I know – I’m sure by now you’re all chocolated out, swimming through a fuzzy cheap chocolate hangover. (Or maybe that’s just me.) But. Stick this in your back pocket for a time when you’re not. When you need something decadent and creamy, or something to bring to the table that will provide an element of surprise – that triggers that hunting instinct that was so evident when W and his five cousins were set loose to sniff out sugary sweets this morning. It doesn’t have to be Easter to get a thrill out of tapping through the crackly shell of a creme brûlée only to discover a peanut butter cup suspended within its creamy innards. I should write Harlequin novels.
Unwrap a peanut butter cup and set it in the bottom of a ramekin. Do about five. Or four. Or six.
Whisk together egg yolks, sugar and cream. Easiest thing ever. Pour it overtop and bake in a water bath (this is totally not complicated – set the ramekins in a 9×13″ pan and pour water in to come halfway up their sides – this provides a gentle, even heat. Bake them until they’re set but still a tad jiggly in the middle. You’ll get a feel for this-creme brûlée is worth learning how to make.
Chill, then sprinkle with sugar. If you have a torch, use it. A broiler also works, but you risk scrambling your eggs; you could also cook sugar until it caramelizes, then pour it in a thin pool on top to harden. Or leave it off entirely and call it a pot de crème.
Dive in.
Peanut Butter Cup Crème Brulée
2 pkgs peanut butter cups
5 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream or 18% coffee cream
1/2 tsp. good-quality vanilla
sugar, for sprinkling on top
Preheat oven to 325°F. Place a peanut butter cup into each of 4-6 small ramekins. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in the cream and vanilla.
Pour into the ramekins, over the peanut butter cups, and place into a roasting pan or 9×13″ pan; pour water in so that the water comes about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. This will sort of insulate them so that they cook gently and evenly.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the custards are set but still just slightly jiggly in the middle (you’ll get a feel for this!). Take them out, let them cool and then refrigerate for a few hours or overnight, until nice and cold.
Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over each dish and caramelize with a torch. Refrigerate again, or just let them sit on the countertop while you eat dinner or make coffee, just until the sugar is set and crackly.
Serves 4-6.
April 08 2012 | dessert | 7 Comments »
Hello! Again. I may have mentioned, we were out in Tofino, where construction on a new bike path disconnected our internet cable. Which meant a lot of hanging out in coffee shops and restaurants and rainy parking lots, trolling for wireless connections. When we had already eaten dinner and had far too much coffee, it became habit each evening for me to go park out behind the Shelter to do what needed doing – even streamlined, the wireless requirements piled up. Which is all to say that when I did have a connection, it was used to send files or book things or answer emails or resize photos or get stories researched or submitted, and keep up with my posts over at Babble (as I’m contractually obligated to) – and you guys wound up getting the shaft. Sorry.
And I’ve so badly wanted to tell you about this pasta. In other (related) news, I read a book this week. By halfway through I wanted to start again at the beginning. In An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, Tamar Adler had me riveted with the idea of boiling vegetables! Letting them pale! And not just utilizing leftovers, but intentionally creating them! Riveting stuff for those of us who would choose how to poach an egg for our bedtime reading. It’s a must read for anyone who eats, and particularly for those who don’t have someone in their employ to cook for them.
Tamar approaches food from a standpoint not of what recipe do I want to make and do I have the ingredients to assemble said recipe, but what do I have, what’s available or in season, and how do I prepare it so that it tastes good? And further, how do I use those bits that might otherwise be tossed? Because stale bread and cilantro stems are food too. Every page has a snippet or two or three that I want to highlight or post-it or quote or tweet. You should probably just read it yourself – it would be much easier.
This wasn’t dinner tonight (by dinnertime we were still digesting porchetta sandwiches from Meat & Bread), but was a few days ago. Luckily I had a head of kale (brought in the car from Calgary – waste not) and distracting thoughts of what it might be like to cook pasta in seawater. And a chunk of cornbread from SoBo that my totally out-there mind thought would work as breadcrumbs. (They did – but without an oven they had to be toasted in a bit of butter and oil in a skillet on the stovetop. Which was just fine.) It’s often said that enough salt must be added to a pot of water destined to cook pasta to make it taste like seawater. Here I was cooking down seawater to make salt – it seemed a bit ridiculous to add a small handful of it back to the water on my stove. So I poured a jar of seawater through my coffee filter into the cooking pot – and nervously added about as much tap water, considering I was getting almost a quarter cup of salt per litre or so. Still, all the salt you add to pasta water doesn’t actually make it into the pasta, but it does effectively season it. I think this is why restaurant food tends to taste so much better – they just know how to properly season. Most often its not the fancy bouquet garni or exotic herbs and spices, but just enough salt.
So I cooked down the kale with olive oil and garlic, and tossed it with pasta and more oil, some saved starchy pasta water, the grated heel of a chunk of grizzly Gouda (also toted from home), and topped each bowl with cornbread crumbs and a marigold-yolked egg from Nanoose Bay. (Here, a good egg makes all the difference in the world.)
The whole point is to cook, to create and taste and make ingredients into something better and more edible than they were when you brought them home from the market or store. But. Every time I do a post where I say I did this and this and this, and got this! I get comments and emails saying that’s all well and good, but WHERE’S THE RECIPE? You don’t always need one, laid out in cups and teaspoons and point-form directions. I often say that although I write recipes for a living, I think having a recipe often stifles those delicious creative juices and can prevent people from actually cooking. Who follows a recipe every night of the week? It’s not always about having a half teaspoon of oregano or cooking an onion for 5-6 minutes, it’s ideas and techniques that help get a good meal on the table. It’s trying this and that and seeing how it goes for you.
So if you’re confident in your pasta-making abilities – and even (especially) if you’re not – go, do. Here’s a semblance of a recipe if you need one. (No hard feelings.)
Pasta with Poached Eggs and Garlicky Kale for Two
enough pasta – spaghetti, fettuccine or linguine – for two
olive and/or canola oil, for cooking
kale, roughly chopped (pull out the stems first)
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 good eggs
a handful of grated aged Gouda (such as Grizzly Gouda) or Parmesan
toasted breadcrumbs (I used crumbled cornbread) – optional
freshly ground black pepper
In a large pot of heavily salted water, cook the pasta according to the package directions. Remove a cup of its cooking liquid before draining.
Meanwhile, heat a generous drizzle of oil in a large skillet set over medium-high heat. Add the kale and cook for a few minutes, until it begins to wilt. Add the garlic and a splash of water (a couple tablespoonfuls), cover and cook for 2-3 minutes, then remove the lid and cook until the excess liquid has cooked off and the kale is tender.
Push the kale aside in the pan and add another skiff of oil to the empty side. Crack two eggs into it and cook them sunny-side-up or over easy, leaving the yolks runny enough to help dress the pasta when they break.
When the pasta has drained, transfer it to a shallow bowl (or two) and drizzle with oil, and add the grated cheese. Toss with tongs, adding a splash of hot pasta water until the mixture is saucy and well coated. Add the kale and quickly toss it in, then divide between bowls and top with an egg, crispy breadcrumbs and a good grinding of black pepper. Serve immediately.
Serves 2ish.
April 05 2012 | pasta | 17 Comments »
Warning: this is a kitchen project I got a little overexcited about. Kind of like rendering our own lard.
We made sea salt.
I’d never have thought of it, but Ashley walked us through the process recently, and the idea stuck. It turned out to be a perfect indoor project when the sideways rain forced us to come in and dry off. I’m on my fourth batch now; fifth if you count our first one, which we forgot about as it neared its final stages and we turned on a movie. You can go about your business as you make salt, but as you get used to how quickly it cooks down, particularly toward the end, you’ll get a sense of when to stick around.
I’ve become preoccupied with bringing my water jar to the beach and have soaked myself a couple times attempting to get the very best sample from an incoming wave. And it has quickly become the norm these past couple mornings to get up and put on the coffee and the salt. As long as we’re puttering around the house, I have a pan of ocean simmering. To save energy and relax my attention, I’ve been bringing it to a boil, then turning off the heat and letting it steam away with the residual heat of the flat stovetop. When I know I’ll be in the kitchen, I finish it off.
To make sea salt: get yourself some seawater, pour it through a sieve lined with a paper coffee filter (Ashely used a few layers of cheesecloth, but I had coffee filters – and I actually like that it for sure gets rid of any iota of grit) and you’ll very easily have a vessel full of crystal clear water. I barely noticed any residue on the filter, even, but it probably depends on your source.
Bring it to a boil and cook it until the water evaporates and you’re left with salt. Lovely, damp, fine-grained sea salt. It’s really that simple. I used a large stainless skillet instead of a pot: more surface area = faster evaporation.
It will start like any other pot of enthusiastically boiling water. After awhile it will be a little less rollicking; the bubbles more clustered together and smaller. When it gets really low, a stir will produce a flurry of fine bubbles.
Toward the end it will look sludgy and opaque, but still you may not be convinced that there is a good quantity of salt in there. I wasn’t. Until the very end, when it turns into a sort of sandy paste, at which point I give it a stir to break up the clumps and take it off the heat to finish drying out with the residual heat of the pan.
A completely awesome science project-slash-culinary experiment-slash-totally spring break thing to do. Except that now W wants us to make our own pepper.
It took an hour or so to cook down about 1 1/2 L of water, which produced about 1/4 cup of salt. Enough to fill a small bowl and plant on your kitchen counter to pinch from, each time taking great joy in the fact that I was eating pure salt from the ocean outside our window. I’m now making extra to bring back home and send to some of my favourite food/Tofino lovers.
Also? It tastes awesome. So far we’ve sprinkled it on poached eggs, asparagus and popcorn. I’m a little distracted by the idea of poaching an egg in filtered sea water, or cooking pasta. I’ll report back.
March 31 2012 | preserves | 30 Comments »
So here’s the thing. We’re in Tofino, having decided to take off and find some green over spring break. We found it – lots of it – but also found that construction crews somehow severed the wire that was our internet connection, and the oven is broken. First world problems, I know. But that’s how it came to be that I’m sitting in my car in the rain, having trolled the town with my laptop, looking for an internet connection so I could answer some emails, send some files and post this, what with all the wireless access coffee shops being closed in the evenings. I found a lovely strong signal behind The Shelter – thanks guys! – which means I have a perfectly valid excuse for going for breakfast lunch and dinner while we’re here so that I may check my email.
Mike is no doubt wondering what happened to me. Then again not, as he does know me quite well.
As always we arrived with a carload of groceries, and plans to eat out at the many fine eateries here (they really do have a disproportionate number of fantastic restaurants and food trucks for such a small town). But still, I like cooking out here, looking out over the stormy ocean and occasional bald eagle. I found a bag of these roasted butternut squash and ricotta ravioli in the freezer – something I had made last time, and froze, I suppose. If you’re tiring of winter veg and thick-skinned squash, these might ease the burden a bit. Wonton wrappers are essentially small square pasta sheets, and make it easy to make ravioli from scratch. To make enormous tortellini, dampen the two bottom corners and bring them together, as if they were holding hands, and pinch them closed.
Roasted Butternut Squash & Ricotta Ravioli
wonton wrappers, thawed
1 butternut squash
canola or olive oil, for cooking
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup ricotta or soft goat cheese
1 tsp. – 1 Tbsp. maple syrup
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Split the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake on a rimmed sheet or in a baking dish for 40 minutes, or until soft.
Scoop out the cooled roasted squash (you can do this in advance if you like while you’re cooking something else, and stash the squash in the fridge for a few days) and mash it with ricotta, a wee drizzle of maple syrup (and some of flax oil if you want to boost omega 3s) and some salt and pepper. Assemble them one or two at a time, placing a small spoonful in the middle of a wrapper, dipping your finger in water and running it along two edges, then fold over and press to seal, squishing out any air bubbles in the process.
Once the ravioli are assembled they can be frozen in a single layer and then transferred to freezer bags, or dropped into boiling water (don’t crowd the pot) for 3-5 minutes, until they float to the surface and the pasta is tender. Drain well and serve with butter – browned butter, if at all possible.
March 27 2012 | freezable and pasta and vegetarian | 11 Comments »
I used to have a Belgian Grandma named Elza who played a lot of solitaire.
(On the other side of the family – no relation to my (only) Grandad.)
Unfortunately I have no memory of her cooking. I have somewhere a three-page hand-written receipt on foolscap for Carbonnade of Beef, and I know she used to make braised red cabbage, but having lived the last of her years in the southern states and not wanting to fly, I don’t think she ever made it for me. I never got her recipe. Then again, I have no idea if it was any good.
My pal Sue is now the authority on braised red cabbage in my world. She makes it with Okanagan cherries she dries herself every year, but not completely – she leaves some moisture in them, so that they’re a little bit squishy and juicy, like a raisin that has been plumped in booze. Because they aren’t completely dry, they need to be frozen. It was the discovery (most likely by force of gravity) of a small baggie of said cherries in my freezer (and half a ginormous red cabbage in my fridge) that prompted me to make a batch. It’s one of those things – like beef bourguignon – that’s ever so satisfying to simmer in a cast iron pot over the course of an afternoon.
And its bright purpleness and tang somehow brightens up those bleak midwinter veggie blahs.
Braised Red Cabbage & Cherries
adapted from Sheila Lukins’ All Around the World Cookbook
2 Tbsp. butter
1 small red cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup red wine
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup honey
1 cinnamon stick
salt and coarsely ground pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 325F.
Set a large heavy saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat and heat the butter until it melts. When the foaming subsides, add the rest of the ingredients and cook over low heat until warmed through, then put the lid on and pop it into the oven for an hour or two – closer to two. The cabbage will be cooked through, and the liquid thickened a bit. Taste and add a little more honey and/or vinegar as you like to suit your taste (or apple juice if it needs a bit more liquid) and bake a little longer or simmer on the stovetop with the lid off if you want to cook it down a bit.
It’s better after a day or two in the fridge; serve immediately or cool and refrigerate until you’re ready for it. Serves 6-10.
March 24 2012 | veg and vegetarian | 8 Comments »
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