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Winter Citrus-Grain Salad

September 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

I know... this is billed as a winter salad, so why did I propose it and why am I posting about it in September?! Aside from my yearning for fall temperatures, this winter citrus-grain salad is really refreshing and full of bright flavors that are perfect for any time of year.

Nutrition Stripped was an impulse cookbook buy, because the pre-order price was so low I felt like it wouldn't even need that many good recipes to justify the price. There are some things I don't love about the cookbook - I'm not a huge fan of life advice and philosophy taking up precious space in my cookbooks - but it's brief and there are a lot of intriguing {vegan & gluten-free} recipes in it. Plus, at least it was written by an actual RN, rather than someone who had a health "epiphany" and has amassed lots of followers for no good reason I can discern.

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Frozen Swiss Chocolate Pie

September 11, 2016 2 Comments

Our Baked Sunday Morning challenge this weekend was a Frozen Swiss Chocolate Pie, in honor of National Grandparents' Day. I had no idea there was such a day, but I'm fairly certain my grandparents would have loved this dessert. I'm also not sure what specifically makes this pie a Swiss Chocolate Pie, rather than a regular Chocolate Pie (or any other nationality pie, for that matter). It really doesn't matter, because this pie is delicious! It's intensely chocolatey, silky, incredibly rich, and just balanced by the nut crust. It's also a huge mess to make, to clean up after, and to serve, so it's a pretty good thing it's as delicious as it is....

Ideas Post 10: Vote for a Recipe

September 10, 2016 2 Comments

I had lots of genius ideas for how much I was going to accomplish on the internet today. I was finally going to post the long overdue upside down plum cake. I was going to get started on drafts for a couple new posts, and prep tomorrow's Baked Sunday Mornings post. I was going to review the mountain of cookbooks I just received from Amazon, and send half back since they turned out to be bummers. Alas, my Verizon cable box decided it was done working, and they won't get someone out here to fix it until Monday night.

Good thing WordPress has an app and I have photo-editing apps on my phone too. Too bad it's so painful to upload pictures and impossible to use the recipe plug-in.

I'm paying for all the cake I ate this past week, and my first ever Cronut (yum) plus somehow it's still outrageously hot here, so I'm thinking salad is a must for the upcoming weeks.

As usual, vote for your favorite recipe and I'll post it Wednesday. If you have ideas about what you'd like to see featured, feel free to mention that instead/as well.
A) Winter Citrus-Grain Salad from Nutrition Stripped

B) Cinnamon Roll Muffins {vegan, gf} from Easy Whole Vegan

C) Pillowy Pumpkin Snacking Cookies {vegan, gf} from Oh She Glows Every Day

D) Crowd-Pleasing Caesar {vegan} from Oh She Glows Every Day

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Chocolate Cassis Cake with Red Currant Raspberry Buttercream and Chocolate Ganache

September 7, 2016 Leave a Comment

Or more aptly, chocolate berry cake. There it is - the whole punchline to this post. Tessa Huff's chocolate cassis cake from Layered is beautiful and delicious, but there's no hint, however elusive, of cassis or red currant upon eating it. My co-workers praised this cake, comparing it to Black Forest Cake, Sachertorte, or simply, Raspberry Chocolate Cake.

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Ideas Post 9: Vote for a Recipe

September 4, 2016 3 Comments

This weekend we're in Ann Arbor, visiting friends from grad school and all our favorite places....mostly restaurants. All this food implies I should probably eat a lot of salad next week, but since it'll be my birthday, I think instead this week's vote should be for my birthday cake!...

Ginger Beef Satay with Charred Asian Vegetables

August 31, 2016 6 Comments

This ginger beef satay seemed to have all of the components that would make it a great, easy dinner I could make for myself, scale up for a crowd, and share with friends looking for new recipes. There's a minimal list of ingredients, the instructions are clear, and there's very little active time. ...

Ideas Post 8: Vote for a Recipe

August 27, 2016 3 Comments

Yikes! I completely forgot today was Saturday and therefore the day to post an idea poll. Too much baby cuteness, not enough reality.

I brought down some of the flatbread dough left over from making gözlemes, and it made fantastic flatbread pizzas. Feta, prosciutto, fig and arugula is a winning combination.

This week I'm away almost every day- the only night I'm home to cook is Wednesday, coincidentally. So picking something relatively quick to make seemed like the best strategy for my list of recipes. The options are:

A) Smoky Spicy Eggplant with Tomato from the Food of India

B) Mustard Spice Cookies from Ovenly

C) Ginger Beef Satay with Charred Asian Vegetables from Good Food Good Life

D) Magic Espresso Brownies from Food52 Baking

Vote by Monday night please!

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Gözleme with Feta and Spinach

August 24, 2016 Leave a Comment

I'm really excited to share the recipe for the winner of this week's Idea Post vote, Rick Stein's gözleme with feta and spinach, because these Turkish flatbreads are incredibly delicious.

Gözleme comes from the Turkish word Goz, for cubby or compartment. These little compartments of bready, cheesy goodness are the number-one street food in Turkey according to Rick Stein, and after making them, it's not difficult to see why. Gözleme are a little like Indian roti, except they might be better (and I'm a huge fan of roti). ...

Chocolate Silk Pie

August 22, 2016 4 Comments

Testing the recipe for Chocolate Silk Pie from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook was a double accomplishment for me. The pie was runner-up in a previous Ideas Post the same week a co-worker asked for chocolate silk pie as their birthday treat. The reason it's taken so long to post (almost a month!) is I've been a little embarrassed --- I do not have a single picture of the full, finished product because my co-workers devoured it in less than 15 minutes.

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Ideas Post 7: Vote for a Recipe

August 20, 2016 3 Comments

This week has flown by much faster than I wanted! Thankfully, I finished a couple of projects at work, so hopefully I'll have more time to catch up with blogging. This week, my recipe ideas are:

A) Ultralemony Lemon Bundt Cake with Almond Glaze from Baked Occasions (Baked Sunday Mornings made it last summer, so I missed out)

B) Chocolate Olive Oil Cake from Chickpea Flour Does It All

C) Gozleme from Rick Stein: From Venice to Istanbul

D) Roasted Tamarind Chicken with Honey and Red Chilies from Made in India

Please vote by Monday night! 🙂

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Okonomiyaki - A First Attempt

August 17, 2016 Leave a Comment

Congratulations okonomiyaki (and Caleb), I can no longer avoid the issue of how to deal with real recipe failures. I have a few draft posts started discussing either individual recipe disappointments or complete failure across all tested recipes. However, I've put off posting them for a number of reasons: I feel guilty saying someone else's hard work in developing a recipe was a flop. I worry the failure is in the chef (me) and not the recipe. Also - who wants to read a post about something that was a flop?

Unfortunately, the okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) from Clean Green Eats were a flop. I can say that because I made them last night and then tried a different recipe for okonomiyaki tonight to use as a comparison. The okonomiyaki from Clean Green Eats weren't awful, or inedible, but I would be embarrassed to served them to anyone and I wound up throwing them away....

Russian Salad with Golden Paprika Chicken

August 15, 2016 Leave a Comment

Jamie Oliver's Russian Salad with Golden Paprika Chicken is actually the sixth recipe I've made from Everyday Super Food. His Super Squash Lasagne was delicious, healthy, satisfying, and something I'm wishing it was cool enough to make for myself again. On the other hand, the Earl Grey banana bread, Breakfast Popovers, and Indian Roasted Cauliflower were all disasters of varying degrees of edible-ness. His Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Broccolini, Chile, and Lemon was okay but not worth repeating. So why am I even talking about Everyday Super Food anymore? I've absolutely broken my "3 strikes" rule for cookbooks. Well, it's like this......

Salted Caramel Soufflé

August 14, 2016 1 Comment

This Sunday's baking challenge from Baked Sunday Mornings is a Salted Caramel Soufflé. It sounds delicious right - what could be better than a delicate and airy caramel-flavored confection? I was excited, but nervous since a soufflé presents several hurdles beyond the usual challenge. I normally bring my baked things to work, so that I'm not eating an entire batch myself, but that's impossible with a soufflé. I've never made a soufflé before and all the conventional wisdom states that your first soufflé is guaranteed to be a disaster. And of course, our weather this weekend was expected to be a glamorous mid-90s F, with high humidity and scattered thunderstorms.

So I made the logical choice to have people over Friday night and serve them soufflé fresh from the oven (which is the only way to serve it). Since I've never made a single soufflé before, I wasn't sure how long this salted caramel soufflé would take me to prepare, and I didn't want to be a sticky mess when people arrived, so I decided to make these the night before, pop them in my freezer, and then simply transfer them to the oven as soon as people arrived. I argued with myself a little over whether I should make the recipe twice or just double it and proceed once. Out of laziness and a desire not to spend my entire night in the kitchen, I worked with the doubled recipe, and planned to make one normal-sized (2 qt) soufflé, then about 6-8 minis in 7 oz ramekins....

Ideas Post 6: Vote for a Recipe

August 13, 2016 4 Comments

Thanks to my overly ambitious ideas about what to cook for my dinner party, I wound up with a lot more cabbage, red peppers, and scallions than any girl needs, and they're burning a hole in my fridge (mostly, I'm worried my milk is going to start tasting like scallions). This week's options reflect that, at least in the savory department!

A) Okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) from Clean Green Eats

B) Japchae (Korean stir-fried sweet potato noodles) from Korean Food Made Simple

C) Upside-down Plum Chai Cake from My New Roots

D) Tomato Scones from Fresh Pantry

Whichever option gets the most votes by Monday evening will be Wednesday's post. Bonus points for voting earlier in the day tomorrow, before I have John and Joy over to feed them something delicious (with cabbage and scallions)!

I'm going to try to play catch up this week, with Monday and Tuesday nights going to the Russian chicken salad and chocolate silk pie. Otherwise, if there's something you'd like to see, and it isn't one of the topics, feel free to suggest it and I'll add it to the top of my list of recipes to try. Also, I started keeping a list of all the ideas posts, so it's easier to see what's been offered previously.

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Mango Cabbage Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

August 13, 2016 1 Comment

All of the food on our rafting trip was excellent (somewhat surprisingly), and among the deliciousness, this mango cabbage salad with poppy seed dressing stood out for me as one of the best meals. It's refreshingly crunchy with the cabbage and cashews, a little sweet from the mango, cooling from the cucumbers, creamy from the feta, and addictive with poppy seed dressing. Our raft guides served it with filet Mignon and potatoes au gratin, which happen to be two of my favorite things, yet all I wanted to eat was this salad.

Mainly because I liked this salad so much, I begged and pleaded until I was permitted to photograph their recipes. I tested the scaled-down and adapted recipe on a bunch of unsuspecting friends last night and people loved it. Of the savory options, it disappeared rapidly, even though it was competing with fresh scallion rolls and tomato scones. It vanished much faster than the tomato-watermelon gazpacho I also served (although maybe because people wanted to drink the gazpacho with vodka as a bloody Mary (I was right!) ... or because I only had a stack of pilfered red Solo cups for serving the gazpacho.)

This mango cabbage salad will serve about 4-6 as a main course, or 8-10 as a small starter. It comes together really quickly, especially if you have a food processor to make short work of shredding the cabbage. Just chop all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces, grate the beet and carrot if using, crumble in the feta, add cashews, dress, then serve. It's possible to prep all the vegetables in advance and keep them chilled, simply add the feta, nuts, and dressing right before serving. Once fully assembled, this mango cabbage salad will keep in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours, but it will lose its crunchiness. That's exactly what has happened in the photo above, especially to those cashews. I didn't have time to take a picture after assembly but before serving, so the leftovers were my photography subject and lunch today.

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Ideas Post 5: Vote for a Recipe

August 6, 2016 2 Comments

I'm planning to chop off all my hair today. My only concern is it might be a little too short to donate. I'll have to have the hairstylist pull it straight to measure. Hopefully it is long enough, because I've been thinking about doing it for months (although I should have done it two months ago, at the beginning of all this summer heat).

This week, I thought I would do something a little different, and include options from our Grand Canyon rafting trip. After questioning whether I worked for a different rafting company (hah!), the head guide let me photograph their food/recipe booklet. There were a few meals I really enjoyed (they were all good), but obviously the recipes were written to feed 32 people and make use of things like canned chicken, cornbread mix, etc. since we were fresh-supplies-limited.

I'm having people over Friday night to serve the next scheduled Baked Sunday Mornings: Salted Caramel Soufflé. I thought while I was at it, I might as well try halving (and making adjustments where appropriate) a couple of the recipes that I really liked from our rafting trip. There is a caveat to the rafting recipes - I'll be serving them Friday, so they'd be posted next Saturday, rather than Wednesday....

Nectarine and Blackberry Pie Bars

August 3, 2016 Leave a Comment

A dessert recipe that combines browned butter, seasonal summer fruit, and crispy pieces of oat cobbler topping is basically guaranteed to be a success. Certainly that's the case for these nectarine and blackberry pie bars, winner of Saturday's vote for a post. As an added bonus, this is the perfect season for blackberries and nectarines and they were on special this week, so it was an ideal time to make them.

Yossy Arefi's Sweeter Off the Vine has turned out to be an incredible cookbook for fruit-based desserts. Her nectarine and blackberry pie bars are the third (but probably not final) recipe I've blogged about, and these are as phenomenal as her brown butter blondies and cherry poppyseed yogurt cake. These aren't two fruits that I'd ever given much thought to combining, but they work together very well. However, you should consider this recipe to be a template for your own pie bars - use the same ratios but vary the fruits, spices, crisp topping, and/or even the whole grain flour to make your own version. For example, I've made this with Santa Rosa plums and blueberries, two of my favorite summer fruits, cardamom instead of nutmeg, and whole wheat instead of the rye; the results were similarly outstanding....

Linzer Cookies from Baked Occasions

July 31, 2016 4 Comments

Linzer cookies (Linzer eyes is the translation from German) and their cake-sized sibling Linzertorte originated in the Austrian town of Linz, according to my very excited German co-worker. Intriguingly, Linzertorte is supposedly the oldest known cake, dating back to the 1600s. It's a mildly-flavored dessert made with almond flour, regular flour, egg, sugar, and of course, plenty of butter. The torte typically features a lattice-pattern cover, while the cookies are typically windowpane-style so the consumer can see the jam inside. They usually show up around Christmas time in the US, but there's no reason not to enjoy them all year round. ...

Ideas Post 4: Vote for a Recipe

July 30, 2016 4 Comments

Today was my first visit to the Jersey Shore, and I have to say, I liked it way more than I expected I would. It certainly doesn't compare with Northern California beaches, but I guess it's not all dirty boardwalks and loud beach-goers here. There was minimal traffic, nice sand, refreshing water, and great weather. Then a storm rolled in and we were all ushered off the beach.

Even though I applied sunscreen at least 5 times, I still managed to burn myself rather badly. I go to the Grand Canyon for 8 days and don't burn once, I spend a few hours at the Jersey Shore and I'm unable to sit.... This week is going to be slow-going, but hopefully one of these dishes will help!

A) Sea Bass with Curried Cucumber-Tomato Water and Tomato Herb Salad from Gourmet Today

B) Skillet Eggplant Parmesan from Williams-Sonoma Weeknight Vegetarian

C) Nectarine and Blackberry Pie Bars from Sweeter Off the Vine

D) Summer Berry-Lemon Ricotta Cake from Modern Potluck

*wildcard) Kimchi Bread from my latest acquisition

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Strawberry Cobbler Bread

July 27, 2016 Leave a Comment

Arik told me this strawberry cobbler bread was the best cake I'd ever made for him. It's worth pointing out this statement is important for two reasons: I've made a lot of desserts he's liked and this bread is a quick bread that's really more like a tea cake. It's fruit cobbler in bread form, which is basically the perfect union of two of my favorite things (fruit and bread)....

Pulled Pork Mole aka the Slow Burn

July 25, 2016 2 Comments

If you like mole, you'll love the "Slow Burn" pulled pork mole recipe from the Country Cat's Heartlandia cookbook. This isn't a sweet mole. It's dark, it's rich, it's full of sultry smokey heat from an assortment of dried chiles, while balanced with a depth of flavor from the chocolate and teeny bit of sugar. If you are one of those strange people who doesn't like mole, then I'm hoping it's because you've never had a good mole. Make this and we'll know. This is exactly how mole ought to taste (in my humble opinion, anyhow)....

Ideas Post 3: Vote for a Recipe

July 23, 2016 4 Comments

Since I already posted about watermelon gazpacho today, the Saturday idea poll post is going to be quite brief. Same rules apply as before: if a recipe gets the most votes by Monday evening, it will be Wednesday’s post. If there’s something you’d like to see, and it isn’t one of the topics, feel free to suggest it and I’ll add it to the top of my list of recipes to try.

This week, the options are:

A) Strawberry Bread from Sweet and Vicious

B) Chocolate Silk Pie from Smitten Kitchen

C) Red Pepper-Feta Fritatta from Love and Lemons

D) Corn Soup from At Home in the Whole Foods Kitchen

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Watermelon Gazpacho

July 23, 2016 1 Comment

The watermelon gazpacho from the Blender Girl cookbook (technically titled, "Watermelon Gazpacho is the Bomb!") is radically different from the tomato-watermelon gazpacho I wrote about yesterday from Magic Soup. Unlike something like a tomato soup, where the taste varies by recipe but there's a common structure and appearance to most tomato soups, the ingredients and looks of a gazpacho tend to vary significantly. The origin story of gazpacho is not entirely clear, but it seems to have started as a water, bread, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar-based soup in Andalusia. Over time, gazpacho has become associated with a tomato base, either partially or completely pureed with a mix of cucumbers, red peppers, onions, olive oil, vinegar, stale bread, salt, and pepper. I've always thought of it as a salad soup. This watermelon gazpacho is relatively similar to a standard gazpacho, except it uses herbs and citrus instead of the vinegar and doesn't contain bread or oil....

Tomato-Watermelon Gazpacho

July 21, 2016 Leave a Comment

In keeping with the theme of light courses designed for beating the summer heat, I present one of the strangest watermelon gazpacho recipes I've ever encountered. This tomato-watermelon gazpacho from Magic Soup is an unusual gazpacho for several reasons: 1) it's not a traditional tomato-based gazpacho, 2) it is a watermelon gazpacho that has tomato juice (rather than the fruit) in it, 3) the recipe also calls for Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce, thus the recipe begins to resemble an odd Bloody Mary, and 4) the header insists on the inclusion of passion fruit.

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