Adventures in Catering

A few months ago, long before culinary school final exams were a worry to be fretted, the Engineer's mom asked me to cater a small party she would be throwing in honor of a friend's 50th birthday. This party was going to be in July (ie, last weekend), but she knows me very well and wanted to give me plenty of advanced notice. She's a swell lady.

Of course, I accepted and immediately started making lists, mining my trove of Successful Recipes for ideas, doubting my culinary prowess, trying (unsuccessfully) to convince Mama Engineer that I wasn't nearly skilled enough to cater her party, and generally getting excited about the whole thing.

It turned out to be quite a lot of fun and rewarding in that "take a step back, fold your arms over your apron, and sigh deeply while people enjoy food you cooked" kind of way. Also to my complete and utter surprise, it was not at all stressful! Shocker!

It was a mid-afternoon party of about 40 people (although about half that number actually turned out). We were planning four main dishes--two salads, a cold soup, and a hot dish--with other little snacks scattered around the room. Here was our final line-up:

• Arugula Vichyssoise--from Epicurious
• Beet and Feta Salad in Endive Cups--from a recipe I did for the Kitchn
• Gorgonzola and Walnut Tortellini Salad
• BBQ Pulled Pork--from a recipe I found over at Andrea's Recipes
• Brioche Buns (to go with the pulled pork)--from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day

Pretty much everything except the pork and the rolls could be made in advance. I intended to make the pork the day before but there was a bit of a snafu with the pork--I hadn't realized it was still on the bone and once I'd deboned everything, I no longer had enough meat. Sigh. That ended up going in the slow cooker around midnight the night before and cooking through the night. You can assess my general state of triumphant exhaustion by the shaky picture below.On the plus side, the Engineer and I awoke Saturday morning to the sweet smell of barbecue. Let me assure you that barbecue smells just as mouth-watering at 8am as it does any other time of the day. I had to slap the Engineer's hands a few times to get him to back off and make some bacon instead.

These brioche buns were my favorite thing to make. My house smelled like a bakery. They should make candles that smell like that. Or else I might have to make these buns every day.The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which if you haven't discovered it yet, is the best book ever for bakers on the go. I made their master recipe here on the blog a few months ago, and have since reviewed the book at the Kitchn. It's full of excellent recipes that are really just...well, good! Don't get me wrong--I love my sourdoughs with the preferments and the kneading and all that lovely stuff. It just that...sometimes...you need a quick loaf to get you through the week or to impress some new friends or something like that.

Anyways. These brioche buns are very good. The texture isn't quite as fine as brioche that I've made the long way, but I'm not telling. For sandwiches like pulled pork, they were perfect.

The salads were both a hit. The walnut-gorgonzola salad is just a solid mix of flavors. The gorgonzola is actually in the tortellini--purchased from Trader Joe's and consumed shamelessly by this particular chef. I threw in toasted walnuts for some extra walnut flavor (the gorgonzola kinda overpowers it in the tortellini, which is honestly fine by me), along with apples, argula, and caramelized onions. The dressing is a simple balsamic.
I loved the little endive scoops with the beet salad. They were so much fun to eat! Also, I'm pretty sure I've made that beet salad in one form or another every week this summer. It's that good. Go forth and make it.The only recipe I wasn't thrilled with was the argula vichyssoise. It tasted a bit flat and bland to me. I made it a few times and fussed with the recipe (especially by adding lemon), but never got it quite right. (Oh, my review of the recipe is over at the Kitchn, though reading it again now, I think I was a bit generous.) I came across another cold soup recipe the other day that used yogurt, and another one today that used buttermilk. I'm wondering if either of these would help give the soup a better flavor.

Maybe it's just that I don't really like vichyssoise or potato-leek soup in general. Or cold soups for that matter. Or pureed soups, either, now that you mention it. Huh. Mama Engineer loved it, though, so that's what really matters.

Operation Catering-for-Mama: Success! While I probably could have done something like this before culinary school, I definitely recognized how much more confident and relaxed I felt. That's definitely affirming. Pats on the back all around.

Ok, who's up for some breakfast barbecue?!

Photo of the Week: Take the Cannoli

"Leave the gun. Take the cannolis."

I am too embarrassed to admit how many times that phrase crept into conversation last night or how we still laughed every time someone said it. But them was some miiiighty fine tasting cannolis.

I will say that my first cannoli experience left me with the impression that cannolis are rather a pain in the arse and are best enjoyed when one does not have to make them personally. And by the way, the reason they look a little, well, burnt is because there's cocoa powder and cinnamon in the cannoli dough. Not at all because I might or might not have left them in the fry-o-lator too long. I'm not sayin' anything.

Stupid cannolis.

It's a Bread Eat Bread World

If you've ever wondered what happens if you forget to slash the top of your bread, this is it. Hard to tell if the loaf is eating itself or giving birth to a Brave New Loaf. Either way, it ain't pretty.

But golly GEE, it tastes good! This is the second loaf from the Simple Crispy Bread recipe I made last Thursday, baked after lazing about (I mean, fermenting) in the fridge for three days. The taste was much the same (yeasty and salty--in a good way), but the crumb and texture were very different. In the first loaf, the crumb was pretty tight with a lot of small, evenly distributed holes. In the second loaf, the crumb was looser with some bigger holes here and there, much more like a traditional hearth loaf. The texture was also very chewy and airy--a seeming contradiction in terms, but actually so delicious and adept at holding pockets of melted butter that we ate the entire loaf before I thought to take a picture to show you one of the slices. Oops!

Simple Crispy (No-Knead!) Loaf

This past Thursday, I left my cube to get something at the printer and by the time I walked back (muttering to myself because I'd ALREADY found a typo I'd have to fix), the sky out the window was full of thick, fat flakes. Our offices closed about an hour after that. I was supposed to have class later, but honestly? I just wasn't feelin' it. What I WAS feelin' was going home, curling up on the couch with some knitting and watching the season premiere of "Crowned" taped the night before. And so I sat at my computer in my empty office pressing the refresh button on my internet browser until ("C'mon! C'mon!") the note went up on the school website that classes were canceled. YES!

Three full trains passed through the station before one came with enough space for me to smoosh myself, my two bags of shtuff, and my equipment roll into the crevice between the first step and the door. Two hours later, I finally got off the train and forged the last stretch of the journey on foot because I could walk faster than the traffic. It was cumbersome with the bags, but I actually think they made good ballast to keep me afloat in the snow. And though I managed to keep my footing the whole way, I like to think they would have cushioned my fall. Except for my equipment roll. That would have...yeah, not the equipment roll.

So after I thawed out with a glass of wine and some mother-daughter pageant action, what did I do with my evening off from baking class? Why, I BAKED of course! I mean DUH! What ELSE would I be doing with a night off from school?!

Ahem.

I first saw this recipe for "Simple Crusty Bread" in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It pledged to be an alternative to the No-Knead Bread of recent fame, but even simpler! quicker! and more flavorful! It was this last promise that really caught my eye since, for me, the lackluster flavor of the No-Knead Bread outweighed it's convenience. I was also intrigued by the fact that one recipe made four loaves and the dough would keep in the fridge for up to two weeks, allowing you to lob off a piece whenever the mood struck. In general a slow rise will give you a more complex flavor and better texture, and a 'retarded' or 'delayed fermentation' rise in the fridge will result in a slightly sweet bread, like the slackdough breads I was working on a few summers ago--HERE. I baked off one loaf right away and stored the other three in the fridge for taste-tests over the next few weeks.

Dough just after combining ingredients

My initial reaction to this bread is....(drumroll!)....pleasant surprise. The just-mixed dough was stiff and tacky, and I had very low expectations of being able to shape it into anything resembling loaf. But somewhere over the next two hours of rising, it really pulled itself together. With only a light dusting of flour, I was able to handle it relatively easily and shape it into a nice little ball. I decided to rest my dough on the countertop instead of on the peel as the recipe suggests since I've had a few too many experiences of resting the dough on the peel, going to shuffle it loving into the oven, and having it stick to the peel and turn out looking like THIS despite a generous dusting of cornmeal. I was able to pick the ball up off the counter and plop it onto my peel without too much fuss. It stuck a bit, but then willingly slid out onto the pizza stone. It didn't rise very much in the oven, but it did keep it's nice round shape without deflating at all--an amazing feat for any loaf, if I do say so myself.

The dough after the 2-hour rise

The crust browned very evenly and crackled when I cut into it--thumbs up for that. The crumb was tight and moist with a few larger holes here and there--a second thumbs up. And the taste? Decent! Not as much flavor as a traditionally kneaded bread, but also not too shabby. It's a little salty, but I'm a fan of salt so no complaints here. It even past the second-day-toast-test with flying colors. I also like that it's a smaller loaf, which means that I have a chance of eating it before it goes completely stale or moldy.

I'm really excited to try the other loaves as the dough ages over the next few weeks. Even if there's not much flavor development, I think this is still my new standby Lazy Girl's Loaf!

Shaped loaf

This is what the underside of the loaf looks like after you stretch the top

~~~~~~

Lazy Girl's Loaf (a.k.a. Simple Crusty Bread)
Recipe alone: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/211brex.html
Full article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEEDB153FF932A15752C1A9619C8B63

Adapted from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," by Jeff Hertzberg
and Zoë François (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007)

Time: About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours' resting and rising

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt (If you don't like salty, try cutting this down to 1 Tablespoon)
6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough
Cornmeal.

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3
cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until
there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not
with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or
up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two
weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut
off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands
to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom.
Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes.
Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle
rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for
20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife
three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan
and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30
minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and
place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh,
an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes.
Place pan on middle rack.

Cooking: Lazy Day Loaf

It's taken a year of research and experimentation, but I think I've finally discovered my solution to bread baking on hot, humid summer days. This recipe is a step up from the No-Knead Bread of recent fame, and I find that the flavor and crumb of this loaf is a vast improvement over that recipe.

And P.S. the man-hands in the pictures below belong to my dad. I'm thinking he has a possible future in the field of professional hand-modeling.

Baguette-Style Loaf
thanks to James McGuire, as published in The Art of Eating, No. 73 + 74

Ingredients:
500 gr all-purpose flour
10 gr (1 1/2 tsp) fine salt (preferably kosher)
2 gr (1/8 tsp, or about a pinch) yeast
400 ml (1 5/8 c) water

Blend flour and salt in a bowl and form a well in the center. Pour the water into the well and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow the yeast to dissolve (about 5 minutes). Using your fingertips, gradually begin to mix the flour into the water until all the flour is incorporated. This should take about two minutes. Cover the bowl and let rest for 10 minutes. When the ten minutes is up, give the dough its first fold. Slip your fingers between the side of the bowl and the dough. Grasp the dough between your fingers and thumb, lift the flap upwards to about the rim of the bowl, and then lay the flap across the top of the dough. Give the bowl a turn and repeat the folding until you have gone a full revolution--about 8 to 10 folds. Cover and let rest for 1 hour. After an hour, give the dough a second set of folds. Cover and let rest 1 hour.After two hours, give the dough a third set of folds. Cover and let rest 1 hour.
After three hours, give the dough a fourth set of folds. Cover and let rest 1 hour.
After four hours, give the dough a final set of folds. At this point, the dough should largely come away from the sides of the bowl when you're doing this and the dough should hold a roughly spherical shape. Sprinkle a little flour between the dough and the sides of the bowl and turn the dough out onto a floured work surface (so the folds are now underneath). Dust the dough lightly with flour and cover with the inverted bowl. Let rest 20 minutes.

While the dough is resting, prepare a rising bowl or basket. If you have an actual rising bowl or basket, pat a little bit of flour into the sides and use that. If you're improvising, find a circular bowl or basket about the diameter of the dough and line it with a clean, smooth kitchen towel (not terry cloth or anything with a nap).

After 20 minutes, pick the dough up and gently reshape it into a sphere by tucking the ends under. Invert it into the rising basket so the folds are on top. Cover with plastic wrap or a towl and let it rise at room temperature for 45 - 50 minutes. The loaf has sufficiently risen when a fingertip indention disappears completely in 2-3 seconds. If it springs back like a rubber ball, it's not ready; if the indention remains, it's risen for too long and your loaf will still be yummy, but won't rise as much in the oven. After the dough has been rising for a half an hour, place a baking stone in your oven and pre-heat the oven to 450-degrees.*

When the dough is ready, sprinkle a pizza peel with a light layer of cornmeal (or the back of a cookie sheet will do) and tip the dough onto it. Quickly cut a few scores into the surface of the dough--about a half-inch deep--with a razor blade. Slide the dough into the oven onto the baking stone. Using a spray bottle, spritz the inside of the oven (avoiding the light) and the surface of the dough and quickly close the door. Repeat this a few times in the first five minutes of baking.

When the loaf begins to color (after about 15 minutes), turn the oven down to 350-degrees. Also, rotate the loaf every 15 minutes so that it bakes evenly (most oven have 'hot spots' that can cause un-even baking). After 45 minutes, start checking for doneness. If you thump the bottom of the loaf with your thumb, it will sound hollow--like you're knocking on a door. The surface should be a caramelly-color with spots of darker toast color. The internal temperature should be about 210-degrees.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes. Serve with room-temperature butter sprinkled with sea salt and a few dollops of good honey.

*You can also bake this in a dutch oven, a la 'No-Knead Bread.' Just place your dutch oven inside the oven so both pre-heat at the same time. When it comes time to bake, tip the dough into the dutch oven and cover with lid. Let it bake for about 30 minutes with the lid on and finish with the lid off.

Cooking: Snow Days and Soda Bread

Since I didn't manage to extract myself from the cozy, multi-blanketed nest of my bed until well after the snow had passed from pristine prettiness into half-melty sludge, I give you this picture from Boston.com taken yesterday afternoon. Besides being yet another beautiful example of the fashion faux pas and arch-collapsing train wreck that is the Ugg boot (oh, why do I torture myself?), this photo so perfectly captures how unwilling we Bostonians were to deal with snow after a week of 55-degree weather--much less the blizzardy ice storm with sideways blowing snow pellets that we ended up getting. In my my three years in Boston, I can't help but notice that Bostonians have quite a time-honored "willing suspension of disbelief" going on here. To name a very few, we are willing to believe:

• That work on the Big Dig will eventually be finished.
• That if I dig my car out of the snow and leave a lawn chair on the spot with a note saying, "My Spot--Don't Take," no one will, in fact, take my spot.
• That the T runs on time, and when it doesn't, this is a completely unprecedented event.
• That Dunkin' Donuts makes the best coffee in the universe.
• That every year is "Our Year" for the Red Sox to win the World Series (And when the Red Sox really did win back in 2004, the entire city shut down for days--not because everyone was so elated that they finally won, but because literally no one knew what to do with themselves.)
• That if you let your dog poop in the un-shoveled sidewalk snow, the poop will magically have disappeared come spring when the snow melts and will not, in fact, sit in a frozen, petrified pile two inches from where I'm waiting for the bus. (I don't have a sassy web link for this one, but maybe it's better that way.)
  

Fuggedaboudit.

A good pummeling of snow seems to bring out the best and the worst in people. This morning, it's bringing out the best. Determined to make Irish soda bread for a St. Patty's Day party later today and lacking the proper ingredients, I cinched on my snow pants, laced up my snow boots, and prepared for the worst. But then...the worst never came! When I realized that my local CVC doesn't carry buttermilk* and realized that a bus trip to the nearest Stop&Shop would be in order, I was sure my good mood was doomed. But then, miracle of miracles, a bus appeared on the horizon mere moments after I arrived at the bust stop. In attempting to board the bus, I managed to drop my shopping list, wallet, and T-pass at the same time, thus delaying the boarding of fellow passengers and departing of the bus. I apologized profusely to the bus driver, but instead of rolling her eyes or gazing disdainfully past my left ear--a normal and accepted reaction to passenger ineptitude--she actually said (get THIS!), "No problem. Welcome aboard." No problem? Welcome aboard?! Did anyone else hear that? But no, my fellow passengers were gazing placidly out the windows, not even minding that I was (continuing) to delay the bus by standing in the doorway, immobile with disbelief.

At the grocery store a group of local firefighters all dolled up in their boots and suspenders were shopping for a St. Patrick's Day dinner together--a very meaty St. Patrick's day dinner, as became increasingly obvious as I followed them around the grocery store. (Side note: I wasn't actually "following" the firefighters in the stalking sense; our shopping routes just happened to coincide is all. Though they were pretty adorable.) There was one Papa Bear Firefighter with the cart and all the other firefighters kind of orbited around him, bringing him cuts of meat for approval, adding condiments to the cart, dropping off sodas. I was especially touched when one swarthy-looking fellow added two beautiful purple rutabagas to the mix. I loves me a veggie-eatin' firefighter! And the whole time, the group was joking with each other, teasing the Stop&Shop employees (who they seemed to know quite well), and chatting with fellow customers. They even posed for a few pictures. It was all very heartwarming.

I found all my purchases, trotted back to the bus stop, and again waited mere moments for another bus to show up. The doors slid open and who should I see but my new favorite bus driver! "Good morning," she said as I climbed up (managing not to drop anything this time). "Good morning!" I chirped in reply. When I got to my stop, I actually walked all the way to the front of the bus just so that I could say, "Thank you!" as I got off. "You're welcome," she said gravely as the doors wheezed shut behind me.

And in one last feat of snowy-day good cheer, I passed the mailman on the short walk from the bus stop to my house. I always feel bad for mail carriers on the particularly gross weather days--rain or shine, they're always out there, but they always seem quite willing and happy to be doing what they're doing. In any case, peering at me from beneath his fur-lined, US Postal Blue hat**, my mailman said, "Hello! How are you?" "Quite well, thank you! And you?" I replied. "Oh, I'm great!" he said, and slushed past me, whistling a little tune.
-----
*By the by, I'm not quite sure why I thought CVS would carry buttermilk, but I rilly wanted to believe it would--ahh...there's that suspension of disbelief! Hey, I'm a real Bostonian!

**Every time I see a mail carrier now, I totally think of the Project Runway episode where they have to redesign the US Postal Service uniform. I saw a mail woman a few days ago wearing a particularly fashionable uniform (I thought) and I almost stopped and asked her about it. That was on a day when snow was making Bostonians grumpy, though, so I decided not to.
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Irish Soda Bread

I've shied away from soda bread for a long time. My memories of it are of dense, dry, crumbly bricks with little taste or satisfaction, which are left in the bread basket long after the hunks of airy baguette and elegant slices of sourdough have been claimed. In the build up to St. Patty's day, a number of recipes for soda bread--both sweet and savory--came my way and I decided to give it a whirl in my own kitchen.

I decided on a sweet bread with raisins and nutmeg and held my breath as the rocky, unappetizing balls of dough baked into golden loaves twinkling with granulated sugar. In both taste and consistency, this bread reminds me of scones. The crust is both crunchy and crumbly, with a satisfying chew. The interior was cakey and moist, rich with a light sweetness and chewy little nuggets of raisin. This cake was the perfect finish to the corned beef stew cooked by our St. Patrick's Day hostess, and was wonderful on its own, smeared with butter, or paired with the traditional sharp cheddar cheese.

In my research for this recipe, I found that soda bread is traditionally baked in a cast-iron skillet so that the top and bottom get crunchy and brown evenly while the middle stays cakey. I don't have a cast iron skillet (yet--I know, I know, it's sin that I don't have one yet), but I thought I could replicate the effect in my dutch oven. This recipe makes two loaves, so I baked one in the dutch oven and one on a regular baking sheet. (In the picture of the two loaves above, the one on the left was done in the dutch oven.)

Both loaves rose about the same amount, but the dutch oven loaf had a rounder shape and more even surface; where the loaf backed on the sheet was craggier and less uniform in shape. Additionally, the loaf baked in the dutch oven did indeed have a more even brown color and crunchier crust while the inside was noticeably more moist. The verdict? If you have a dutch oven or cast-iron skillet, I definitely recommend baking the loaf in it--just add about fifteen minutes to the baking time and remove the lid in the last five minutes. However, if you don't have a dutch oven, never fear--your bread will disappear just as fast.

Sweet Irish Soda Bread

Makes 2 loaves

4 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon nutmeg (1 1/4 tsp if using freshly ground)
4 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 1/2 cups thick buttermilk
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups raisins (purple or golden)

Set oven to 375-degrees. If using a dutch oven or skillet, put it into the oven to warm as the oven heats.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and nutmeg. Add the butter and use the tips of your fingers or a pastry cutter to work the butter into the flour until it reduces to pea-sized bits. Add the raisins and toss to coat with flour (this helps the raisins stay suspended in the batter).

In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, th egg yolks, and the vanilla. Create a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the liquids. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until all the ingredients are combined and the dough easily comes together into a ball. It will be very moist and shaggy.

Divide the dough in half and form each half into a ball. Use a sharp paring knife to slash a cross into the top of each loaf about 1/2 inch deep, a traditional feature of soda bread that also allows the dough to expand while baking without cracking the surface. Sprinkle each loaf with a few pinches of granulated sugar.

If using a dutch oven or skillet, drop the dough (cross-side up) into the bowl and cover. If using a baking sheet, cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and set the dough in the middle. Bake loaves for 40 minutes or so until the surface is evenly golden, the center is set, and a cake tester (or toothpick) inserted into the center comes out clean. (Loaves baked in a dutch oven may need another 15 minutes to bake. Leave the oven uncovered for the last 5-10 minutes of baking.)

Allow the loaves to rest at least 1/2 hour before serving.

Weight Watcher's Points: Each loaf is about 34.5 points total. If you slice it into 12 wedges, each wedge is about 3 points a piece.

Food: Muffin Bake-Off!

It's a cold and dreary Saturday afternoon here in Beantown, USA--about time given all the warm weather we've been having here this winter. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to finally collect all my little recipe notes and taste-testing thoughts on my Lemon Anise Spice muffins and put everything together in proper recipe formation. Plus the deadline for the recipe contest I want to enter this into is Wednesday, but whatev.

I was hosting a Craft-ernoon at my house a while back and wanted to serve all my crafty little friends some muffins that were both familiar and a bit more...dramatic. Looking through my cupboards, cardamom immediately jumped out at me as a good pairing with the creamy flavor in basic muffins. Think chai tea with milk while lounging sumptuously on a red velvet sofa, and spicy after-dinner toddies just before you snuggle into bed. The anise was really added as an afterthought. I tasted the batter and decided it needed that something "extra," and was surprised at how the anise ended up stealing the show. A few tablespoons of lemon brought all the ingredients together (Lemon goes with poppy seeds and anise is about the same size as poppy seeds, right?).

The resulting flavor is exactly what I was going for--familiar ingredients put together in an unfamiliar combination resulting in something new. The primary flavors are lemon and anise, but that little touch of cardamom rounds out the edge and highlights the best qualities of both the lemon and the anise. The basic muffin recipe I use for this results in a denser muffin than you might be used to seeing. This makes it a perfect brunch item since the cakey fluffiness is a happy medium that both muffin and scone lovers can enjoy. Note: Other citruses would probably work equally well here--tangerine, orange, Meyer lemon...

Lemon Anise Spice Muffins
with thanks to Orangette for the basic muffin recipe HERE

Ingredients:
3 c. flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
scant 1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cardamom
2 Tbsp anise seed
3/4c + 1 Tbsp milk
2 Tbsp buttermilk
4 oz unsalted butter (at room temperature)
3/4 c + 1 Tbsp sugar
2 large eggs (warmed to room temperature)
2 Tbsp lemon zest (about the zest of 2 medium lemons)

Note: It's important for the butter and eggs to be at room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with rack on the middle position. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with muffin liners (or spray with non-stick coating).

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cardamom, and anise. In a separate measuring cup, combine the milk and butter milk and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand-mixer or using an electric hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add the lemon zest to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until just combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition until just combined and no trace of yolk is visible.

With the mixer on low, pour in one-third of the milk mixture and then one-third of the dry ingredients. Continue to alternate between the milk and dry ingredients until all ingredients are incorporated. Your dough should look pale yellow and shaggy.

Divide the batter between the twelve cups and bake until the muffins are firm to the touch and a cake-tester inserted into the center muffin comes out clean--about 25-30 minutes.

The muffins are wonderful on their own, but you can also brush the tops with melted butter and press them into confectioner's sugar for an added treat.

WeightWatchers: Using 1% milk, 12 muffins is 5.5 points per muffin. These make pretty big muffins though, so you can easily make 24 muffins out of the same recipe and still have a healthy muffin to munch on. If you make 24 muffins, each muffin is about 2.75 points each.

Food: Holiday Festivus with Emma and the Engineer

On Christmas Eve at the abode of Emma n' the Engineer and with many friends in attendance, a festivus was had and, yay verily yay, it was good. This was the first Big Production meal I have ever prepared, and I was a bit nervous. We're talking appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, vegetarian dishes, drinks, and (of course) dessert. With the day itself looming on the horizon, I suddenly realized that pulling this whole thing off was going to require some Planning and Preparation. My list-making, organization-obsessed, multi-tasking little heart was filled with glee. Keep in mind that this is the same little heart that spent whole afternoons as a child organizing and then reorganizing the desk in her room, and who looked forward to buying school supplies every Fall nearly as much as she looked forward to Christmas.

My good friend R. and I had a grand time coming up with the menu. After much trolling of the Internet and a smattering of ideas thrown back and forth, we decided on a Cross-Atlantic Portuguese-Brazilian Dinner. Here was our final menu (click on the name of the dish to link to the recipe):

DRINKS:

• Caipirinha
• Quentao
• A Portuguese or Brazilian Wine
  

STARTER/SIDES:

• Green Beans with Coriander and Garlic
• Empanadas-- vegetarian (with hearts of palm)--I came up with my own recipe for this, loosely based on THIS recipe and also THIS one, and THIS dough recipe. I'll do a separate post about the empanadas cuz they were quite an...adventure to make, shall we say.
  
• Broa (Portuguese Cornmeal Farm Bread)

MAIN:

• Portuguese Potato Dumpling Soup (with Kale)-- vegetarian
• Portuguese Style Poached Chicken (with Lime, Chili, and other South o' the Border Seasonings)--loosely based on THIS recipe.
  

DESSERTS:

• Custard Cups

Like a dufus, I had a few too many caipirinha's and "forgot" to take picture of a lot of the dishes, but here's the run down of how the food part of the night went down and a few pictures of the pictures I remembered to take.

Drinks: The caipirinhas were FIERCE. Wowzas, did they knock your socks off. It wasn't until R. was actually preparing them that we fully realized that the drink is essentially all cachaca, a Brazilian brandy made from sugar cane, with a little sugar and lime thrown in there to take the edge off. Barely. We ended up adding a good dose of Fresca (classy!) to the drinks to make them a bit more drinkable. Even so, we all agreed that caipirinhas brought back ever-so-fond memories of Spring Break beach parties.

We had the quentaos after dinner as we reclined around the living room in various states of comatose. This is a drink that I would definitely have again--the spices are very similar to mulled wine (red wine is actually an ingredient in some variations) with some of that lovely cachaca. Also like mulled wine, it's served warm and would be quite nice for a cozy winter afternoon on the couch. I imagine a mug of this would also be an excellent antidote to insomnia, or at the very least you wouldn't mind being awake at 2:00 in the morning as much after you've had a few healthy gulps.

Ironically, we ended up drinking a South African wine with dinner--Mountain River 2003 Pinotage/Shiraz, a whooping $7.99 at Trader Joe's. While I was looking for Portuguese wines, I overheard another customer asking the wine steward for recommendations for a dinner of enchiladas and other South American dishes. The wine steward recommended this wine with such a glowing review that I had to try it. The wine was a deep red and very full-bodied. It had a deep, mellow flavor with just a touch of spice that really did pair well with all the flavors in the meal, but also didn't overshadow the food. I did find one bottle of a Portuguese wine, but we didn't end up opening it at the party--did I mention that the capirinhas were FIERCE?

Starters/Sides: The green beans were nothing super special. Blanched green beans drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with garlic and coriander. The recipe says to serve these cold or room temperature after having marinated for a day, but I didn't get my act together in time and also for some reason the idea of cold green beans with this particular meal didn't feel right to me, so I served them warm. (By the way, coriander was the surprise spice of the meal for me. I've never really cooked with coriander, but really liked it in the empanadas and the soup.)

The empanadas were a big hit. I'll do a separate post on them in another day or so and describe the whole preparation process. They're essentially little pasties or turnovers--a savory filling in a pie crust. I made them the week before the party, froze them, and then baked them right before dinner. The picture here is of an empanada right before I baked them. I really wish I'd remembered to take a picture after they came out of the oven--they were all crisp and golden, the kind of food that makes your mouth water just looking at them. The crust turned out well--nice and flaky, buttery and crisp. For the filling, I used onion, plum tomatoes, hearts of palm, corn, tomato paste, and spices (cayenne, chili powder, cumin, coriander, salt). The prep work is a lot of trouble, but it was really worth it. I think my guests and I would have been happy with just a plateful of these little empanadas!

The broa was kind of a disappointment for me, I have to admit. It's a cornmeal bread, so I knew it would be pretty dense and probably wouldn't rise like a regular wheat loaf, but I imagined the bread to be moist, crumbly, and springy like southern-style cornbread. Instead the loaf was more like a hockey puck--dry and dense. Sliced thin and spread with butter, the bread was decent, but I was still let down. I'm not sure if I didn't something wrong or if this is just the way the bread was supposed to be. I did a lot of searching on the Internet and found lots of recipes but few descriptions of how the final loaf was supposed to look, feel, and taste. From the pictures I found, I think the loaf is supposed to be rather flat (like mine turned out) but not quite as dense. More like a country hearth loaf than corn bread. I could probably figure out a better loaf if I had the urge, but I'm not a huge fan of cornmeal, so this will probably remain an unsolved baking mystery. By the way, I have an entire loaf and a half frozen in my freezer, so if you're still curious to try this bread despite my description, let me know and the loafs are yours!

Main: Poaching chicken is my new favorite thing. I do it in my slow cooker and it comes out perfect every time. (OK, it's come out perfectly all two times that I've done it.) The meat is moist, flavored throughout, and literally falls off the bone. For this chicken, I prepared a marinade using THIS recipe from the Boston restaurant Chez Henri, only substituting 1 tablespoon of chili powder, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of garam masala, and 1/4 tsp of cayenne in place of the achiote powder. (Achiote powder is a kind of sweet South American spice similar to chili powder--I couldn't find it in bulk at our co-op and didn't want to cough up the dough to buy a whole jar at the grocery store.) Instead of roasting the chicken as in the recipe, I poached it in the slow cooker with about a half cup of chicken broth, a few shots of soy sauce, lime juice, several whole quarters of limes, and a head of garlic with the cloves separated. Mmm, mmm, good. (P.S. I'm also planning another post on poaching whole chickens, but let me know if you want more detailed instructions before then.)

The only error in my otherwise well-timed meal prep was the time I allotted for preparing the potato dumplings for the potato dumpling soup. I plum forgot how gosh-darn long it takes for large potatoes to cook through when you're boiling them. (The thirty minutes suggested in the recipe was NOT enough for my potatoes, by the by. I probably would have been better boiling them for 45 minutes or so.) By this point in the evening, our friends were starting to arrive and I was feeling a bit frazzled. I thought I could make do with slightly undercooked potatoes, but it turns out that undercooked potatoes don't mash very well or even take very kindly to being mashed at all. Ah, well. So we ended up having Portuguese Half-Pureed, Half-Chunky Potato Soup instead. And it was delicious. The broth was light, pleasantly starchy, and well-flavored with garlic, salt, and coriander. I'm used to loading my soups up with all the veggies in my fridge, so I had to really exercise restraint on this one. I stuck with my recipe and only used onions, green onions, and kale...oh, and the potatoes, of course. I've never cooked with kale before and was at first a bit intimidated by the mounds of leafy greenness taking up half my counter space. Like spinach, I stripped the leaves from the woody stalks, rolled them lengthwise a handful at a time into a long cigar-shape, and cut cross sections about an inch thick. This gives you ribbons of kale about the length of your hand and as wide as a finger. It looks like a LOT of leafy greenness, but once you submerge it in the broth, the greens wilt down into a more reasonably-sized state. I thought the kale was a bit rubbery, like seaweed, but this was not unpleasant. It was actually very satisfying to have something with a bit of chew in every bite. The bitterness of the kale also balanced well with the relative sweetness of the broth and the onions, and the whole soup was warm and filling. (In retrospect, I think I would have cut the kale into smaller, postage-stamp-sized pieces instead of the ribbons. Pieces this size would be less cumbersome when spooning the soup into your mouth.)

Dessert: And last but not least, the custard cups. These were so good that a lot of us burned our mouths rather than wait for them to cool completely. The puff pastry made a crisp and buttery cup for the custard. (FYI, I decided to leave-off making my own puff pastry for another dining adventure, so I got a little help from my friends at Pepperidge Farm for this one.) The custard was smooth and creamy, flavored with vanilla and a hint of lemon. This was my first time making custard, and I definitely recommend THIS recipe for anyone else out there looking for something new to serve. You can also caramelize the tops under the broiler or with a brulee torch for an added bit of elegance.

Since the Engineer and I were leaving for holidays in Minnesota the day after our party, our lovely friends reaped the reward of what leftovers there were. To everyone that came to the party, we were so happy to see you and spend time with you during the holidays. And to everyone else near and far, if you ever find yourself in Boston on Christmas Eve, feel free to stop by--we'll be here cooking up something fabulous!

Cooking: Pecan and Salt Caramel Cheesecake

I was willing to bring any dish to Thanksgiving dinner that my host requested, but I absolutely insisted on bringing this Pecan and Salt Caramel Cheesecake. I first saw this recipe a few months ago over at Chow.com (the recipe is HERE) and immediately knew I was going to have to make it. Luckily, there was very little resistance to adding another dessert to the menu--especially one with an ingredients list like this one.

Speaking of the ingredients, my only real worry with this recipe was that it would be a complete sugar overload. I easily envision the ingredients mingling together into one uniform 'sugar!!!' instead of retaining their individual flavors. And the verdict? It's a sweet dessert to be sure, but I was surprised and pleased to taste distinct layers to the sweetness and real depth of flavor. The sour of the cream cheese complimented the buttery caramel. The graham cracker was a nice balance to the sugar and vanilla. I think with a little more experimentation and refinement of the various steps, the caramel flavor could give the whole cake a roasted, smoky flavor that would really bring it all together.

My mom asked me how many Weight Watchers points each slice of this little doozy was and I just laughed at her. Honestly, folks, I didn't even bother to figure it out. This is just one of those occasions when you just need to relax and be a glut without guilt. Having said this, I do have a few ideas for making this cake a bit more waist-friendly (see below).

Some thoughts for improvements and future variations:

• My caramel ended up with little chunks of sugar suspended in it. They weren't rock hard, didn't pose a threat to any one's dental work, and we didn't even notice them once I added the pecans, but the perfectionist in me was disgruntled. My suspicion is that I didn't stir the butter and sugar as thoroughly as I should have (I was in a bit of a rush seeing as how the Engineer's mother was arriving in about ten minutes). I've done a bit of research on the properties of sugars and making caramel sauce since making this recipe and have decided that, as you might suspect, making caramel is a bit more tricky than this recipe would lead a gal to believe. I'm actually really intrigued by the whole process since it has to do with chemical reactions on the molecular level and all sorts of science-experiment type things. I'm planning to do some more research and experimentation, and will be sure to share my findings with y'all!

• Another caramel note: I was happy with the final flavor--it really did taste like caramel!--but I think it could have had more depth. As my pal Harold McGee says in his book On Food and Cooking, "The aroma of a simple caramelized sugar has several different notes, among them buttery and milky, fruity, flowery, sweet, rum-like, and roasted. As the reactions proceed, the taste of the mixture becomes less sweet as more of the original sugar is destroyed, with more pronounced acidity and eventually bitterness and an irritating, burning sensation." Thanks, Harold! Since my caramel could definitely be described as "buttery and milky," my suspicion is that I could have let the syrup boil for a little while longer to deepen the flavor before adding the butter and taking it off the heat.

• I love pecans, but I'm not sure they really added very much here. The Engineer suggested briefly dry-frying or roasting the pecans before adding them to the cake. This is something that is often suggested in other recipes I've come across in order to activate the oils in the nut and enhance the overall flavor. I also think that roasting the pecans would bring out similar flavors in the caramel.

• I also wondered about doing away with the pecans all together and instead sprinkling roughly crumbled graham crackers on the top. This would add a bit more crunch and bite in the mouth, would mirror the graham cracker crust (of course), and would also reduce the number of ingredients competing for precedence in your mouth. The taste of the cheesecake and caramel is complex enough, and unless the pecans are really enhancing the flavor in those components, I think they're just distracting. Again, I think graham crackers could compliment the flavors just as well if not better.

• I am curious to make a lower-fat version of this cheesecake. A recipe for New York Cheesecake in The Best Light Recipes by Cook's Illustrated suggests replacing the cream cheese with a combination of light cream cheese, drained cottage cheese, and drained low-fat yogurt. The recipe is described as definitely tasting different than regular cheesecake, but just as excellent on its own merit. I've tried several recipes from this book and have been well pleased with many of the recipes, which don't just rely on using the "Low Fat" version of a full-fat product. Worth a try anyways.

• It would also be fun to experiment with different flavors in the caramel. This could be done by either infusing the syrup while it's melting or by adding flavors to the final caramel as it's cooling. Cook's Illustrated has several mouth-watering suggestions: Orange-Espresso Caramel Sauce, Coconut Ginger Caramel Sauce, and Dark Rum Caramel Sauce, to name a few.

Some serving suggestions:

• I think that this recipe could translate really well into a finger-food, buffet-table item. My thought is to make the cheesecake as normal, but then cut out mini-cheesecakes (either in square or in circles using a biscuit cutter) that would be about an inch or so across--small enough to be eaten in one single bite. Then use a chopstick or other poking-device to dowel a little hole in the top of the cake. Fill the hole with caramel and top with one whole pecan or a fragment of graham cracker.

• Another serving option would be to make several mini-cakes in individually-portioned ramekins. This would be fun for a dinner party and would be a bit more elegant than cutting slices of cheesecake.

Ok, ok, enough jabbering. Here's the recipe itself:

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Pecan and Salt Caramel Cheesecake
Adapted from Chow.com

Crust:

1 1/4 c. graham cracker crumbs (5-6 graham cracker rectangles)
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter--at room temperature
3 tbsp granulated sugar

Cheesecake:

2 lbs (4 8-oz packages) cream cheese--at room temperature
1 c. granulated sugar
1 large egg yoke--at room temperature
3 whole eggs--at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract

Caramel Topping:

1 c. granulated sugar
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter--at room temperature
1/2 c. heavy cream--at room temperature
1 c. roughly chopped pecans
1 large pinch sea salt

To begin:

Place all ingredients (included refrigerated ingredients) on workspace. Allow refrigerated ingredients to come to room temperature. The butter should be soft and malleable. Eggs can also be placed in a bowl of hot water to bring them to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To make the crust:

To make graham cracker crumbs, break several squares of graham crackers into rough pieces in a bowl. Use the bottom of a cup or a pestle to grind the crackers into uniform-sized crumbs. This was one of the most satisfying parts of the process--I may start crumbling graham crackers for stress relief. Mix sugar into the crumbs. Mix in the butter with your hands, squeezing gobs of butter together with the crumbs with your fingers, until thoroughly combined. Press into the bottom of a 9- to 10-inch spring form pan. (If you don't have a spring form pan and want to make this cake in a regular pie dish, make sure to use a deep dish pan at least 2.5 inches deep. There's lots of toppings that go on this and the cheesecake with rise quite a bit in the oven!)

To make the cheesecake:

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or medium-sized bowl if using hand mixers), roughly combine sugar and cream cheese with a spoon. Once the sugar is adhered to the cream cheese, beat with a mixer until light and smooth--about the consistency of ganache frosting. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the egg is completely blended in (but be careful of over-mixing; the egg should just be barely blended so you can no longer see strings of the yellow yoke). Add vanilla extract and mix.

Pour mixture into the spring form pan on top of the graham cracker crust. Bake until a toothpick or a cake tester comes out clean and the center is set. The Chow.com instructions say this will take about 40 minutes, but mine ended up taking about 55 minutes, so just monitor your cake carefully. It will rise significantly in the pan and turn a deep golden color around the edges. It will also likely crack along the top--this is not so desirable in normal cheesecake, but fine for this one--just more nooks and crannies for the caramel!

Let the cheesecake cool completely on a cooling rack with the spring form still attached to the base. As it cools, the cheesecake will sink a bit into itself. Ultimately, the sides will be sloped slightly higher than the middle.

For the caramel:

Combine the sugar and 1 tablespoon of water in a small saucepan and stir until you make a thick sugar paste. Place over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. At this point, the Chow.com recipe says to allow the mixture to boil until it is amber in color. While this is true, I think it's a bit misleading about what you should expect.
In this first picture (left), the sugar/water paste has just come to a boil. It looks a bit shiny, but is still a grey color. This will boil furiously for a few minutes without changing color and the boiling will slowly begin to stop. In my first batch of caramel, I kinda panicked at this point and assumed that I had done something wrong since it wasn't changing colors. I stirred it a bit, and the mixture started to reform itself into granules of sugar (the middle image). I waited for a while longer and noticed that the sugar on the bottom was melting again, and the re-melted sugar was indeed turning an amber color. However, the sugar was really clumping together and looking more like rock candy than sauce, so I dumped it into a pan to cool (far right picture) and started over again.

My recommendation is DON'T STIR the mixture--a crust will form on the top and you'll see it pushing and dipping here and there as the sugar melts into a liquid again. Eventually (in about 5 minutes or so), the crust will melt as well and you can stir it a bit. I wasn't sure exactly what constituted an 'amber' color, so I erred on the side of caution and called it good when the sugar was about the color of browned butter.

Add the butter to the pan, and be careful because the mixture will pop and bubble and generally behave like a spoiled brat of a sauce. Stir until the butter is completely combined with the sugar. Remove from heat and add the cream in two batches. Again, the mixture will boil and bubble, toil and trouble, for a bit. Keep stirring until everything is well combined and the caramel is a milky tan color. As you stir and the sauce cools, it will thicken slightly into a more familiar caramel consistency. The milk and butter also stabilizes the caramel, so it won't harden into rock-candy and will stay a thick syrup.

When the caramel has cooled to room temperature (you should be able to dip your finger in for a taste test), pour it over the cheese cake. Sprinkle a few pinches of sea salt over the top and then sprinkle on the pecans.

Once the bottom of the pan is cool enough that you can touch it with your bare hands, cover and let the entire cake cool in the fridge. The longer it sits, the more the caramel will absorb into the nooks and crannies of the cheesecake. If you like this effect, let it sit for a few hours (for instance, while you're eating turkey n' stuffing). If you like your cake pristine and the layers separated, serve it a bit sooner.