2010 Thanksgiving Menu

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Chelsea

I get excited about holidays that involve cooking waaaayyyyy earlier than I should (then again, since our Target already has a Christmas section erected, complete with at least six artificial trees, maybe I’m not totally unhealthy). I even told my mom over the phone this past Sunday that I’d probably go grocery shopping for the holiday late this week or this weekend. Right, with two weeks to go. I was already a week ahead of myself and willing to completely skip seven days of reality so I could buy a turkey.

But I love the way food impacts a holiday, and not just because I love eating. For my family, food has a binding quality. I love to cook, my mom taught me how and she loves to cook, my sister is developing an enjoyment and adventuresome spirit in the kitchen, and my dad… likes eating the food we make. But still, it gives us something to talk about, something to share with each other, and something to do together, when we are in the same kitchen. I feel close to them through the food we create.

At Thanksgiving, my mom and I make most of the dinner, my sister pipes in with seasoning suggestions, my dad carves the turkey, N. tastes things and generally tries to stay out of the way, and Lucy’s nose never stops twitching. Every hour or so, little click-clacking dog claws tiptoe into the kitchen to take a sniff and clean the floor.

So I’ve already thought through the entire menu. I know exactly what we’re having. I’m even contemplating spending my evening tonight making a detailed grocery list for the big shopping trip. Excessive? Premature? Perhaps. But so delicious.

Here’s the menu for our Thanksgiving this year:

Appetizers: whole heads of roasted garlic with soft goat cheese and toasted baguette, roasted nuts with brown sugar and rosemary, assorted dried fruit.

Dinner: herb roasted turkey with giblet gravy, stuffing, chipotle mashed sweet potatoes, creamed spinach and artichoke bake, and whole berry cranberry sauce.

Desserts: Mom’s pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and pumpkin cheesecake squares. My sister doesn’t love pumpkin pie, so this year there will be two desserts. If the recipe I invent for her works out well, I’ll post it here.

What are you having for Thanksgiving dinner this year?

Seattle: Day Two

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Chelsea

This trip was extra special in the food indulgence area because we opted to stay at a bed and breakfast instead of the usual chain hotel. At the Villa Heidelberg, our hostess serves what she calls a “hearty breakfast,” which consists of coffee or tea and fruit, followed by a hot dish that changes every day. As we ate this hot dish the first morning – a croissant stuffed with Canadian bacon, cheddar cheese and sliced, cinnamon dusted apples, then coated in egg and baked until the pastry was even toastier and flakier than before and the apples were just softening – she explained that she has almost run out of room in her kitchen for her cookbook collection. Other bed and breakfast establishments have five or six standby breakfasts they alternate between or cycle through, but she said that early in her career as innkeeper she got tired of making the same things week in and week out. She keeps adding and adding to her repertoire, and with a side of maple syrup to absolutely drench this croissant in fantastic sticky decadence, we were well set to begin our adventures.

Despite this incredibly filling start to the day, when thoughts of lunch started to percolate as we strolled through Pike Place, I knew almost immediately what I wanted. The smells in the marketplace were so good that you’d think it would be hard to decide. But I knew.

The fish stalls here were impressive, and when I say that the place smelled like fish, I mean this in a positive way. Even raw, the fish was so fresh and so reminiscent of the salty spray of the Pacific that even N. admitted it smelled good. It didn’t hurt that the aromas of smoked salmon and fried seafood lingered around us as well, and this became my lunch quest: fried shrimp.

For $7.99, the sardonic but chatty expediter at one stall sold me this beautiful portion of beer battered and fried prawns with French fries. It was like heaven. Since N. doesn’t like shellfish, we never eat it at home. Not only were these fresh, plump, perfectly toothsome prawns, but they were coated in delicious rich batter and fried until they had soaked in just the right amount of grease. Enough to coat the fingers and shine suggestively in the corners of my mouth. Not quite enough to weigh me down. Perfect. Well, perfect if I’d had a beer on the side. Maybe a nice wheat beer with a generous lemon wedge. And bringing the expediter home, where he would become our local bartender. Then I could call it perfect.

Dinner this night was to be our belated anniversary dinner. Since I’d just celebrated my birthday, I decided it could do double duty. We chose Purple, a bistro and wine bar right downtown, and entered the enormous, dimly lit room slowly. Solid heavy doors and ceiling to floor windows protected a huge spiral staircase winding around a column of shelves packed with bottles. While I was still gaping at this collection of wine, we were seated and handed a binder full of beverage choices. Our poor server had to come back three times to get our order, as I, still a bit of a wine novice, was completely intimidated by the gratuitous supply and tremendous number of options. I selected a nice citrusy Gewürztraminer while N., always the beer man, had an Old Rasputin Stout. He gave me a sip and I was surprised by its dark smokiness.

With so many wine choices, I was almost dizzy with the rush of having to choose accompanying food. I get nervous at restaurants when I have a plethora of choices. Do I opt for something comforting, familiar, guaranteed to be good, or do I branch out and order something that sounds adventurous – a startling mix of flavors that might be outrageously good… or a slight disappointment? Here, though, I needn’t even have opened the menu; the first special on the front page was too good to pass up: risotto with roasted tomatoes, spinach, and Greek feta.

The poor quality here is due to the dim lighting, but I could just as easily claim it was thanks to my hands quivering from delight. It sounds so simple, and as I looked down at my plate I feared I had been too cautious, but I was wrong. The blend of flavors was stellar. The rice was tender and flavorful, the tomatoes had sharp tanginess that matched well with the feta, and the whole thing had that unbelievable magical creaminess risotto gains from twenty minutes of tireless stirring while the rice grains – little sponges that they are – slowly suck in more and more broth.

While my fork danced around my plate, N. enjoyed a more hands-on experience, ordering a gorgonzola and fig pizza, replete with walnuts and rosemary, and a shy sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. The thick purple slices of fresh fig looked so alien on pizza, as did the hefty chunks of walnut, but the finished product was tasty and intriguing. In my plans for recreation, I may try making a rosemary foccaccia dough as a base, and then replacing the fresh figs for dried.

Because it was a special occasion, and because our server told us the desserts were “tapas sized,” we decided we had to splurge. With options like these, there was simply no leaving before we had a sample or two. We decided to share two desserts: the red velvet cake with lavender cream cheese frosting, and the blackberry cheesecake with blackberry coulis and candied lime zest. Despite being barely bigger than golf balls, both were triumphant. The cake was moist and rich, and the lavender sprinkled atop the frosting was an unexpectedly good touch. It had a sophisticated flavor somehow and a light perfume, making this more than just good cake.

The cheesecake was rich and exceedingly smooth, and I found the perfect balance was a generous dip of blackberry coulis and a sliver of candied zest. I like a bite of sour citrus with my cheesecake, and without that tart, slightly bitter chew, this perfect little cylinder might have been bland. As it was, if I were slightly less polite I would have licked my plate. Hell, I would have licked both plates.

Thanks, Seattle, you were that good.

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.

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.

First Bounty

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Chelsea

Though we have been harvesting sugar snap peas by the bowlful for the past few weeks, and though we probably still have enough preparing for maturity on the vine for me to freeze a bagful, it didn’t feel like we really had a harvest on our hands until a few days ago, when I picked these:

I know it seems crazy, and I know I’ll be sick of it before August is over, but despite the heat and despite the impending pounds of zucchini and despite my encouragement to myself to eat better at breakfast time, I couldn’t resist. Despite all that, I made zucchini bread.

As you can see, whether it was the monster zucchini I grated up that exceeded the recipe’s requirement a little bit, or whether it was because my thrift store loaf pan was on the small side, I had extra batter. Fortunately, my sweet little too-seldom-used ramekins called to me from the cupboard, and I heeded their siren song. In addition to the loaf, we also had four big muffin-sized servings. The advantage of this was that they were ready for consumption much sooner, and consume we did. Here’s my serving suggestion:

The recipe I use for zucchini bread right now is from Bon Appetit’s latest cookbook. This isn’t the magazine, it’s the full book, and this particular version is called Zucchini Spice Bread. It has a hefty teaspoon of cinnamon added to the standard mix, and with 2 cups of zucchini as well as a cup of toasted nuts (I used pecans because I was out of walnuts, and may have liked it better with the substitution), it seems like one of the healthier quickbreads out there, as well as using up a decent amount of zucchini. And the flavor. The flavor is stupendous. Since the nuts are toasted, they donate more of a crunch and a warm richness to the bread. Because there is so much zucchini, they don’t dry out the bread too much, which is sometimes a complaint I have about nuts. The zucchini itself is mild but still present, and the bread is not too sweet. It has a nice moist crumb to it but the top gets crusty, so the whole thing is just a medley of textures that I really enjoy. Here’s to the joy of baked goods, the joy of home grown vegetables, and the very special joy of being able to eat them both at the same time!

Wedding Cake Redux

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Chelsea

Yesterday, N. and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. I know, I know, we’re practically newlyweds still, and maybe that’s why I wanted to make something special for us to eat. N. wanted to go out to dinner, since I cook a lot, and so I hatched a plan for dessert. I’ve been getting a subscription to Cuisine at Home, and a few months ago I received an issue with a recipe for Pink Champagne Cake. At our wedding, the cake flavor was champagne, and the filling was fresh strawberries. It looked like this:

Chelsea_Nick-264

Though this recipe didn’t call for strawberries, the idea behind it seemed perfect, so early yesterday morning while N. was in a class, I set to work on what was easily the most complicated cake I have ever baked. The first part was easy:

Like any cake, the layers needed to cool completely before frosting them, which was convenient because it gave me ample time to clean up the incredible mess I had created in the kitchen. Not only do I enjoy creating food, apparently I like to throw my whole self into the process. When the cakes were cooled and the kitchen was clean(er), I embarked on step two: frosting. This cake was more complex than my normal baking projects not only because the batter involved champagne, two mixing bowls, and egg whites, but because the frosting was a multi-step process as well. The first frosting step was for the filling between the two layers. Here I decided to go a few extra kilometers in recreating our wedding cake, and arranged slices of fresh strawberries atop the frosting layer:

Next, after carefully stacking the cake and performing some fancy heating, cooling, whipping, and folding with gelatin, heavy cream, and the remaining already mixed frosting, I carefully stacked on the second layer, frosted the bejeezus out of the whole thing, and then covered the cake and refrigerated it so that the frosting could set up a little before eating. When it came out, it looked like this:

Then we ate it. The addition of strawberries was really wonderful, both for reminiscence sake and because the frosting was powdered sugar based, which is often too sweet for me. The tart juiciness of the strawberries cut the almost overwhelming sweetness of the icing, and the layer of red in the middle was pretty, since I didn’t use the food coloring required to make the “Pink” part of the recipe’s title. This didn’t seem necessary, both because our wedding cake was not pink, and because I didn’t want to spend the money on food coloring. This is a change I would advise keeping. My only other critique of the cake, which was ultimately my fault, would be to use white shortening in the frosting. Mine was butter flavored and yellow, which is usually fine, but it did make the frosting on the cake a creamy color, when bright white would have been a little more aesthetically pleasing.

But the important thing here is the flavor. It was delicious. The cake was moist and a bit dense, and though it was not particularly strong, there was definitely a hint of champagne flavor in there. It was definitely more complex than a simple white or yellow cake, and maybe with a simpler frosting – just whipping cream, sugar, and a splash of champagne – this would be a perfect showy dessert. In fact, with so much left in the fridge, I might just have to taste it again and make sure it’s as good as it was last night…