Gourmet Bloggers Meet in Three-Dimensional Space! And Have a Tapenade Smackdown!

You know, there are hobbyists and then, there are hobbyists. Most people who have a passion about something--knitting, cars, birdwatching, whatever--have a group out there somewhere of friends who are similarly obsessed.

But this Gourmet cook-through blog project is pretty darn specialized, folks. Four. There are four of us embarked upon this nutty voyage. And when there are only four you get excited about the chance to meet one of your fellow voyagers. Excited enough to drive an hour and a half, food processor tucked under your arm, to participate in a lunchtime this-is-my-hobby-and-here's-a-fellow-hobbyist presentation + Ultimate Tapenade Smackdown!

My new three-dimensional friend? Adam, from Gourmet, all the way!



Adam works in Manchester, NH--not far from his Massachusetts digs (so he goes against the rush hour traffic--such a smart fellow) and let me just pause right here to show you a picture (from 10 floors up) of Elm St., which is the main downtown street in Manchester.



Manchester is a happening little city! Restaurants thick on the ground--it kind of has a university town vibe. I definitely plan on visiting again to do some serious exploring. And writers, here's a little anecdote from which you can take heart--I went to stop at a Barnes & Noble on the way out of town and I couldn't find a parking space. Once I got inside, the place was packed--this was a Friday, mid-afternoon--and it's not because there was a Starbucks inside either. They were browsing the shelves. Maybe it's because everybody's unemployed, I don't know, but I was happy to see the action.

But getting back to our lunchtime adventure, check this out!



Adam put together a powerpoint presentation!

It was great--he defined "blogging", then "cook-through blogging"...talked about the first cookthrough blogger (of Julie/Julia fame) and also quite a bit about Carol of Alinea at Home fame, who is making things that I'm pretty sure I couldn't get my bookgroup to eat no matter how much they love me.

And then...the tapenade. Adam picked out two tapenade recipes because we were in a conference room (no stove, no nothing...except a few outlets) and with the food processors we could whiz those suckers up with little to no fuss.

Now, I say little or no fuss, but I must pause to mention my own personal smackdown with my food processor, which is to say I COULD NOT GET the lid off and spent at least a few minutes grunting (and cursing?) while I tried. The food processor won. Well, actually Adam won because HE got it off, while gracefully transitioning me from shooting dagger-like looks of hatred at my aging food processor to telling the amused (I hope) crowd what my favorite recipe so far is (Grapefruit and Coconut Angel Pie).

Here is a picture of the graceful Adam preparing the Tapenade:



This guy could be in a test kitchen show on tv. Seriously. Unflappable. By the way, the first recipe used black olives, which were whizzed up with garlic cloves, capers, and olive oil. Our observation about this one is that it seemed a little loose in the oil department--if you make this yourself add the oil slowly and stop when it looks right to you.

The second one, Green Olive and Almond Tapenade, was just as simple--green olives, parsley, toasted almonds, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Here's a picture of the two:



The assembled lunch-goers preferred the Green Olive and Almond Tapenade, but I have to say I was equally impressed with both. The capers add an interesting, earthy flavor to the black tapenade, and the almonds do the same for the green olive version. I'd make both again.

The other thing I'd do again? Cook with Adam! He's SO NICE, and he gave me a bottle of Madagascar Vanilla Extract for coming up, and when I asked him if he'd ever consider a career in cooking he mentioned the idea of a cookbook bookstore with a test kitchen in the back where you could hold cooking classes. Doesn't that seem like a brilliant idea? I think so too. I can't wait to meet his family and we'll do something fun like whip up some Gourmet baby food. :-)

(EDIT: stop the presses, there's ANOTHER Gourmet blogger--Annie Gustely of Bon Appetit to you too! Why is her blog named after Bon Appetit? Because she's decided to cook through BOTH cookbooks, to which all I can say is good luck, sistah--in three years I've only done 572 (Adam, I finally counted!) so you'll be cooking on your deathbed, most likely. But we'll be cheering you on. :-)

Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing & Lentils and Curried Rice with Friend Onions

These tough economic times have had me taking a closer look at what's hanging around in my pantry. I have the standard stuff--cornmeal, lentils, tuna fish--but I also have a preponderance of Japanese ingredients, thanks to a Yankee Swap present I received a few years back. Soba noodles, udon noodles, nori, bonito flakes, and a Japanese cookbook that I flip through from time to time.

A perfect opportunity to explore a cuisine that I enjoy eating but don't have that much experience cooking--and Gourmet helpfully provides a recipe that involves one of my pantry ingredients: Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing.

I don't think I've ever eaten udon noodles before--the notes describe them as soft and slightly chewy and that's about right--they are incredibly satisfying to eat. This recipe has you combine three things--the boiled, cooled noodles, marinated, grilled chicken breast, and a cilantro/parsley vinaigrette. It's actually pretty straightforward--the only issue I really had with it is that the recipe needs a little clarification.

For example, it has you combining stock, cilantro springs, parsley etc in a blender, to puree until smooth. This is what it looked like after pureeing:



which resembles something you might find in an unkempt aquarium. This is easy to fix--don't say "cilantro sprigs", say "chopped cilantro".

The other moment of hesitation for me was what to do with the vinaigrette (there was a lot of it). Are the noodles supposed to sit in the vinaigrette like soup? Or are they supposed to be just lightly coated and then drain the vinaigrette off? I ended up letting the leftovers hang out in the same bowl as the vinaigrette, which ended up being a mistake--the noodles break down and lose that lovely chewy consistency by the next day.



These small niggly things aside, I would make this dish again in a minute, especially for a fun summer dinner. The flavors are bright, and it's easy to put together.


**********************************************************************************


Lentils were another thing I had floating around in my pantry, and it was pretty easy to find a recipe would put them to good use. Lentils and Curried Rice with Fried Onions is based on an Indian dish called khichri (explain the notes) and the fried onions are not what you're thinking of--no batter, just simple sliced onions fried in vegetable oil until they're brown and crispy.

This is another recipe that has you making components separately and combining them to delicious effect. The lentils are boiled and drained, the onions are fried and salted, and the rice is cooked with lots a curry powder and a little bit of cayenne.

The lentils and the rice are tossed together with some chopped parsley, and onions top off the show. I should say, the onions that didn't go into my mouth topped off the show--it is very hard to resist crispy salted things hanging about on the counter.



This makes a lot and we had great leftovers for days. It's worth noting that the onions don't retain their lovely crispy nature in the refrigerator but that's ok. If you're struggling with mid-winter food blahs this might be just the thing to spice up your dinner plate.

**********************************************************************************

Gluten-Free recipe in this post: Lentils and Curried Rice with Fried Onions

Melissa Feeds the World Part IV: Her Bookgroup & Exciting Cook-Through Blogger News!!

Exciting News first! Folks who follow the Gourmet cook-through blogs may have noticed that two of us live pretty close to each other here in Massachusetts: Adam from Gourmet All The Way is just down the road in Methuen.



Well, I recently received an email from Adam, inviting me to be his guest at a luncheon demonstration where he works as an attorney. Wait, a roomful of attorneys? Does this mean I could get sued if they don’t like the food? Ha ha, just kidding. Kind of.

We’ll talk about cook-through blogging, and whip up some tasty food that doesn’t require oodles of time and equipment (Adam has picked two tapenade recipes) but best of all we’ll get to meet each other in Three Dimensions. I had a blast meeting Teena from The Gourmet Project last summer, and I look forward to a good time here as well.

Watch this space for a full report!



*************************************************************************************



On to my bookgroup, which if you’re a regular reader you know that means I’m talking about DESSERT.

For the past few months I’ve been trying out various puddings on my bookgroup, and January’s group was no exception. For the discussion of Suite Francaise, I chose Toasted Bread and Butter Pudding. Part of my reasoning is that I can’t get anybody else in my life to eat bread pudding, but the other part is that it calls for challah, which was connected to the subject matter of our book.

I also remembered that Adam had made this recipe, and liked how it got crispy on top but was pudding-y on the bottom.

Now, this recipe says that you can use challah or firm white sandwich bread. Challah is not typically found for sale around here except during Jewish holidays so the EASY thing for me to do would be to use white bread, but what would be the fun of that?

The Gourmet Cookbook actually has a great recipe for challah, and so I made challah. I love making challah. It’s so satisfying.



If you are on the fence about bread pudding because you don’t like the slimy texture, this might be the recipe for you to try. The egg mixture doesn’t fully engulf the bread, so part of it bakes on top, and it does get nice and crispy, as Adam noted.

But unfortunately I had to cover and transport the pudding, so the crispy bread on top got steamed…by the time we were ready to serve it I actually thought it was sort of rubbery and it seemed more like French toast than bread pudding.

But the caramel sauce saved the day! That’s the great thing about sauces—they hide a multitude of errors. And my book group is a loving and appreciative audience, and that’s why I keep making desserts for them.

This is not my pudding, but it's made from the same recipe...




For February’s group, I made Coffee Almond Ice Cream Cake with Dark Chocolate Sauce.

I don’t know why I’m intimidated by this chapter--Frozen Desserts and Sweet Sauces. Maybe part of it is because I still don’t have an ice cream maker that is easy to use. Or maybe it’s because many, if not most of these recipes are incredibly complex—requiring multiple components and a lot of time. You think I’m kidding? Check out Watermelon Sorbet with Chocolate Seeds—a trompe l’oeil that has you filling a frozen watermelon shell with watermelon sorbet and chocolate “seeds”. It uses the phrase “working quickly” at least twice, which makes me nervous just reading it.

But I was determined to try something other than pudding this month, and so I browsed around here trying to find something that would feed a lot of people (three new members—yay!) and wouldn’t take three days to make.

Enter Coffee Almond Ice Cream Cake, which very nicely calls for store-bought coffee ice cream. All you have to do, really, is layer it in a springform pan.

I expanded the recipe by half to fit a larger springform—a 10 inch, and then I got busy.

First a layer of chocolate cookie crumbs mixed with melted butter, which you freeze for a while, then the softened coffee ice cream.

Then you spread whipped heavy cream that’s been folded with crushed almond cookies, and sprinkle the whole thing with toasted almonds.

Done. Well, you have to freeze it for four hours, but then you’re done.

And—another recipe that calls for sauce!! This one called for Dark Chocolate Sauce, and mmmmmmmm, can there possibly be anything better? No, I don’t think so.



I would like to personally recognize Don Rittenburg, who artfully sauced these as they were going out of the kitchen. It was important to him to get it right, and he did.

Melissa Feeds the World Part III: Her Elders

Well technically, almost everybody I've mentioned here recently is older than I am, because I'm celebrating my fifth annual 39th birthday soon and my peers are just getting older and older while I remain as fresh as a daisy.

No, you don't buy that? Damn.

OK, well here when I say my elders I'm thinking specifically of the two lovely ladies I cook for in my two lovely jobs, plus one slightly younger than them but still far older than me gentleman who has sadly since passed away from cancer.

And the reason I'm putting them together in one post is because older people sometimes have special eating needs that can make cooking for them challenging.

Need #1: soft food

One of my lovely ladies--let's call her Mrs. H.--is keen on veggies but they have to be soft. One of her favorite cooking tricks for green beans and broccoli (and asparagus and brussel sprouts) is to have me boil them in water with 1 tsp of baking soda for two minutes, then boiling salted water for 6-8 minutes. They keep their bright green color yet are amazingly soft (and salty). Sort of (well exactly) like...canned beans!

So in expanding on this base of just-like-canned veggies, I turned to The Gourmet Cookbook to see what they could offer us, and came up with Maple Squash Puree, and Asparagus with Tarragon Sherry Vinaigrette, along with a few others that I've already talked about here.

(Let me just digress here to say that I really appreciate the veggie section of this cookbook. SO MANY people see vegetables as an afterthought, something to make that dinner plate look healthy, and don't know how to honor them in all their earth-bound glory. This chapter is eye-opening, even for somebody who was a vegetarian for 12 years. Will I ever find purslane, though? Stay tuned.)

Maple Squash Puree is easy-peasy. Boil squash, and puree with butter and maple syrup. That's it. What's not to like?



Asparagus with Tarragon Sherry Vinaigrette is slightly more complicated because it involves shocking the asparagus, which does not mean exposing their virgin ears to Christian Bale's rant on YouTube, it means stopping the cooking by plunging them into a bowl of ice water.

(Oh, I caught your attention with Christian Bale, but you don't want to listen to three minutes and fifty-two seconds of swearing? Try the dance mix instead.)

But getting back to asparagus--this gets topped with a simple shallot/mustard/tarragon vinaigrette, which I make even simpler by putting everything in a glass measuring cup and blending with a hand mixer. Fast and easier on those forearm muscles.

Mrs. H. LOVES this, hot or cold. The picture below shows some grated egg on top, which I don't bother with. What's the deal with cold asparagus and hard-boiled egg? Thanks to Romulo Yanes for making such a pretty photo:




Need #2: fat-free food

If you've ever cooked for or worked with older folks (or maybe you are one) you'll know that sometimes the world revolves around the digestive tract. OK, not sometimes. It just does. Medications don't help--some of them make you constipated, some of them give you the trots--it's a tricky balancing act that seems to need adjusting constantly.

So at one of my lovely jobs, we are often asked to make food that is intended to have a certain, shall we say, digestive effect. We never know exactly what it is--more roughage or less, dairy ok or not, bring on the butter or strictly fat-free.

Fat-free dinners that are also interesting pose a particular challenge, and it's one that I solved on one occasion with Fish en Papillote with Tomatoes and Olives.

Food in packets isn't a new concept--I seem to recall there was a little flurry of popularity with this technique in the eighties, and I'm sure it has a long pedigree with other things besides parchment paper.

The idea is you put the fish in the middle of parchment paper and pile on the goodies--in this case sliced tomatoes, olives, orange zest and fresh herbs--wrap them up and bake for ten minutes or so in a hot oven (500). This isn't a picture of my fish but it will give you the idea:



Other cook-through bloggers might be saying, hey, what about the butter? Well, it's true there's some butter in this recipe but I just left it out. That's what's nice about this particular recipe--you don't need it.

It's a great way to cook fish--I should remember it more often. If you're on a diet (or trying to recover from, ummm, digestive troubles), check it out.


Need #3: something soothing for the chemo patient

Well, this is a hard one to write about, because this particular person meant a lot to me and others who work at the craft of writing. Forgive me for erring on the side of discretion--I won't mention his name, but please know that it was an honor to give something back, if only briefly.

And let's have a little discussion about cancer, and chemo--something I'm learning more and more about from the cooking end of things. Chemo makes you hate food. It makes all food taste like sh*t, and you throw up, and lose a lot of weight. So oddly, one of the things that cancer patients need is MORE flavor (you would think spices would be upsetting) but in super small quantities. And it needs to be caloric.

Bringing my guaranteed weight-gaining High Calorie, High Nutrient Shake was easy, and helped with a weight gain of eight pounds--yay!

But what else? What flavor was he craving?

Lemon, he said. He loved lemon sorbet, but it wasn't that caloric.

Mister, I can make ANYTHING high calorie, and off I went to do my research.

I looked over the recipe for Lemon Parfait in The Gourmet Cookbook. Where lemon sorbet has just sugar, this puppy has both eggs AND heavy cream. Bingo.

Kevin, thanks for letting me steal your photo. I'm bad today.



He loved it, but even the best food can't stop death when it's marching in your direction.

RIP

Melissa Feeds the World , Continuing with Her Writing Group

There are two reasons I love my writing group:

1. They are great writers and readers.

2. They enthusiastically eat whatever I put in front of them.

I LOVE people like that. Give me an appreciative and adventuresome audience any day. (Oh, picky eaters don't be sad. I love you too. You know who you are.)

So when it was my turn to host I thought a nice thing to make for our wintry lunchtime meeting would be Yellow Split Pea Soup, and being the organized lass I am, I even made it the day before so I could share it with my son and husband.



What's not to love about split pea soup? The folks on Epicurious sure do--this recipe is rated by 30 people with a 4 out of 4 fork rating...all would make it again. And I will too--it's seriously yummy and I made it even more so by putting in all three of the ham hocks that were in my styrofoam meat tray from Stop n Shop instead of only one.

Now, I just know my writing group gals are reading this, and scratching their heads and saying I KNOW we didn't eat split pea soup, yellow or otherwise. What gives?

What gives is that while I was heating it up for dinner, with Don and O'Malley, I left the burner on, and scorched the bottom (this is the problem with thick, puree-type soups) and what I could rescue was not enough to feed my lovely guests.

Plan B!!

I was determined to have soup. And I didn't have loads of time, considering I had to shop and produce said soup between dropping my son off at school and welcoming my group at 11:30.

Chicken Soup with Almond Matzo Balls seemed to be easy enough, and pretty fun since a) I've never had matzo ball soup and b) one of our group is a gal from Vermont who converted when she married a Jew from Long Island.

The basic idea here is to spice up what seems to be a bland product with coarsely chopped almonds, fresh dill, and cinnamon. Sounds weird, but they taste great, and Martha was so impressed that she took some home in a baggie to give to her Dan. She was sure they wouldn't fly with his mother, but maybe at home, during Passover?

I streamlined the recipe slightly by cooking the matzo balls in the chicken stock instead of cooking them in water and then putting them in the stock. I don't think I screwed anything up by doing that, and it made a lot more sense to me.

Try it. You will like it too.



And since I had had such a success with the chicory salad from the dinner party with my parents, I thought I'd go wild and try another salad recipe, and one that I've had my eye on since the beginning: Bibb Lettuce with Butter Dressing.

All you have to do is wave the word "butter" around in front of me to get my attention. I love that stuff, though it seems like a counter-intuitive choice for salad dressing. The trick here is to have your lettuce at room temp--anything cooler will make the butter clump up unpleasantly.

But there was no clumping in this household. The way you make this is wonderfully simple--melt butter and add one halved clove of garlic...saute until both garlic and butter are golden brown. Add a little lemon juice and some salt, pour it over the lettuce, and toss to coat.

Easy, and delightful. Hooray for butter! I didn't take a picture of the salad, but here's a picture of a 800 lb. butter sculpture for you to enjoy.



Butter. Is there anything it can't do?

Melissa Feeds the World, Starting with Her Parents

Usually, I sponge off my parents when it comes to dinner, one of the many advantages of living 15 minutes down the road from them. I'm only waiting for the day when they get demented enough that I can extract pocket money from them, but by that point I'll probably be helping them wipe the drool off their chin and they won't have any to give because it will all be sucked into some giant pool of nursing home fees. (sigh) So much for my big plans.

But every once in a while I can lure them out of their cozy home to our cozy (but second floor) home with the promise of a nice, gourmet dinner, and during this most recent dinner I made two stunningly delightful recipes from The Gourmet Cookbook.

It's possible that I was so thrilled with the first because I thought it would suck. And here's why:

I hate chicory.




So when Don came home with a head of chicory ("I was just craving it!" he said. Crazeeeee.) I grumpily looked it up and found a little note on it (strip the leaves, it says, the stems are the bitter part) and one lonely recipe for Chicory Salad with Oranges and Red Onions.

Even while I was making it, and tasting the stripped chicory leaves, I thought it would be way too bitter. Blech!!

But the combination of parboiled, vinegared red onions and sweet navel oranges did something magical to the chicory leaves, and this salad was the perfect counterpart to marinated steak tips and Creamy Parmesan Polenta.

Not bitter. Not at all. Refreshing and seriously yummy.

Hooray!

And I took advantage of this dinner party to make a rare dessert for me--souffles.

Because of the split-second nature of their debut, souffles just never work out for my cooking jobs. And nothing is sadder than saying, oh, this looked great about 20 minutes ago, when I THOUGHT you'd be done eating dinner, but now it's just a wrinkly, deflated chocolate balloon....

No sir, not for me. I live for external validation in case you haven't figured that out yet and so I need an audience under my control for souffles.

Enter Coffee Souffles with Chocolate Sauce.

It's hard to have an issue with a recipe like this, but have an issue I did, if you can call too much of a good thing an issue--this recipe serves far more than 4. Here I was, with my four little ramekins filled and a heck of a lot more souffle to go...



I finally settled for 6 small ramekins and one big one:



And did I ever mention I really like chocolate?




MMMMARRBLURRGGGGAAHHHHHHHHHHsighhhh

That's me eating the souffle.




Mm mmm good!

Rush Limbaugh, White Trash Cake, and Me

Friends, you know how dedicated I am to gourmet cooking, and The Gourmet Cookbook in particular.

So it was with some bemusement that I regarded my Sitemeter statistics last week, which were telling me that the most popular page on my blog was not my home page, but suddenly the post entitled "Cappuccino Brownies and White Trash Cake".

???????

Not only that, but my daily hits went from oh, about 75/day to over 2500 on Monday, 1/12.

At first I thought I was getting a lot of action on my open letter to Ruth Reichl--perhaps Gourmet staffers were passing it around and clearing out some desk space for me?

And then...my cell phone rang. It was not Ms. Reichl, it was a lovely food columnist from the West Coast named Lisa Messinger who SOLVED THE MYSTERY.

And here it is:

You may have heard of a radio talk show host named Rush Limbaugh?



I thought you may have.

Anyway, apparently he celebrated his birthday last week, and his staff made him a "White Trash Cake". 2500 people googled that term and found my post, which describes a family birthday cake my mother made for us kids while we were growing up.

Anyway, Ms. Messinger and I had a nice long talk, and then she called my mom, and here's the column she wrote about it. And, today is Lisa's birthday! Happy Birthday Lisa!!! I want to know what flavors you picked. :-)

It is ironic that this blog, which is slavishly devoted to gourmet cooking, gets mucho attention for a cake that relies heavily on Jell-O products and Cool Whip, but allow me to make the point that I made in my original post, which is that this cake borrows classic French baking techniques to make a cake that is really moist and yummy. If you HATE the dry Betty Crocker-type cake layers with super sweet frosting, then either hit a French bakery for some nice tortes layered with custard and brushed with flavored syrup, or make your own from the Gourmet Cookbook, OR for a home-grown in the USA interpretation, try White Trash Cake.

So, Rush--that birthday cake of yours was inspired by the French. What do you think of that? ;-)

Happy Birthday.

EDIT 3.11.12

Rush Limbaugh has been much in the news lately, so I just want to clarify where I stand on him. When I originally wrote this post I didn't know much about Rush Limbaugh, except that he was a particularly vitriolic radio host who seemed to hate almost everybody. I've never listened to him and probably never will. I dislike pundits of all stripes and as a progressive democrat would probably not be able to stand more than 5 seconds of his nonsense. Nevertheless:

1. Freedom of Speech means for everybody, not just people you agree with.
2. The more polarizing somebody is, the more people clarify what their values and beliefs are in reaction.

You can see that now with the backlash against the GOP's current war on women (and there really is no other way to describe this evangelically-driven legislative movement). Women all over America of all political persuasions are recoiling from this political platform. Who brought it to a head? Rush Limbaugh, with his on-air comments about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke. It's a weird kind of favor he's doing us, but there it is.

Also--I have to believe there's more to this guy than the on-air persona. Come on, he has staffers who thought it would be hysterically funny to make him a White Trash Cake for his birthday. Okay, he's paying them (good point) but he must at least have a sense of humor and that counts for something.

Six Cookies

Oh, you think I've been languishing, do you? Waiting by the phone for Ms. Reichl to call? Listlessly dusting my cookbook collection?

That's what cell phones are for. You don't have to sit by them. And I haven't been languishing, I've been cooking my butt off. Or baking, I should say, because people, I am almost done with the Cookies, Bars and Confections chapter.

Can you believe it? I can't.

It's not like I went crazy for some bake sale--we were so low on cookies at work post-Christmas that we were down to just one or two varieties (we try to keep about 10-12 different kinds in the freezer).

Chef hat on. Melissa gets down to it.

First up, Madeleines.

Now, here's the problem with madeleines: they require a special pan. The whole POINT of these things seems to be the shape, because the cookie is nothing more than a little tiny shell-shaped cake. Did I have this pan? No.

But about a month ago my husband and I were in a kitchen supply store in Concord and I spotted some--and not just the madeleine pans, but mini-madeleines. Perfect for work, where the ideal size for a brownie is about the size of an international stamp. My husband got me the pan, because he's awesome.

Here's the pan. It doesn't look mini cuz I took a close-up shot.



Now, here's the problem with this recipe. Or maybe it's the problem with me. OK, it's definitely the problem with me, and here it is: if you don't get the amount of cake batter EXACTLY right, the batter overflows the mold a little bit and then you get this kind of crusty fin that sticks out all around the cookie. For somebody with a sculpture degree (me) who is obsessive (me) that means HOURS practically sitting there cutting the little fins off to get the right little shell shape.



And see how I rolled the edges of those in powdered sugar? All the while I was thinking how stupid they were in the cookbook to direct us to "dust scalloped sides with confectioner's sugar". Obviously you can't dust just the SIDES--you're going to get some on the top too. Well, this is what they meant. Der.




Next up: Date and Oat Bars.

These are very agreeable, nice bars. They are like the pleasant boys in class that your mother wants you to date, who get good grades, and stay out of trouble. But oh, you're thinking, if only they were more like CHOCOLATE!



These were very tasty for cookies that don't have chocolate, though it must be said that if you hate Fig Newtons for texture reasons you will probably hate these. I happened to be baking in the company of a young lady who hates Fig Newtons, so I can confirm this.


Number Three on the list: New Orleans Praline.

This was actually the final Confections recipe for me--I've done them all now (not THAT hard a task since there were only six). And I must confess, in the take-it-or-leave-it dept, I think I could leave this one. It's not really fudge, it's not really candy, it's kind of a weird hybrid. Maybe you just can't make it correctly unless you're in New Orleans. Here's what mine looked like:




Cookie #4: Shortbread.

What? you're thinking--This is the First Time you've made shortbread?

Nojeezumgivemeabreak! I've made it about ten gazillion times but never This Particular Recipe. So many times that I forgot to take a picture of this one, even though I jazzed it up with hazelnuts on top, much to the dismay of the above-mentioned young lady who hates Fig Newtons and who used to live in Scotland. Or maybe it was England, but anyway someplace where they bake and eat a lot of shortbread and have STANDARDS, for chrissakes. And those standards don't include putting hazelnuts on top.

But for people who like pictures, here is a picture of somebody else's shortbread. Just envision hazelnuts on top:



The fifth cookie was Langues de Chat, or Cat's Tongues for those of you who like to name your cookies after body parts.

This was one of those recipes that required an Exotic Ingredient, in this case Orange Flower Water, which unbelievably is a beverage in some parts of the world where drinking perfume is yummy.



You think I'm being a jerk, but you've got to smell this stuff. I guess it would be great for chronic bad breath, though.

The idea of this cookie is that it's a long, thin, sugared wafer that is ideal as a complement for ice cream (for example). You shape it by piping lengths of batter on a silpat-lined baking sheet. You can see my idea of what a six-inch strip is changed just a little bit while I was piping:



Good thing I'm not a carpenter.

My problem with these cookies is that the difference between almost done and burnt was the blink of an eye. It was driving me nuts! Here's where about half of them ended up:



By the way, it was just sheer coincidence that I had thrown away some wilted flowers, lest you think I was decorating the trash can for this shot.

So batch after batch were just on the edge of burning, and I was so pissed, and I finished the batter and the last batch and went to turn off the effing oven, and what was it set to? Not 325, as the recipe directs--352.

Yes, good thing I'm not a carpenter and also good thing I'm not a....some other job that requires numbers. Like an air traffic controller.



I'm actually planning on remaking these at some point, just to prove I can program the oven correctly.

The LAST ONE (for today, not the chapter): Almond-Apricot Biscotti.

I love biscotti! They are so crunchy and yummy, and they're the perfect shape, somehow. We make tiny ones at work, not longer than three inches, and slice them very thinly--less than half an inch. This particular recipe hits MY buttons because it involves toasted almonds, one of my favorite flavors. I'm a fool for almonds, I tell ya. And even though I was working with freeze-dried apricots (???) instead of normal dried ones, they turned out to be those California apricots Gourmet writers go on and on about (as opposed to the Turkish ones, which are less tangy and interesting).

Here they are:




What could possibly be left, I hear you cry? I can practically list them on one hand:

Oat Lace Cookies
Coconut Tuile Cones (these are actually a vehicle for ice cream)
Cinnamon Chocolate Cigarettes (the surgeon general LIKES these)
Swedish Ginger Thins
Gingerbread Snowflakes (tree decoration)
and
Stained Glass Teardrops (more tree decorations)

Watch this space. When I'm done with the chapter, I'll announce My Favorites.

Melissa Needs a Job, or Oh Ruth Reichl, Don't You Need a Freelancer?

All good things in life must come to an end, and although my primary, wonderful job has not come to a COMPLETE stop, it's a shell of its former self and that, my friends, is why I'm letting you know that Melissa, Your Most Faithful Correspondent, needs a job. Sooner rather than later.

I know, join the crowd at the food pantry. But hear me out, folks-- I've got mad skilz in the cooking department, and I'm also a pretty snappy writer. DON'T YOU THINK that makes me perfect for working at someplace like, oh, Gourmet Magazine?

So here's an open letter to Ruth Reichl. Feel free to chime in with your support in the comments section and you too can tell Ruth how awesome I am.

Dear Ms. Reichl,

I know, it's a total long shot. And it's true that it might be perceived as a conflict of interest that I'm cooking through your massive, beautiful yellow cookbook, reviewing recipes in a contentedly unbiased fashion, unpaid by Gourmet, or Conde Nast, or whoever your corporate overlords are.

But I have a beautiful capacity to take money and be unbiased. In fact, I would make a great politician. And don't you want a column featuring things like my upcoming adventure tenderizing octopus in my washing machine? I think you do. I am sending amazing psychic brain waves to your apartment to that effect.

(Ruth....you need a columnist...a funny one...octupi + washing machines = increased readership...you'll probably get a raise...)

Are my amazing psychic brain waves working? Not yet? OK, well, how about this: when you invite me to NY for an interview, you don't even have to put me up in a hotel room because my in-laws live on Long Island. See? I know how to save money.

(Hire Melissa...but not to dust, she's a terrible duster...)

Hey, Amazing Psychic Brain Waves, whose side are you on? It's not that I'm a terrible duster, it's that I don't SEE dust. My mascara has these dust-filter thingies. In fact, dusting is the next thing on my list to do. Here's my list:

1. Beg for job
2. Dust

(Ruth...you also shouldn't hire her to clean out the cat litter box...)

OK, look. If the job is Columnist + Office Duster, I'm probably not your gal. And I doubt you have a litter box in your test kitchen (although, have you seen those joke cakes? In a litter box, with bran cereal and Tootsie Rolls mooshed up to look like...you know? I'm sure the Gourmet Test Kitchen has never turned out anything like that, and Readers, I'd like to assure you that The Gourmet Cookbook does NOT feature anything that even remotely resembles Tootsie Rolls mooshed up to look like cat doody.)

Here are ten other good reasons to hire me:

1. I don't snore, except when I've had too much to drink, which is only when I get laid off from jobs.

2. I am brilliant at giving tours. When you come to Gloucester to meet me I'll take you to the Crow's Nest and explain how it fits into the fishing industry while we drink beer and play pool.

3. I suck at pool, which means you'll probably win.

4. I'm good at poker, though, so consider yourself forewarned.

5. I also don't really drink beer, I'm more of a Bombay Girl. Well, Gordon's when I've had my hours cut.

6. Even though I'm a cat person I also like dogs, when they're Good Dogs. In fact, I'm in love with the Cocker Spaniel who lives next door. His name is Leo. The fact that I'm in love with him has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that his owner is a cute musician. I'm already married to a cute musician. One is enough.

7. I can do a headstand.

8. And a backbend. Well, kind of.

9. I am learning karate so if you ever get attacked by a mugger while we're walking down the street I will kick his ass. But you have to wait a few years for this side-benefit of hiring me. Right now I can only stomp on feet. I might be able to break a nose.

10. I can speak enough French and Spanish to be able to get into trouble in foreign countries with my non-comprehension of what they say back. Think of how much fun it would be to travel with me.

There, ten excellent reasons. I can come up with more. Don't make me do it.

Ruth. Call me.

978 879-9120

Yours sincerely,
Melissa

P.S. Crazy people, DO NOT call me. Unless you are offering me a job with health insurance, retirement benefits, and vacation pay. Because as we all know, being crazy and being able to offer a job are not mutually exclusive.

Ringing in the New Year with Yet Another Food List, or Melissa is Going to Take a Nap Now

It must be said that the New Year's Eve dinner parties I put on at work are my favorites.

Why? The numbers are manageable, the food is--or can be--elegant, and I have complete creative control. No time-honored family traditions to contend with (yes, I'm thinking of that flaming figgy pudding)--just culinary playtime for Melissa.

And you all know how I feel about this cookbook--I would make anything from it for the first time for any event. Last New Year's I made Individual Beef Wellingtons. Mmmmmm.

We thought we might have a group of 14-16 for this dinner, and I figured this would be a fun time to try out crown roast. Here was the menu I came up with:

Chilled Lobster Cocktail with Tarragon Vermouth Sauce
Crown Roast with Baked Apple Stuffing and Glazed Apples
Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Beets with Lime Butter
Creamed Spinach
Salad with Candied Walnuts
a Dacquoise of my own invention

In the event that you, too, would like to put on a fancy dinner party like this, I'll tell you just for your own planning purposes that I cooked for two days straight--the first day was an 8 hour day, the second a ten--although that second day did include the actual dinner. And should you be in a celebratory mood, I recommend Prosecco to go with the meal--an Italian sparkling wine. We had three bottles on ice for this evening.


I certainly wasn't the first person to come up with the idea of a lobster cocktail (though I've never seen one on a menu or had one myself) but it's possible that most of my diners had never had one with what is essentially chilled Bearnaise sauce.

Here's a photo of somebody else's so you can get the idea. Mine were similar except the small cordial stemware were filled with Bearnaise and had two long, elegant chives sticking out (like lobster antennae!)




Crown roast. I've never had one, and I've never even seen one cooked. But no time like the present for new experiences, so I called Henry's and asked for a Frenched, tied crown roast for 16. And throw in some of those little paper hat thingeys. By the way, Frenched means the bones are cleaned, not that the butcher has been French kissing it back in the meat room.

Before I picked it up, I had a long conversation with Nick at the Cork N Cask about crown roast while I was picking up the Prosecco. Nick used to be a butcher, and he prides himself on his tying technique for crown roasts (lamb or pork--apparently you get lamb for a smaller crowd, or I guess if you like lamb instead of pork). So Nick was full of opinions about lazy-ass butchers who don't tie them right and had an even lower opinion of somebody on tv who criss-crossed the string through the bones, making it impossible to stuff, which is sort of the point of these meat dishes.

Anyway, I digress. My point, the one I'm trying to get to (if Nick would stop talking) is that when I picked up my crown roast it looked like this:



instead of this:



Now, perhaps only the most obsessive person would be bothered by something tied in an oval shape rather than a round shape, but COME ON PEOPLE, crowns are ROUND not oval, and if you're going to have an oval-y shaped roast, then why not call it a football roast? Or a, a, a....(trying to think of something oval-y shaped and not succeeding) anyway you get my point. I was bothered by it way too much for my own mental health and state of mind and no amount of prodding could get it round instead of oval.

You might be asking, why not cut it here and there? You have a degree in sculpture, for christ's sake!

OK, true, but since I've never cooked a crown roast I didn't want to mess with something I knew nothing about. Fine time to be thinking about these things, I know, but come on, cut me some slack. The stuffing is a pretty straightforward apple/onion/celery stuffing, and the stuffing did help push the sides of the roast out.

The instructions say to count on 2 1/2 to 3 1/4 hrs with 20 minutes resting time--with a probe measuring 150 degrees inserted 2 inches into the meat. And here is where I ran into my first problem with the crown roast.

Problem #1--it cooked way too fast. I was counting on a serving time of 7pm, so I put it in just before 4pm. Well, by 5:15 it was clear that I was going to hit 150 within twenty minutes or so. Was I near the bone? No. Was the probe too far out? No. What to do? What I did was first turn the oven way down, then I just turned it off--and a little after 6 I turned it back on to 350.

Problem #2--remember that issue I had with the oval that wasn't round? Turns out I had good reason to be worried.

The oval shape (and the resulting variation of thickness here and there) meant that some of the pork was cooked perfectly, and some of it was pretty rare. Now, this fun fact was discovered while all the guests were seated and some of the guests were carving the roast. What to do? I turned on the broiler, lay the rare-ish chops on a cookie sheet, and broiled them six inches from the heat for a minute or two. Perfect. If you do this, don't forget to take the little paper hats off.

Next time, that roast will be round if I have to re-tie it myself.

The Glazed Apples that went with the roast were fine, but they didn't ever really get glazed per se. I think if the recipe had the sugar syrup boiled down a bit it might have worked but as it was it was too watery and didn't have much of an impact. They were popular, however. Like I said, I had quite a few elders at the table, and soft food = good.

I bet you're thinking that the Crown Roast was my biggest headache of the night, right? Well, you're wrong.

The prize for that goes to the Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes, and you can blame it all on this little gadget right here:



That, my friends, is a potato ricer. And the idea is that you cook the sweet potatoes in the oven until soft, then de-skin, rice, and mix with cream/maple syrup/butter etc. It seems simple in concept but this is how it really went.

1. Peel hot skin off hot potato
2. Wave fingers around in air to cool off
3. Slice potato in three parts
4. Put one or two parts in ricer
5. SQUEEZE
6. Get hot sweet potato water spattered on forearms
7. Regard with irritation the sweet potato that has extruded from the holes but not fallen off because of the fibers
8. Scrape sweet potato off with sharp knife
9. Regard with irritation the fibrous mass left behind in bowl of ricer and pull out with fingers.
10. Repeat about ten times
11. With each time getting stickier

And let's not even talk about the fact that the handles of the ricer look a lot like that friend of all women everywhere, the speculum. Ack!!

It is my solemn conclusion that this dish would be better served by using a FOOD PROCESSOR instead.



I've made Beets with Lime Butter before and talked about it here. They proved to be one of the most popular items on the buffet--it's the first time I've made them at work, and this family of beet admirers had never had beets like this before. High marks.

Likewise with the Creamed Spinach, which although it's not the most interesting dish in the world is becoming a standby for me in my two jobs.

Out of everything on the buffet, the dish that I put the most time, thought and care into was the Dacquoise.

Now, I've made the dacquoise before. And I realized while I was making it that the structure (layers of meringue and buttercream) had the possibility of infinite flavor variations. Meringue can contain ground nuts of any type, or coconut, or it can be chocolate. Buttercream can be coffee, chocolate, white, or citrus flavored. Daughter K. speculated on the possibility of whipped cream, which can also hold all kinds of flavors.

So this is what I came up with--almond meringue, chocolate buttercream, stabilized raspberry whipped cream, and chocolate ganache for the top.

I basically followed the directions for the dacquoise to get the meringue, but with both the chocolate buttercream and the whipped cream I was flying by the seat of my pants. I used the recipe for coffee buttercream but substituted cocoa powder for the espresso powder, and then I folded in melted bittersweet chocolate, hoping that the fat in the chocolate wouldn't somehow screw up the fat ratio as I was throwing in the softened butter.

One interesting thing that didn't happen (this is probably only interesting to people who make a lot of buttercream) is that you know how at a certain point in buttercreams the frosting breaks down and looks curdled...but then it comes back together?

This never did that. It just stayed smooth, firm and creamy the whole time. I don't know if it was because of the body of the chocolate or what but anyway I was breathing a sigh of relief that it turned out fine. And yummy.

I used the recipe for stabilized whipped cream from the Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Bars, which has you use unflavored gelatin to keep it...flated? Is that the opposite of deflated? Anyway, to keep it perky. I folded in raspberry puree and crossed my fingers.

The only problem I had with either of these was the day I put them together I let them come to room temp and re-whipped the buttercream to loosen it up. When I did the same to the whipped cream, it did deflate, a little bit.

I didn't need the chocolate ganache--really, it was gilding the lily but visually the dacquoise seemed unfinished and the ganache was really spectacular on top--glossy and dark.

Here's my sea of plates ready for the dessert/coffee service:



The best thing about dacquoise is that nobody in the US knows what the heck they are. I'm sure in other countries (France, for sure) they're a commonplace dessert item but here I can be virtually certain that my diners have never heard of them, let alone tasted one. So they seem exotic--they ARE exotic--and that adds to the fun.

Happy New Year, folks! I hope 2009 is a great one for us all. Oh, and if you want to try a crown roast but don't have the bucks and/or the fortitude to try the above recipe, here's a variation--sure to be the same temp all around no matter what you do to it: