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.

Menu planning

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Chelsea

I have a bad habit. Well, let’s not lie, I have many. But pertaining to food, I have one particular potentially disastrous practice: I like to make food for company that I’ve never made before. I have experimented with risotto, fancy baked pastas, doughnuts, all for company for the first time. I have tried to diagnose this habit, and I can’t be sure where it comes from. Maybe I think that once I’ve made it before, it becomes simple and easy and not adequately fancy. I like to be fancy. Maybe I want to show off a little. Maybe I just get excited about trying new recipes. Who knows?

Oddly, I noticed that the menu I currently have planned for the “Belated Reception” party N. and I are throwing contains almost no unattempted recipes. Despite permission, no, encouragement even, from K. (one of our guests of honor) to use this gathering as an opportunity to try out fancy new dishes, the ideas I immediately gravitated toward were tried and true. With guests bringing their own grillable mains, K. and I will be making a series of sides.

Here’s a preview of the intended menu:

Marinated tofu skewers, grilled.

Grilled corn, cilantro, and lime salad

Grilled garlic bread (seeing a pattern here?)

Fresh tomato bruschetta

Pea and mint puree on crostini, topped with nasturtiums

German or red potato salad

Pasta salad with tomatoes, mozzarella, olives, and sundried tomato vinaigrette.

(Chips, salsa, guacamole, etc.)

For dessert, I’ll make two types of cake for folks to try, both drenched in alcohol (because that’s just the kind of hostess I am):

A reprisal of my terrifically successful Chocolate “tiramisu” cake (featured here).

Pink champagne cake (N. and I had champagne cake with strawberries at our wedding, and I’d like to return the favor).

In addition to wine, beer, and the usual party beverages, I will also make a Champagne-rum punch, a deadly recipe because it is fizzy and sweet and delicious, making you forget the two kinds of alcohol it contains as it fizzes right into your bloodstream.

Ah, summer living.

In which I attempt an Extravagant Apology

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Chelsea

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

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

X is for eXtra Special Chocolate Celebration Cake.

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

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

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

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups cold water

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

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

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

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

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

Here are my additions:

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

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

My trusty stand mixer stood ready to receive:

an 8-oz. container of mascarpone cheese,

¼ cup of sugar,

a few tablespoons of amaretto

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

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

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

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

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

Breakfast for dinner close-up: Cranberry Fritters

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Chelsea

I am sitting on my front porch with my feet – in striped socks – crossed atop the white railing. It is 4pm and the outside temperature exceeds 70F. Earlier this afternoon, I pulled weeds and thinned our rows of broccoli and lettuce in the back garden with my sleeves rolled up. And I’m looking back to Friday. This past Friday ago, while rain and hail alternately pelted, flooded, and overflowed the lip of our driveway, I put my stove and oven into an overtime they haven’t seen since Thanksgiving. Everything was good, but what I want to discuss today is item 3 from that menu: Cranberry Donuts.

They were more fritters than donuts, really, but that’s close enough. Simple batter: egg, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, cinnamon. And to add something special, a spare ½ cup of defrosted cranberries, barely pulsed in the food processor. No rolling, no cutting, no kneading, just tablespoon-fuls of this chewy, sticky batter into a pot of hot vegetable oil. I came close to disaster several times, because the batter was so sticky that it didn’t want to come off the spoon. The problem here, of course, is that resistance leads to increasingly vigorous shaking, which means when the fritter finally disengages, it hits the oil with a resounding, gut-wrenching plunk that means you will end up with finger confit if you don’t step back very, very quickly.

I escaped burns, and was able instead to watch the quick and wondrous transformation of a batter so raw and sticky it cannot even be called “dough” into these little two-bite-mouthfuls of extravagance.

When the batter drops into the pot, with a heavy plunk or even a less fear-inducing hiss, it sinks for half a moment before buoying back to the surface. It sizzles like onions in a hot pan, and somehow magically holds itself together to float in a lazy circle around the pot, trying to bump and mesh with any fellows you add. I played chaperone with a slotted spoon. It only takes about two minutes before the lower half of the fritter, concealed like an iceberg below the surface of the oil, is mouthwateringly golden and crispy and needs to be flipped over before it verges toward mahogany. The second side takes even less time, since it has already been submerged in its initial dip into the oil, and when it too is crisp and the color of perfect toast, or a dark caramel, it should come out and bathe on a layer of paper-towels, spreading its extra grease almost obscenely until the paper-towel is suddenly transparent.

While still warm, I rolled these dense nuggets around in a cake-pan containing around ½ cup of mixed cinnamon and sugar. Though much of the oil threatening to seep in past the crisp crust was thwarted by its paper-towel session, enough moisture is retained on the outside of each fritter to hold onto a sparkling coat of sweetness. That the batter drops into the oil in irregular shapes ensures that crunchy nooks and crannies are created, almost as if their sole purpose was to hold extra sprinklings of spicy sugar.

Before I was done frying (my pot could only hold 4 or 5 at a time without crowding or cooling down the oil too much, so I did several batches), I couldn’t keep myself from sampling one of the freshly sugared spheres. Oh heaven. It doesn’t seem like the batter could possibly be in the oil long enough to cook through, but it does. The outside is crispy and has a nicely textured crunch not only from the irregular shape and the fry, but also from the sugar, which provides its own gritty pleasantness. The inside is densely fluffy, and the cranberries pack the perfect amount of tart sourness to combat the sweetness of the dough itself as well as the sugary topping. I don’t tend to like cake donuts, but it was hard to stop myself from eating more than one.

After the party started and plates were loaded almost beyond bearing capacity, I didn’t notice anyone eating them. Yet, when I went back to the table for my second helping (or third, but who’s counting, really?), the cake pan I’d loaded them into was empty but for a remaining few spoonfuls of cinnamon-dusted sugar.

Even without the sun streaming across the faded red patio stones of my porch, that makes me feel a little warm inside.

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, 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.