Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread #TwelveLoaves May

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Chelsea

When it comes to cooking, I don’t mind a little complexity. You can call it fuss if you want. I’m not put off by a picky technique or an extra step. Separate the eggs? Okay. Toast the nuts first? Sure thing. If it adds to the flavor of the finished dish, I’m on board. But when it comes to eating, I like things simple. I love appetizers because your gratification arrives in a single bite. I dig pizza because the toppings all come at you together. A drumette of roasted chicken sitting precariously atop a mound of braised greens in a puddle of puree? I’m sure it’s delicious, but it’s a little fancy for me. At the point that it comes off the heat, I’m ready to put it in my mouth, plating-be-damned (obligatory self-deprecating note: it’s clear, given this, why I haven’t yet managed to squirm my way onto Tastespotting or Foodgawker).

So this week, faced with this month’s Twelve Loaves challenge of baking a loaf of my choosing, I started thinking about the humble sandwich. Now, I know, a sandwich isn’t exactly challenging to put together. But I’m a little anal-retentive about some things, and one of them is the old classic pb&j. Here’s the issue: I like my peanut butter on both sides. That means you have to put it on first. But then, you can’t just dunk that peanut-buttery knife into your jam jar! Cross-contamination! So you have to decide: do I get a different knife? Or do I take an extra few seconds and rinse off the peanut butter knife (and peanut butter doesn’t just rinse off like that, you know)? I know, this is a silly non-problem to have. But it led to a delicious idea: what if the bread itself were already infused with peanut butter and jelly, making spreading, smearing, and layering all unnecessary?

What arose from this self-indulgent, first-world-problems sort of pondering was a moist, deeply tawny loaf, dense in the best kind of way, with a mild but definite peanut flavor. I flattened it into a rectangle and spread it thickly with jam before rolling it up and twisting it to create a swirl: a thick artery of gloppy, sticky strawberry so pervasive it cracked the crust and oozed forth into barest caramelization. The borders of the jam swirl maintained just a little doughiness from the extra moisture, echoing the effect the jam would have on the bread after sitting in your lunchbox all morning, and at these doughy, almost under-baked pockets, the peanut butter taste was most pronounced. With butter, peanut butter, an egg, and milk in the dough, this is a rich bread, though not as indulgent as brioche. It’s a perfect mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack, and the best news of all is: it’s instant gratification – a sandwich in one step! No spreading required; all you have to do is cut a slice.

Note: I do not like, nor have I ever liked, crunchy peanut butter. I don’t even really care for peanuts in their original form (I know, the fact that I like peanut butter despite this makes me a bit odd. On the flip side, I could go the rest of my life without tomato sauce but I can’t wait for the first big brandywine or sweet Cherokee purple heirloom of the summer. Go figure). However, if you wanted to ramp up the peanut flavor in this bread, I’d advise you to do one of two things: 1.) instead of smearing the top of the loaf with butter just before baking, smear it with chunky peanut butter you’ve heated in the microwave for a few seconds (heating it will help it spread better). 2.) if the idea of smearing melty, sticky peanut butter doesn’t appeal to you, use regular butter, but drizzle on a few tablespoons of finely chopped peanuts. This will give you a crunchy peanut-y hit every time you take a bite of crust.

Peanut Butter and Jelly bread

¼ cup warm water

2 tsp yeast

2 tsp sugar

¼ cup scalded milk, cooled (microwave or heat on the stovetop until the barest simmer, then cool.)

½ cup very soft butter, divided

¼ cup smooth peanut butter

¼ cup sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla, divided

1 tsp salt

2-2¼ cups bread flour

1 cup strawberry preserves, or your favorite flavor

In the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large bowl), combine the yeast, 2 tsp sugar, and warm water. Let stand 5 minutes or so until the yeast becomes bubbly.
Meanwhile, scald the milk, then let it cool. I like to add the peanut butter and a ¼ cup of the butter to it and stir – this helps incorporate them into the dough more easily AND it cools the milk down faster. Double duty is always good!
When the milk has cooled to just above room temperature and the yeast is bubbly and smells like baking bread, add the milk, peanut butter, ¼ cup of the butter, egg, remaining sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla to the yeast and mix with the paddle attachment or a sturdy whisk until incorporated but still lumpy.
Add the salt and about 1½ cups of the flour and mix again, still using the paddle attachment, until the flour is evenly damp. If you are using a stand mixer, switch to a dough hook and begin kneading on medium-low speed. If you are not using a stand mixer, dump the dough out onto a well-floured board, sprinkle it with a bit more flour, and begin kneading by hand. If the dough is too sticky to knead productively, add flour ¼ cup at a time until it is workable. I ended up using a total of 2 cups of flour.

Knead for 8-10 minutes, or until the dough becomes smooth, shiny, and elastic. At this point, relocate it to a lightly oiled bowl and cover it with a taut layer of plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place for 2 hours. It will double or almost double in size in this time.

When the dough has risen and is close to double the size of the original ball, deflate it gently with your fist and then let it sit for 10 minutes. While it gets its breath back, place the jam or preserves you’ll be using in a small bowl and heat it just until it loosens up a bit – this will make it easier to spread. Add the remaining 1 tsp vanilla to the warm jam and combine with a fork.

Once the dough has rested, turn it out onto a floured board and roll it into a rectangle of about 12×18 inches. Spread this rectangle with the jam mixture, leaving a border of at least ½ an inch on all sides. This will prevent the filling from leaking out as you roll it up.

Starting on the shorter edge in the middle (so you’ll end up with a log about 12 inches long), begin rolling up the dough into a tube, moving back and forth between middle and ends to create an even log. When you get to the end, seal the long edge by pinching the dough together with your fingertips. This will keep the loaf together as it bakes.

Twist the whole log six or seven times. This distributes the jam through the center of the dough, so that your baked loaf will have a beautiful sweet swirl throughout.

Smear a 9×5 inch loaf pan with about 1 TB of the remaining butter, then snuggle the log of dough into it. Scrunch it up a bit – that’s okay, it will fill out the pan when it bakes – and set it aside to rise again for 30 minutes.

While the dough rises, preheat your oven to 350F.

When the dough has risen, rub the top with the remaining 3 TB butter (or chunky peanut butter, if you wish), and bake for 30-45 minutes.

Note: this bread’s doneness is difficult to test. Because the jam is interspersed throughout, the finished loaf can seem a bit doughy. If you have an instant read thermometer, try to insert it in an area that is just bread, not jam. (I had some difficulty doing this, as you can see from the small holes on the top of the loaf in some of the photos above.) You are aiming for a temperature of between 190-200F. I must admit, though, I don’t mind this loaf a bit underdone – I think it captures the softness and almost-soggy glory of a simple pb&j from childhood. And really, that’s what this bread should be about.

Orange Marmalade and Almond Sweet Rolls

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Chelsea

Guys, I’m pretty excited about this one. It’s a mile marker for me in a couple of ways. One, it’s a sweet application of yeast dough, which I’ve never tried before. Two, I’m well into the second month of this project and I haven’t had any true disasters yet or fallen off the horse, which buoys my confidence. Three, except for temperature and cooking time, which I had no idea about, I didn’t consult the internet a single time for clues about how to make this. But four, and unquestionably most important, this is an adaptation of one of my Nana’s recipes, and I made it successfully.

Nana was a cook. She was an old-fashioned, from home, meat/starch/veg-that-sometimes-came-from-a-can kind of cook. She was a clean-your-plate-before-you-can-have-dessert and sometimes a there-are-starving-children-out-there kind of cook. But that was her era. She raised her three kids on three square meals a day plus cookies. She taught my two aunts how to cook, she cooked for our Pap almost up until the day he died, and she sent out a yearly box of Christmas cookies until I was almost through college. My freshman year I remember getting a slip in my mailbox that meant I had a package to pick up, and finding, after returning to my room and tearing at it feverishly, that it was filled with sweets. Chocolate dipped apricots, cream horns, which we called ladylocks, nut rolls, seven layer bars, pizzelle; these were how Nana sent us her love. I always meant to send one back to her, when I was “grown up.” It tugs at me a little that I never did.

When she heard I was learning how to cook, she gave me my first cookbook: The Complete Guide to Country Cooking, along with a subscription to Taste of Home magazine. One summer when we came to visit, I offered to help with the menu and she told her friends her granddaughter was going to be her cook for the week. She said it was good, too.

In 2007, when I was about to get married, I received a large red photo album from my female relatives, featuring favorite recipes from their own kitchens. Nana couldn’t attend my wedding – she was on oxygen and too weak for the plane ride across the country from Pennsylvania – but she had contributed recipes to this book, and even as I cherished her contributions I never thought I would make most of them myself: I was too inexperienced to try these dishes she had clearly mastered – lemon meringue pie and yeasted sweet dough were beyond my capabilities.

But when I thought about cooking this past week, I thought about that stretch of dough from my dill bread and in its place saw cinnamon rolls. They are, after all, filled and constructed in a similar way. I love cinnamon rolls, but sometimes the dripping gush of cinnamon pooled in pounds of sugared butter is just too sweet for me. Orange marmalade came into my mind, and with it, almonds. They seemed like such a nice pairing, and as I wondered how to make them I found myself back in Nana’s section of my big red cookbook, staring at directions that now seemed less intimidating than they did six years ago.

This is a beautiful, elastic, slightly sweet dough. It is smooth and rich and expansive, and it makes a glorious roll. It sighs like a feather pillow when you punch it down. It wants very little from you – just a massage with melted butter, a liberal smear of marmalade and almonds, and gentle, careful rolling. Inside, after baking, the orange and almond marry well, since the jammy part of the marmalade pools against the dough, but the zest and the almonds retain texture for the teeth to play with.

I doused one pan with a glaze made from fresh orange juice and powdered sugar, but I think that overdid the sweetness factor a bit too much: the glaze tasted like liquified orange Pez. Better, I would say, would be a slick of soft cream cheese, perhaps whipped with a little brown sugar if you absolutely must. But plain, browned, warm out of the oven, and a little sticky with its own sweetness, is just perfect all by itself for breakfast, for dessert, for mid-morning snack. For any time that is right now, really. Thanks, Nana.

Orange Marmalade and Almond Sweet Rolls

Dough:

¼ cup warm water

2 tsp yeast

¼ cup scalded whole milk (heated to just below boiling – 45 seconds in the microwave does the trick)

¼ cup sugar

½ tsp salt

1 egg

¼ cup soft or melted butter

2 ¼ cups flour (you probably won’t need all of it – I ended up using a total of 1 ¾ cups)

Filling:

¼ cup melted butter

1 cup orange marmalade, warmed slightly

1 cup sliced almonds

In the bottom of your mixing bowl, combine the yeast and water and stir gently. Let it sit for at least 5 minutes so the yeast wakes up a bit.

Meanwhile, heat your milk, then cool it down. You can hasten the cooling process if you forgot to soften your butter: just drop the still-cold stick right into your warm milk and swirl. You’ll cool the milk and soften the butter simultaneously.

When the yeast bubbles and smells bready, add the cooled milk, softened or melted butter, sugar, and egg. Stir to combine. When the mixture has homogenized a bit, add 1 cup of the flour and the salt and stir again. You will have a soggy, unworkable mixture.

Continue to add the flour ¼ cup at a time, stirring after each addition (if you are using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment and just keep it on low speed until things come together). When it starts to look like bread dough – pieces begin to have that floured, torn texture and hold together – and becomes just workable, don’t add any more flour to the mix. Switch to your dough hook or a well floured board, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.

Once kneaded, put your shiny, smooth ball of dough in a lightly greased bowl and roll it over so all sides are moistened by the oil. Let it rise in a warm place until it doubles – at least an hour and a half. I like to heat my oven to 200F (my lowest setting) for a few minutes, then turn it off and let it cool for another few minutes before stowing my dough inside.

When the dough is ready, it will have doubled in size, and the bottom will be covered with puffy little bubbles like the ones that let you know your pancake is ready to flip. Punch it down by pushing your fist gently into the middle to let the gas escape. Turn it out onto a floured board and roll gently, forming a rectangle of probably 2 feet by 3 feet. Maybe 3 by 3, if it seems willing. It should be ¼ – ½ inch all the way around. My board was, clearly, a bit on the small side for this undertaking.

Give your layer of dough a massage with the ¼ cup melted butter, spreading it evenly over the surface until it’s gleaming, but leaving an inch or so margin around the edges. This will help prevent spillage of the inevitable ooze when you start rolling.

Spread the warmed marmalade over the buttered dough, again respecting the inch margin. Warming it up by microwaving it for just 30 seconds or so helps it spread more evenly. Sprinkle on the sliced almonds and get ready to roll.

You have to do the rolling in small stages, I found. Begin at the middle of the longer edge of your dough rectangle and make a few tight rolls, but then move to the edges and help them catch up. They don’t roll on their own, since the piece of dough you are working with is so big, so your fingers will be busy (and no doubt sticky) flying from side to middle to side again. Continue this process until you have created a long, tight roll of dough. Some filling will unavoidably ooze out the ends, but if you’ve left a margin around all sides this should be minimal. Turn the tube gently so the outer edge faces up, then pinch it gently into the next layer to create a seam so your rolls don’t become unrolls.

Carefully slice your rolled tube into individual portions. I ended up with about a dozen squashy, messy, less-than-round offerings. Deb at Smitten Kitchen suggests using a serrated knife and sawing gently, letting only the weight of the knife move down through the dough, to prevent the squashing I experienced.

Nestle your rolls filling side up in greased baking trays – I used 9 inch cake pans – and let them rise again for 30 minutes. This would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 375F.

Stow your pans in the preheated oven for about 18 minutes, at which point the tops will be golden, the exposed marmalade will be somewhere between dripping and caramelizing, and the edges of each roll will have puffed against each other, some adhering thanks to the sticky filling.

While they are warm, you can drench them in glaze or icing if you wish, or you can just gently liberate them from their pans and eat them with fork or fingers. I like to unroll mine as I eat, saving the extra buttery, extra jammy middle bit – which everyone knows is the best part – for absolutely last.

Most of the photo credit on this one goes to N., who got really into his job as stand-in photographer this week! Thanks, honey.

Lemon Ginger Shortbread with Hazelnut “Crust”

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Chelsea

Inspired by numerous sources, but mostly the deep golden orbs on my backyard lemon tree and a winter-blues-banishing post from Hannah at Inherit the Spoon, this post had to be about shortbread. This is a cookie of the most basic sort, crisp and sandy, with only the three essentials: flour, butter, and sugar. No leavening to worry about, no eggs to tussle with (incidentally, do you know how hard it is to crack eggs without making a mess when you’ve sliced the tip of your thumb and it’s therefore awkwardly bandaged?), just the base, the sweetener, and the fat.

These are, as Ruhlman points out in Ratio, an “adult” sort of cookie. Dry, unadorned, plain, but equally ideal for a dunk in tea or chocolate ganache, and amenable to all sorts of attempts to “play dress-up,” which makes them not just easy and tasty, but suitable for kids-at-heart.

Recently I’ve become obsessed with the combination of lemon and ginger. Hannah’s citrus shortbread and my tree with its laboring, weighty boughs all but begged me to try this combination. When a quick web search turned up only recipes featuring one or the other, I knew I had to insist on their marriage in my version.

Then insanity struck. I got the ridiculous notion that I wanted to create a hazelnut “crust” for these cookies. Yes, that’s right, I decided to add a crust to a cookie that is commonly used itself as a crust. I’m not sure where this idea came from, although if I must place blame it’s going to be on my sister, who commented at Thanksgiving that I should pursue the lemon-ginger-hazelnut flavor combo because it sounded so outstanding. So really, R., these are for you.

I scoured multiple recipes to put this dough together, checking the likes of Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Paula Deen (who I was surprised doesn’t have more sweet versions), and of course Deb Perelman. But with the exception of a few technique ideas, I came back to Ruhlman’s basic 1-2-3 cookie dough as my backbone (1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour).

The butter, I decided, needed to be browned (another recent obsession). This would add depth and nuttiness in case the crazy hazelnut idea didn’t work out. The ginger would be candied and minced into a sticky pile, and the lemon would be zested into mild spritzy confetti. This made for a dough that, while delicious, was perhaps not the easiest to work with – I refrigerated it too long and was then impatient to roll it out, so there were cracks. I rolled it quite thin, which made the cracking worse, and created a painfully delicate cookie. The chunks of ginger, too sticky to mince very finely, stood up like carbuncles through the buttery dough and made slicing difficult.

The hazelnuts I pulverized in the food processor with some ground ginger (in case the candied chunks didn’t come through) and a healthy sprinkling of turbinado sugar. Faced with a bread board of delicate cookies on one side and a pie plate full of hazelnut crumbs on the other, I almost opted to forget the whole “crust” idea altogether, but I’m glad I didn’t. You can transfer crumbs to cookie in a number of ways, including pressing the cookie into the crumbs, which I don’t recommend (they adhere only reluctantly and the raw dough tends to break), or mounding crumbs on top of the cookies and pressing them in with a rolling pin, which I do recommend. Then you can gently lift the cookie and flip it quickly and firmly onto a parchment lined baking sheet so the hazelnut layer is on the bottom. The crumbs will try to scatter. Don’t let them! Press the cookie down lightly but firmly back into the crumbs, and they will adhere as they bake.

When they came out of the oven, they were too soft to move. They needed a good five minutes alone on their baking sheet, undisturbed, to cool and crisp. But once crisp, they were perfectly sandy and satisfying, tasting of – I can’t think of a better description – powdered butter. At first I couldn’t detect the ginger or lemon, aside from the now chewy bits of candy distributed through the dough, but a day later, and then two days later, the more delicate flavors started to shine past the overwhelming richness of the brown butter. The hazelnuts, with their earthy crunch, were perfect the whole time. You could probably mix the nut crumbs in with the rest of the ingredients and save yourself a bit of time and frustration, but I loved the way they looked as a crisp layer on the bottom. Cookies with their own crust. Glorious. My sister got to taste them during an unexpected visit, and pronounced them delicious. The lemon-ginger-hazelnut trifecta is a triumph. And the leftover ginger-spiked hazelnut crumbs make an excellent topping for oatmeal.

Lemon Ginger Shortbread with Hazelnut “Crust”

8 oz. butter (1 cup, or 2 sticks)

4 oz. sugar (1/2 cup + 1 TB)

12 oz. flour (2 – 2½ cups)

½ cup chopped candied ginger

Rind from 1 lemon, finely chopped (some pith is okay) (about ¼ cup)

1 cup hazelnuts

1 TB ground ginger

2 TB raw sugar, like turbinado or demerrara

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, swirling gently on occasion, over medium to medium-low heat. Once melted, the butter will foam up, then clear slightly, and then the magic: the solids will sink to the bottom of the pan and begin to brown slightly. At this point, turn off the heat. You want this beautiful browning, but you don’t want those solids to burn. There is only a small window between browning and burning, so watch carefully as the butter reaches this stage.

Pour the melted butter and browned bits (which you may have to scrape off the bottom of the pan) into the bowl you will use to make the cookies. I used my stand mixer bowl. Stow it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes, or until the butter gets sludgy.

When the butter has solidified a bit, pull it back out and add the sugar, then cream (or goo) well until everything is incorporated and has become a beautiful flecked mixture the rough consistency of frosting.

Add the flour and mix until crumbly.

Add the lemon zest and the ginger and mix again. First the dough will become large crumbs, then come together into something more like wet sand. This takes a minute or two. If it isn’t coming together right away, don’t worry. The wet sugar and butter mixture needs some time to moisten the flour.

Once the dough is the consistency of wet, packable sand, dump it out of the bowl onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Using the plastic wrap to help you, shape the dough into a rectangle of 5×8 inches or so, wrap up securely, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

While the dough chills, pulverize the hazelnuts, ground ginger, and raw sugar crystals in a food processor (or chop finely with a sharp knife) until some of the hazelnuts are reduced to powder and some remain in very small bits. Don’t overprocess – you don’t want this to turn into nut butter. Stop before it becomes moist.

When your dough has had a chance to chill, unwrap it onto a floured board and roll or press out to about ¼ inch thick. This takes a bit of patience, especially if you, like me, let it chill for too long and try to roll it out before it’s ready. Cold rolling results in cracking. Just relax, let the dough warm up a tiny bit, and roll gently with a floured rolling pin, patching cracks as you go. This would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 350F.

Once you’ve achieved even thickness (minus the odd tall chunk of ginger), use a pizza cutter to trim off uneven edges, and slice the remaining rectangle into smaller rectangles the size of your choosing. Mine were probably about 1×3 inches, which seemed like a nice sized cookie.

Now it’s time to add the hazelnut crust. As noted above, you can do this in a number of ways. You can, if you wish, lift the cookies, place them into a dish of crumbs, and press down, hoping for adherence without breaking the cookie itself. This method requires almost excruciating gentleness. You can also press handfuls of the hazelnut crumbs down on top of the cookies on the board, applying firm but gentle pressure, and then lift the cookies one at a time and invert them onto a parchment lined baking sheet. As you flip, some of the hazelnut crumbs will loosen. That’s okay. Just get your cookie settled on the baking sheet and then press down again gently but firmly to re-stick the crumbs. They will adhere better as they bake.

Once you have a full baking sheet (mine each fit 15-18 cookies in various arrangements), pierce the cookies gently with a fork to achieve that pricked look so popular in shortbread, and bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will become lightly golden all over, and the hazelnut crumbs will darken and get a bit toasty.

At 18 minutes, take them out of the oven, set the baking sheet on a cooking rack, and walk away. The cookies need 4-5 minutes to set before you try to move them. They are much too soft at their moment of emergence to transport intact. As they cool, they will deflate and crisp up a bit, and you can move them to a cooling rack or a marble countertop or surface of your choice.

You can certainly eat these warm, but I liked them better completely cooled. In fact, I liked them better the next day, once the flavors had melded and developed.

Stored in an airtight container, these keep deliciously for over a week. They even, wrapped carefully, stay crisp and fresh through the mail.

This recipe probably made about 3 dozen cookies, and could have made more if I had eaten less of the dough scraps. I, alas, didn’t make a count before I started sampling, which is always a tasty, tasty mistake.

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Chelsea

Oh friends, it happened. I made it. Yesterday I made the last two Bittmans on my list and completed, albeit a year later than I’d originally intended, my project. I have reflections to share, certainly, and I have changes and excitement and promises for the new year, but first, I think, let’s work with the program. Two Bittmans. Two reports:

“14. Steam or poach 2 cups of pumpkin cubes until tender. Meanwhile, sauté 1 cup sliced shiitake mushroom caps in vegetable oil with a few drops of sesame oil. Boil 4 cups water and whisk some of it with ⅓ to ½ cup of miso. Stir miso mixture, pumpkin and mushrooms into water and heat everything through, then serve, drizzled with more sesame oil.”

Because we were planning to reach midnight by ~~eating as many snacks as possible~~ ~~eating our way to midnight~~ snacking, I wanted a light dinner to precede the countdown. This seemed to fit the bill. And it had to, after all, since it was the only soup left and the calendar was screaming December 31^st.

2 cups peeled, cubed butternut squash (I had some in the fridge, and suspected pumpkin would be hard to find)

1 1 oz. package dried shiitake mushrooms

1 TB vegetable oil

¼ tsp (or to taste) toasted sesame oil, plus some for drizzling

3 packets instant tofu miso soup mix (all I could find at my grocery store)

water

white wine

To reconstitute my shiitake mushrooms, I soaked them in a mixture of white wine and almost boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until they were plump and soft.

While the mushrooms soaked, I cubed up my butternut squash and submerged the pieces in a pan of salted water. I brought this to a bare simmer and cooked it just until the squash pieces were tender – 10-15 minutes – then drained the pieces in a colander. Don’t overcook them, because they will start to fall apart. Set the squash pieces aside.

When the mushrooms were tender, I scooped them out of their bath and decided the remnants shouldn’t go to waste. I poured the soaking broth into a little pot to bring to a boil, so I could use this already flavored liquid as the base for my soup. While it heated, I stemmed and sliced the mushrooms.

Since the shiitakes were now basically cooked, I probably could have skipped Bittman’s sautéing step. But honestly, I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to ingest sesame oil, so I dutifully dribbled vegetable oil with a few (or a few more than a few) drops of sesame oil in the (drained and dried) pan I’d used to simmer my squash and sautéed the mushroom slices over medium heat until they dried out a bit and started to take on some color.

While this colorization happened, slowly and so aromatically, I made the broth. I poured all three miso soup seasoning packets – tofu and seaweed and all – into a small dish, then mixed in about ½ cup of my heated mushroom soaking liquid and whisked gently to dissolve the powdery soup mix. This created a slightly thickened slurry, which I poured with the rest of the liquid and the butternut squash cubes into the mushroom pan.

After a few moments of reheating, we dipped up bowlfuls and ate.

N. wasn’t sure (he sometimes takes issue with the texture of reconstituted mushrooms), but I inhaled it with devotion. I love the flavor of miso soup, and the mild sweetness of butternut squash against the salty umami and fleshy squish of the mushrooms was lovely.

It was light but still satisfying, and the tofu and vegetables from the soup mix were so welcome that I’d advise you, if you are using straight miso rather than a pre-mixed, additive laden packet, to consider adding some tofu or seaweed or green onion just to contribute a little substance and contrast to the soup.

Dinner done, we moved on to the second stage of the evening.

“89. Vegetable crackers: Slice beets, sweet potatoes, plantains or parsnips or all of the above into 1/8-inch disks (a mandoline is helpful) and toss lightly in olive oil. Spread the slices on baking sheets, sprinkle with salt, pepper and, if you like, other seasonings and bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. When browned, flip the chips over and bake for another 10 minutes or so.”

This sounded tasty, and I’d always intended to make it for a party. With a dear friend coming over to ring in the new year with us, and since hunks of cheese alone might be deemed a slightly imbalanced offering (though so, so delicious…), this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Beets were out of the question (N.’s nemeses since childhood), and I couldn’t find plantains in my grocery store’s produce section, so we were left with the nutty herbiness of parsnips and the always dependable earthy sweetness of sweet potato.

3 medium parsnips, peeled

½ large sweet potato, peeled

generous dose of olive oil (maybe ¼ cup?), plus more to grease the cookie sheets

1 tsp each (or to taste) salt, pepper, and garam masala

To prepare for roasting, preheat the oven to 400F and line two cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil and spread to cover the surface of the foil evenly.

While the oven preheats, tackle the vegetables. I don’t have a mandoline, but I do have a ruler, and I must confess I did bring it to the kitchen to give myself a better idea of what 1/8 inch looks like. My slices were not quite even, but they did verge on passable. I tossed them – big coins of harvest orange and speckled white – in a glass bowl with the olive oil and the spices until they were evenly coated.

Spread the vegetable coins across the cookie sheets in a single layer, not overlapping, not in piles. If they cook in a stack, they will soften but not brown or crisp. Stow them in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until they are just beginning to brown.

This next step is a true exercise in patience. Unless you are far more talented with a spatula than I, you will have to flip each piece over individually. You have to, because otherwise one side will burn and the other side will flutter limply into cooked-but-not-crisp status. Trust me on this one. When you have laboriously flipped each coin, shove the tray back into the oven for another 10-12 minutes.

At this point, you’ll have to use your judgment. My offerings were, after this additional time, cooked through but not remotely cracker-like in texture. Another five minutes in the oven might have done the trick. Putting them back in, failing to set a timer, and heading to the couch to eat dinner (I was trying to multitask) is not advisable. I didn’t remember them until I smelled the slightly spicy aroma of parsnips, and by then it was too late – many of the little coins had gone from crackers to briquets.

I decided to pick out the worst offenders – Lucy reports that she didn’t mind a bit of charred flavor – and eat the salvageable ones anyway.

To make them a bit more exciting (and disguise any lingering burned taste) I made a little dipping sauce. You’ll need:

juice from 1 lime

2 TB honey

1 tsp garam masala

½ – 1 cup Greek yogurt

Whisk the first three ingredients together with a fork until they are smooth. In increments, add Greek yogurt until your sauce reaches the desired thickness. Mine was about the consistency of ranch dressing, but much more interesting in flavor.

These crackers (with and without the sauce) were – if you were able to overlook the overcooking – a nice alternative to crudites or store-bought crackers. They weren’t quite as crispy (except the ones that were too crispy), but they had a lovely deep flavor and none of the powdery, processed taste some crackers can have. They are also a gluten-free offering and, minus the yogurt and honey sauce, vegan as well.

I served them alongside a cheese platter,

Joy the Baker’s chili spiced sharp cheddar cheese crackers,

assorted sweets,

and my appetizer version of Bittman’s “Marshmallow Topping for Adults” dish: thick discs of sweet potato roasted until tender, topped with a dollop of cream cheese and sprinkled with a pecan brown sugar blend before being broiled until the sugar bubbles and the cheese slackens toward melting.

And champagne, of course.

Happy New Year. I hope you celebrate your achievements, meet your goals, and find happiness in your own self. I’ll be checking in again later this week with some reflections and announcements. Welcome to 2013.

Truffling

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Chelsea

At our house, a box of See’s chocolates was standard holiday fare. They were special – the white box, the ruffled, rustling brown wraps that made it all but impossible to sneak a selection without someone overhearing – and all too quickly gone. But they were special for good and for bad reasons. As Forrest Gump so wisely told us, you never knew what you were going to get. It might be a luscious square of soft, fudgy dark chocolate studded with walnuts, or it might be the dreaded maple nougat. My cousin J. loves caramel, and when she was little she developed a surefire way to determine which mysterious See’s square to choose: bite the bottoms off, and if you don’t like the filling inside, put it back in the box. No one could see the intrusion, at least not until that piece was selected again.

For the past few years, I’ve made truffles for my officemates at the end of the term. Squares of ganache flavored with fruits, nuts, and liqueurs, robed lovingly in melted chocolate and stuffed carefully into pretty little boxes make excellent, always well-received holiday gifts. I’ve experimented with ginger, apricots, amaretto, peppermint, almond butter, dark, white, and bittersweet chocolate. To my delight, Bittman has a truffle (or at least a truffle-like) recipe among his 101. With no officemates to share with this year, I decided to make a selection of truffles for my husband to give his department at his school.

I went a little overboard.

“Cranberry Truffles: Heat ½ cup simple syrup and ½ cup bourbon or water; add 2 cups dried cranberries and steep until soft, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain, reserving the liquid. Pulse the fruit in a food processor, adding just enough liquid so the mixture comes together. Roll spoonfuls of the cranberry filling into balls, then roll them in cocoa, mixed with pulverized nuts if you like.”

This sounded decadent and very adult – an excellent addition to truffle flavor combinations I was planning like Chambord with dried raspberries and Grand Marnier with candied orange peel. I used:

½ cup bourbon (I used Knob Creek)

½ cup simple syrup (I had some ginger syrup kicking around, so why not?)

2 cups dried cranberries (use reduced sugar, if you can find them)

½ cup cocoa powder

½ cup hazelnuts (optional)

I was pleased to find reduced sugar Craisins to use here – the bourbon has its own kind of sweetness, and the ginger syrup I was using instead of a simple syrup was tooth-twingingly sweet. I heated the liquids together in a small pot over medium heat until they came to the barest simmer.

As Bittman directs, I steeped the Craisins in the bourbon and syrup for fifteen minutes or so. I wasn’t sure what temperature “steeping” actually is, so I decided on a barely bubbling simmer. The syrup seeped into the cranberries, giving them a slightly fleshy texture. The bourbon wafted headily through my kitchen, making me think 10am might have been on the early side to take on this project so clearly meant for a Friday evening.

Fifteen minutes of simmering down, and I dumped my swelling craisins into a strainer over a pot to catch the liquid. Don’t lose all the liquid; you’re going to need a tablespoon or two of it later. Let the craisins drain and cool for at least ten or fifteen minutes. While they cooled, I put half a cup of hazelnuts in my food processor and let it rip until they were almost all pulverized into a powder.

When they were cool and had (emitted) plenty of bourbon infused syrup, I moved the craisins to the clean-scraped food processor and let it run. The little ruby jewels came together into a whirring relish of red, and as the bits began to clump in the bowl of my food processor, I added a tablespoon of the bourbon syrup, and then another. The cranberry bits now clung stickily together and I decided they were stable enough to scoop.

I mixed my powdered hazelnuts with cocoa powder in a shallow bowl, then laid out a piece of wax paper for the finished balls. I spooned out rounds slightly smaller than ping-pong balls and rolled them gently in the nut and cocoa mixture, then set them gently on the wax paper to set or firm up or whatever it was they were going to decide to do.

When I let myself taste one (I waited until after lunch, out of respect for the bourbon), I was glad to have waited. These, folks, are strong. They are utterly delicious, but extremely intense. The cranberries absorb all the flavor and warmth and musty floral overtones of the alcohol, and the cocoa adds just the right hint of matte bitterness to combat the sweetness and tartness of the cranberries. I set them gently in mini cupcake wrappers.

Once completed, the bourbon balls joined the rest of the bejeweled collection, which consisted of:

Apricot and almond bits in white chocolate, spiked with amaretto and then dipped in dark chocolate.

Bittersweet ganache with orange liqueur, threaded with candied orange peel, dunked in white chocolate and garnished with a piece of sugared rind.

Dark chocolate with candied ginger and ginger syrup, dressed with semi-sweet chocolate and topped with a piece of ginger.

Chocolate ganache flavored with chambord and studded with freeze dried raspberries, which contributed a really intriguing crunchy intensity.

Crunchy flaxseed and almond butter cups, topped with a sprinkle of sea salt.

Happy Holidays!

Veganize it!

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Chelsea

I must admit to getting nervous. Counting this week’s offerings, I’m down to 8 Bittman selections, and just over 3 weeks in which to complete them all. If I face the honest fact that it’s unlikely I will attempt any of these concoctions during Christmas or the days that surround it, as family and I insist on old familiar dishes, reality tells me I in fact have just over 2 weeks left.

But I have a determined set to my jaw, sometimes, and I can feel it approaching. This must be done. It can be done. It may mean making soup for lunch from scratch sometimes, but as I’m learning, soup doesn’t have to be something that simmers all day long. It can be a quick meal.

It can be delicious, too. This week’s selection is proof positive.

“Thai Squash Soup: Simmer cubed winter squash, minced garlic, chili and ginger in coconut milk, plus stock or water to cover, until soft. Puree if you like. Just before serving, add chopped cilantro, lime juice and zest, and toasted chopped peanuts.”

This was a lunchtime experiment, because N., in one of his tragic shortcomings, doesn’t like coconut. At first I thought it was something I could break him of. I have, after all, in under a decade, convinced him to eat everything from sushi to quinoa to kale chips. He is, as an eater, unrecognizable as the man I met in college. But the coconut sensitivity is the food analogue to ESP. He can eat a granola bar with coconut oil hidden deep in the ingredient list and say “I’m not sure I like this.” If I don’t choose my sunscreen carefully and it happens to have that delightful coconut aroma that means it’s well and truly summer, N. tells me I smell funny. So a coconut milk based soup had to be consumed in his absence.

½ big butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into small cubes

1 13.5 oz. can coconut milk

½-1 cup water or vegetable stock

½ tsp red chili flakes

3-5 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 tsp ginger, minced

salt to taste

2-3 TB cilantro, roughly chopped

2-3 TB peanuts (if you have a nut allergy, consider using the butternut squash seeds instead), toasted and chopped. I used dry roasted peanuts for mine.

zest and juice of ½ a lime

Put the squash, chili, garlic, and ginger into a pot. Add the coconut milk and, if necessary to cover the chunks of squash, water or stock. Bring to a boil, then simmer over medium heat for 20-25 minutes, or until the squash is tender.

During this simmering process, don’t forsake your kitchen completely. Coconut milk boils over, just like regular milk. If you leave to, say, comb out your hair, do your makeup, and put a few things away, you might return to a stove swimming in chili infused coconut milk sludge sitting underneath your burners. One of which isn’t working anymore. Just saying…

Once the squash cubes are tender, you can choose to puree or not to puree. I, feeling lazy, took my potato masher to them and ended up with a slightly chunky, rough textured soup that I liked the look and feel of.

Top with garnishes and eat!

Alternative: I liked this, and the simmered squash had a nice, fresh flavor. But I missed the caramelized depth you get when you roast it. Were I making this again, I would roast the squash with olive oil and salt until it was tender.

While the squash roasted, I would add the spices to the coconut milk and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Then, when the squash was cooked and the milk was hot and flavorful, I would add the chunks of squash and proceed as above.

This bowl of soup was surprising. It awoke flavors of sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter. The squash was tender and freshly vegetal. The coconut milk added this incredible unctuous creaminess that felt round and thick against my tongue, but the squash itself and the lime flavor kept it light and fresh and delicate at the same time. The peanuts were the right crunch, and I surprised myself by finished an enormous bowl and feeling quite satisfied but not overly full.

The soup wouldn’t have been right without the lime juice. I’m learning, as I continue to cook, that acid is a seasoning just like salt or nutmeg. This new understanding, and a little bit of experimentation, saved the next dish from being muddy and boring.

“56. Cook lentils, thyme sprigs and chopped carrots in a pot with water to cover until tender; drain and remove thyme. Cook chopped onions in oil until soft; add chopped kale and allow to wilt. Add lentils, stir to combine and cook until kale is tender. Add chopped parsley.”

With the holiday season practically upon us, this seemed like a sobering, “healthy” dinner choice which would, against all the logical reasons for eating healthy, permit us to have cake for dessert.

1 cup lentils

12-15 baby carrots, quartered lengthwise, chopped into small rounded triangles

6 sprigs thyme

4 small whole cloves garlic

½ red onion, chopped

2 cups kale

2 TB parsley

sprinkle of red wine vinegar to taste

I put the lentils, carrots, thyme, and – in a flash of inspiration – garlic in a pot and added water according to the lentil package directions (depending upon what color lentils you use, you may need more or less water). I added a bit extra, since I realized the carrots might benefit from some bubbling too. I let them simmer for about 35 minutes, at which point the lentils were just barely still resistant between my teeth.

Never enthusiastic about using multiple pots, I dumped the lentil mixture into a strainer and then, with a bit of olive oil to lubricate the surface, sauteed the chopped onions in the same, now-empty pot. When they were just beginning to turn golden around the edges, I added the kale and a sprinkle of salt. Softening the onions and wilting the kale took about ten minutes.

After the kale had collapsed a bit, I dumped the lentil mixture back in, folded it gently in with the greenery, and let them stew over low heat until the kale was the texture I like. I tasted and felt the muddiness of the lentils and carrots: winter vegetables are wonderful, but sometimes the heaviness they impart is reminiscent of the dirt from which they were pulled. Lentils, though they aren’t root vegetables at all, tend to have a similar effect.

This was my inspiration point. Only a few drops of red wine vinegar pulled the flavors up out of the garden ditch they’d been wallowing in and made them interesting and individual again. Add the vinegar and chopped parsley at the last moment.

I mounded this on our plates and topped it with a tuna steak (I know, that’s not vegan. But the Bittman is, and that’s what matters here!). It would have been better with salmon – the more delicate meatiness would have contrasted nicely against the lentils and carrots. The tuna was almost too dense a pairing, calling back to the muddiness of the pre-vinegared dish. Lamb rubbed with harissa, or maybe even a grilled portobello or a big steak of tofu, pressed, dried, and rubbed with a marinade that involved roasted red peppers, are other potentially promising pairings.

* As the year draws to a close, I’m thinking a lot about friends I’m now physically far from. This title celebrates two of them: M. and Ph. Both became unintentional vegans due to food allergies, and M. is fond of exclaiming, of dishes she likes the sound of but cannot eat thanks to its animal product ingredients, “I’m going to try to veganize it!” So here you go, ladies: these are pre-veganized. And gluten-free. And yummy. What more could you ask for?!