The Continuing Education of Melissa in the Art of Bread Baking or Why It's Not a Good Idea to Put Bread Outside in a Nice Patch of Sunshine to Rise

Because, if you're making Portuguese Cornmeal Bread, little ants will come and steal the cornmeal on the side of the dish. And then when you take the dish inside and flick them off into the sink, they will splash about pitifully in the dish water until you wash them down the drain. And then there will be more of them on the counter where you threw down the dish cloth that was covering the bread and you'll have to throw them in the trash.

That's why.

I haven't seen any in the bread though. So far.

catching up! and Long Cooked Lamb Shoulder, Rib-eye Steak with Wild Mushrooms, Chocolate Macaroons and Rumaki

Isn't it crazy how dependent we've become on our computers? When they go AWOL it really does turn the world upside-down.

I don't think I can comment at length on the meals I've cooked in the last week--that would be a mighty long post! You will note that I've provided links for the recipes if you want to check them out. With the exception of the Skillet Cornbread, they were all really outstanding. I don't know what happened with the cornbread--I've made it before, but for some reason it kind of separated and I had an eggy bottom and a crusty dry top. Hmm.

If you're thinking that maybe this all seems a little more hearty than usual, you're right...I have been cooking especially for some visitors to Dr. and Mrs. S.--their eldest child K. and her husband L. It seems funny to refer to K. as a child since she's in her early 60's! K. and L. love hearty food--beef, duck, lamb, cheese, beer, chocolate, coffee...you get the idea. And L., one of my favorites of all the in-laws and out-laws, is probably the one and only true hedonist in the family. A cook and a hedonist--we were made for each other, culinarily speaking. When they visit, I cook with L. mostly in mind since he's such a fabulous audience.

Over the past few days, I have made: Long Cooked Lamb Shoulder, Rib-eye Steak with Wild Mushrooms, Chocolate Macaroons and Rumaki. (I am quite amazed to find only one of these recipes on Epicurious!) I think the recipe that was the biggest revelation to me was the Lamb Shoulder--I've never cooked lamb like that (which is to order a 6 pound cut of lamb shoulder from the butcher). If you like pot roast you will die for this dish--likewise if you are a "picker"--somebody who hovers over the Thanksgiving turkey trying to get away with stealing just a little bit of skin--you will be in heaven. Please note it involves two bottles of white wine (probably another reason why I liked it so much)--at work we often have half-consumed bottles of wine hanging around (can you imagine?) so it was nice to be able to use them up.

Second favorite, the Chocolate Macaroons. The reason for liking these is easy--the ganache filling! It's a sandwich cookie, which is a little time consuming, but oh so worth it.

The recipe I probably won't make again--the Rumaki. I just can't resolve myself to canned water chestnuts, not after eating fresh ones. They taste terrible in comparison!! I read somewhere that jicama comes closest to capturing the texture and flavor of fresh--I might possibly try this again with jicama, maybe.

Thanks for checking back in and being patient--I think we're back on track now.

technical difficulties

Dear readers, please bear with me. Our computer has been badly behaved and we are only now getting ourselves sorted out. But since I have last posted, I have made:

Skillet Cornbread
Chocolate Espresso Pot de Creme
Duck and Wild Rice Salad
Parmesan Walnut Salad in Endive Leaves
Smoked Salmon Smorrebrod
Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches with Lemon Aioli, Feta and Mint
Baked Flounder Fillets in Lemon Soy Vinaigrette

Check this space soon--tomorrow even--for my thoughts on these recipes. Thanks for your patience!

Crisp Sauteed Cabbage with Caraway and Pignoli Cookies

I'm not going to spend too much time on the Sauteed Cabbage with Caraway except to say that it was very nice, just fine, a pleasant way to use up cabbage that's been kicking around in the fridge.

What I really want to do is skip right to the Pignoli Cookies, which are SO GOOD that I think I need an intervention. They're made with almond paste and egg whites, which gives them a sweet, chewy texture at room temp, and when they're just out of the freezer (that's where I store all of these delicious cookies at work so I can keep many varieties on hand) they are delightfully crispy. My mouth is watering just writing about them, that's how pathetic I am. Thank god I don't have them at home.

Almond paste is a little esoteric--Crosby's in Manchester just happened to have it but I never have seen it at Shaw's. And note that almond paste is NOT marzipan--same idea but much less sugar. Also the recipe calls for optionally piping the cookies in little rounds, which I did but I think if you have a melon baller with a slider bar that would work just as well. I did read on the epicurious page somebody talking about shaping them with wet hands. The point is, they're sticky. I didn't use anywhere near the number of pine nuts they called for either which is good because those suckers cost money.

Enjoy these cookies. But don't blame me if you eat all 3 1/2 dozen yourself--I gave you fair warning.

Lemon Bar Recipe

What's different about this recipe from the many others floating around is that it has a little bit of heavy cream in the filling. How that makes it more lemony is beyond me.

Lemon Bars

For Crust:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
6 tbsp granulated sugar
3/8 tsp salt
9 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

For Filling:
6 large eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from 3-5 lemons)
1/4 tsp salt

confectioner's sugar for sprinkling

Make the crust: Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat oven to 350 F.

Pulse together flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor just until combined. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse, powdery meal. Press dough onto bottom of an ungreased 9 inch square baking pan. Bake until pale golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the filling: Whisk together eggs, granulated sugar, flour, heavy cream, zest, juice, and salt in a bowl until combined.

Bake the bars: When the crust is baked, rewhisk lemon mixture and pour onto hot crust. Bake until just set, about 30 minutes. Transfer pan to a rack to cool.

Refrigerate bars, covered, until cold, at least 4 hours. Before serving, cut into bars and sprinkle with a thick layer of confectioner's sugar.

Cucumber Tea Sandwiches, Chicken Salad Tea Sandwiches with Smoked Almonds, and Lemon Bars

Sounds like a tea party, doesn't it?

Mrs. S. hosted her book group yesterday morning, and this is what she wanted: cookies, snacks (that means nuts), tea sandwiches, tea, coffee and cold drinks. I of course got all excited about the tea sandwiches because the Gourmet Cookbook has three recipes for them, and I personally am not in the habit of making tea sandwiches at home.

By far and away, the star of the show was the Chicken Salad Tea Sandwiches with Smoked Almonds. This was gratifying because they were a pain to make--quite fiddly what with spreading the edges of the sandwich with mayo and dipping them in the minced nuts.

One woman tracked me down in the kitchen and said that eating that sandwich was like having a magical taste experience. Then Mrs. S's secretary/helper came into the kitchen and said they (17 female senior citizens) were swooning over them in the living room and wanted the recipe, which I photocopied and handed out after the group. Beverly Farms will be awash in chicken salad tea sandwiches!

Should you embark upon this magical taste experience yourself, here are a few changes I made to the recipe:

I made the chicken salad in the food processor by mincing the shallots first, then adding the minced tarragon and the chicken cut into chunks. Once it was processed fairly evenly I added the mayo, lemon juice and salt/pepper and processed til smooth. I also didn't cut the sandwiches into rounds--I just cut off the crusts and made them into triangles.

The Cucumber Tea Sandwiches were like any other cucumber tea sandwich I've ever had or made. Light, simple, not much to write home about except I liked the addition of lemon zest to the butter.

Now--the Lemon Bars. I must confess I have something of a fetish for lemon bars. I like them not only for their flavor but for the way they (if they're good) make me break out in a light sweat on my upper lip. Isn't that weird? I know.

So I have high standards for lemon bars, and as a result I am always crushed when I make a batch that doesn't "work" the way it's supposed to. And believe me, almost every lemon bar recipe out there claims that THIS recipe is the lemony-est.

This recipe is the lemony-est.

Epicurious doesn't list this version, so I'm going to have to type it in, but I can't do it now because I have to go pack for a trip to NY. I don't ordinarily type recipes in (see above for Cucumber Tea Sandwiches) but these lemon bars are SO GOOD that I want to share the love (and the sweat).

So stay tuned, Readers. I'll be back on Monday.

Grilled Lemon-Herb Poussins and Vodka-Spiked Cherry Tomatoes with Pepper Salt

What the heck, you may well be asking, are poussins?

They are, Readers, baby chickens weighing a mere 3/4 to 1 pound, falling into that elusive category of Ingredients that Exist Only In NYC (or perhaps on chicken farms).

Fortunately Cornish game hens make an able substitute.

The trickiest part of making Grilled Lemon Herb Poussins for me was the grilling part. As you may have surmised, I'm not fully comfortable (or capable) with grills yet. I'm still discovering that if you do something like put a platter of chicken thighs on the grill skin side down, when you come back out in 17 minutes they will be incinerated because the fat creates a mighty bonfire (a lesson I learned last summer while cooking dinner at work for many hungry people)

So I approached this grilling exercise with extreme caution. One thing I'm learning about gas grills is that they get hot. Really really hot. If you think you need to cook something at 700 degrees, just set it down after you've been preheating the grill on high.

Now this recipe says to cook the birds on "moderate heat", and I wouldn't consider 700 degrees moderate so I actually ended up turning the grill down to almost the lowest setting after preheating it. Once the temperature gauge started hovering around 400 I was happy.

And guess what? They came out great. Next time I would take them off the heat a little bit sooner (I don't subscribe to the USDA recommended temps for meat--it makes for woefully overcooked food). The skin was a lovely dark crispy brown (only incinerated here and there) and it got raves at the table.

I actually first heard about Vodka-Spiked Cherry Tomatoes from my hairdresser, who made them for a party. At the time I was baffled about how tomatoes with a peel could absorb a marinade, but he said that he made a little X in the bottom of each one. When I actually found the recipe in the book, I realized that the X was supposed to be your preparation for blanching and peeling the tomatoes.

Now this is a royal pain in the ass, especially if you are, as the recipe suggests, doing 3 pints of cherry tomatoes. Stephen's report as I recall it was that he marinated the tomatoes overnight, so perhaps that time period is enough to let the tomatoes get soaked with that little skin break--much easier than the blanching and peeling.

I only did a handful. The recipe errs on time spent blanching the tomatoes--three seconds isn't near enough time to loosen up that skin. Try 30.

The tomatoes themselves were pretty tasty--I let them soak for an hour and they had enough of a kick that I only sampled a few for fear of getting too much of a buzz-on during the dinner hour. Oddly, Dr. and Mrs. S didn't detect the vodka, even after I pointed it out, but that could be because I usually run on an empty stomach about that time and they had recently had tea (and many cookies).

I would try this recipe again the way Stephen made it, but I definitely would not go to the trouble of preparing it as written in the book.

Buttery Croissants

Do you want to know how much of a cooking geek I am? I was so excited when I put these croissants in the oven that my heart was pounding.

To tell you the truth, a croissant is a croissant. These Buttery Croissants taste pretty much like all the 1000 or so croissants I've had in my life--flaky, airy--perfect for a light sandwich or to go with butter and jam.

So the fun of these is the production and the bragging rights. Again, there's more rolling out and measuring, and--for geometry lovers--cutting into rectangles and triangles. Rolling up the croissants is good for exercising your capacity to compromise, since the dough is cut into triangles that have right angles (what are those called?) but you have to roll them up so that the point is in the middle. Yes, I did that 24 times and each one drove me a little crazy.

And here's something curious--some of the croissants rose higher than the others. I couldn't quite figure out what it was connected to--the tightness of the roll, whether the dough was chilled or warm when I rolled it...but I had pretty significant variation all on the same tray.

I had some trouble with the oven--mine (or mine at work I should say)is electric and you punch in the temp--it didn't seem to lower to 375 as the recipe required for the final 10 minutes of baking and my first tray was a little scorched on the bottom. I solved this by simply setting the lower oven to 375 and switching the final two trays from the top to the bottom oven, but not everybody has two ovens in their kitchen.

Another technical note--some of the little "points" uncurled themselves from under the croissants during the baking which allowed them to sort of flatten instead of rise up. Next time (if there ever is a next time) I think I would moisten that tip with water to better afix it to the underside.

What a baking adventure! I'm glad I did it. Anything involving yeast is very mysterious to me so any measure of success makes me want to paste a gold star to the middle of my forehead.

Chocolate Truffles and Croissant Dough

Among the very many ways one could spend Mother's Day, making Chocolate Truffles, taking a walk to the beach, and rolling out dough for croissants surely must be among the most pleasant. True, I was at work on a twelve hour shift, but that only points up what an awesome job I have.

Now, normally at work I don't whip up such luxurious items. This is a special situation because we have important guests coming this weekend to stay and I'm trying to impress them. Dr. S. is an important, even famous fellow, so is it the president? No. Is it the head of one of the many agencies he's been involved with? No.

It's his beloved granddaughter's new in-laws, who hail from Spain.

The Es live in Manhattan now, actually, and the only thing I know about their dietary habits is that they keep "forgetting" that their new daughter-in-law is a vegetarian when she comes over for dinner (so they are traditional carnivores) and that Mrs. E adores the chocolate from Maison du Chocolat.

Well, I just happen to have some Valrhona chocolate in the cupboard, some heavy cream in the fridge, and a recipe dictated by Robert Linx himself (founder of Maison du Chocolat) to the editors of Gourmet.

And you know what? I've never eaten fresh chocolate truffles before. I thought I had, but just having made them--it's a different experience.

This is what a fresh chocolate truffle feels like in the mouth: there's a very slight resistance to the teeth at first, which gives way to a creamy middle. Not like a cream chocolate, but just like the thinnest of thin shells. This is created by the smear of melted chocolate you rub around the chilled truffle to get the cocoa powder to adhere.

I'm not going to rhapsodize here about dark chocolate (though I could, easily) but I will tell you that once in your lifetime, if you are a fan of chocolate or know somebody who is--show them some love and order a box of chocolates from Maison du Chocolat. They are truly the most sensational chocolates I've ever had and this is from a who grew up eating Godivas in Belguim. They will blow your mind, and that's a promise.

I've never made croissants, but any recipe that involves a ruler and geometry appeals to me mightily.

Croissant dough is yet another recipe that takes a LONG time to make--there's a lot of chilling in between the folding and rolling, so you'd want to do it when you're hanging out in the house anyway doing something else. But it sure is fun to square it off into a rectangle and measure it exactly to 10 X 15 inches. I took Dr. S.'s 15 inch ruler from his office and he says he can't think of a better use for it.

I have one worry about this dough, and that's that it will chill longer than they advise (the recipe is from Nancy Silverton, founder of La Brea Bakery)--the recipe states that it may not rise sufficiently when baked if chilled longer than 18 hours. And aside from that I was a little worried that the dough would pop right out of the tight plastic wrapping I have it--it looked pretty taut when I left it last night.

Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you how it all turned out!

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Maple Squash Puree

We celebrated my sister's 40th birthday on Saturday, and she was given the choice of several types of menus. Her pick? Thanksgiving dinner. With a carrot cake for her birthday cake.

I was assigned the job of birthday cake (my pleasure) and given the extra duty of Squash. The cookbook of course has a recipe for Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, and a nice squash recipe, Maple Squash Puree.

I love baking cakes. There's something so gratifying about seeing all those disparate parts come together in a stacked, frosted package. And oh my lord, the reaction I got at the table! You would think I had spanish fly tucked away in that cake somewhere.

For me it was a pretty standard carrot cake, much along the lines of my former favorite carrot cake that I baked from the Silver Palate Cookbook--crushed pineapple, coconut, raisins, walnuts and of course carrots.

My parent's neighbor, Mary, stated with delight that it was not your Standard Lesbian Carrot Cake.

"What does a Standard Lesbian Carrot Cake taste like?" I asked.
"Oh, it has lentils in it," she replied.

I think she's kidding, but she has more experience in that department than I ever will (with lesbians, not with lentils--or if the two go together than maybe she does).

The Maple Squash Puree was pretty easy and tasted great, and it will smell great for awhile in my car where it tipped over and spilled on the backseat floor mat.

Now comes the post-Thanksgiving diet and exercise regime. Thank goodness Christmas ISN'T just around the corner!