Candy Girl

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Chelsea

Sometimes, it’s not enough to just cook beautiful, delicious food (she said modestly). Sometimes, you have to make something really special, just because.

Something like this:

Yes, these are chocolate truffles. Yes, I made them by hand. I did not make them by imagination, though. They were created thanks to the February issue of Cuisine at Home magazine, and an unintended modification to Elana’s Pantry’s nut butter balls.

I won’t go into a step-by-step written process, but here’s how it went:

First you have to make two kinds of chocolate ganache. One contains bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and crème de cassis. It gets poured into a plastic-wrap-lined loaf pan and refrigerated for an hour or so, just until firm enough to maintain a solid top surface. The other contains white chocolate, heavy cream, and almond extract. I didn’t have almond extract, so mine contained amaretto.

This gets layered on top of the dark chocolate and chilled. I left it in the fridge overnight. Then, when everything is firm and solid (as solid as ganache gets, anyway), you pull it out of the loaf pan by the overhanging edges of plastic wrap and cut the block into truffle sized squares.

While you are releasing and unwrapping and cutting, melt some additional chocolate, dark or semisweet this time. Just pure chocolate this time. When it was smooth and luscious and liquid, I used two forks to quickly dunk and coat each ganache square before transferring them to parchment paper.

This was a pretty systematic process, so I got thinking while I was working. I had some crunchy almond butter from Trader Joe’s, and a few weeks before I had drooled over Elana’s nut butter balls. Why not make some myself? On a suggestion from her comments thread, I mixed the almond butter with a few tablespoons of powdered sugar in hopes of firming it up a bit. Then I stuck it in the refrigerator to chill it and maybe make it easier to form into individual pieces. While that was chilling down, I finished the first set of truffles. I melted some white chocolate chips in the microwave, scooped the sweet goo into a plastic bag with one bottom corner cut off, and squeezed out a nice drizzle over the tops of my little soldiers. Just to change it up a little, I rolled some of the smaller squares in shredded coconut.

Isn’t that gorgeous? Now, I’m no Bakerella, but that looks pretty darn impressive to me!

After encasing each little chocolate triumph in mini muffin papers, I stowed them gently in Tupperware and took out the nut butter. I rolled five balls. It was decidedly not firm. I decided to freeze the individual pieces on a plastic cutting board to solidify them before dipping them in warm melted chocolate. I pushed the board onto what looked like an empty shelf in the freezer. It was not empty. The almond butter mashed all over a gallon freezer bag full of salmon. I sat down on the floor and just stared at the delicious mess I had created. How to fix this? I scraped off as much of the nut butter as I could salvage and, in a moment of minor genius, added it to the bowl of melting semisweet chocolate chips I already had on the stove, ready to receive its next set of victims. The almond butter melted in nicely, and I was able to pour my little disaster in a bread pan to cool and cut. Remembering Elana’s suggestion, I sprinkled the top with coarse sea salt. Brilliant. Cut into squares, it was a perfect mixture of texture and sweet-salty contrast.

And the truffles weren’t bad either.

The tuxedo colored layers of ganache inside the slightly crunchy chocolate shell are visually stunning, and have a very subtle liqueur flavor that somehow enhances their chocolate-y richness. They are impressive to look at, mouth-coating-ly opulent to eat, and better than anything you will find in a See’s candy box. I brought small plate offerings to my officemates as thank yous for how supportive they have been toward me as I studied for my exam. I read about and admire those people who can make mixed platters of sweets for holidays. My Nana was always one of them. Now, it would appear, I am fast amassing the skills and recipes necessary to do the same. Maybe I should start taking orders.

The Week of Magical Eating: The End

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Chelsea

After a week of hard work for N. and plenty of cookery for me, I came home from grocery shopping last Saturday and routine disintegrated. N. and I looked at each other, and we looked at our books, and we looked at the tentative sunshine falling onto our porch, and we decided to take our dog-daughter to the beach. Sure, there was cooking to be done and reading to be done, and editing and grading and cogitation.

But there was also this:

And that made it all worthwhile.

And then when we got home, sandy and tired and smiling, the house smelled like strawberries from the buy-one-get-one-free sale I couldn’t help but take advantage of during my grocery adventure. So there was nothing else to do but eat them. A whir of cream with a sprinkle of sugar in my trusty stand mixer, some quick coring knife-work, and two beautiful glasses, and voila, dessert is served.

Homage to Stratigraphy: Lasagna #2

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Chelsea

After both taking and making suggestions for improvement about the lasagna I made here, I decided to take advantage of the last few weeks of outdoor Farmers’ Markets and take a second stab. I believe I have now created the ultimate: Wild Mushroom and Spinach Lasagna with Arugula Pesto and Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce. Since I have had several requests, I am willing to share the recipe with y’all. Here goes, and keep in mind that most of my measurements are approximations.

Preheat oven to 350F and make sure you have a 9×9 square glass baking dish.

Ingredients:
1/2 lb (?) mixed wild mushrooms (I used reconstituted dried shiitakes and golden chanterelles from the Saturday Market)
1-2 bags baby spinach leaves
2 bunches arugula
(your own mix for pesto, or my cheat: 3-4 TB premade pesto, to blend with arugula)
Olive oil
4 TB butter
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk or cream (or a mixture)
Splash of white wine (if desired)
salt and pepper
2-4 TB sundried tomatoes, finely chopped
1 16oz. container ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/4-1/2 cup grated Parmesan
no boil lasagna noodles

Procedure:
1. Roughly chop the mushrooms and fry them in a medium saucepan in olive oil or butter to your liking. Don’t rush them. Keep them on about medium heat and wait, patiently or impatiently, until they have sucked up all the butter, expelled their own liquids, and then regained those liquids to become browned but still tender.
2. Add the spinach and cook just until it has wilted but still retains its bright green color, then set the mushroom and spinach mixture aside.
3. Meanwhile, whir together arugula, premade pesto, and a little extra olive oil in a blender or food processor (or just make your own arugula pesto).
4. In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Add garlic and cook just until fragrant. Add flour and combine well to make a roux. When flour is well incorporated and has cooked for a minute or two, add milk or cream slowly, stirring or whisking well until clumps are incorporated. Season with salt, pepper and white wine to taste. A little grating of fresh nutmeg might also not be amiss. Add sundried tomatoes and stir gently until thickened to your liking.
5. Combine all three cheeses
6. Assembly: spread a layer of sauce in the bottom of your pan and add a layer of no-boil lasagna noodles. Then, add layers in your preferred order. I stacked cheese, arugula pesto, mushroom and spinach mixture, then sauce in that order before adding another layer of noodles and repeating the process. Repeat until you run out of filling ingredients (should be about half a box of noodles, if you are using Barilla and a square pan). After adding the final layer of pasta, top with any remaining sauce, cheese, and/or pesto, and then add a generous layer of grated Parmesan. (If you don’t have sauce to add to the top, the final layer of noodles will not soften as nicely as they should. I discovered this as I made my first cut.)
7. Bake for 45 minutes or until the cheese on top is browned and looks a little crunchy, and the fillings are bubbling up on the sides. If possible, wait for five minutes before cutting in, because the slices will hold together better this way.

Enjoy. Gorge. Disintegrate. Burn your mouth on the cheese and decide you don’t care, eat chilled slices you cut out of hand straight from the fridge at midnight, or have your neighbors over and just decimate the whole thing in one sitting, for I declare this the ultimate spinach and mushroom lasagna.

My First Lasagna

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Chelsea

Since I’ve been in California for roughly the past two weeks, I haven’t shared any foodie experiments or revelations. Yes, I cooked and ate delicious food on my trip, and yes, I brought my camera with me. However, I neglected to bring the correct cable to plug the camera into a computer and upload the photos. I’m home now, and certainly have things to share, but for the moment I’m much more excited about tonight’s dinner, which is currently just starting to emit cheesy delicious aromas from the oven.

I have never made lasagna before. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how it’s labor intensive and time consuming, and since two of the major ingredients are ground beef and tomato sauce, I’ve steered clear. I like ground beef in hamburgers, and occasionally in burritos or meatloaf, but I’d prefer that it stay away from my pasta. As for the tomato sauce, since I’ve entered adulthood cooked tomatoes in almost any form upset my stomach. Therefore I have found a large number of alternative pizza and pasta toppings so I can still enjoy Italian cuisine. But lasagna… that was always a roadblock that I wasn’t overly inspired to circumvent.

Then N. and I went to Ashland for our two year wedding anniversary. In addition to the delicious food that we ordered from Pasta Piatti on Main Street (a must-visit, in my opinion), I salivated over most of the options on the menu, including, to my surprise, their take on the perennial classic: lasagna. Here’s their description, and tell me this doesn’t sound amazingly delicious: roasted wild mushrooms, layered pasta, spinach, ricotta, parmesan, arugula pesto, white sauce. I mean, I guess if you’re not a mushroom fan then it wouldn’t sound amazingly delicious, but I suspect substitutions could be made. I scribbled down this description on the back of a receipt that I’d jammed in my wallet, and it traveled through the state (and into the next!) with me for the next few weeks. Then we saw a dip into what might be the beginning of the fall season. The temperature dropped. The rain returned for the morning. It was conveniently Saturday so that I could go and pick up a few things from the Saturday Market. It was cool enough to turn on the oven, and so I decided to brave the lasagna.

It was a little bit time consuming, if only because there were multiple steps, but I wouldn’t call it particularly labor intensive. Here’s what I did:

Reconstituted a package of shiitake mushrooms in a mixture of warm water and white wine for half an hour (tip: never buy dried shiitakes in the produce section; they cost about twice as much for about half as many mushrooms as they do in the Asian foods aisle!)
Chopped and blanched a bunch of Italian kale and about ½ lb. of baby spinach, drained and cooled in a colander.
Sliced and fried a generous handful of crimini mushrooms in butter, adding some pepper and the drained, squeezed, sliced shiitakes when the criminis were about half done. When both kinds were done to my liking, I deglazed the pan with some white wine (I had about a ¼ of a bottle I was trying to finally evict from my refrigerator) and then continued to cook the mushrooms just until the liquid had evaporated. Then I set them aside in a bowl to cool.
While the mushrooms were cooking, I made the arugula pesto. I must confess, I love the idea but hate the practice of making my own pesto. I can never seem to get the ratios right. But for this dish, I had what I must call an ingenious fix. I had a container of store-bought pesto in the fridge, and I combined four or five TB. of this with probably 2 cups of arugula in my food processor and pulsed them together. Flawless, and so much easier than making it from scratch.
Using the same pan as I cooked the mushrooms in (I’m big on reducing the number of dishes needed for a meal), I made a roux with about 3 TB. each of butter and flour, then added between 1 and 2 cups of milk to create a white sauce. When it was thickened, I added some pepper, freshly grated nutmeg, and the last few tablespoons of that pesky bottle of wine.
Then it was time to assemble. Since I’ve never made this before, I actually found deciding which order to add ingredients to be the most challenging part. I put down some sauce first, then a layer of no-boil pasta, then a mixture of ricotta cheese and arugula pesto, topped by the veggies and sauce. Then I repeated, confining myself to three layers of pasta so our dinner would be heavy on the vegetables. On the top layer of pasta, I spread the last little bit of sauce, a little bit more ricotta and pesto, and then a generous layer of grated parmesan cheese. When I stuck it in the oven, it looked like this*:

When it came out 45 minutes later, it looked like this:

The cheese was browned and crusty, the sauce was bubbling up around the corners, and miraculously, my worst fears did not come to fruition, as the no-boil lasagna noodles were soft and chewy. I was secretly afraid they would be crunchy, because I’m not familiar enough with the product to know how they work. Here’s my review: the mixture of both greens and mushrooms was great, and made the dish taste satisfyingly healthy (well, as healthy as cheese-laden pasta gets, I suppose). The arugula pesto added a satisfying bitterness, which I’m sure was helped along by the kale. And of course, it was creamy and cheesy and actually came out of the baking dish in servable pieces, rather than collapsing all over itself in messy piles. Actually, if I may toot my own horn for a moment, the whole thing was rather beautiful. Somehow, despite not really knowing what I was doing, I got the proportions of fillings to cheese to pasta to sauce pretty much right. A nice crisp white wine would go nicely with a large square of lasagna, which is convenient as you could simply drink the wine you were also soaking and deglazing the mushrooms with.

All in all, it was a good, tasty dinner, but it’s definitely a work in progress. N. and I both decided that, lacking the usual piquant, acidic bite of the tomatoes in a red sauce, the dish was actually missing something. The flavors of the cheese, the pesto, and vegetables were good, but they were a little muddy without that sweet tangy top note of tomato. For next time, I will be making a few additions. To attempt to compensate for the missing acidity of the tomatoes, I’ll add extra lemon juice to the pesto mixture. We both agreed that maybe adding a sprinkle of parmesan cheese along with the ricotta in each layer would add a nice touch; I don’t use much salt when I cook, and sometimes the deep greens like spinach and kale need some to enhance their flavors. Extra parmesan mingling with the vegetables while they bake might accomplish this without actually having to add salt. I might also add some of my beloved Penzey’s Black and Red pepper blend the next time to the white sauce, just to spice it up a little bit. It was creamy and thick and good, but really, milk, butter and flour cooked together have only so much flavor on their own.

Other additions, or accompaniments, that have occurred to me since dinner include mixing finely chopped sundried tomatoes into either the white sauce or the mushrooms. They would add that intense tomato flavor without the heavy sauce that upsets my stomach. Thinly sliced fresh tomatoes in between each layer, or maybe only on the top layer underneath the parmesan cheese, might accomplish the same thing. Finally, an old friend from high school T. just told me about a sauce she makes of roasted tomatoes and red peppers that might do the trick, and I wonder whether a plain old roasted red pepper sauce would have the same zippy tang as tomatoes? Certainly it would be pretty, even if it was drizzled over the top or added plate-side. Lasagna #1: down. Lasagna #2 awaits…

* Nota bene: as a geologist’s daughter, I am all but obligated to understand and appreciate cross-sections as a method of conveying information. Conveniently enough, this seems like a perfect strategy for photographing lasagna!

Ravioli

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Chelsea

What does one make with half a package of wonton wrappers slowly succumbing to freezer-burn, a yard full of fragrant spearmint, and a package of cherry tomatoes?

Homemade ravioli.

A few months ago, during that first spell of beautiful heat, N. and our friend S. and I went to the annual Friends of the Eugene Library booksale. Amidst nerdy volumes, I found two glorious, inexpensive cookbooks, and it was from a volume called “Everyday Epicurean” that I found the recipe for this simple and really quite delish ravioli concoction.

The filling combines crumbled feta cheese, cream cheese, herbs, and the magic ingredient: a small pickled jalapeño pepper. After a whirl in the food processor, half a tablespoon of filling gets mounded in the center of a square wonton wrapper, which you fold into a triangle after moistening the edges with water. Stow your raviolis safely on a WELL-FLOURED cookie sheet while you finish producing the batch.

I stuck mine in the refrigerator for a few hours before dropping the delicate little stuffed triangles into a boiling pot, though the recipe didn’t call for this. While the little darlings boiled, I mixed up the sauce, which consisted mainly of cherry tomatoes and mint, just barely heated up in a sauté pan with some hot olive oil. Since my tummy doesn’t do well with heavy processed tomato sauces, this was near perfect for me.

The result was heavenly. The raviolis stuck together a little bit while I was pulling them out of the pot, and one or two of them may have leaked a little bit (the water was pretty cloudy by the time they were done), but it didn’t seem to matter. Unlike the usual frozen variety we depend on in a pinch, the wonton skins were ultra-thin and delicate, and tasted more like restaurant fare than the quick fix from the freezer section. The filling was creamy and rich, but not overpoweringly so, as the sharp bite from the pickled jalapeño inside and the sweet acidic tang from the tomatoes outside cut through the potentially cloying velvet of the cheese. Served up with a toaster-oven broiled slice of romano-garlic toast, this was completely worth the effort of creating all those little packages. Maybe the cliché about good things is true after all.

Cheese, please!

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Chelsea

Once upon a time ago, N.’s parents bought him a quesadilla maker. I’m not sure what this was in response to, but my first reaction might have been a giggle. I can make a quesadilla, you just fold a tortilla in a frying pan! I resisted the quesadilla maker. I begrudged it the space it took up in our moving boxes when we moved in together. I glowered at its awkward shape in our cabinets.

Since those early days, the quesadilla maker and I have become good friends. I still use a skillet for plain cheese quesadillas, but when I want to go all out and add other vegetables, the dual surface cooking mechanism is helpful in preventing flip-related spills and leaks. In fact, we’re down to a fairly standard recipe that one of us employs once every month or two.

Tonight, inspired by the need to use up some vegetables, I dug out the trusty quesadilla maker and layered in the standards plus a few additions. I usually fry some sliced mushrooms and defrosted corn in olive oil until the mushrooms are soft and the corn has just started to caramelize against the bottom of the pan. Then I layer Monterey jack cheese, baby spinach, the mushroom and corn mixture, and a little bit more cheese onto the bottom tortilla before slapping on the top. Today, since I’ve been reading everywhere to eat a rainbow of colors in your fruit and veggie diet, I added some chopped radicchio that I had hanging around in my crisper drawer.

While I was waiting for the mushrooms and corn to do their thing, I addressed several aging avocadoes in our fruit baskets. I’ve recently made a few alterations to my old standard guacamole thanks to a shortage, and am pleased enough with my new strategy to share it. I’m not calling this a recipe, because I still adjust things every time I make a batch. Tonight’s avocado-and-a-half was joined by four or five strips of julienne cut sundried tomatoes, chopped cilantro and garlic scapes from the back garden, lime juice, sea salt, one finely chopped miniature pickled jalapeño, sea salt and black pepper. Sometimes I use garlic powder and some green onions instead of the garlic shoots, but the key ingredient, the fundamental change, is the move from fresh tomatoes to sundried. There’s a pleasant textural difference, and I like the intensity of the flavor profile that the dried tomatoes lend. Tonight’s spice from the pickled jalapeño was a bright change as well, that cut nicely through the thick cheesiness of the quesadilla itself. I cleansed my cheesy palate with a Hornsby’s hard cider, but I suspect any pilsner or lager would have done the trick just as nicely. A crisp pinot grigio or some other fruity white wine would have paired well too.