a sweet morning treat

I wouldn’t imagine from-scratch biscotti are one of the more popular baked goods in America. In fact, even “from scratch” biscotti at coffee shops and bakeries seem strangely manufactured, too perfectly shaped, too similar, and all pretty boring. But few treats are as well-suited to a coffee dunking, and given my intense coffee addiction, it’s surprising I’ve never tried to make these before.

I found a recipe on epicurious for chocolate-orange biscotti that sounded pretty delicious, and I had everything on hand already except for the chocolate. The crispness of these homemade biscotti is superior to any I’ve had before — crunchy but not hard, delicious with or without being dunked…that I think I would use this recipe as a base and sub out any number of flavor combinations. You could use dried cherries, almonds, and a little vanilla extract for a less dessert-like variation. Or walnuts instead of pecans, white chocolate chunks, pretty much anything. The dough is very simple to make. The only issue I had is that I think my oven runs hot (it definitely has hot spots) and so the bottom of my biscotti after the first bake was a bit darker than I would have liked, but miraculously there’s no burnt flavor to them at all. Just keep an eye on those suckers and you’ll be fine!

Here’s the recipe, which I made without modification: Chocolate-Orange Biscotti

taco experiment round-up

People are passionate about their tacos, I’ll tell you that. The Brooklyn Taco Experiment was possibly the most exhausting and hectic of all the cook-offs I’ve done, and I’ll tell you why. Tacos. Take. Work.

Lauren and I had about 100 tupperwares, containers, tote bags, and boxes between us and still we were improvising. Thirty pounds of pork shoulder alone. And we had about the perfect amount after it was all said and done. I’m convinced we made way more than 300 tacos.

We had about 4 square feet in which to display / heat / assemble our tacos, and some seriously stubborn donated tortillas to deal with (not all the best things in life are free, I’m just sayin’). Nothing makes me feel older than standing for a whole day. Man, my back hurt!

No prizes this time, but I have to say, I have not seen so many hard core competitors (or so many competitors, period — there were 30 tacos to try) in any previous cook-off, and though once again I tried nothing, my friends who were there said it was a stellar group. So I’m not in the least bit sad about the lack of prize winning. If I were there and had to try 30 tacos, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to pick a favorite at all.

I think it might be time to take a bit of a cook-off hiatus. Work is crazy busy, and I have some possible big purchases coming up (including a car?!?) so the massive amount of time and money that these things take will just not be available to me. However, I will be an enthusiastic spectator and continue to follow Nick & Theo’s meteoric rise to the top of the New York foodie scene.

My final taco?

Slow roasted pork (with habanero, pasilla, ancho and chipotle chiles and cinnamon), creamy jicama slaw, home pickled onions and jalapenos, cotija cheese, a squeeze of lime, and cilantro! We also served a tequila punch: tequila, guava juice, orange juice, and fresh squeezed lime juice.

(these 2 pics are from the Huffington Post article on the event!)

grapefruit yogurt cake

I love to bake in general, but my favorite recipes to bake are quick breads. Endless variety and so easy. Plus, since many of them contain either fruit or vegetables, I can fool myself into thinking they’re healthy! Aah, the power of denial. This recipe is more cake-like than bread-like, but since it’s made in a loaf pan, it’s pretty much a quick bread in my mind, and thus totally acceptable to eat as breakfast.

Since most fruits (or vegetables, for that matter) are not exactly in season right now, you should make this grapefruit cake — citrus is one of the things that gets me out of bed on these miserable, gray winter days, when the thought of fresh corn on the cob and giant bunches of basil at the farmer’s market will just about send me over the ledge. Soon enough I’ll be bitching about how I can’t walk anywhere without sweating profusely, and longing for the days of jeans and boots and turtlenecks. But such is life in New York, where we get about 10 days of absolutely transcendent weather during the year, and that measly quantity somehow fools us into tolerating months on end of misery. Today was more miserable than most, what with the torrential rain, but when you have a tangy, sunny piece of cake waiting for you, it’s not so bad. You can almost pretend spring is on the way.

I found this recipe, like many others I have so enjoyed, on Smitten Kitchen. I’ll just link to the recipe since I didn’t make any modifications. Enjoy!

taco prep

The toughest part of competitive cooking is editing. Prepping for a cook-off is mostly a question of picking something strong conceptually and then making it taste really good, which would be easy (OK, not easy, but easier) if the task weren’t so open-ended. Tacos?? That could be almost anything on earth, and when you consider all the amazing things that are normally put in tacos, then combine that with the possibility of anything tasty at all that could be put in a taco…well, you get my drift. That’s a lot of editing.

I had a little taco tasting get-together on Saturday and I think I have a solid concept. However, I will not be divulging that here! No siree bob, because we taco cook-off contestants were just informed that the top prize for the audience vote is two tickets to Mexico. No, I am not making that up. So things just got a little high stakes around here! Although, I could probably buy a round-trip ticket to Mexico for what I’ll have paid in ingredients when you count the tests and the final recipe, so really, it’s about the experience not the prizes. As long as I win. Just kidding!

Here is a little photo of a quesadilla I made for dinner last night with some of the leftover taco ingredients, but of course I will not reveal what they are or whether I’m actually using them. You’ll have to buy a ticket for Sunday for that! I also made a simple salad, which I will tell you about, with baby spinach and blood orange segments. Just a simple red wine vinegar and olive oil dressing and some salt and pepper made it just the right tangy balance for the cheesy quesadilla.

lemon risotto with spinach

I rarely have the initiative to make risotto, but really, it’s not much harder or more time consuming than pasta or most other dishes I’d make on a week night. It just requires that you don’t wander too far from the stove. I am a sucker for kitchenware so I bought a big paella pan awhile ago, which is ideal for risotto, but any large pot or deep sauce pan will do. You just want as much surface area as possible.

I started from a recipe for lemon risotto on Epicurious and adapted it a bit, then decided to accompany it with chicken — it would be equally delicious with seafood. You can easily sub in different cheese as well. I happened to have an odd-sized chunk of gruyere on hand so I used this recipe to whittle it down. It would be really easy to double this and serve it at a dinner party. The lemon makes it so nice and fresh in the dead of winter! When does that damn groundhog tell us when winter will be over again??

the taco experiment

It’s another cook-off, y’all! Nick and Theo are back with the Brooklyn Taco Experiment at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Since pretty much anything worthy of going into a taco is delicious in my book, this one should be pretty fun. I’ll be there competing (taco recipe as yet undetermined), so get your tickets now!

fennel soup and…drumroll…the second galette!

Last Friday, my friend Melissa came over for a mellow ladies’ night in. It was a definite change of pace after our first week back at work after the holidays. We made some delicious fennel, tomato and white bean soup with gremolata and crusty bread with fontina melted on top. And for desert, an apple galette! ‘Twas delicious. We had a bottle of wine (though we could have easily drank two) and just listened to music and geeked out.

Recipe for the soup was improvised, and the galette recipe is courtesy of Alice Waters. The dough isn’t sweetened, the apples have no spices on them, and yet, it is so delicious. Something to be said for her simple approach. Recipes after the jump.

two galettes (almost)

See, I had this clever idea to make my 2010 return post something special, since I’ve been MIA for so long, with a pair of savory and sweet galettes. I thought, being a nerd, that the title “two galettes” was amusing, which is probably mostly the reason I decided to go with this plan. But New York conspired against me, in that we didn’t even eat dinner until 9 pm. I realized that two different from-scratch doughs combined with cooking times just didn’t leave enough time or room in my belly before bedtime to justify the sweet galette (apple, courtesy of Alice Waters / Jacques Pepin).

So, enjoy instead this savory butternut squash and caramelized onion galette courtesy of Smitten Kitchen. I made a couple of small modifications, indicated in the recipe below. This is, in the parlance of early 90’s California, hella good. It pretty much contains everything I love in life (except garlic) in one buttery rustic tart. Can you tell I am prone to exaggeration?

In any case, if you want to impress some guests (and convince some people that vegetarian can be just as delicious as omnivorous), make this galette. But I’m warning you — although technically it should serve 6, I wouldn’t count on it serving more than 4. You might just need to make two! And although the dough seems fussy, do not skip the freezing step! The colder the butter, the smaller the pieces you can cut it into without just mushing it around. It’s the tiny bits of unincorporated butter that make it all flaky and delicious. You’ll thank me in the end.

monkey bread

I hadn’t heard of monkey bread until I stumbled across a recipe online recently. If you haven’t heard of monkey bread either, I’ll describe it for you, but first a warning: once you know what this is, it will get inside your brain until you get up at the crack of dawn and spend 2 1/2 hours on a weekend making it. Be forewarned.

OK so it’s these balls of dough, essentially cinnamon bun dough, dipped in melted butter (you could stop right there) and rolled around in brown sugar and cinnamon, stacked together in a pan, baked, and drizzled with a confectioner’s sugar glaze. Because the dough is in little balls, the loaf or whatever you want to call it just pulls apart and you get these gooey, perfectly bite-sized pieces. You can also be in denial about how many of said dough balls you’ve consumed (it must be less than a whole cinnamon bun, right?) HOW GOOD DOES THAT SOUND RIGHT NOW??

I’ve never made cinnamon buns before, but I do have a deep fondness for Cinnabon (and a healthy amount of shame over it). I am fairly new to yeast breads / doughs, but I loved this making this dough. It’s pillowy and gooey and when it rises it just fluffs up like a yeasty cloud. I mean, it’s a pain to work with because it’s pretty sticky, but believe me when I say that you will have no memory of the hardship when you take a bite of the completed masterpiece of monkey bread. I didn’t have a bundt pan, so I just did this in a 9″ round springform pan. You just need something deep enough — these suckers rise a lot.

Here’s a link to the recipe that I used. Make it now!

belated

When does something become so long overdue that you can’t even use the term “belated”? Extremely belated? Grossly belated?

In any case, here’s a rundown of a few of the Thanksgiving delicacies we enjoyed…

First up, house smoked turkey. Holy crap it was delicious. I’m pretty sure it went into the smoker at like 9 am and then didn’t come out until about 6:30 pm. Although it was not me slaving over the smoker, I can pretty confidently say that the amount of work it took was worth it. I’ve never had such moist, flavorful turkey in my life. And it looks pretty cool, too.

One of my non tradition traditions. Brie wrapped in Pillsbury crescent dough and baked. Gooey.

Spiced rosemary cashews.

Biscuit and Cornbread Dressing, a la Martha Stewart.

Roasted Brussels sprouts. Look, I know they taste like feet, but they taste like delicious feet, OK??

Pop. Overs. I bought a special pan just for these things and boy are they tasty! Recipe from The Kitchn.

Delicata squash for the salad (with pomegranate seeds!)

We also had cranberry butter, sweet potato pie, and red wine poached pears with mascarpone cream filling. Oh, and did I mention there were four of us? I recognize the perversity of that, believe me, I do. So does my belly.