Category: The Book

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

172. Brown Sugar-Ginger Crisps p.665


The recipe

I made these cookies in the middle of a cookie-baking frenzy, I was buying ingredients for about five different types, with a couple of backup shopping lists in case I couldn’t find all the stuff for the first tier cookies. Somehow the crystallized ginger that this recipe called for never made it into the basket. I discovered this once I was home and ready to start baking, and just not at all interested in going out to hunt down crystallized ginger. I’m an industrious guy, I figured I could crystallize my very own ginger. I looked up a few recipes on the web (The Book doesn’t have one) and it didn’t seem too difficult, although the recipes were very inconsistent. Some called for boiling chopped ginger in a sugar syrup for about 20 minutes, some asked you to boil the ginger in syrup for an hour, let it steep in the sryrup for a day, boil it for another hour, and to repeat this process every day for a week. Since I was interested in using this ginger for cookies that very afternoon I went for a middle ground and chopped the ginger very finely, and boiled it in a concentrated syrup for 2 hours. It was no where near as good as the store bought kind, quite ugly, and very hard, but it basically tasted like candied ginger. No one else was much interested in my crystallized gingers, but they were my little treat, I loved them with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.

The ginger did a serviceable job in these cookies. They’re a fairly standard cookie base of butter, brown sugar, egg yolk, and vanilla creamed together, crystalized and ground ginger mixed in, and a mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt gently stirred in. They came out as very thin and crisp cookies, studded with the ginger chunks. “Real” crystallized ginger is soft and pliable, whereas my improvised version was quite tough. On the first day they were baked they had a nice crispy exterior with a chewier interior. The recipe says they keep at room temperature for a week, but I found that they lost their crispness overnight. I really would have preferred the chewiness of the professionally produced product in the cookies. Other than that they were nice, they didn’t blow me away, and I probably wouldn’t have asked for a recipe if they’d been served to me, but they were perfectly good.

A strange thing about these ginger cookies is that they weren’t particularly gingery. Beyond the crystallized ginger there’s only 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger in the recipe. If I made them again I’d up that to 1 teaspoon, many of the Epicurious posters suggest that it improves the cookies dramatically. As written this recipe makes a nice buttery cookie, with a hint of ginger flavour and chewy bites of crystallized ginger. It’s possible that I missed out on what this recipe had to offer with my sub-standard ginger, as they were I liked them well enough, but wouldn’t go out of my way to make them again.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

171. Mexican Tea Cakes p.673


The recipe

While there’s nothing particularly Mexican about these tea cakes, they’re an international favorite for good reason. I’ve always heard these cookies called Russian Tea Cakes, and they mostly seem to be made by older eastern European women at bake sales and Christmas fairs. As children, these were the cookies that we ignored on the big cookie platter, preferring the triple chocolate and jam puddle options. Conveniently the adults in the room weren’t too interested in those ultra sweet and sticky confections, and seemed to prefer the tea cakes. I didn’t get it, the nuts made them taste suspiciously healthy, and they were far too dry. Now nut based cookies are some of my favorites, and I realize what a joy dry cookies are with tea or coffee.

The cookies take a little bit of forethought, but they’re well worth it. You start by making the dough (cream together butter and confectioners sugar, add vanilla, flour, finely chopped pecans, and salt, mix until just combined), and refrigerating it for 6 hours. You then roll the dough into balls, and bake. The hot cookies go directly from the baking sheet to a bowl  of confectioners sugar. The heat of the cookies melts the sugar and ices them for you. Once the cookies have had a chance to cool they go back to the sugar bowl to get a final layer of powdered sugar.

By far the best thing about these cookies is that they keep forever. The recipe says they keep at room temperature for up to three weeks, but I kept mine for more than a month and the last one was almost as good as the first. The pecans are both the prominent flavour and texture of these cookies, and that’s a very good thing. They’re quite dry and a bit crumbly, but their sugar coating keeps them from completely drying out or becoming brittle.

Before making this recipe I’d never realized how cookies like this got so evenly glazed, the hot cookies in sugar method was a real revelation for me. I’m adding these cookies to my repertoire. They’re delicious but not at all showy, can be made well in advance, they work year round, and they  fill out a cookie tray nicely. Having cookies like these in your arsenal is a very smart move.

Categories
Breakfast and Brunch The Book

170. Tomato, Garlic, and Potato Frittata p.632


The recipe
The Book’s blurb before the recipe suggests that this dish is equally good as a breakfast dish, or for dinner. I’m not convinced that it belongs in the breakfast section at all. I wanted to make a fritatta as a simple way of doing eggs for a crowd, but this dish is actually more of a potato pancake bound together with eggs. I’m a great fan of fritattas because they’re so hands off. I use them as a fridge cleanup device. On a Saturday morning we’ll make coffee, and haul all the tags ends of vegetables out of the crisper, chop them up and brown them in a cast iron pan. While they’re frying we go over the weeks leftovers, and see what can bulk up the fritatta, if we find leftover steak we celebrate, leftover chili makes it a Mexican fritata, and potatoes are an especially prized find. I tried adding leftover rice, but it wasn’t too successful. Once anything and everything is in the pan, I pour a few beaten eggs over top, and leave the pan on the burner for about a minute. I then sprinkle some grated cheese over the still liquid eggs, and pop in in the oven under the broiler for about three minutes. Once the cheese is browned and bubbling I take it out. Like a quiche the centre should still be a bit wobbly as it will continue to cook with the residual heat in the pan. The fritatta is a standby improvised dish for us, but the proportion of eggs to other stuff is a constant. I fight with my impulse to use up all the leftovers, because an overloaded frittata is just no good.

This particular frittata starts by making a mixture of eggs and egg whites, Parmigiano-Reggiano, sliced basil, salt, and pepper. You then lightly brown garlic in a skillet, remove it, and soften diced potatoes in the pan. The potatoes come out, and tiny grape tomatoes are browned until their skins split. Then the potatoes and garlic added back in, and the egg mixture is poured overtop. The eggs cook for 3 minutes uncovered, and 5 mintues covered on top of the stove, then gets put under the broiler for 5 minutes more. Parmesan is sprinkled on top, and put back under the broiler to brown for 2 or 3 minutes more. Then in a nerve wracking move you slide the fritata onto a serving place, and slice it into wedges.

For those of you who are counting, the fritata cooked for 15-16 minutes. My standard fritata is nicely set after 5, not surprisingly the eggs in this dish were overdone and dry.  I misread the instructions, and sprinked the cheese on top before it went under the broiler for the first time, so the parmesan was overdone by the time I took it out, but that’s my fault. My main complaint was the proportions though, by weight there was as much potato and tomato as egg in this recipe, and I was really looking forward to a much eggier dish.

I think the basic concept of this frittata is solid, but I wasn’t thrilled with the excecution. The potato-garlic-tomato-basil flavour combination is a good one. My ideal version of this dish would use more eggs, cook them less, mix up the cheeses (think goat), add fresh basil on top, and cut the potatoes into larger chunks so that they could be browned before going into the fritatta. To me the frittata is a casual and convenient dish, and this version was a bit too overwrought for my tastes, the ingredients in the pan, ingredients out of the pan dance was more effort than I’m willing to put into what should be a very straightforward breakfast. My standby whatever-you-have-on-hand fritatta is much simpler, and ends up tasting better than this one does, so I’ll give it a miss next Saturday morning.

Categories
Breakfast and Brunch The Book

169. Sweet and Spicy Bacon p.656


The recipe

The food blog world has been swamped with recipes for caramelized bacon with a kick, so I decided that now would be a good time to see what all the fuss was about. After trying this recipe I’ve decided it’s just a gimmick, and not a worthy treatment of bacon. I get the concept, and can see the appeal, a dish that’s simultaneously sweet, smoky, salty, and spicy could be the holy grail of addictive breakfast treats. Alas, that’s not how this dish turned out.

The method is simple, but just because it’s easy to do a thing, doesn’t mean you should. You cook thick-cut bacon on a broiling rack in a 350 oven for 20 minutes, flip it over, and spread on a mixture of brown sugar, cayenne, and black pepper, then continue baking for another 15-20 minutes.

In re-reading this recipe I realize I missed the whole thick-cut bacon instruction, and used the normal stuff. That meant that my cooking time was significantly shorter, and I had proportionally more of the sugar-spice mixture than the recipe intended. Consequently my bacon was sweeter and spicier than it should have been. I think I’ve decided that any amount of sugar and spice on my bacon is too much. The flavour wasn’t bad precisely, it still tasted like bacon, but my palate had to filter out distracting brown sugar and cayenne flavours to get to it. Most of my guests thought it was sort of OK, but one just hated it, I think he found this dish personally offensive.

If there’s one thing the internet doesn’t need it’s another ode to bacon, but it’s pretty well understood that bacon is near perfect all on its own. You can use it to make other dishes better, but trying to improve the bacon itself is a fool’s errand.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

168. Cheddar Scallion Drop Biscuits p.597

The recipe

The Boys were over for breakfast, and I decided to make them biscuits. One of them has been living down in the Carolinas for the last few years, and has become something of a biscuit connoisseur, so I didn’t dare try a traditional buttermilk biscuit. These are far simpler, and less error prone. It’s a basic biscuit dough (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, butter, buttermilk) with a bit of sugar, cheddar cheese and scallions mixed in. These aren’t kneaded or shaped which when done wrong can toughen the biscuits, they’re not cut out so there’s no risk of collapsing the flaky layers, and there aren’t twenty generations of ancestors looking over your shoulder to make sure you do it exactly right. You just blend butter into the dry ingredients, stir in the cheese and scallions, and barely mix in the buttermilk (gluten is still your enemy). The biscuits get unceremoniously dropped onto a baking sheet, and stuck in the oven.

As Epicurious posters have noted, the cooking time is off, at 450 these will be burned after the recommended 18-20 minutes, I started smelling a hint of char from the bottoms after 14-15 mintues. so don’t get too far from the oven, and use your nose.

They tasted a lot like the biscuits at Red Lobster. I don’t think I’ve been to a Red Lobster since 1998, but the taste of their biscuits is stuck in my food memory. They’re less over the top greasy (which unfortunately means not quite as good), in fact they’re a little dry. A bunch of the Epicurious posters recommended adding more buttermilk, and I think I’d go with that suggestion next time. The cheese flavour is prominent in these biscuits, I used some middle of the road aged cheddar, but I’d definitely choose the oldest sharpest stuff I could get my hands on next time, the cheese is the make or break ingredient, so choose it wisely. I really liked the addition of scallions, the onion flavour wasn’t overwhelming, or un-breakfasty, just delicious. The exteriors of these biscuits were glossy and crispy, and while the insides were a bit dry once they’d cooled, they were lovely and tender when warm. The solution is obviously never to let these cool down.

These biscuits were a success, they’re fairly idiot proof, so I can handle making them before the espresso machine has heated up. The ingredients are mostly things you’ll have on hand (or maybe normal people don’t absolutely always have scallions in the fridge, but that’s just semantics), they taste good, and look pretty. While the recipe has a few problems, with a couple modification I think they could be a breakfast standby.

Categories
Puddings, Custards, Mousses, and Souffles The Book

167. Crème Citron, Chilled Lemon-Wine Mousse with Raspberries p.840

There doesn’t seem to be a recipe online for this one.

My dining companion has gone on a major citrus based dessert kick. If we’re flipping through the book talking about a menu, she’ll inevitably pick a lemon flavoured confection. The only things that can top lemons and limes in her books are rosewater and lavender based sweets. That’s fine by me, I certainly like lemony desserts as well, but I fear The Book will run out of them and it’ll be nothing but raisin puddings until 2016.

This was a really nice, and simple custard, lightened with whipped cream. It starts with eggs beaten with sugar, then dry white wine and lemon juice are added, and the custard is slowly thickened. once it coats a spoon it comes off the heat, gets an addition of lemon zest, and is allowed to chill in the fridge. Meanwhile you beat cream, and fold it into the chilled custard. The custard is layered with berries in a wine glass, and allowed to chill for an hour before serving.

I was really happy with the way this dish turned out. I don’t have a heck of a lot of experience with making custards, and I think I overheated mine a bit. I had trouble taking an accurate temperature, and a burned my finger trying to decide if it was nappe yet, but otherwise things went smoothly. The wine was the killer addition to this crème, it had its sweet, rich, and creamy, bases covered but the wine gave it some complexity and body. You can really taste the wine here, so I’d pick something decent, and very dry. The custard ended up being a touch too sweet for my taste, but overall it was very good. Berries for dessert are always such a treat, and they’re even better when the come with an elegant custard. Whipped desserts like this are a great way to end a heavy meal, or to serve on a hot summer night. It tastes rich and satisfying, but it’s not actually that filling.

The recipe made five portions, and we each had one the night we made them. Although we both liked them, neither of us when back for the leftovers, and we eventually threw them away. Sometimes that will happen to me with very intense desserts, that are wonderful, but after a few bites I’m just done for the next couple of months. In this case, the dessert was light and airy, so I’m not sure why I didn’t want it more. Although, I suspect that if I’d served this on a sticky night in July with burstingly ripe berries it would have been a lot more craveable.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

166. Skillet Corn Bread p.600

The recipe in The Book is identical to this one on Epicurious, but The Book adds a tablespoon of sugar to the corn bread.

The desire to make corn bread comes in waves for me. Six months will go by, and I won’t even think of it, then I’ll get the urge, and make it three times in a week. I like to play with my recipes, and improvise. The first batch of the week is usually pretty straightforward, in a baking pan, hardly sweet, good with gravy. Then I get stupid and try putting things that shouldn’t go into corn bread into my recipe. I’ve never once liked the cheese or sausage corn bread I’ve made, and I don’t particularly like corn bread muffins, I should just learn my lesson. I make the third batch to redeem myself. By this point I’ve remembered how much I like leftover corn bread for breakfast, and that I really like it warmed for a few seconds in the microwave, with a bit of butter, and a drizzle of maple syrup. I substitute maple syrup for the sugar in the recipe, and add a bit of extra butter directly to the batter for the week’s final batch, and I am usually well pleased. By the time we’ve finished that pan, I’m so ODed on corn bread that I can’t look at it for another few months.

This recipe takes the unusual step of omitting the flour that’s in most corn bread recipes, it’s all cornmeal. That makes the bread more coarse and granular, and less cake-like. The nice thing about corn bread is that it’s fairly idiot-proof. You just whisk together the dry ingredients, gently stir in the wet ingredients until it’s barely combined, and bake. This bread is baked in a preheated cast iron pan, and the butter that goes into the bread is melted in the pan first, this leaves you with a browned butter coating in the pan, which tastes nice, and helps keep the bread from sticking. The recipe uses the muffin method, of barely combining the wet and dry ingredients, which is usually done to prevent gluten from forming, and making a baked good tough. In this case there’s no flour, so I can’t see why you shouldn’t beat the tar out of it.

This was perfectly fine corn bread, I liked the cast iron skillet method which created a very nice deeply browned crust. This was a dryer style of corn bread than I prefer, and even with the tablespoon of sugar, I would have liked a bit more sweetness. I found it a bit crumbly, and missed the soft texture of a flour based corn bread. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it’s probably somebody’s favourite style. As a recipe I think it worked quite well, I just wasn’t totally on board with what it was trying to do.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

165. Chocolate Macaroons p.676

I can’t find the recipe for these online, but they’re so good I’ll retype it for you lovely people.

FOR MACAROONS

1 1/3 cups (7 ounces) skinned whole almonds

3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

7/8 cup egg whites (from 6 large eggs)

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

FOR GANACHE FILLING

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 teaspoons whole milk

2 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

4 ounces good bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: Parchment paper; a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4-inch plain tip

MAKE THE MACAROONS: Put a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 400F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Pulse almonds with 2 cups confectioners’ sugar in a food processor until finely ground (almost to a powder). Add cocoa and remaining 1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar and pulse until combined.

Beat egg whites with salt in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until they hold soft peaks. Add granulated sugar and beat until whites just hold stiff peaks. Gently but thoroughly fold in almond mixture in 3 batches (batter will be very soft).

Transfer batter to a pastry bag and pipe 1-inch-wide mounds about 2 inches apart on lined baking sheets. Bake macaroons in batches until tops are slightly cracked and appear dry but are still slightly soft to the touch, 8 to 10 minutes per batch. Transfer macaroons, still on parchment, to dampened kitchen towels and cool for 5 minutes, then peel from paper and cool completely on racks.

MEANWHILE, MAKE THE GANACHE FILLING: Bring cream and milk to a boil in a small heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Whisk in cocoa and remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate and butter and stir until smooth. Cool filling, then refrigerate, covered, until firm enough to hold its shape when spread, about 30 minutes.

Sandwich flat sides of macaroons together with 1/2 teaspoon filling per pair.

COOK’S NOTES

  • While 7/8 cup egg whites may seem and odd measure, this amount gives the ideal texture and flavour. Measure the whites in a liquid-measuring cup.
  • The macaroons can be made up to 1 day before you fill them. Refrigerate, layered between sheets of wax or parchment paper, in an airtight container.
  • The filled macaroons keep, layered between sheets of way or parchment paper in an airtight container and refrigerated, for up to 1 week.

I don’t have enough good things to say about this recipe. The cookies were delicious and elegant. The recipe makes a lot of cookies, so I brought them to several gatherings, always to rave reviews. The chocolate filling is wonderful, and everyone loves ganache, but the cookie itself was my favourite part. I really like flourless cookies like this, the almonds provide substance, but the structure is all from the meringue. The outer surface of the cookie was smooth and crisp, the interior was like almond sponge candy, soft, but with just a little bit of toothsomeness. Despite all the sugar, they miraculously avoided being too sweet.

My only bone to pick with this recipe, is the use of the word macaroon in the title. A double O macaroon is an American coconut cookie, a single O macaron is a French almond cookie, get it straight Gourmet. These were truly excellent cookies, they were a bit time consuming and finicky, but I enjoyed the process. The recipe was well written and didn’t lead to any major surprises. My only caveat is to make sure to grind the almonds very finely, otherwise they’ll clog up the tip of the pastry bag when you’re piping the cookies.

A while ago my brother brought me some Macarons from a very posh bakery in Paris, and while theirs were certainly prettier, I preferred the flavour of my homemade version. These macarons are my new favourite cookie, and I expect them to be on frequent rotation in our house.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

164. Beef Bourguignon p.440

The recipe

I grew up on boeuf bourguignon, we could be guaranteed to have it at least once a month during the winter. Since a braised dish like this is better a day or two after it’s cooked, my mom would usually make it on a Sunday, and it would sit on the chilly garage floor in her big orange Le Creuset Dutch oven until dinnertime on Tuesday. I remember being very small, and being tasked with bringing the stew upstairs, I swear that cast iron pot weighed more than I did, and it was so cold it burned. Since a bottle of wine goes into a boeuf bourguignon, and even after a long braise not all of the alcohol cooks off, I’m wondering if this dish didn’t contribute to some of excellent sleeping we got done as kids.

The recipe starts with some home butchery, getting beef shoulder off the bone, and cubed. The cubes are then seasoned, coated in flour, and thoroughly browned. The meat then braises for an afternoon with sweated onions, garlic, and carrots, tomatoes, red wine, and a bouquet garni. While that’s going on you get to blanch and peel boiling onions. I hate peeling boiling onions, but I did it anyway. The onions then get browned with some butter, and simmered until tender. You then sauté some mushrooms in butter, and add the mushrooms and onions to the braise, and let it simmer for a few minutes. Once everything’s done cooking you can eat it right away, or better yet stick in in the back of the fridge and forget about it for a couple of days. The Book recommends serving this dish with buttered potatoes, but I’ve always been a fan of egg noodles with boeuf bourguignon, so that’s what we had.

There’s an error in this recipe. The first ingredient listed is a quarter pound of bacon, and the fist cooking direction is to simmer the bacon in water for a few minutes. That bacon is never mentioned again. The linked Epicurious recipe has the error fixed, you’re supposed to crisp up the bacon in the pot before starting the braise, but it’s mystery bacon if you follow The Books version. I guessed that it was meant to go into the braise, and that worked out well, but I hope they’ve caught this mistake in the updated version of The Book.

I was entirely satisfied with this dish, it tastes just like what mom used to make, it’s hearty, rich, stick to your ribs, winter cooking. The flavours were right on, this is not a difficult dish to get close to right, but making it really well is a challenge. This is a really solid boeuf bourguignon recipe, my only complaint is that it was a bit too salty. I’ll certainly be making this one again next winter.

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

163. Grilled Tuna with Warm White Bean Salad p.299

The recipe in the book is similar to this one on Epicurious, except that the book calls for larger (6 oz) tuna steaks.

This dish was a triumph. As I’ve mentioned before my dining companion isn’t a fan of fish, and the book has 95 Fish and Shellfish recipes for us to get through. While she’s open to trying new things, and always tells me she’ll try whatever I make, I want to make her happy, so I’ve been staying away from fish when she’s around for supper. I decided that barely seared tuna would probably be an easy way for her to dip a toe into fishy waters without being overwhelmed. We’ll work our way up to mackerel and cod, but this was a successful baby step.

The dish has two components, grilled tuna steaks seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil, crushed fennel seeds, salt, and pepper, and a bean salad. The salad is made with soaked great northern beans, which are simmered with garlic for an hour. Some of the beans are mashed and combined with the beans’ cooking liquid to hold the salad together, fresh garlic is added in, along with chopped arugula, onion, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. The tuna is served on top of the beans, and some of the remaining arugula.

I was really happy with this dish, it was simple, clean, and very tasty. Mostly I was happy that my dining companion was happy though. Our grill heats quite unevenly, so some parts of the tuna steaks were more done than I would have liked. My dining companion liked the barely cooked parts of the tuna, but found the overdone bits too fishy for her taste. I thought the fennel worked exceptionally well with the tuna, and I’d absolutely grill steaks like this again. I’d probably try to sear the steaks over an extremely hot flame for just a couple of minutes though, if you’re using high quality tuna, and paying high quality tuna prices, getting a seared exterior, and a barely warm interior is important. The bean salad wasn’t as successful, but not bad at all. The beans needed more garlic, and more salt or lemon juice, they were a little on the bland side. The texture was nice, with just barely firm beans, in a thick sauce. The decision to put chopped arugula into a warm dish is mystifying though. Arugula’s claim to fame is it’s peppery crisp flavour, and that completely disappears the second you heat it. A few of the Epicurious comments suggest that the dish would be better with spinach, and I’m inclined to agree.

I thought this was a really nice dish, it came together easily, tasted good, and managed to do it without dousing everything in cream and butter. It’s the kind of dish that begs to be eaten outside on a beautiful spring day with people you really like. I’ll always remember this dish as the first time my dining companion ate and enjoyed fish for dinner.