Archive for April, 2009
People, I think I may have just discovered my new favourite cookie. (Or at the very least, cookie dough.) OK, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. These are at the very least in the running, or in the top ten. I’m not speaking out of lust here – I mean I am, but this love is going to last forever. (This time I mean it. And these cookies can’t ever change their minds about loving me back. Perhaps I could just have an affair with them on the side, whenever I tire of the classic chocolate chip kind?)
Except that I still haven’t tried David’s 36-hour cookies yet. Am waiting for company as backup.
Really, you could revamp any chocolate chip cookie recipe to make a maple-walnut-white chocolate version. You could conceivably use maple sugar, but that would be pricey and brown sugar actually does well to mimic maple when paired with syrup or extract. Trade 1/4 cup brown sugar for maple syrup (you couldn’t switch it all, as maple syrup is very much a liquid), and/or use maple extract in place of the vanilla. Swap white chocolate chips or chunks for the semi-sweet, and add some chopped walnuts. Et Voila!
Point of note: A lot of people think they don’t like walnuts because they are bitter. I used to be one of them. But here’s a revelation: walnuts should not be the least bit bitter – they should be lovely and mellow and sweet. If they are bitter, they’re rancid, and you need to toss them out and find yourself a new walnut source.
Maple Walnut White Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup (not flavoured pancake syrup)
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla or maple extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup each white chocolate chips/chunks and chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, beat the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup until well combined — the mixture will have the consistency of wet sand. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt (stir them together first only if you want to) to the butter-sugar mixture and stir by hand until almost combined; add white chocolate and walnuts and stir just until blended. It may seem dry at this point – I always find it easiest to get in there with my hands toward the end.
Drop spoonfuls of dough (or roll rough walnut-sized balls) about 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Flatten each a little with your hand, just to give them a head start. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden and set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 20 cookies.
One Year Ago: Corn Dogs & Mini Donuts
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April 19 2009 | leftovers | 27 Comments »
I’ve had a preoccupation with chocolate chip cookies lately. I think I’ve been missing them. It’s been far too long.
This fixation led to near-constant daydreaming this week about David Leite’s quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie in the New York Times last year, and how he had come to the conclusion that refrigerating the dough for 24-36 hours before baking it improved their flavour and texture. More to the point was the fact that I hadn’t gotten around to trying them myself yet. I was mid-thought when I sat down to check out some of my favourite food blogs, and found Shauna had created a gluten-free version of the very same. A clear sign if ever one was presented to me.
But when I got to my mixing bowl this afternoon, printed-out recipe and softened pound of butter in hand, I couldn’t bring myself to start with a cup and a quarter of it.
And then – duh – this is not what I’m all about, is it? I sometimes forget. (Too often lately it seems.) Yes, it’s easy to make delicious cookies out of the better half of a pound of butter and twice as much sugar; easier even to eat far too many of them. I can make low fat versions of stuff like this that are pretty fantastic. I wonder if time spent in the fridge would improve them too?
So I made a batch of my old standbys, which I haven’t made in ages. I always add a bit of Roger’s Golden Syrup, honey or corn syrup to my cookie dough (the low-fat kind, anyway), to add a bit of moisture and to speed up the browning action. (Syrups brown more quickly than sugar.) People tend to want their cookies to be beautifully golden all the way through, and by doing so overbake them in order to get there, and then when they cool down and firm up, they aren’t chewy anymore. You almost need to underbake chocolate chip cookies, much like brownies. (Which has been running a close second to cookies in my brain’s porn channel lineup.)
And since I am currently in a maple mood (my breakfast of choice this past month has been homemade or Highwood Crossing granola with frozen wild blueberries and plain Bles-Wold yogurt, sprinkled with a little of Manon’s maple sugar), as I made the dough I pondered a maple version, made using maple syrup instead, and white chocolate chunks. And maybe pecans. Or toasted walnuts. That’s it – Maple Walnut White Chocolate Chunk Cookies. They wouldn’t have quite filled the proper void tonight, but I am so making them tomorrow. Hell, I might not even get through tonight without mixing up a batch.
Meanwhile, here’s a low fat chocolate chip cookie recipe. (Of course to be considered low fat in Canada a product must contain 3 grams of fat or less per serving, but these contain considerably less fat than a traditional recipe – only 1/4 cup, as opposed to a cup or so. And just look at them! Low-er fat.)
I baked half the dough tonight, and saved half for tomorrow night or Monday – I’ll let you know the results of the aging process then. In theory it should work with any dough.
Much-Lower-Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies
The biggest problem people run into when baking chewy chocolate chip cookies is overbaking – if they are golden all over when they come out of the oven, they won’t be chewy once they cool down. Because they firm up as they cool, make sure they are golden and set around the edges, but still very soft in the middle, if you want chewy cookies.
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Tbsp. golden syrup, honey or maple syrup
2 tsp. vanilla or maple extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 325°F.
In a large bowl, beat butter and brown sugar until well combined — the mixture will have the consistency of wet sand. Add egg, corn syrup and vanilla and beat until smooth.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt (stir them together first only if you want to) to the butter-sugar mixture and stir by hand until almost combined; add chocolate chips and stir just until blended. It may seem dry at this point – I always find it easiest to get in there with my hands toward the end.
Drop spoonfuls of dough (or roll rough walnut-sized balls) about 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Flatten each a little with your hand, just to give them a head start. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden and set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 20 cookies.
Per Cookie: 155 calories, 5 g fat (3 g saturated fat, 1.4 g monounsaturated fat, 0.5 g polyunsaturated fat), 25.5g carbohydrates, 17.6 mg cholesterol, 2 g protein, 1 g fiber. 29% calories from fat
So. Does this lightened recipe in lieu of going whole hog (or cow, as the case may be – we’re talking butter, aren’t we?) mean I’m back on the weight-loss wagon? I’m sorry to have dropped the subject so abruptly. I could offer up a dozen reasons why, but all sound annoyingly like excuses. And none are any different from the impediments any of us face on a day to day basis. And when I think about it, although I have been pointing myself in far too many directions these days and not keeping on top of anything well, that’s not really the reason the subject (and our “Book Club”) has been backburnered. I think I just took that particular line of my brain off the hook, although I haven’t been able to shut off that annoying beeeep beeeep beeeeep reminder that it’s still there, waiting for me to pick up already. And is it me, or time just blasting by these days? Particularly in this state of global uncertainty, a debilitated economy and complete dismantling and simultaneous reconstruction of popular media. As Shaggy would say – Zoiks.
Part of me thinks no one wants to hear it. I don’t want to bore those who have no concerns about their weight with my ramble. I know I’m getting a little tired of the subject myself – of it occupying such a significant portion of my brain, all the time, for as long as I can remember. (As I may have mentioned, the first time I joined Weight Watchers, with my Mom, I was in the single-digits.) But I don’t really feel much better for ignoring it – it’s not quite the holiday I think my subconscious was hoping for.
Anyway, quick update, and I’ll keep them to the ends of my posts, so that they are easy to skip over if need be. Not much to report, really. You see how I’ve been eating. Still hopping around 204. Meh. Although only 5 lbs back up from when we were shooting in February (how could it be that long ago??) I feel much puffier. Could have something to do with my gym membership running out. Hopefully the coming of spring, coupled with a 90 pound dog, will get me moving again. More importantly, I have to start eating better. And less! (Yes, I realize exercise is important. It is. But people tend to overestimate how much they’ve burned with exercise, and more than make it up calorically. It doesn’t help that Big Food tries to put the blame for obesity rates on TV and computers, when it really has as much or more to do with the enormous quantities going in.)
Step 1: stick to two cookies, instead of putting away the entire sheet. (And I don’t mean into Tupperware.) Totally doable.
One Year Ago: Prosciutto-wrapped Prawns with Pesto
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April 18 2009 | cookies & squares | 30 Comments »
So after taking over traffic duties at CBC this afternoon, and a Save the CBC rally, I went to a salon. Not the mani-pedi type, the Parisian intellectual type, only with a wood-fired pizza oven.
(From Wikipedia: A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horace’s definition of the aims of poetry, “either to please or to educate”.)
Did you get that? Stimulating people of quality. That’s me.
It’s late – I’m getting punchy. Brian not working so good. (Ha – good typo – from now on will have to refer to my brain as “Brian”. No Brian, no more cupcakes! Bad Brian!) My most common mistake is to type “busty” instead of “busy” when I’m in a rush – as in, “I’ve been really busty lately”, or “I know you’re busty, but…”
This is what you get when you sign on for a month of real-time blogging: not the toppest-notch writing that can be done when IQ levels are high and then subsequently groomed and accessorized until ready to post. Punchy 2am posts with typos is what you sometimes settle for.
So yes. It was an evening of wine and pizza and conversation at the home of someone I recently met at a Forage Farm Table Dinner, centered around a wood-fired pizza oven he built – by hand, mind you – and the very first brick he laid in his life was the one on the front right corner – in his back yard in Bowness.
How cool is this? So well insulated it could be 700 degrees inside and still have snow sitting on top. Pizzas cook in around 80 seconds (who needs a microwave?) and the next morning, after the coals are long gone, the residual heat still registers 300-350F, so they bake bread or shirred eggs in it for breakfast. Last Thanksgiving they did the turkey and all the trimmings in the wood-fired oven, then kept the entire dinner – enough for 12 – warm in it until it was time to sit down and eat.
There were 10 of us, only 3 of whom I had ever met. We cranked out thin-crust pizzas, taking turns creating them out of the buffet of toppings – roasted tomato sauce, artichokes, pulled pork, salamis, bacon, cheeses, basil, rocket, pine nuts, caramelized onions, roasted peppers, prosciutto, pears – and sliding them into the pizza oven to bubble and cook in less than a minute and a half. After we made 14 or so and devoured them all, with meaty red olives and prosecco and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we retired to the living room where we drew numbers and each had to speak for 10 minutes on a subject that inspired us, or we were knowledgeable about, or that otherwise turned our crank. (Far better than Cranium, no?) I was last, which did not bode well for me, but we did have enough to talk about to keep us out until 1 am.
It really was a great evening. (Thanks Brian.)
And now… drum roll please… Free Stuff Fridays!
I’ve been requested to post the winners of previous FSF – sorry, I keep meaning to do this, but then forget (having given the stuff away back on Tuesday!) – I’m not trying to keep winners under wraps, honest. Maureen was the lucky winner of the new blender, and Gwendolyn won tea, and Katharine won the Corningware set, a bunch of you won copies of OSC, and over 20 are receiving sourdough starter.. Maria got a Candy Apple Apron.. am I forgetting anything in the past month or so? Sorry, I’ll start posting the winners. But if you win, I’ll email you on Tuesday or thereabouts.
I’ve been looking forward to this one. I was thinking awhile ago of the things I love to get. And one of them is Starbucks cards. There is nothing like having a loaded credit card full of free lattes in your wallet. So I called them up (or their PR firm, anyway), and told them about you all, and how great you are and how I love to give you stuff, and they generously shipped me SIX twenty-five dollar Starbucks cards, PLUS six 1-lb. bags of Pike Place Roast coffee beans to divvy out as I see fit.
!!!! (Thanks, Starbucks!)
So, I see fit to divvy them out two at a time, and spread the love. This week I’ll give away two $25 gift card and 1 lb. coffee combos, and if you don’t win one this time, there will be two more chances. Fair?
So since coffee is on the line here, why don’t we make that our topic of discussion? What’s your very favourite thing to have with a cuppa? (And if not coffee, tea then?)
One Year Ago: Roast Chicken with Lemon and Parmesan Risotto
April 18 2009 | eating out | 89 Comments »
I defy anyone out there to come up with faster food than this. (Cereal doesn’t count.)
OK, I got a head start on the sweet potato, so that can be an exception if it evens things out a little. W and I make banana bread a lot – a recipe that allows W to mash the banana, sugar, oil and eggs in a bowl with a potato masher, then add the dry ingredients, stir them in, scrape it into a pan and bake. The other day it seemed like a waste to have the oven on with only a loaf pan inside, so I threw a sweet potato and head of garlic, wrapped in foil, in for the hour it took to bake the banana bread. (Both will keep just fine in the fridge for up to a week.) Roasted sweet potatoes are best for mashing – they have more flavour and retain all their nutrients (none lost to the cooking water), and they practically peel themselves as they come out of the oven. Seriously – you just pull the skin off with your fingers. So I mashed it with a teeny pat of butter and splash of orange juice, and that was done.
As for the rest – I had some glaze leftover from the Easter ham: equal parts balsamic, brown sugar and grainy mustard – so I picked up a salmon filet to make use of it. Threw it on a foil-lined sheet (only to avoid sticky clean-up after) and poured the marinade overtop while heating the oven to 400F. (Anything will do – basil or sun-dried tomato pesto, teriyaki sauce, even barbecue sauce.) Snapped the ends off the asparagus and stirred 1 tablespoon sugar (white or brown) into 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Put the salmon in. Drizzled some sesame oil in a hot pan and cranked it on to medium-high. Set the table. (Yes, I have an electric oven. Pity me. And “setting the table” involves W getting 3 forks from the drawer and me pouring 3 waters.) Threw the asparagus in the pan and tossed them around for a minute or two; added the pea pods for another minute or so, turned off the heat and poured over the sugary soy sauce. Sprinkled with sesame seeds. Pulled the salmon out. (Salmon takes 10 minutes per inch of thickness. So usually around 10 minutes.)
Total time lapsed: 8 MINUTES. (I know this because the timer was on. It didn’t just seem fast.)
And battered frozen fish fillets take 25? Where’s the convenience?
One Year Ago: Crabcakes Benedict (with Classic Hollandaise and a lightened version!)
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April 16 2009 | fish and veg | 12 Comments »
I pulled a pound of ground (Galloway beef from Second to None meats) out of the freezer last night with no real plans for it. Tonight, after painting a bowl as part of the Empty Bowls Benefit for the Calgary Inter-faith Food Bank and coming home with no dinner plan, I noticed half bag of Italian buns in the breadbox and got a sudden urge for sloppy Joes. It seems to me the penultimate working weeknight family meal. (With peas.)
When I was a kid, sloppy Joes were about as close as to a burgers as we got. Closer even than the made-from-scratch burgers my dad made out of extra-lean ground beef and oat bran (in approximately equal quantities) which I called sawdust burgers and which discouraged my friends from staying for dinner. Now it is becoming evident that I am in fact turning into my Dad, as I do things like bring bagels and cheese to the zoo (instead of buying food there) and am excited to tell you how easy it is to sneak ground flaxseed into things like sloppy Joes – anything with chunky texture, like chili or spaghetti sauce, makes a good candidate. It seems I have developed a taste for frugality as well as grainy breads.
I’m sure their sweetness was a big part of the reason I loved SJs so much – between the ketchup and brown sugar, it’s sweet, saucy meat on a bun. Although a soft bun is considered the classic vehicle, sloppy Joes are phenomenal on split cheese biscuits or a thick wedge of cheddar beer bread.
Sloppy Joes
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped (optional)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 lb. lean ground beef or bison
1 14 oz. (398 mL) can diced, whole or stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup ketchup or barbecue sauce, or some of each
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
soft buns, cheese buns, plain or cheese biscuits
Heat the oil in a large saucepan set over medium-high heat and sauté the onion, celery, red pepper and garlic for about 10 minutes, until the onions are starting to turn golden. Add the meat and cook for about 5 minutes, breaking it up as you cook, until the meat is no longer pink.
Add the tomatoes, ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Split the buns or biscuits in half and ladle the sloppy Joe mixture on top. Serves 4-6.
One Year Ago: Peanut Noodles (weird!)
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April 15 2009 | beef and freezable and sandwiches | 12 Comments »
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