A few years into my experience of teaching cooking classes, I looked at every opportunity to partner with other small businesses to bring a new concept to our collective publics.  Working at the Farmers’ Market in St. Matthews, my next booth neighbor was Justin Gilbert of the locally famous Gelato Gilberto.  We talked about his experiences in Italy and before you know it, we’d agreed to partner in offering a few Italian Cooking Classes in his home.

Justin’s home just wasn’t any home, but a three story, cozy condo in Norton Commons.  Above his Gelato Gilberto business, his family enjoyed their perch above the little village in Prospect.  We tried a few classes in his shop and a few in his and his family’s cucina at the top of the stairs.

It was up those winding stairs that the magic of food and friendship took place.  We began the evening with some antipasti, the details, I don’t remember.  What sticks in my mind and what I thought quietly about that day last week in Blue Dog Bakery and Cafe was the Panzanella Salad, the Pasta d Fagioli and the Gelato.

Patricia Wells, one of my favorite cookbook authors says: ‘there are about as many versions of pasta and bean soup as there are cooks…varies from a broth-like bean soup to a creamy bean puree…’  The one I had at Blue Dog, and the one that I make (although different) are of the brothy variety.  Tonight, we are sharing my version, along with a homemade loaf of bread and, I am sure a few glasses of vino.

Pasta e Fagioli

• 2-3 oz. of finely diced Pancetta
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 2-3 ribs celery, diced
• 1/2 cup or more diced carrot
• 2 Tbls olive oil
• salt and pepper
• pinch crushed red pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 cup, or more diced tomatoes
• 1 cup uncooked pasta, or two cups cooked pasta
• 3 cups cannelini beans, undrained – if canned*

Begin by preparing the diced vegetables.  Drizzle the olive oil into a stock pot.  Add the onion and Pancetta and begin to saute.  Once the onion has softened, add the celery and carrot and cook until the onion is translucent and the celery and carrot have begun to soften up a bit.  Season with salt and pepper and add the pinch of crushed red pepper and bay leaf.  Add the stock and tomatoes.  Bring to a simmer.  Add the pasta and cook until al dente.  add the cooked beans.

Heat the soup until completely hot and the pasta the perfect consistency.

For, me, I love a sprinkling of fresh Parmigiano cheese, fresh grated black pepper and some basil chiffonade.

*It’s easy to cook beans from their dried state, but they do take a bit of a watchful eye and time.  See my blog post about cooking beans, January 12, 2009.

Enjoy!

December is way too busy a month for me to bake all the cookies that I desire. Many times, I do bake dozens! In some memorable years, I’ve been know to bake hundreds of dozens. The problem is, of course, that I don’t have time to eat them. They are usually given away or devoured by others anyway. January is my time to bake and eat cookies.

This January, I have a new favorite cookie to share. It’s been on my mind since I found the recipe in a special publication called Food Gifts. Sorry to tell you that you probably won’t be able to find the magazine any longer on the book shelves. It’s display date ended on December 10th. But, I am sharing the delicious recipe (well, my rendition) with you, and will keep you alerted to other inspirations of the print variety.

The name of the recipe ‘Toffee-Pecan Chippers in a Jar’ drew me in right away. The picture of the layered cookie mix was cutely staged. I built the jarred cookie mix in a class in early December, but didn’t actually mix the cookies up until Christmas Eve, when my schedule for dessert baking was evaporating and I was getting desperate. Since Christmas Eve, I’ve baked these cookies three times. They are that good.

You might be able to imagine that I didn’t make the recipe exactly as prescribed. The changes I made relate to my desire to put coconut oil in lots of different baked goods (see my post on My Morning Muffin). Coconut oil gives wonderful texture to muffins, cookies and even cakes. I generally substitue about 1/2 of the butter or oil in a recipe for coconut oil. I no longer use Crisco shortning in pie crusts, substituting half butter and half coconut oil. The results are delectable.

Toffee-Pecan Chippers

2 Tbls butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup Heath Bar crumbles
1/3 cup coconut
1/3 cup chopped nuts or sunflower seeds

Directions:

Cream together the fats and sugars.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.  Add the remaining ingredients and stir in with a wooden spoon.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Scoop the cookies into mounds onto a parchment lined baking sheet.  Use your fingers to press the mounds into flattened discs. (This helps the cookies bake more uniformly.)

Bake for 5 minutes, then spin the cookie sheets around (left to right).  Bake for another 3-5 minutes.  Baking time relates to the individual oven, so be prepared to watch the cookies closely.  You’ll see the cookies puff and dry slightly on top and become golden brown on the edges next to the pan.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool completely on the pan.  This gives the cookie a chance to continue to crisp up on the outside, yet stay chewy on the inside.  That, my friend, is a description of the perfect cookie!

If you’re baking all the cookies at once, you’ll most likely need two baking sheets.  I like to give my cookies aboout 2″ between each one so that they bake evenly and crisp up nicely.

Enjoy!

Taking a bite of the muffin while waiting on the coffee was my only mistake today (so far).  The muffin was gone before the water got hot.  The coffee was good on its own too.  Now fully awake, I began opening windows and doors.  Beautiful day.  Birds are tweeting, chipmunks are chipping, the sunshine and breeze in perfect harmony.  All because of a perfect muffin.  Life is so in balance.  These muffins will make your day too.

I began a new experiment a few months ago with the purchase of a bag of Trader Joe’s White Whole Wheat Flour.  I am a baking snob.  I will always be a baking snob.  I have intermittently played with whole wheat flour in cookies and used a partial measure of it in muffins and quick breads over time. I never would have thought that a Whole Wheat flour could replace my standard, unbleached, all purpose flour.  This flour pretty much does just that.  I’ve been using it (WWW) in cookies, muffins, breads and even pizza crust.  Convinced, that’s me.

Don’t get me wrong, WWW won’t be in my angel food cake recipe, nor will I use it next week when I bake my husband’s German Chocolate Birthday cake.  But, day to day, we’ve made a commitment to use whole grains, so that’s what I do.

The other surprise ingredients in my muffin recipe are pumpkin, coconut oil, flax seed meal, golden flax seeds and natural sugar.  You’ll find most of these ingredients at either Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. 

Don’t you just hate it when someone tells you to go shopping before you can even begin to prepare a recipe? These are great ingredients that you can use over and over, and have a long shelf life.  Maybe you’ll love these muffins enough to bake them multiple times.  Spread the love to your neighbors and friends.

Whole Grain Pumpkin – Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes about 30 standard size muffins

Whisk together:

• 3 3/4 cups WWW (White Whole Wheat Flour)
• 3/4 cup whole oats
• 1/2 cup flax seed meal
• 2 Tablespoons + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• finely grated zest from 2 oranges (thoroughly wash before grating)

Cream with an electric mixer:

• 2 cups natural sugar (substitute granulated sugar, if you like)
• 6 oz coconut oil* (sub canola or olive oil)
• 1 stick (4oz) unsalted butter

Add to creamed mixture:

• 6 whole eggs
• Juice from the 2 oranges
• 1 15 oz can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

Once the eggs, juice and pumpkin are thoroughly mixed in, use a wooden spoon or spatula to gently mix in the combined dry ingredients. Add:

• 2 cups chocolate chips

Set the oven at 350 degrees.  Use paper liners for 30 muffins.  Scoop the batter into the cups.

Make a crumb topping by mixing:

• 1/2 cup WWW flour
• 1/3 cup natural sugar
• 2 Tbls flax seeds
• 1 Tbls melted butter or oil

Sprinkle the crumb topping over the muffin batter, then bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until the center springs back when lightly touched.

*Coconut oil – while the central point of this post is to highlight the versatility of the WWW, coconut oil has become an indispensable item in my pantry.  It has successfully replaced solid shortening in my pie crust, and is the only oil that I will pop corn with.  Thanks to Pam Jones, CHHC, for indoctrinating me into the coconut oil hall of praise. 

Enjoy!

Every week since the first of the year, I am finding new inspiration to ‘eat my veggies’.  Most recently, a youtube video by a doctor whose MS was reversed by completely changing her food plan.  The key, Dr. Terry Wahls says is to eat three huge platefuls of leafy greens per day.  Kale is touted as being the most nutritious green helping us to make these cellular changes.  Take a few minutes and watch this video – you won’t regret it.

Back to Breakfast.  My first inkling that eating something green for breakfast was during my days at Breadworks.  We made wonderful salads with a great mix of field greens, brightly colored peppers, onions and seeds.  Topped with a conservative amount of cheddar cheese and drizzled with a bit of balsamic vinaigrette, it was tasty.  Crunchy, sweet, savory, acidic and satisfying.  But, I have to admit that I was pretty surprised that one of my regular customers was eating it for breakfast!  Once she explained, I thought: “why not?”

Years have past, but I still try to take a routine stab at adding veggies to breakfast.  Sure, it’s easy to add left over vegetables to an omelet, but more recently, I’ve gone a different route. With a selection of veggies and greens almost always in the fridge, I’ve decided to broaden the experiment.  I was never one to really ‘love’ breakfast food, unless of course, if I can ‘love’ my chocolate chip cookies with my morning coffee.  So why not cook foods that we think of as lunch and dinner foods for breakfast?

I’ll not give up on the breakfast salad that I introduced at Breadworks, but lots of times, I want a warm, filling plate in the morning.  So, here are a few of my new favorite things:

Steamed Kale with leftover potatoes, sauteed with a bit of olive oil and red onion

Roasted peppers, tomatoes and eggplant over a steaming mound of polenta

Stir fried rice with egg and minced peppers, mushrooms, green onion and jalapeno

Arugula, with a simple dressing made from red wine vinegar and olive oil, with pistachios thrown on for protein.  Adding a piece of whole grain toast with a bit of shaved Parmesan will let you think you might just be in Tuscany for Breakfast.

Visit a previous post of mine: ‘Stir Fried Rice Makes Good Use of Leftovers’ for the details of making the fried rice. For Breakfast, I usually streamline the process by just doing the egg, some veggies and a little sesame oil.

Enjoy!

All I know is that this is one of my absolute favorite recipes.  It’s wholesome, spicy and very satisfying.  Like most homespun recipes, if you ask 10 cooks how to make it, each version you received would be a bit different.  Experiment with your own pantry items and your personal tastes to perfect your version!

Please search this blog for the Marinara recipe, or use your favorite sauce.

Pasta Puttenesca

Serves 4

• 1 1/2 cups marinara sauce
• olive oil
• 1/4 cup olive tapenade or chopped black and green olives
• 1 Tbls anchovy paste
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 or more cloves of fresh garlic, smashed and minced
• 4 cups cooked whole wheat pasta
• 1/2 cup reserved cooking liquid from pasta
• freshly ground black pepper
• fresh basil for garnish

In a wide saute pan, heat the olive gently, then add the anchovy paste, olives, red pepper flake and garlic.  Stir and watch closely so as not to burn the mixture.  When sizzling, add the marinara sauce, and heat to a simmer.  Allow flavors to marry for about 3-4 minutes.  Toss in the cooked pasta and enough of the reserved liquid to just loosen up the sauce and pasta.  The pasta should be evenly coated, but not swimming in the sauce.  Taste for addition of salt, pepper or more red pepper flakes.  Garnish with lots of fresh basil.

Enjoy!

While Tony was heating up the grill for a pizza experiment, I sliced the veggies and pulled the salad together. I pulled the first fennel bulb from my garden.  It was still relatively small compared to those found in the grocery stores, but just the right size for feeding salad to four.  Earlier this spring, I found a pot of Florence Fennel at a garden center grown for the herb garden.  There must have been 50 baby plants in that one pot!  I took the pot home, separated the plants and filled two 4 ft. beds with fennel plants.  After cutting the stems and fronds away from the bulb, I plunked them into a flower arrangement with purple stock.  Don’t you love it when all the parts of something grown in your own backyard get to be used?

This time of year, salads can take on a much different look and taste than those of early spring.  I’ve often thought how unfair it was to have tomatoes and lettuces ripen at such different times of year.  I’m still pulling some arugula out of my garden, and dreaming of August 15th to be able to plant lettuces again.

Great tomatoes are just around the corner, but probably not from my back yard.  The squirrels and chipmunks seem to take a bite out of each ‘almost ready’ tomato we have.  I am ever optimistic though and continue to plant them each year.  So, I’ll continue to frequent the farmers’ markets for the perfect tomato.

Summer Fresh Salad

• 4 cups fresh baby arugula
• 1/2 cup or more very thinly sliced red bell pepper
• 1 small fennel bulb (about 2″ wide) very thinly sliced
•  1/4 cup or less thinly sliced red onion
• kernels removed from 1 ear of fresh, raw corn
• 1 avocado, cubed
• toasted walnuts or pine nuts
• 3 Tbls olive oil
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard

Place the arugula and the remaining vegetables in a large bowl, keeping the avocado and walnuts separate for now.

In another smaller bowl, whisk the oil, mustard and honey together. Pour over the veggies and toss.  Add the avocado and nuts and toss again.  Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

I saw a simple batter recipe about a million years ago in a magazine or newspaper, had the urge to try it, and the rest is history.  Imagine the light and crispy canned French’s onion rings you put on top of a green bean casserole.  Now, imagine them hot, fresh and just sprinkled with salt.  Imagine piles of them.  Put them on your burger, dip them in ketchup, just eat them!  Fast, before everyone else catches on.

Mark's Favorite Onion Rings

There is no doubt that the batch made for Mark’s party the other night turned out really well because of my portable deep fryer.  Turning these rings in a saute pan takes a bit too much attention.  If you don’t have a little fryer, just use a fairly deep, but narrow sauce pan and place about 3″ of canola or vegetable oil in the pan.  The optimal temperature for deep frying is between 350 and 360 degrees.  Less than 350 and the food will absorb too much fat and taste greasy.  Hotter than 360, the exterior will cook too quickly, leaving the interior undercooked.  This may sound too precise for some, but using a candy/deep fry thermometer makes the process simple.  A sample onion ring tossed into the hot oil should also give you the clue as to whether the oil is hot enough to begin.  The food should start bubbling the second it’s dropped into the oil.

Add enough of the food (other vegetables coated in this batter fry up nicely too), to make your batches efficient, but keep in mind the temperature of the oil will drop with each addition, causing the cooking process to slow down.  Give the rings room to swim.

Another tip is to salt them as soon as they come out of the oil, but not before.  Salt is one of a few things that will cause the oil to break down.  You might want to experiment with some salt and pepper combinations to jazz your rings up even more.  Maybe a bit of cayenne or chipotle, smoked paprika, or even a bit of cinnamon and sugar.  Ooh, deep fried sweet potato fries with chipotle, cinnamon and sugar… a story for another day.

One last thing before we start; plan ahead.  The batter is easy, but it takes a while to rest before it’s ready.

Mark’s Favorite Onion Rings

• 1 cup beer
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 sweet onions, such as vidalia or mayan sweets
• canola or vegetable oil
• salt and pepper

Pour the beer over the flour in a small bowl; stir with a whisk until smooth.  Allow the batter to rest for 4 hours.  This gives the gluten in the flour time to develop.  Slice the onion into rings about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick  and place in large, open bowl.  Pour the rested batter over the onion rings, gently mixing to coat.  The rings can stay in the batter for a while before you cook them.

Heat the oil to 350-360 degrees.  Drop a sample ring in the oil and cook until golden brown.  Remove to a platter that is lined with paper towels or brown grocery bags.  Salt and/or season as soon as the rings are removed from the oil so that the salt will adhere.  Cool slightly before eating.

If you are working in small batches, line a baking sheet with additional paper towels and keep in a 200 degree oven while the remaining rings are frying.

Caution: if you and your guests beginning nibbling before the bulk of the rings are fried, you won’t have enough rings to add to the dinner table.

Enjoy!

Word travels fast when a basket of Bacon Squares hits the door.  Selfish people might think to keep the news to themselves, but everyone starts raving… and eating these snacks.  Before you know it, they’re gone.  It’s best, I guess that I didn’t even get ONE last time, because one is really never enough.  Sort of like the reason I don’t keep potato chips in the house, once you get started, it’s too hard to stop.

Try these with some bubbly at an appetizer party.  The salty, crunchy combo is perfect with cava, prosecco or champagne.  You will too form a love-hate relationship with this recipe.  A guilty pleasure for sure.

Jackie’s Bacon Squares

• Keebler Club Crackers
• 1 pound sliced bacon (not thick sliced)
• parmesan cheese

Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  Cut the sliced bacon into quarters (each slice will now be 4 small slices).  Line the baking sheet with crackers and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Place one of the 1/4 slices of bacon on each cracker and again sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  One pound of bacon will make 60-68 crackers.

Bake for approximately 2 hours.  The bacon and the crackers will be crispy.  Mom says “enjoy the compliments”.

Happy New Year!

I immediately begin to relax, knowing that my accomplished sous chef is in charge of the cookies. (So relaxed, in fact, I begin singing the Shortbread song…) It’s not that I had a specific recipe in mind for the shortbread cookies, but surely I could lay my hands on one in my  wide array of cookbooks.  I tried three books before I found something that I thought would work.  King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion was my guide as I thumbed through multiple recipes to land on one that we could adapt for this evening.

So, the dessert selection wasn’t too shabby.  Not exactly what I had in mind when I designed the menu of two cakes, three cookies, candies, etc.  But Oatmeal cookie wedges, Chocolate Cake with Orange Butter cream and Chocolate Ganache, Truffles, and these Shortbread Cookies seem to be enough to satisfy everyone.

I rarely get a chance to bake enough cookies during the holidays and January is usually when I try to make up for that.  Since Christmas, we have already managed to bake up a batch of Martha Stewart’s Outrageous Chocolate Cookies, but I still  need some Thumbprints with blackberry jam and Coconut Macaroons.    These shortbreads will be a repeat performer, and I hope you’ll like them too.

What makes a shortbread cookie ‘shortbread’?  Well, it’s the fat content.  High fat content, such as in biscuits, pie crust and shortbread cookies, ‘shortens’ the gluten strands and prevents the item from getting tough or chewy.

What makes a shortbread cookie an easy, last minute choice for a baker in a rush?  Simple, always on hand ingredients – nothing fancy or peculiar.  If you don’t have the coarse ground sugar on hand, just use granulated sugar, colored sanding sugar, or skip this step.  The cookies are improved by the extra crunch of the coarse sugar, but it’s really not a necessity.  These cookies would be great to cut into ‘fingers’ and use as dippers into chocolate fondue – decadent!

Christmas Eve Shortbread Cookies

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 generous teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/3 cups (10 ounces)unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 Tbls (or more) coarse Bourbon Vanilla Sugar (Demerara Sugar or Sugar in the Raw are  good substitutes)

Heat oven to 300 degrees.  In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter, granulated sugar and vanilla.  While the butter and sugar are mixing, whisk the flour and salt together in a separate bowl.  Once the sugar and butter are fluffy, mix in the flour and salt until thoroughly combined.

Press the mixture into an 8″ square baking pan or a 9″ round cake pan.  Since the air that has been whipped into the cookie dough will provide space for steam to help ‘rise’ these cookies, handle the dough minimally and gently press into the pan.   Sprinkle generously with the coarse sugar, and press the sugar down lightly, helping it adhere to the dough.  Bake for 30-45 minutes, the center will be puffed and the edges golden brown.  Remove from oven and allow to rest for about 5 minutes.

Using a bench knife or other flat blade, cut the shortbreads into squares or wedges and allow to cool completely in the pan.

Enjoy!

Blogging about orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit peels seemed like a great thing to do, so here I am.  Citrus is available to us all year long, like most fruits and vegetables.  But, citrus is ‘in season’ during winter months. There is a reason that oranges and tangerines show up in Christmas stockings.  Watch the Susan Sarandan , Claire Danes, Winona Ryder version of Little Women – it’s my fav – and look for the oranges.

Remember that zest is the colored part of the citrus fruit peel only – don’t include the white ‘pith’ underneath the zest, it will be bitter.  So, as you are peeling or grating, don’t push too deeply.

OK, I am going to give you a list of one million things to do with citrus zest, most of them really simple.  As a finale, I’ll outline a detailed process of making candied orange peel that you can use in lots of recipes throughout the coming year.

To start, here is a list of my favorite tools for working with the peels and zest of citrus fruits:

• Fingers – to remove tangerine and mandarin peels
• Julienne Peeler – to remove little, thin strips for garnishes
• Potato Peeler – to remove wide strips, which you may then chop in the food processor or by hand
• Zester – a good one will dig a bit deeper than the J-peeler, and provide lovely, curling strips for garnishes or for candying
• Chef’s knife – to finely mince the zest, and to cleanly peel an orange or grapefruit for slicing or sectioning
• Paring knife, to score oranges and grapefruit for removing peel
• Rasp grater – Microplane or Pampered Chef has the best.  This tool will shave off tiny fragments that you can add directly without further fuss.

Now, here is my list of 1 Million things to do with citrus zest:

1. Drop a piece of orange of lemon zest into your cup of hot tea while it’s brewing
2. Grate orange peel into your oatmeal or chocolate chip cookie batter
3. Use orange and lemon peel in hot apple cider
4. Lemon zest goes well with blueberries – in pound cake, scones…
5. Make simple syrups infused with any citrus zest
6. Flavor salad dressings with finely grated zest
7. Make citrus sugar (orange, lemon, lime) by drying the zest in a jar of sugar
8. Add zest to icings for the most intense flavor
9. Add a mixture of orange and lemon zest to a simple cheesecake recipe
10. Make my Brown Rice Salad
11. Add orange zest and ginger to sweet potatoes or carrots
12. Add lime zest and juice and honey to cantaloupe chunks
13. Add lime or lemon zest and juice to salsa
14. Use the zest of red grapefruit along with tarragon for an incredible sorbet

OK, so maybe it wasn’t a million, but hopefully a few ideas that you hadn’t thought of yourself.  Here is my favorite thing to do with lots of oranges – if you are lucky, someone will give you a fruit basket for the holidays.  Or just buy yourself a bag of oranges during their season.  Most times, I don’t get to this until January.

Candied Orange Peel

• Score 3 thick skinned oranges into quarters and remove the peel, zest, pith and all.  Use the oranges for salads or snacking. Slice the peel into 1/4″ long slices.
• Place the orange peel slices  in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.  Drain and rinse.  Repeat this process twice more.
• Return the peel to the pan and add 1 cup sugar and 1/2  cup water.  Bring to a boil once again and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Reduce to simmering and cook and watch closely until most all the liquid is absorbed.  Gently stir until the liquid is completely absorbed – the peel will still be moist.
• Line a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper or lightly oil with vegetable oil.
• Pour the orange peel out onto the sheet pan, and separate the sliced orange peel with a fork.  Be careful!  The peel is blisteringly hot – don’t touch it with your fingers.
• While the peel is still hot, sprinkle with granulated sugar (extra fine is best), and allow the peel to absorb the sugar.  Repeat this process until the peel is dusted  with a light, but dry sugar coat.  Allow to rest on the pan until completely cool and dry.
• You may decide to dip one end of the orange peel slices into melted dark chocolate – YUM.
• Dicing some into small square will get you ready to try baking some Florentines.  But that’s a blog post for another day.

Enjoy!