Archive for August, 2008
The best thing about lasagna is that there are almost always leftovers the next day. And it’s easy enough to reheat in my toaster oven, since I finally ditched the microwave. But that’s another story.
But I felt sort of empty around suppertime, having not actually made anything all day. I should have revelled in it, but instead I made cookies. (This is not actually a big deal; having had a cookie bakery and cranked out 100 dozen cookies in a night, one little batch is a snap. I actually make a little game of challenging myself to turn on the oven and then mix up the dough and get it onto the sheets before it’s preheated. Like a cookie race. I have a very exciting life. It’s very exciting.)
And then I got all nostalgic and started thinking about the very first cookies I made for my bakery, One Smart Cookie, which I built when I was 25 on the 8th floor of an old office building downtown. (Another really long story.) These were by far my biggest sellers – low fat brownie-like cookies that before I found my bakery space I used to bake in my apartment and smuggle out to the coffee shops I supplied in a laundry basket covered with towels while my landlord stood in the foyer and scowled at me. I pretended I was a clean freak. I’m not.
I originally made these for my dad, who tends toward high cholesterol and tries to limit his saturated fat intake; my nephew named them chocolava when he was 7 because of their crackly resemblance to lava. I almost got Subway to carry these. But that’s yet another story. Anyway, I haven’t made them in ages, and it occurred to me that it’s a recipe y’all should have.
Also, I just wanted something chocolate.
Don’t overbake these. You want them to be chewy, like you would a chocolate chip cookie or a molasses-ginger cookie; that means that they should come out of the oven set around the edges, but still soft in the middle. They will firm up as they cool, so if they are set all the way through, they may be soft while they’re hot, but won’t be once they’ve cooled off.
Chocolava
These are rich, intensely chocolate, brownie-like cookies, rolled in icing sugar before they’re baked to create a crackled surface as they rise and spread in the oven. They’re also low fat.
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, softened
3 large egg whites or 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp. vanilla
icing sugar, for rolling
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl or in the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, brown sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt, breaking up any lumps of brown sugar. Add the butter and pulse or stir with a fork, pastry cutter or whisk until the mixture is well combined and crumbly.
Add eggs and vanilla and stir by hand just until the dough comes together. The dough will be fairly dry – it will seem at first that there isn’t enough moisture, but if you keep stirring, or get in there and use your fingers, eventually it will come together.
Place a few heaping spoonfuls of icing sugar into a shallow dish. Roll dough into 1 1/2” balls and roll the balls in icing sugar to coat. Place them about 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for 12–14 minutes, until just set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 20 cookies.
Per Cookie: 111 calories, 2.6 g fat (1.5 g saturated fat, 0.7 g monounsaturated fat, 0.1 g polyunsaturated fat), 21.3 g carbohydrates, 6.2 mg cholesterol, 1.8 g protein, 1.3 g fiber. 20% calories from fat
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August 26 2008 | cookies & squares | 13 Comments »
Grilling vegetables isn’t hard. Slicing them evenly lengthwise sometimes can be though, and brushing them with oil and flipping them on the grill, jockeying for position over the hot and cool spots, can be tedious. The resulting lasagna was fantastic, but I think next time I’ll chop all the veg up and roast them in the oven. The slices did make for pretty layers though.
I can’t say vegetable lasagna without thinking of Seinfeld. I’ve been calling Mike vegetable lasagna all night. It sounds like a band name: “I play bass in Vegetable Lasagna.” You know how when you say a word over and over and over it starts to sound weird? Vegetable lasagna.
I don’t use a recipe to make lasagna, so I’ll walk you through it:
1) Spread some sauce on the bottom of the pan. It doesn’t have to be a traditionally shaped pan – I often make lasagna for 2 (now 3) in an 8″x4″ loaf pan. Just break the noodles to fit. Whatever pan you use, make sure you have lots of sauce. Top with 3 noodles. (Oops, I forgot a picture of the noodles! You know what noodles look like. Use the no-cook ones because it is a royal pain to boil lasagna noodles. Hint: even the ones that aren’t labeled “no-cook” work without cooking them.)
2) Slice some eggplant (1 medium), zucchini (I used 1 green, 1 yellow) and a red pepper (quartered), brush with oil and grill until softish and grill-marked. Set them aside and slice the grilled chunks of pepper into strips. Lay half of them on the noodles. Their moisture will help the noodles cook through.
3) Drop some part-skim ricotta in spoonfuls over the veg. (I used almost a whole 500 mL container altogether.) I have decided to skip the traditional stir-with-an-egg step, which seems to me like a waste of a bowl and an egg; after all, there isn’t much reason for the cheese to be bound together, is there? Sprinkle with some grated Parmesan, if you want.
4) Repeat layers of noodles, veg, ricotta, noodles, then sauce, and mozzarella cheese (part-skim).
5) Bake at 350F for about an hour, until bubbly and golden and a fork poked through tells you that the noodles are tender. Cover with foil if you need to if it’s darkening too quickly. (In fact, you could start out with it covered for half an hour – this also helps keep the moisture in so that the noodles cook through. Uncover for the second half though, to allow it to turn golden.) Let it sit for about 15 minutes before you cut into it.
W has started asking me to take pictures of his food, and tonight he took the camera and wanted to take a photo of his own dinner. Since I was slow to get the lasagna in the oven, it was still baking at 6:30 and so I made him some whole wheat rotini with tomato sauce instead, and he asked to take it under the table to eat with the dog. At least he used a fork.
(This is one of his photos.)
August 25 2008 | freezable and one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 15 Comments »
I’m starting to feel guilty now when I repeat myself in the kitchen. But on Friday, when I made a vat of ceviche for the party, the thrifty part of me threw the halibut bones and shrimp shells into a pot of water and made stock. Which wouldn’t fit in the fridge, so today I had to come up with some use for it. I wasn’t in the mood for seafood chowder, and one of the best uses of great quantities of stock is risotto. (My parents are under the impression that risotto is made with plenty of cream, which is understandable considering it’s so creamy, but this creaminess comes from the starch in the rice coming out to meet the stock, and of course the Parmesan cheese you stir in at the end. You could also add a dab of butter at this point, but I generally don’t bother.)
This batch was better than the last time I made it – I cut back the lemon to just a small squeeze from a bottle, since I really don’t like too much lemon with my seafood (weird, I know, but I think it tends to overpower it), and when I rummaged through my freezer to find some shrimp, I found a bag of small scallops as well, so threw a handful of them in too. Had anyone told me that risotto would become a regular in my kitchen a year ago, I would have said they were crazy. But really, it’s as easy as making oatmeal.
I even winged it this time (recipes, I think, can be far too rigid; unless you’re baking, there generally isn’t a need to adhere to strict ingredient measurements): a small onion, finely chopped and sauteed in a bit of oil and butter until soft; a handful of short-grain arborio rice (about a cup?) and between 3 and 4 cups of stock; then a handful of grated Parmesan, the aforementioned squirt of lemon juice, and about 8 shrimp and 10 scallops. (But who’s counting?) If you want a recipe, follow the one for lemon-Parmesan risotto and at the end, stir in as many raw shrimp and/or scallops as you like, which will cook in about 3 minutes, and then tear in a couple handfuls of fresh spinach or chard. As soon as it wilts, serve it in shallow bowls to eat on the couch with extra Parm to sprinkle on top.
I went to the farmers’ market (Crossroads) late this afternoon, late enough that the vendors started slashing produce prices to avoid trucking it back home, and bought a bunch of slightly bruised but beautifully red tomatoes for 49 cents a pound (!!). Earlier, I was at my parents’ house helping them pack for their move, and left with a giant can of crushed tomatoes – so big you could use it as a bench – to do something with. I froze a bunch in ziploc bags, and the rest went into my largest pot with an onion sauteed in olive oil. I hacked the tomatoes in halves or quarters and put them on a rimmed baking sheet with a head of garlic, separated into cloves, and drizzled the lot with olive oil, then roasted them at 400F until they were soft and slightly charred on the edges. That got scraped into the pot, particularly the caramel goo stuck to the pan (add a little water or stock to loosen it if need be), and whizzed it with my hand-held immersion blender with a bit of salt and Italian seasoning. (Add some stock and you have a great roasted tomato soup.)
So now I have a good stash of tomato sauce to take me into fall. Fall! How could this be?
August 24 2008 | grains and one dish and seafood and vegetarian | 5 Comments »
I used to hate avocadoes. Now there isn’t anything about them I don’t love. Wait, there is: the fact that you have to bend to their schedules. That is, when you need a perfectly ripe avocado for a recipe right now, good luck. And when you buy them hard, once they arrive at the stage of perfect soft-firm ripeness, you have about a 24 hour window to come up with a use for them.
We had two that came into their own in tandem, so Mike made some guacamole for later, and I made a salad with tomato, purple onion, flat-leaf Italian parsley (I love having this stuff growing in my garden), avocado and bison bacon – a very lean, salty bacon that comes in thin strips, yet texturally resembles dark back bacon rather than the strip bacon that comes with bacon & eggs. (From Valta Bison in Ramsay.) I shook up a jar with about two parts olive oil to one of bottled pesto to drizzle overtop. I suspect this combo would translate very well into a sandwich. Bacon-tomato-avocado, with some pesto stirred into the mayo? You think?
It was fantastic, although I did find myself picking through the salad for little salty slabs of bacon and soft, melting avocado. And next time, I think I’ll opt for thinly sliced spinach instead of stronger-tasting Italian parsley.
(I often wonder how different this blog would have been had I written it 10 years ago. Of course, there weren’t blogs 10 years ago, were there?)
August 23 2008 | one dish and salads | 4 Comments »
I didn’t want to jam up the title with a bunch of finger foods that I’ve already written about earlier this year. Really, the one thing I was most excited about was a new invention – grilled mini donuts dipped in warm caramel. (Please don’t tell me if someone has done this already, I’m certain someone, somewhere has already thought of it.) But first, let me lay the groundwork for you.
Tonight I ended up cooking for a fabulous party with tents full of wine and food and cheer spread out over rolling fields just east of Red Deer, at the home of a prolific author (him) and singer (her), who brought her band up from Nashville to perform on the patio, violins and all. It was glorious.
I made some familiar things: bison meatballs with blueberry sauce, gruyère gougères (a.k.a. cheese puffs) which barely made it outside and down the stairs; crostini with bruschetta and olive-fig-walnut tapenade, which didn’t go over as well (I heard reports of guests discreetly throwing it into the bushes), arancini (complete opposite reaction – I could not make enough of these), and ceviche (I think 2 or 3 out of about 100 loved it, or at least could identify it enough to brave tasting it).
For dessert: espresso brownies with espresso ganache, mini pavlova with berries, and the aforementioned -are you tired of my own horn-tooting? – grilled cinnamon-sugar mini donuts with caramel dip. Unique finger-food sweets for a party are sometimes tricky, but this one was a blast. I had wanted to make chocolate panini (sandwiches made out of thinly sliced baguette and squares of dark Lindt chocolate, grilled until crispy-melty), but already planned chocolate in the form of brownies, so was pondering what I might do with a panini grill and a caramel theme. Solution: press mini donuts until flattened, warm, crisp and grill-marked, and serve with caramel to dip. Mike and I tested leftovers from Globalfest, and then packaged powdered-sugar and cinnamon-sugar varieties from Safeway and 7-11, then TimBits: honey dips, cinnamon-sugar, cruller and sour cream glazed. A tasty experiment. The cinnamon-sugar mini donuts and TimBits (cinnamon-sugar and honey dip) worked best, although with the honey dips a lot of the honey melts off, so I tossed them in a shallow pan of cinnamon-sugar as soon as they came out of the machine. (If you don’t have a panini grill, you could do this on a grill pan with a skillet on top to weigh them down.)
In keeping with the donuts-dipped-in-coffee theme, it occurred to me after sending the first batch out that the caramel dip could be served in a coffee cup, set on a plate with the donuts around it for dipping. (This photo does not do justice – it was around 10 pm and so not much light to work with!)
McDonald’s tarnished the idea of caramel dip a bit with their apple-caramel dip attempt at health food; really this is just caramel sauce, served as a dip. It’s easy enough to make, but you could go the easy route and pour it out of a jar.
Caramel Sauce
To make espresso caramel, dissolve 2-3 tsp. instant espresso in 2-3 tsp. water, and stir it into the cream before adding it to the sugar mixture.
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup honey, maple syrup or corn syrup
3/4 cup whipping cream
In a heavy saucepan, combine the sugar, water and honey over medium heat; stir until the sugar dissolves. Turn up the heat to medium-high and cook without stirring, swirling the pan occasionally, for about 10 minutes or until the mixture turns a deep amber colour. If you like, you could wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water.
(Some recipes call for butter at this point – if you like, stir in about 1/4 cup.) Turn the heat down to low and carefully stir in the cream (it will splatter) until smooth. Serve warm or refrigerate – rewarm in a saucepan over low heat, or in the microwave.
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August 23 2008 | appetizers and dessert and snacks and sweet stuff | 11 Comments »
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