer you a guilt, chocolate, and liqueur laced update.

More than twenty years ago, my mom acquired this cookbook. Simple, humble, kid-friendly instructions (“stir real hard”), bright pictures of anthropomorphized food, and one recipe for each letter of the alphabet. This was a cookbook intended to get kids into the kitchen with their parents. This was a cookbook intended to make kids interested in cooking. We tried out a few of the recipes, and my dad even became an expert in P: Pocket Pizzas, but then we got stuck on the X page and never looked back.

X is for eXtra Special Chocolate Celebration Cake.

This cake is good. I mean, this cake is GOOOOOD. Since finding it, with very few exceptions, this has been the cake my family makes for every birthday, every celebration, every party. I’ve made it for Academy Awards parties, I’ve made it for my husband, my mom and I made it for my Rehearsal Dinner, and most recently I made a gluten-free, Ph-Ph version. But then our friend S. invited us over for dinner, and through luck of the draw we were assigned to bring dessert. I asked N. what I should bring, and he said “chocolate cake.” I said, “well, the dinner is sort of Italian themed.” N. said “chocolate cake.” I told him that wasn’t really Italian, and he said “that’s their fault, isn’t it?!” This was not a question, it was a proclamation. I resigned myself to making chocolate cake. It’s not that I don’t like it (in fact I love it; see list of occasions above!), it’s just that I’ve made it so many times, and it’s so easy, and it always comes out perfect, and I guess I was looking for a challenge.

Then I had a revelation. I adore tiramisu. N. wanted chocolate cake. Why not blasphemously, worshipfully, impossibly, combine the two? Chocolate tiramisu cake surrounded (just for fun) by chocolate-covered strawberries. Yes.

Here’s the basic recipe, and below are my additions:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups cold water

Preheat the oven to 350F, grease and flour 2 9-inch round cake pans (I use cocoa powder instead of flour, which doesn’t leave white residue on the outside of this dark brown cake).

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients well, whisking or stirring until it looks a little pink from the cocoa powder.

In a small bowl (I just use my 2-cup glass measuring cup), combine the oil, vinegar, and vanilla.

Add the oil mixture and the water to the dry ingredients. As the Alpha-Bakery cookbook advises, “stir real hard” for 2 minutes or so. The cocoa sometimes clumps up, and you want a smooth, lump-less batter.

When batter is smooth, dark, richly delicious, pour even amounts into the two pans, tapping the bottoms gently on the counter once they are full to pop little air bubbles. Then enclose them in the oven for about 35 minutes, or until a tester comes out just clean. The tops will be springy and moist, and I have found that just the barest crumb clinging to the tester is fine, as they continue to cook while you let them cool for at least twenty minutes in their pans.

Here are my additions:

When the cakes were cool enough to liberate, breakage free, from the pans, I turned them upside down on my cooling rack and drizzled Kahlua onto the spongy, porous bottoms until it pooled a little rather than being instantly drunk in. I continued to do this at intervals while the cakes cooled completely. I probably used at least a ¼ cup all together.

While the drunken cakes continued to cool, I washed and dried a dozen or so strawberries and started some semi-sweet chocolate squares melting in a glass bowl over barely simmering water, which I robed the strawberries in.

My trusty stand mixer stood ready to receive:

an 8-oz. container of mascarpone cheese,

¼ cup of sugar,

a few tablespoons of amaretto

I whipped these into a light, creamy frosting. I tasted some and swooned just a little. With the bottom layer of cake gently centered on my cake stand (with parchment paper lining the edges, of course, to keep the stand clean while I iced the cake), I spread about ¾ of the cheese mixture on the bottom cake layer. Since there was a little bit of chocolate left in my makeshift double boiler, even after receiving and coating all of the strawberries, I waited for it to cool off just a little, then drizzled it on top of the cheese filling layer, figuring a little extra chocolate wouldn’t hurt. Then I added a pint of heavy whipping cream, a little more sugar, and a little more amaretto to my stand mixer and started it whipping while I carefully positioned the top cake layer atop the mascarpone and chocolate.

I iced the whole thing, top and sides, with light clouds of almond scented cream. I probably added an inch of frosting atop and on all sides, then sifted a few teaspoons of cocoa powder around the top of the cake.

N. and I agreed (as did S. and her other guests) that this was the best incarnation of this cake I had ever made. The Kahlua added the coffee flavor and liqueur touch that tiramisu seems to require, but it didn’t overwhelm the cake with sweetness. One of the best things about this cake is that it has solid cocoa flavor without being tooth-tinglingly sweet. The Kahlua was a buzz-suggesting addition and kept the already moist layers almost fragile-tender.

The chocolate in the middle hardened as it cooled and made a crunchy layer on top of the creamy cheese. The amaretto lent aroma and a warmth that was almost flavor to the whipped cream, and the mascarpone made it creamier without weighing it down. We ate large, thick slices, tempering the richness with the fresh sweet punch of chocolate-covered strawberries, letting the juice trickle onto the whipped cream and add yet another dimension of flavor.

I have never been so glad to take home half a cake at the end of a party.

Breakfast for Dinner

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Chelsea

I have a curious relationship with breakfast food. The heavy kind, the kind you get from a diner or a good bed-and-breakfast or a hotel, doesn’t sit well with me in the morning. It’s too much, it weighs me down. But it’s food I love. Potatoes, eggs, bacon, quiche, pancakes, cinnamon rolls… the list goes on. So I take full advantage of every opportunity I get to eat this kind of food later in the day.

Enter Friday, April 2nd: for the third year running, N. and I are hosting a Breakfast for Dinner potluck. We try to host one party per term, usually with some loose theme, and I think this one is my favorite. My mouth is already watering at the possibilities.

Here’s a preview of my own menu for the evening:

Ph-Ph rice pudding

Jalapeno cheese grits casserole

Cranberry donuts

Deviled eggs

Spiked hot apple cider

Mimosas

Yum.

The Week of Magical Eating, Day Five: Phoebe-Phriendly

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Chelsea

I realized recently that if I lived alone, I would not cook the way I do now. I would eat scrambled eggs, I would eat yogurt and granola and pasta. I would cook occasionally, but what I do now built out of a desire to care for my then-boyfriend, now-husband. Some of it was, admittedly, to impress him, because he was eating microwave dinners and frozen bagged teriyaki concoctions. But some of it was born from a desire to nurture him, because he was eating microwave dinners and frozen bagged teriyaki concoctions!
Somewhere along the line, I discovered that I really liked this whole cooking thing. It became challenging but fulfilling, stress-relieving and relaxing, but also a self-induced obligation. Deep within these seemingly-contradictory-but-somehow-harmonious-co-existing attributes, the urge to feed and nurture remained. I cook because I love. It is the best, most sincere, heartiest way I know how to show my deep affection and fierce warmth. If I cook for you, it means I care about you.
As I have mentioned on this blog before, I have a friend Ph. who presents some challenges to my ordinary routine. She is a good friend. I care about her. Therefore, I want to feed her. But her particular dietary needs present me with unusual requirements. Not only does she eat gluten-free, but dairy-free, corn-free, and nut-free. This has, much like the Caesar dressing in my previous post, become a minor obsession for me. I never realized how much of my love involved cheese, milk, and butter, to say nothing of wheat products. But I care, and I feel driven, and I want to cook for her. It has become a kind of mission for me. So I have been educating myself; experimenting with alternative flours, rejoicing in olive oil, learning about how soy milk reacts differently than cows’ milk. I have done some reading, found some new “friends” online, and discovered with delight how many flour and starch options exist in the bulk foods section of Market of Choice.
Despite all this, I haven’t done much baking yet. I find myself a little intimidated because I don’t like failure. I don’t know how these new ingredients react to each other yet, and I dislike the idea of presenting substandard or imperfect food. But I bucked up my courage recently and made my way through my first bag of rice flour. One semi-triumph was a version of Elana’s “Magically Moist Cherry and Apricot Cake” from Elana’s Pantry. Since Elana uses almond flour as her primary gluten-free alternative, I cannot use her recipes verbatim. Ph. cannot eat tree nuts. Additionally, Elana uses alternative sweeteners, and I have not yet delved into the mysterious world of agave nectar. So some amendments needed to be made.
For a girls’ TV night, to which Ph., ironically enough, was not able to attend, I attempted Elana’s cake. I used white rice flour instead of almond flour, and sugar instead of agave. Since the resulting clumpy, bumpy batter would not have poured, per the directions, if I’d pointed a gun to my bowl, I added a few splashes of soy milk until things loosened up a bit. I smoothed the dough out in my pie plate and stuck it in the oven. Thanks, I suspect, to the soy milk addition, I had to up the cooking time by ten minutes or so, and when I took it out of the oven, it certainly didn’t look like Elana’s. Hers looked moist with a lovely crumb and a golden crust. Mine hadn’t lost the spatula-smoothing strokes I’d used to even out the batter. I broke off a clumpy edge and took a taste.
It was tasty, if different. Rice flour seems to contribute a grainy texture that I’m not thrilled with, so I know that more experimentation awaits. But the cake was not as dry as I had feared it would be. Finally, a baked good that Ph. could eat safely and enjoy (she loves dried fruit). Since, as it turned out, she was not able to partake on that evening, I broke all my rules to make the dish completely Ph-Phriendly, and made a yogurt glaze to drizzle over the top. Vanilla yogurt, defrosted frozen blackberries, and a tiny splash of creme de cassis. This added just the moisture the cake seemed to need. A few days later I had a slice spread with cream cheese. That was good too. Oh what would I give for nondairy cream cheese?
So experiment #1 is complete. Next up, new flours, mixes of flours, and maybe a fruit crisp. Doors are opening, and I’m on a mission.