I'm a little late posting this week's idea post (obviously). I had plans to be on top of blog post drafts before Caleb arrived, but I didn't quite make that happen. Thanks for being patient and voting for recipe ideas 🙂
A) Quinoa Stew with Potatoes, Spinach, and Chard from Love Soup
B) Mushroom-Barley Soup with Cabbage from Love Soup
C) Cornmeal Rosemary Cake with Lemon Glaze from the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook
D) Chocolate Celebration Cake from Heartlandia
The process of making Yossi Arefi's soft chocolate and fig cake is highly reminiscent of the recipe for Alice Medrich's flourless chocolate cake, which I'm a big fan of. ...
Chana saag masala is one of my favorite dishes from the enormous catalog of Indian food. In his cookbook India: In Search of the Perfect Curry, Rick Stein assures me that I am not alone in this feeling, claiming chana masala is the most popular vegetarian Indian take-out order in the UK.
However, there's no reason to order this as take-out anymore. It's really simple to make this comforting, healthy, lightly-spiced Indian classic at home. Rick Stein's recipe yields a delicious chana masala that requires pretty basic pantry ingredients and a minimal investment of prep time. I opted to add spinach to his recipe because more vegetables in my dinner are always a win.
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Another winner of a recipe from Chickpea Flour Does It All, this onion poppyseed bread is on regular rotation in my kitchen. It's another simple and fast recipe full of big flavors and great texture, a quality I really appreciate in Lindsey's cookbook. ...
It's difficult to think about making food right now, in the aftermath of my friend's "where the wild things are" birthday party for her one-year old son that involved 16 lbs of BBQ and an entire dessert table. Who knew DC had great BBQ? Baby Jack definitely enjoyed his first taste of brisket.
I listened to a great book on the drive down: News of the World. It's a short read; there are no stunning plot twists or deeply nuanced characters, but it's a beautifully written post-Civil War Western nonetheless. If you're looking for something new and uplifting to read, I highly recommend it. Conversely, I don't recommend the last rest stop in NJ on the drive south down 95....
Caleb is coming for a visit this week, so I'm hoping to prep some meals before he arrives.... after I recover from today's feast.
Please vote for your favorite dish by Monday!
A) Cheddar Cheese & Black Pepper Bread from Bread Illustrated
B) Quinoa Stew with Potatoes, Spinach, and Chard from Love Soup
C) Mushroom-Barley Soup with Cabbage from Love Soup
D) Soft Chocolate and Fig Cake from Sweeter Off the Vine
Growing up, mom would often put currants in her scones, so I had high expectations for these currant-oat paddles from Nancy Silverton going in. I hit a few stumbling blocks along that way to heavenly scone-dom. However, I've baked enough scones that I like to think I know my way around good scone dough and the flaws were pretty minor in the scheme of things, so I happily wound up with very tender and rich scones, delicately spiced by the cinnamon-sugar on top and the whiskey-soaked currants inside. I really appreciated the combination of flours in these - the pastry flour (or all-purpose flour plus cornstarch) keeps the crumb light and airy, while the oats and whole wheat flour give the scones complexity, depth of flavor, and wholesome appeal that is missing in standard scones.
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It pains me to confess this, but cookies and cream is one of my favorite ice cream flavors. Especially Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream (because mint chocolate chunk is another favorite), but I'll take any brand that makes a rich, creamy ice cream and giant chunks of Oreo. I'm always disappointed when I try a cookies and cream ice cream where everything has been blended together. The cookie pieces need to be sizeable. Why am I talking about ice cream in a blog post about cookies? I guess it's because the name of these cookies and cream cookies from Cookie and Cups makes me think of ice cream, not cookies. And now that I'm writing about them, I wish I had put these cookies and cream cookies on top of cookies and cream ice cream, because it would have been extra delicious.
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I'm suffering from a serious case of buyer's remorse, with 6 lbs of cubed and frozen butternut squash taking up precious space in my freezer. As much as I love butternut squash, I'd never considered how mushy the texture becomes once frozen. What I'm saying is, I have 6 lbs of butternut squash that are only good for soups and baking applications, not for eating as the bite-sized pieces Costco so generously sold to me. Today I made some pumpkin beer and turkey chili from Modern Potluck, sweet potato quinoa muffins (with squash) from At Home in the Whole Foods Kitchen, vegan mac and cheese with butternut squash-cashew "cheese" sauce, and more sweet potato macadamia magic soup (with squash) from the Perfect Blend, so I'm down to 2 lbs remaining to be magicked into something glorious. And I have a lot of food to eat.
In happier news, January is over, which means I'm back to posting 2 savory and 2 sweet recipe ideas each Saturday (although I'm holding off on eating sweets until later this month...). I've missed bread, and today I started a sourdough, a rye sourdough, and a batch of croissants from Bourke Street Bakery. I also threw together some butterscotch cookies from Home Baked Comfort, and chocolate walnut scones and currant-oat paddles from La Brea Bakery (I had cream to use up). Hopefully these scones are as good as their ginger scones, which I obsessed over in college. It was a long Saturday in the kitchen and now my freezer is even more full than it was when I began. Which wasn't really the point, but isn't altogether surprising.
Any of these sound good to you? I'm pulling out four, but let me know in the comments what you'd like to see on the blog by Monday.
A) Pumpkin Beer and Turkey Chili with Butternut Squash and Beans from Modern Potluck
B) Herbed Black Quinoa Muffins with Sweet Potato and Caramelized Onions from At Home in the Whole Foods Kitchen
C) Butterscotch Blondies (as cookies) from Home Baked Comfort
D) Currant-Oat Paddles from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from La Brea Bakery
These chocolate sandwich cookies filled with tahini cream from Honey & Co Baking (published as Golden in the US) are really, intensely chocolately. Several people said the cookie itself was like eating fudge. Since they need to stay refrigerated and the cookies are so fudge-like, it's best to cut them in half (if you'll be eating half at a time) prior to storing them.
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Mustard spice cookies seem like an odd idea and I was a little worried about how they would received by my coworkers. I thought these might be a little too outside the box as far as desserts in New Jersey go. But I was wrong – people loved these cookies. Ovenly's mustard spice cookies were one of the crowd favorites during my first twelve days of Christmas and I've made them several times since. They are excellent representatives of Ovenly's sweet/savory baking style: not too sweet and ridiculously addictive....
In her first cookbook, Joy (the Baker) based her recipe for cranberry orange poppy seed cookies on her favorite slice-and-bake cookies from Smitten Kitchen and Dorie Greenspan. The incorporation of orange (or lemon) zest, poppy seeds, and dried cranberries gives this standard shortbread dough a jewel-like character and won lots of exclamations over how cute they were from my co-workers. Her gorgeous shortbread cookies are easy to make, only require a short rest in the fridge, look like cookies that required a lot of effort, and bake up beautifully.
...Dorie Greenspan used to be a cookbook author I ignored, because how could a little tiny American woman living in Paris (part time, anyway) who claims to eat dessert every day actually make delicious desserts. Then I was checking out Around my French Table and noticed one of my classmates from Hamilton thanked as the assistant editor. Once I was done fuming with jealousy over how glamorous it must be to edit cookbooks as a profession, I started actually making some of Dorie's recipes. Then I was hooked. When she realized her enormous tome on cookies last year, I pre-ordered it and ate dessert every day multiple times a day.... These lemon sugar cookies were among the cookies I tested from Dorie's Cookies during my twelve days of Christmas at work, and they are lemon sugar cookie perfection. A little lemon-y, not too sweet, chewy in the middle and crispy along the edges, or chewy throughout, they'll make you wonder why you've never made a lemon sugar cookie before.
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This week's winner of the vote for a recipe was Gordon Ramsay's flatbread with fennel and feta from his eponymous Home Cooking. I'll be honest, I was a little concerned about how much I would like raw crunchy fennel on my Middle Eastern-style pizza, but these were delicious.
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I really wanted to love this recipe from Sirocco for citrus and za'atar chicken. Perhaps I fell prey to high expectations, since I love citrus in all things, especially with roast chicken, and I think za'atar is enjoying a well-deserved moment in the spotlight. Mixing up this rub, my kitchen was full of tantalizing smells that promised a succulent, flavorful chicken.
...This week, Baked Sunday Mornings is baking Nutella chip cookies from Baked Occasions. I love Nutella. I don't remember when I discovered the joys of smothering everything in Nutella - I suppose it probably was in college. Since then, I've learned to keep Nutella out of my cupboard, because otherwise it winds up on toast, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, vanilla ice cream, pretzel rolls, in ebelskivers, and of course, by itself on a spoon. At one point last year, I was trying to purge the Nutella jars (yes, it comes as a two-pack) I'd bought at Costco from my cupboard and decided the obvious thing to do was bake with Nutella. So I made Nigella Lawson's Nutella brownies. They were fast and easy to make, friends said they were delicious, but I was not a fan. To me, the Nutella was diminished by being baked into brownies, not elevated or even turned into something equally as good. I would have preferred eating it on a spoon. I have a similar opinion about these Nutella chip cookies....
This Chinese chicken salad is the best Chinese chicken salad you are going to eat. Seriously. I know, you aren't supposed to call any food post "the best", because the hundreds of recipes for "the best chocolate chip cookie" all differ a little and it's very subjective. Plus, I called Sarabeth's English muffins the best, and have since discovered another recipe from Bread Illustrated I like a little more. But, Chinese chicken salad is a different thing altogether from a chocolate chip cookie or an English muffin. And I am certain you won't find a better Chinese chicken salad anywhere else, so you might as well make it for yourself with guidance from Modern Potluck.
...January is almost over! I'm done with my taxes, I signed up for a new gym, I reorganized my pantry and kitchen cabinets, and I'm working my way through stacks of old magazines (because obviously, I want to keep the recipes. And the makeup tips. And the work-out advice. Not that I have a good reason for it... my hoarding of useless paper is still a work in progress. Much like my hoarding of cookbooks.)
Clearly, all of that adulting has worked up an appetite for the week ahead, and I can't quite narrow down the list of things I might want to eat to a simple selection of four. I also am a little conflicted over what to make with the leeks, fennel, feta, avocado, and preserved lemon hanging out in my kitchen.
If there's a recipe you'd like to see on this blog, please vote for it below! I do try to make all dishes voted for, so speak up for your favorites here or in the ideas archive.
A) Mushroom and Leek Pasta from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking
B) Flatbreads with Fennel and Feta from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking
C) Jerk Chicken from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking
D) Seared Tuna with Preserved Lemon, Olives, and Avocado from Simple
E) Lamb with Preserved Lemon, Dates, and Cumin Butter from Simple
F) Chocolate Sandwich Cookies filled with Tahini Cream from Honey & Co. The Baking Book
Honey & Co., you make me feel like an inadequate baker. Please don't misunderstand.... I am madly in love with both Honey & Co. as well as Honey & Co. The Baking Book, but the baking-centric recipes (rather than, say, the lamb siniya) take me a couple of repetitions before I feel like I've succeeded. Some of them are simple and work the first time around, some of them are not. Everything I've tried has been completely worth the extra effort, mess, and occasional frustration, including this lovely chocolate hazelnut cinnamon krantz loaf.
What is a krantz loaf? Simply a babka (recently enjoying a massive surge in popularity), where the filling is on display along the top of the loaf rather than hidden inside the braided bread. In Honey & Co's version of a krantz loaf, the chocolate-hazelnut-cinnamon filling to dough ratio is practically one-to-one. And while I just called this a bread, because it's baked in a loaf pan with yeast and bread flour and calling it bread gives me permission to eat more of it, it is really a yeasted cake. It's rich and buttery and decadent chocolate-y with exactly the right hint of cinnamon.
...I was a huge fan of this polenta stuffed with sausage and broccoli rabe (aka Italian casserole) from Modern Potluck. I've seen numerous recipes for polenta, Italian sausage, and broccoli rabe, but none that combine them together in quite this same manner. I also haven't found any that go the extra mile of baking everything together to ensure a creamy polenta crust, gooey, stringy Provolone, nutty Parmesan, and a well-seasoned, slightly spicy meat and vegetable filling. This modernized casserole is clearly more than the sum of its parts. ...
Dolly & Oatmeal is a gorgeous blog run by Lindsey S. Love, so despite the slightly niche concept of a cookbook devoted to chickpea flour, I pre-ordered her cookbook Chickpea Flour Does It All. It's organized seasonally, which is something that drives me a little crazy, because it makes it more difficult to flip a book open and quickly locate that dessert or soup or salad you know is in there. But, I appreciate cookbook authors trying to simplify seasonal meal planning for home cooks. Torn pieces of junk mail help me flip quickly to the recipes I like/want to try and I've been happily wowed with almost every recipe I've tried so far, including these almond butter brownies.
It's worth stating up front that this little square of 8-by-8-inch brownies will set you back a few more pennies than your average brownies recipe. With the expensive ingredients, you're looking at $5 for 1 cup almond butter, $3 for 1 cup coconut sugar, $4+ for 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate. Don't fool yourself into thinking these are necessarily healthy either, they're fat and sugar held together with a minimal amount of chickpea flour, just like your favorite flourless chocolate cake or fudgy brownie. Not that that's a bad thing, but this "don't use sugar, use honey/agave/dates instead" craze is making me insane. All of these sugar sources, are, surprise...full of sugar. It's really a question of moderation in all things and which sugar will work best for your application.
...Over MLK weekend, a friend invited us over for a spontaneous dinner party. One of the guests brought a very shapely loaf of French bread, and we spent a while discussing the excellent recipe testing and scientific insight provided in the recent books from America's Test Kitchen: Cook's Science and Science of Good Cooking. I only have the first on my bookshelf so far, but it's provided lots of inspiration. It even had a rational for where my ginger-scallion-beef satay testing went wrong.
I brought the salty-sweet orange tahini soft pretzels and chocolate, hazelnut, and cinnamon krantz loaf (also known as a babka) as dessert. I'm not quite happy with how the orange tahini pretzels turned out, but the krantz loaf was intensely chocolate-hazelnutty, with just a hint of cinnamon taking it beyond a standard chocolate-hazelnut bread.
A) Braised Halibut with Leeks and Mustard from Cook's Science
B) Sesame-crusted Salmon with Lemon and Ginger from Cook's Science
C) Sweet Potato and Macadamia Magic Soup from the Perfect Blend
D) Chocolate, Hazelnut and Cinnamon Krantz Loaf from Honey & Co. The Baking Book
Chicken with apricots and almonds, or Mahmudiye, is presented in Rick Stein's From Venice to Istanbul as a classical Ottoman recipe. Slow-cooking meat-based stews with sweet spices and dried fruit evidently was a common practice in Ottoman cuisine, particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries (says Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire)... I'm not sure what the link is between the dish and Mahmudiye, the town/district in central Anatolia nor the ship of the line in the Ottoman navy. Wherever the original name stems from, this chicken with apricots and almonds is a delightful, easy, slightly sweet Turkish stew. ...
Maybe you'll recall back to my ideas post in December, when I mentioned picking up Divine Food at Omnivore Books in San Francisco? It was the stunning, mouth-watering photography of food that drew me in, like the one for this sweet focaccia with oranges. The thoughtful essays on food as it relates to Israeli and Palestinian culture made me choose Divine Food over several other books I was considering. Maybe I should have paid some attention to the recipes themselves.
The bookseller told me Gestalten is a highly respected publisher and everything they produce is very well done, but a Google search indicates Gestalten doesn't publish many English-language cookbooks, so maybe I should have done a little homework instead of trusting. I think some things have been lost in translation or poor editing. Important things, like amounts and methods and critical steps. The mistakes contained in this one recipe for sweet focaccia with oranges seem primarily attributable to someone's laziness. There are two focaccia recipes in this cookbook, a focaccia with mixed seeds and a sweet focaccia with oranges. The savory focaccia header states it produces 2 loaves. The sweet focaccia header states it produces 1 loaf. However, halfway through the recipe for sweet focaccia with oranges, the directions for what to do with the topping have been copy-pasted from the savory loaves. All of sudden, there are two loaves to work with instead of one. What? No way my dough wanted to roll out to two loaves of 12-by-16-inches each. Plus, for a liquid-y list of topping ingredients, the book's directions didn't make much sense. "Mix ingredients together, place topping on dough." The whole cupful of sugar-water? I think not....
Two days ago it was a balmy 60 F, today snow is sticking to the ground. In another two days, it's supposed to rain....this week can't quite decide what temperature it wants to be.
If you're a fan of marrying chocolate and peanut butter together, you'll probably like this variation from Layered with stout beer complementing the chocolate and providing some leavening.
I know it may seem silly, posting two recipes from a Paleo cookbook, but they're actually genuinely good recipes, regardless of their source. The avocado ranch dressing is much more flavorful than any other ranch dressing you'll make. And who doesn't like salmon, sweet potatoes, and coconut?
Everything I've made from Rick Steins's From Venice to Istanbul has turned out well. I have about half the pages bookmarked, which might be a bit silly, but there's always something I want to make for dinner from his book.
Raspberry Foley bars are named after the author's friend, they are essentially raspberry cookie bars, not quite a linzer bar but similar concept.
A) Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout Cake from Layered
B) Wild Salmon with Coconut-Lime Sauce and Sweet Potato Puree from The Paleo Chef
C) Chicken Salad with Avocado Ranch Dressing from The Paleo Chef
D) Chicken with apricots & almonds (Mahmudiye) from Rick Stein: From Venice to Istanbul
E) Raspberry Foley Bars from Little Flower Bakery
Welcome to the Tastiest Book! I'm so thrilled you stopped by. I'm cooking (and baking) my way through my cookbook collection, sharing my experience with which recipes worked and which flopped. Meet Kat...
