Cake and Commerce

How2Heroes: Toasted Almond Semifreddo

Watch me make it at How2Heroes.com or you can read how to make it here.

How2Heroes: How to make Japanese-style Egg custard

Watch me show you how to make simple egg custard cooked in its own shell.

For complete written instructions, go here to my previous post from April.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies: 2 new yummy recipes

Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies...held by mom

Gluten-free Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today: two new recipes - Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies and (certified!) Gluten-free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. And they are tasty.

(And the video from my friends at How2Heroes.com is there for all you A/V learners. It is embedded just past the recipe for the first cookie).

A few years ago I developed a recipe for gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that had a distinctly beany flavor. That's probably because I used a flour that I now generally avoid - garbanzo. The flavor is too overpowering and 'green' tasting. Great in hummus, not so great in chocolate chip cookies.

I've learned a lot in the last few years about gluten-free flours. As I've explained before, I don't use potato starch (nutritionally useless) or corn starch (I avoid using corn as much as possible) or sorghum (it makes me sick) or most rice flours (the texture is wrong). I've fallen in love with teff, the 'smallest grain in the world' that has a neutral flavor and a similar composition to wheat flour and a flavor similar to whole wheat. I also love light buckwheat flour because it has a slightly lighter flavor than regular buckwheat and the color is more attractive in baked gooods. I also use tapioca because it adds sponginess and crispness. And finely milled sweet brown rice flour absorbs moisture, adds a bit of starch and tastes more neutral than other flours.

I also wanted to improve the quality of sweetener I was using. Instead of using white sugar and brown sugar, I used a combination of maple syrup and Rapadura, which is granulated unrefined evaporated cane juice. Considered 'healthier' because it is high in dietary non-heme iron, it still spikes blood sugar.

I decided to keep butter and eggs in the recipe. I don't have an issue with casein, but if you do, you can substitute your favorite non-animal based shortening (margarine etc). You cannot substitute oil one-for-one or the recipe will come out very oily. Reduce oil by 1/3. Eggs can be substituted with 1 t ground flax combined with 2T water.

The key to success with this recipe is to make the dough and allow it to rest, in your refrigerator, for at least 24 hours. This isn't an option. This is a requirement. When allowed to absorb the liquid ingredients, the dough becomes firmer and drier and bakes up like a dream. The edges are crisp and the centers are soft and chewy. Apparently, according to this New York Times article, that's the chocolate chip cookie ideal.

I don't use gums in this recipe, but if you like using guar or xanthan, you can add a 1/2 teaspoon to the recipe.

You'll need a scale to execute this recipe properly. I use My Weigh KD-7000 Digital Stainless Steel Kitchen Scale.

I use certified gluten-free oats in my baking. To read more on oats and celiac, check out this great reference from Health Canada. Oats ARE gluten-free and are tolerated by most, but not all.

Here's what Health Canada says:

"...the safety/benefit evaluation for the introduction of oats in the gluten-free diet of patients with CD indicates that moderate amounts of pure oats are well tolerated by the majority of individuals with CD and dermatitis herpetiformis.The term "pure oats" is used to indicate oats uncontaminated with gluten from other closely related cereal grains, including wheat, barley and rye as detected using current test methods. Based on clinical trials in the published literature, the amount of pure oats considered within safe limits is 50 to 70 g/ day for adults and 20 to 25 g/day for children."

Enjoy!

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free Ooey Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookies
(recipe based on ratios from the New York Times recipe, 7-9-2008)

Combine dry ingredients and set aside:

• 3.5 oz Teff Flour
• 2 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
• 2 oz Sweet Brown Rice Flour
• 1 oz  Tapioca Flour
• 3/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt

In bowl of stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl combine:

• 5 oz butter (1-1/4 sticks) (substitute vegetable shortening)
• 7 oz Rapadura (you can substitute 5 oz brown sugar and 3 oz white sugar for the Rap & Maple)
• 1 oz Maple Syrup

Mix until uniform. Add:

• 1 egg (substitute 1-1/2 t egg replacer + 3 T water)
• 1 t vanilla

Mix until egg is completely incorporated. All at once, add the dry mixture.

When flours are incorporated, mix in:

• 12 oz chocolate chips or 1 bag of chocolate chips of your choosing

Once the chips are mixed in, spread dough out in roughly a straight line on a sheet of parchment and roll it into a cylinder.Alternately, individually scoop the dough into 1.25 ounce portions and refrigerate inside a plastic bag. Refrigerate it for at least 24 hours.

Once the dough has been refrigerated for 24 hours (it can spend up to 3 days in the fridge or be frozen for up to a month if wrapped in plastic) you can bake it off.

Preheat your oven to 350.

Place cookies (cut from the cylinder or whole 1.25 ounce scoops) on cookie sheet with about 3 inches of space between each cookie. Press each cookie down and flatten a bit for better baking.

If you are feeling trendy, you can lightly sprinkle the cookies with coarse sea salt (such as Maldon).

Place in center rack in oven and bake for about 10 minutes for a chewy, soft cookie up to 15 minutes for a crisper cookie. Allow to cool completely before handling.

Eat immediately, store in an airtight container for up to 4 days, or freeze cookies.

And then there's the video, courtesy of my friends at How2Heroes.

Here they are, working in the house:

And here's the video:

So let's just say you don't want to eat a plain old chocolate chip cookies. You want something with texture. For you, I have gluten-free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, made with certified gluten-free oats.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the bowl of a mixer, combine:

• 5 oz butter (substitute vegetable shortening)
• 7 oz rapadura
• 1 oz maple (substitute 5 oz brown sugar and 3 oz white sugar for Rap and Maple)

When evenly mixed, add in:

• 1 egg (substitute 1-1/2 t egg replacer + 3 T water)
• 1 t vanilla

Add the following to the bowl and stir until evenly mixed:

• 1.5 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1 oz dried unsweetened coconut
• 8 oz CERTIFIED GLUTEN-FREE rolled oats (NOT instant)
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt

Once mixed, stir in:

• 1 12 oz bag of chocolate chips (10 oz bag fine too)

Portion out the cookies using a 1.25 oz scoop (small-sized scoop) and place each scoop on a parchment-lined sheetpan. Chill in a refrigerator until hardened. Place scoops in an airtight container and allow to chill for at least 24 hours.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Press down and flatten the tops of each cookie. Place on a baking sheet leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. Sprinkle flat sea salt (like Maldon) sparingly on each cookie. Bake 10 minutes for a soft, gooey cookie. Bake up to 15 minutes for a crisper cookie.

Eat immediately or store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.'

Here's my 'scratch' pad. No disrespect intended, Edible Boston.

Blessed be she who makes clumpy granola without raisins

See that picture above? Do you know what is missing? I suppose, given the title of this post, it is rather obvious. But I wanted to clearly make the point: this granola is raisin-free.

And even better? It isn't too sweet or too nutty and it is gluten-free - well, as long as you consider certified gluten-free oats gluten-free (not everyone does).

I've been on a granola bender of sorts lately. A friend dared me to develop a recipe he liked. Given that lately I've had more than a little time on my hands, I took up his challenge with gusto.

I've never made granola before. I never had reason to. I'm not much of a morning cereal eater, and on that rare, blue moon of a day when I actually did crave a bowl of breakfast, I'd just buy Bare Naked Original Granola - until they sold themselves to Kellogg's for $65 million.

But this friend wanted his own custom blend, and he was specific about ingredients. As I jotted down his requested ingredients, I realized we were very simiilar in our mutual dislike of raisins, puffed cereals, and cloying sweet or overcooked granola.

The first recipe I pulled, from a Cook's Illustrated article from 1994, was all I needed to create a baseline 'good' granola. The recipe was more formula than prescription, something that allows for improvisation of all sorts.

The results? Delicious, crunchy granola that was completely unclumpy. Hmm. Had to fix that. My friend had specifically requested 'clumpy' granola.

I ended up trying out 5 versions until we hit upon the correct method/baking time/baking process/flavor/nut-to-fruit-to-oat ratio. The below photo is from versions 3 and 4, where we varied fruit percentage. In the end we went with something right in between.

The one thing I did struggle with was making the granola clumpy. After asking the Twittersphere and getting the same response I'd read in some other recipe ('use wet hands to squeeze granola into clumps" - what? Am I going to spend hours doing this when I have a five pound batch?) I decided to take matters into my own dry hands. Using two sheets of parchment, I pressed down on the granola and placed another tray over it for the first 15 minutes of baking and absolutely NO STIRRING the granola. Results? Perfectly clumpy granola, with some loose oats in there for textural contrast.

Here's the view inside the oven:

Basic Granola Formula with instructions for clumpy granola (adapted from Cook's Illustrated, September 1994).

(Forgive the vagueness...I want to keep my version to myself)

Dry Ingredients:

• 5 parts rolled oats (do not use instant)
• 1 part seed(s) of your choice (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower etc)
• 1 part coconut, shredded unsweetened
• 2 parts nuts of your choice
• Pinch of salt
• .1 part sweet spice (cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, cardamom etc)

Wet Ingredients

• 2 parts natural invert sugar (maple, honey, agave etc in combination or alone)
• 1.5 parts sunflower oil (less if you want to omit fat. Can substitute coconut oil)
• 1.5 parts water (ONLY if you want clumpy granola)
• .5 parts (or less) Vanilla (or other flavoring such as almond, liqueur, juice etc)

Fruit

• 5 parts (equal to oat by weight) dried fruit of your choosing (including raisins, if desired. If you like a less fruity granola, reduce by half)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 275F convection or 300 if using a conventional oven.

Weigh out all dry ingredients. Combine. Warm invert sugar until flowing. Add oil, water (if making clumpy granola), vanilla and stir (oil will float on top). Add to dry ingredients. Stir until completely mixed.

Spread out on baking sheet lined with parchment. Place another piece of parchment on top. apply pressure with your hands to granola to press down. Place baking sheet on top and repeat.

Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove top piece of parchment and baking pan (you CAN do this without a top sheet pan, but you'll need to watch it more carefully - the edges will burn faster). Allow to bake until golden, about 30-40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Break up and store in an airtight container. Keeps for several weeks - but I promise, it will not last that long.

Keep cool - the fats will turn rancid if temperature fluctuates too much.

To make un-clumpy granola, omit water. Stir every five minutes until golden. Labor intensive but remarkably un-clumpy!

Firing up the (Vintage!) 1974 Salton Yogurt Maker

About ten years ago I picked up a yogurt 'maker' at a yard sale for five dollars and stuck it in the storage space that had served as my room until I went off to college. Until two weeks ago, it just sat there, collecting dust on a shelf and waiting for its closeup.

Maybe it was the amount of money we were spending on yogurt, maybe it was my mostly failed attempt to make it without properly incubating the milk, maybe it was the raw milk that my friend Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It kept buying for me that inspired me to wind up the ole Salton and see what she could do.

The 'machine' (little more than a low-energy warmer) is pure 1974.

The machine has five milk-glass jars and snap-on lids for each. There's something that looks like a timer at the top, but all it actually does is remind you what time you started to incubate the yogurt.

I followed the basic recipe for yogurt: heat milk just past 180 F, cool to 120, add culture, incubate 12 or so hours. There's also Harold McGee's recipe from the New York Times. It works. You can then drain the whey out (and reserve it for lacto-fermentation starter for coolers, krauts etc) and make yogurt cheese which is a great substitute for cream cheese or can be mixed with other spices and ingredients to serve as a dip.

Seriously easy. You'll never supermarket yogurt again - except when you need culture. And no, you don't need a vintage yogurt maker. There are a ton of modern ones available on Amazon, and if you make a water bath and keep the cultured milk warm-ish for a few hours, you won't even need a maker.

For those who want to see the instructions, I give you the instructions, in order, from the manual. If you want to see a bigger version, click on the photo and go to the Flickr page where you can see a larger copy of the page.

First page:

Second Page

Third Page

There were a couple more pages - mostly recipes that incorporate yogurt. Nothing special. You know what to do, right?

(Gluten-Free) Lemon Sponge Custard - A Joy of Cooking Classic that never gets old

This past weekend I put together a simple brunch for a family celebrating their son's Bar MItzvah. I recruited my mom to make noodle pudding and strada, a layered bread and egg dish. I made all the desserts - cookies, cupcakes and one of my favorite homey desserts, lemon sponge custard, a classic from the Joy of Cooking. In the above picture, it is the dessert on the bottom left, in the blue Le Creuset casserole.

What makes this dessert great is that in a single dish there is both a sponge cake (on top) and a smooth lemon custard (on the bottom). There's no dignified way to serve it unless you bake it in an individual terrine. One fine dining restaurant where I worked incongruously sold this as a dessert as a gloppy mess, dished out from a large hotel pan onto a dessert plate, until they (finally) invested in a pastry chef. 

Days after the brunch, guests were still talking about it. So I decided if it was that good, I better try to make the gluten-free version. The lower fat, dairy-free gluten-free version.

Here's my first and only attempt at the gluten-free, dairy-free version:

• 2 T Coconut Oil
• 2/3 C Rapadura
• 1/8 t Salt

• 3 egg yolks
• 1-1/2 T Tapioca Flour
• 2 T Teff Flour

• 1/4 C Lemon Juice
• Zest of 2 lemons

• 1 C Rice Milk

• 4 egg whites, stiff but still shiny

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine first three ingredients. Beat in yolks. Add flours. Beat in juices, followed by milk. Fold in egg whites, pour into greased pan or ramekins. Bake in water bath for 30 minutes or so.

And the results? Uhhh, cognitive dissonance would be an understatement. Butterscotch-colored sponge and custard (thanks to the rapadura) that tasted like lemon with a faint hint of molasses and a stronger hint of coconut. Not bad if you ate it blindfolded, but even blindfolded it wasn't quite right.

Even my mom, the diabetic sweets fan, told me, without prompting, that she would never waste her calories on this particular version.

For a 'healthier' version it wasn't bad. But for a dessert that could cross the GF/CF divide and appeal to a broader spectrum of eaters, this rapadura and coconut oil version wouldn't satisfy.

Back to square one.

So I repeated it, replacing the rapadura with organic sugar (still processed, still not so good), the coconut oil with butter (there goes the dairy-free, casein-free claim), and the rice milk with raw, local, unhomogenized milk (again, bye bye dairy-free, casein-free claim). I used tapioca flour and I found that the starch settled to the bottom and made a slimy crust on the pan. In a batter that is not a complete suspension, tapioca starch - and longer cooking starches like rice flour - should be avoided.

I eliminated the starch and used 100% teff flour. Results? Great!

The color was appealingly lemon yellow. The flavor was bright and clear. It was tasty. And almost identical to the original, thanks to the very low flour content in the Joy of Cooking version.

Here's the final recipe, less healthful, but cognitive dissonance-free:

Lemon Sponge Custard (adapted from the Joy of Cooking)

• 2 T Butter, soft
• 2/3 C Organic Sugar
• Pinch Salt

• 3 egg yolks
•  3T Teff Flour (or the flour of your choice EXCEPT rice or starch)

• 1/4 C + 1 T Lemon Juice
• Zest of 2 lemons

• 1 C Local, grass-fed milk

• 4 egg whites, beaten until stiff but still shiny

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine first three ingredients. Beat in yolks. Add flour. Beat in juices, followed by milk. Fold in egg whites, pour into a well-greased pan or ramekins. Bake in water bath for 30 minutes or until no longer jiggly when shaken.

Teff Flour

Daring Bakers April Challenge: Cheesecake! Made with Goat Cheese! Yeah!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Cheesecake doesn't tempt me at all.

It never has.

Maybe it is the texture. Or the idea of a custard made mostly with cream cheese. Biting into a cheesecake, no matter how well-made, is not too far off from biting into a softened wedge of cream cheese that just happens to be sweetened.

For four years, I worked for a company built on cheesecake. I visited the plant that made our cheesecake and tasted the samples that were put out every day for quality control checks. I tasted new upscale versions at our meetings and helped give feedback on what our final commercialized version should taste like. I led brainstorming sessions where we developed new versions of our cheesecake, ones that were turtle or fruity or chocolatey.

And I never developed anything even approaching love. Cheesecake may have built our house, but it certainly wasn't welcome in mine.

The only cheesecake I ever really liked was something I recall eating in Japan in the 80s. Just down the street from my host family's home in the countryside outside of Nagoya was a small tea room called Mary Chantee. A big after-school treat for us was a selection of Mary Chantee's pastry and a cup of instant coffee (it was before the cheap fresh-brewed coffee revolution hit Japan). Their 'nama kurimu' (unbaked cream) cheesecake was my favorite. I couldn't really understand how it was made until years later when I learned about "French Cheesecake", an American favorite (it is what made Sara Lee famous), a cheesecake set with gelatin in the refrigerator instead of set with eggs in the oven. Mary Chantee's "nama kurimu' was a not-too-sweet, light-tasting and snow-white version of that cake (some French cheesecakes have a light yellow tint to better match the perception that cheesecake has eggs). It was irresistable.

In my last pastry job at the Four Seasons, I was frequently responsible for baking dozens and dozens of cheesecakes for large functions. There were several important attributes that the cheesecakes could not have:

NO:

1. lumps
2. cracks
3. color
4. fallen centers
5. evidence of boiling

To achieve an even bake (the lack of which caused the appearance of attributes 2-5), we baked our cheesecakes in deck ovens on top of inverted sheet trays (putting the cakes directly on the deck would have meant overcooking the cakes) at low heat in hot water baths. If we had more time to spare, we could turn down the oven to about 215-220 and skip the water bath but cover the tops with additional sheet pans.

I made a lot of cheesecake. I made a lot of cheesecake crust. And, the moment I left baking and the professional kitchen, I never made another one.

And then I spent a summer on a goat dairy in Northern California. We had an abundance of fresh goat cheese, goat milk, and fresh eggs. We also sold the cheese at a weekly farmers market. So once a week I made goat's milk cheesecake and sold it for $2 a slice. It was delicious. And since everything came from the farm, I felt good about eating it, thought I didn't eat much of it.

That was in 2002. Since then I haven't made cheesecake. Seven years. And I haven't missed it at all.

And then this month the Daring Bakers made cheesecake their challenge. Oh no. Cheesecake. My old frenemy. What to do?

Goat cheese cheesecake, of course.

This time, sadly, I wouldn't be able to use fresh-from-the-farm goat cheese or goat's milk, though I did find some from our local-ish Westfield Farm about 40 miles from my house. And I don't like using UHT milk, so I skipped the available goat's milk in the market.  Instead I used fresh milk and buttermilk.

The results are a tangy, bright cheesecake that is snow white flecked with white vanilla beans. It tastes even better drizzled with local raw honey, which takes the sour edge off the goat cheese.

And of course I just made up a new recipe. I'm really bad about sticking with recipes when they don't conform to my culinary, ah, peculiarities.

Cake and Commerce's Vanilla Bean Goat Cheese Cheesecake

Yield:  7" cheesecake

Crust

• 1 C Graham Cracker Crumbs (want to make your own graham crackers? here's my recipe)
• 1 oz  Coconut Oil
• 1 T Rapadura

Combine all ingredients. Into a prepared pan (see below) place mixture. Press down on crust and push some to the side and up the edge.

Bake in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes and allow to cool.

Cheesecake Filling

• 12 oz goat cheese
• 5 oz Agave Syrup
• 1/2 Vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 3 oz Egg Whites (about 3)
• 1/2 C Buttermilk (can be replaced with goat's milk)
• 1/2 C Milk** (can be replaced with goat's milk)
• 1/2 t Vanilla
• fine zest and juice of one lemon

Preheat oven to 275 F. If using convection, set oven to 235 F.

Line a 6" or 7"" round baking pan (or springform pan) with parchment. Cut a long strip for the sides and a circle for the bottom. If you are using a springform pan, wrap the bottom with plastic wrap then cover with aluminum foil. Prepare and bake crust  and allow to cool. I use a ring or a regular cake pan - I've gotten pretty good at flipping cheesecakes out of pans, but unless you have experience with it or aren't afraid of failure, I wouldn't do it.

Scrape out vanilla from vanilla pod with the blunt end of a knife and scrape into bowl of stand mixer.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine vanilla bean, goat cheese and agave syrup and mix with the paddle attachment until smooth. Add in egg whites and mix until combined. With the mixer on low, slowly pour in the buttermilk and milk. Add in lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla and mix until combined.

Pour the batter into the pan that you have prepared with a crust. Place pan on sheet pan and place on center rack in oven.  Pour about 4 C of hot water into pan - either just off the boil or instant hot.

Bake until set - 1.5-2 hours. The cake won't be jiggly at all, and that's fine. For slightly less set cake, pull from oven when still a little jiggly like Jello. The fat from the crust may have seeped out a bit - also okay. Allow to cool completely before moving from baking sheet. I like to refrigerate my cheesecake overnight, and when I am ready to depan it, I warm the bottom of the pan with hot water and then depan it to make sure it comes out cleanly. Make sure when you place it in your refrigerator i is in your original pan or a cake circle or another perfectly flat surface or it will break when you move it.

Serve with local raw honey or the topping of your choice.

                **To make the cake a little more sour, replace milk with buttermilk

 

To see more Daring Bakers Challenges, check out the blogroll.

Making sausage with a food processor and a pastry bag - with surprisingly good results

Making sausage at home is actually quite simple - you don't need fancy grinding and stuffing equipment to make it work. As long as you have a food processor, a stand mixer (or the desire to stir a whole bunch with a wooden spoon), a pastry bag with a round tip and an elastic band, you too can make your own beautiful, professional-looking sausages. You'll also need hog or lamb casings, which you can usually get through your local butcher.

There are three easy steps to making sausage:

1. Grind seasoned meat in food processor

2. Develop stickiness by mixing it by hand or with a stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid)

3. Using a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip, fill casings then twist into sausage portions

3a. Cook as you like

The basic ratio for sausage, according to Michael Ruhlman is 3 parts meat to 1 part fat (which means the ideal sausage is at least 25% fat, excluding any extra fat the meat you use has in it). The seasoning is up to you. As long as you stick with this ratio (and grind and mix the meat properly) you'll get a great result.

If you have time, season your meat and leave it overnight. Keep your meat as cold as possible, using frozen chunks if it gets too warm in your kitchen.

My basic recipe for all my fresh chicken sausages:

• 3 lbs Chicken Thigh, fat left on
• 1 lb Finely GROUND Chicken skin with fat intact (if you buy chicken thighs with skin on, what you have in the package should be enough. If you eat pork, sub 1 lb fatback)
• 1T + 2 t salt

PLUS flavoring - you can use liquor, beer, liqueur, spices, herbs, vegetables, cheese - really anything of your choosing.

Food Processor Method:

Twenty-four hours before you are going to make your sausage, cut your chicken into chunks and season with your spices and herbs and any liquid ingredients you are using. Allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator. About 2 hours before using, place chicken in freezer.

It will look something like this, except you'll want your fat held separate so you don't use too much (this duck meat was very fatty and before I used it I picked through and measured the fat. Sheesh):

1. Grind Chicken in food processor. Pulse until meat is fairly finely ground but NOT consistently sized. Remove half of the mixture and place it in the bowl of your stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl. Pulse the remainder AND the chicken skin in the bowl of the processor until finely ground. Add to the chicken already in the stand mixer.

2. In your stand mixer fitted with a paddle (see below) mix for 1 minute (just combined) to five minutes on medium speed to develop the myosin in the meat - the protein that promotes stickiness and creates a more desirable texture. If you don't have a stand mixer, stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes. Just as effective though more messy, use your hands and knead the farce (the sausage filling) for a minute or two - make sure, however, that your hands stay cold.

This paprika sausage has been vigorously stirred and had a little hand kneading as well:

3. Whether or not you are using a stand mixer, you'll want to fold in your vegetables, cheeses, whole herbs, etc now. If you are using mushrooms, you'll see a rather speckled mixture, as below.

4. Mix on lowest speed  (or stir until all the ingredients are distributed evenly) until the veg/cheese/herb mixture is completely combined. And then...

TEST, TEST, TEST your sausage first. Saute it in a pan and make sure it is seasoned to your liking. If not, adjust.

5. If you are satisfied with your mixture, pull out your piping bag fitted with a round tip - it should be a WIDE tip (like an 808 Round Tip, which will work for hog casing but will be too big for lamb casing), but not so wide that your casing won't fit at least half-way up the tip as you'll need to push the casing up (beware, unintentionally suggestive photos follow). You don't need to fill the bag before attaching the casing, but it doesn't make a huge difference if you do. Remember, before using your casings, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes and then rinse them out completely inside and out as if they were hoses.

Half-fill the pastry bag (any size will do - I use a smaller bag because it is easy to handle) with the sausage mixture. Shake down the bag so the mixture gets a little more compact in the bag and push out the air. If some mixture comes out, put it back down into the bag.

You'll want to make sure you leave enough casing at the end to tie a knot once you have filled the casing.

6. Now. start applying pressure to the bag (try and keep your hand on the end of the casing near the pastry bag, just in case the elastic isn't in a mood to do its job). The meat mixture will start filling the casing. Hold the end of the casing and draw it out as it fills.

Don't overfill the casing - you'll want enough slack to be able to twist it into portions once your are done filing it. Once it is completely filled, tie at knot at one end, and make your first sausage twist about 4-6 inches up from there. Try to be consistent with your sizes. Twist the first one toward you. The next twist should be away from you. The twist after that should be toward you, repeating away/toward/away until you have no more sausage left to twist.

If your casing explodes while filling it, don't despair. It happens if you apply too much pressure. Just push the sausage down past the hole and cut the casing (a scissors will work) just below the hole or tear. And start over.

If you do not destroy your sausage, it will look like this, but probably more consistently sized (I made a number of different sizes for different uses...or something):

7. At this point the sausages should be allowed to air dry for about an hour in a COOL place - but only if you have time and inclination. It isn't a must. But if you have time, hang them up in a cool room and point a fan directly at them for 1 hour.

You don't need to do this step. Your sausage is ready to be cooked - the drying helps with grilling, roasting, smoking or frying but isn't that helpful if you are going to cook the sausage in beer, confit them in fat, or use another wet preparation.And your grill and friends will be very forgiving. Trust me on this. My friends were.

Raw, the sausage will only last a couple days (it is raw meat, after all). If you confit the sausage, they will hold under fat for up to a week. Cooking in an acidic medium (beer, wine, etc) and leaving them in the cooking liquid will also keep the sausages good for several days.

You can also make the sausage farce (stuffing) in advance, keep it cool in your refrigerator and use it only when ready, presumably within 24 hours:

If I have made too much, I'll cook the sausage and freeze them. They freeze well. They can also be frozen raw - just remember to label your bag properly to avoid cross-contamination.

If you aren't feeling inventive with the seasonings, just Google "sausage recipes" and you'll get a host of ideas.

If your guests or you do not wish to eat hog or lamb casing, you can make plastic casing from plastic wrap. Just spread some plastic wrap out,  spread a line of sausage filling across it in the middle if possible, and, using a straight edge like a small cutting board, shape it into a cylinder. Once it is made, you can let it sit overnight before you cook it, or freeze it. The first cooking should be steaming - gently steam the sausage in a pan. Once they are steamed, you can cook them any way you like, with the plastic removed, of course.

The sausages made in the plastic casing come out nicely, hold together, and do not need extra binding agents added unless they have not been mixed enough to develop a sturdy emulsion.

Sausages made with a pastry bag, made small so that guests could indulge in many types:

Though they are made without the assistance of proper meat grinding and stuffing tools, they still cook up beautifully:

These gorgeous sausages were made by Mary of Cooking 4 the week using a proper sausage attachment for the Kitchenaid:

Foodbuzz 24-24-24: Get Stuffed! A celebration of encased meats

According to some sources, butchers (and, presumably sausage makers) have three patron saints: St. Adrian, St. George and St. Peter the Apostle. Unfortunately for butchers, these saints have quite a large number of other constituents who may have once also wielded knives - including soldiers - who likely have priority over the lowly meat cutter.

For those who prefer their patron saints living and non-denominational, there is only one true patron saint of the sausage, or, more broadly, the encased meat:

Hot Doug:

Doug Sohn, encaser of the encased, feeder of the hungry

As Doug's t-shirts and website and wall of his restaurant read, "There are no two finer words in the the English language than 'encased meat', my friend." Taking this as a mandate for a spring dinner, My partner in food crime, Mary Reilly of Cooking4theWeek, and I set to work encasing meats, she tackling the mammals and I taking on fowl.

And as luck would have it, the first Red Sox-Yankees match up of the year was falling on the same day. Okay, so it would be the third game of the match up, but it was the first series. And for that reason alone, my friends and I - Red Sox haters and indifferent included - had a reason to get together, eat some encased meats and french fries cooked in duck fat, and watch a few innings of the game. Or at least listen to Rem-dog  call it on the radio.

Making Sausage

The real work of the dinner was the actual sausage making. Mary, armed with a sausage attachment for her KitchenAid, made quick work of the grinding and stuffing:

My methods were more primitive; I don't own a sausage attachment, and even if I did, it would have been boxed away in storage with the rest of my things three miles up the road in one of those pay-by-the-month places.

So I opted for the slightly more cumbersome and time consuming but equally effective pastry bag method.

Making sausage at home is actually quite simple - you don't need fancy grinding and stuffing equipment to make it work. As long as you have a food processor, a stand mixer (or the desire to stir a whole bunch with a wooden spoon), a pastry bag with a round tip and an elastic band, you too can make your own beautiful, professional-looking sausages. You'll also need hog or lamb casings, which you can usually get through your local butcher.

There are three easy steps to making sausage:

1. Grind seasoned meat in food processor

2. Develop stickiness by mixing it by hand or with a stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid)

3. Using a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip, fill casings then twist into sausage portions

3a. Cook as you like

The basic ratio for sausage, according to Michael Ruhlman is 3 parts meat to 1 part fat (which means the ideal sausage is at least 25% fat, excluding any extra fat the meat you use has in it). The seasoning is up to you. As long as you stick with this ratio (and grind and mix the meat properly) you'll get a great result.

If you have time, season your meat and leave it overnight. Keep your meat as cold as possible, using frozen chunks if it gets too warm in your kitchen.

My basic recipe for all my fresh chicken sausages:

• 3 lbs Chicken Thigh, fat left on
• 1 lb Finely GROUND Chicken skin with fat intact (if you buy chicken thighs with skin on, what you have in the package should be enough. If you eat pork, sub 1 lb fatback)
• 1T + 2 t salt

PLUS flavoring - you can use liquor, beer, liqueur, spices, herbs, vegetables, cheese - really anything of your choosing.

Food Processor Method:

Twenty-four hours before you are going to make your sausage, cut your chicken into chunks and season with your spices and herbs and any liquid ingredients you are using. Allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator. About 2 hours before using, place chicken in freezer.

1. Grind Chicken in food processor. Pulse until meat is fairly finely ground but NOT consistently sized. Remove half of the mixture and place it in the bowl of your stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl. Pulse the remainder AND the chicken skin in the bowl of the processor until finely ground. Add to the chicken already in the stand mixer.

2. In your stand mixer fitted with a paddle (see below) mix for 1 minute (just combined) to five minutes on medium speed to develop the myosin in the meat - the protein that promotes stickiness and creates a more desirable texture. If you don't have a stand mixer, stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes. Just as effective though more messy, use your hands and knead the farce (the sausage filling) for a minute or two - make sure, however, that your hands stay cold.

3. Whether or not you are using a stand mixer, you'll want to fold in your vegetables, cheeses, whole herbs, etc now. If you are using mushrooms, you'll see a rather speckled mixture, as below.

4. Mix on lowest speed until the veg/cheese/herb mixture is completely combined. And then...

TEST, TEST, TEST your sausage first. Saute it in a pan and make sure it is seasoned to your liking. If not, adjust.

5. If you are satisfied with your mixture, pull out your piping bag fitted with a round tip - it should be a WIDE tip (like an 808 Round Tip, which will work for hog casing but will be too big for lamb casing), but not so wide that your casing won't fit at least half-way up the tip as you'll need to push the casing up (beware, unintentionally suggestive photos follow). You don't need to fill the bag before attaching the casing, but it doesn't make a huge difference if you do. Remember, before using your casings, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes and then rinse them out completely inside and out as if they were hoses.

Half-fill the pastry bag (any size will do - I use a smaller bag because it is easy to handle) with the sausage mixture. Shake down the bag so the mixture gets a little more compact in the bag and push out the air. If some mixture comes out, put it back down into the bag.

You'll want to make sure you leave enough casing at the end to tie a knot once you have filled the casing.

6. Now. start applying pressure to the bag (try and keep your hand on the end of the casing near the pastry bag, just in case the elastic isn't in a mood to do its job). The meat mixture will start filling the casing. Hold the end of the casing and draw it out as it fills.

Don't overfill the casing - you'll want enough slack to be able to twist it into portions once your are done filing it. Once it is completely filled, tie at knot at one end, and make your first sausage twist about 4-6 inches up from there. Try to be consistent with your sizes. Twist the first one toward you. The next twist should be away from you. The twist after that should be toward you, repeating away/toward/away until you have no more sausage left to twist.

It will look like this, but probably more consistently sized (I made a number of different sizes for different uses...or something):

7. At this point the sausages should be allowed to air dry for about an hour in a COOL place - but only if you have time and inclination. It isn't a must. But if you have time, hang them up in a cool room and point a fan directly at them for 1 hour.

You don't need to do this step. Your sausage is ready to be cooked - the drying helps with grilling, roasting, smoking or frying but isn't that helpful if you are going to cook the sausage in beer, confit them in fat, or use another wet preparation.And your grill and friends will be very forgiving. Trust me on this. My friends were.

Raw, the sausage will only last a couple days (it is raw meat, after all). If you confit the sausage, they will hold under fat for up to a week. Cooking in an acidic medium (beer, wine, etc) and leaving them in the cooking liquid will also keep the sausages good for several days.

You can also make the sausage farce (stuffing) in advance, keep it cool in your refrigerator and use it only when ready, presumably within 24 hours:

If I have made too much, I'll cook the sausage and freeze them. They freeze well. They can also be frozen raw - just remember to label your bag properly to avoid cross-contamination.

If your guests or you do not wish to eat hog or lamb casing, you can make plastic casing from plastic wrap. Just spread some plastic wrap out,  spread a line of sausage filling across it in the middle if possible, and, using a straight edge like a small cutting board, shape it into a cylinder. Once it is made, you can let it sit overnight before you cook it, or freeze it. The first cooking should be steaming - gently steam the sausage in a pan. Once they are steamed, you can cook them any way you like, with the plastic removed, of course.

The sausages made in the plastic casing come out nicely, hold together, and do not need extra binding agents added unless they have not been mixed enough to develop a sturdy emulsion.

Party Preparations

For the party, I ended up making four kinds of sausage - Chicken  Paprika, Apple and Cheddar; Chicken and Spring Ramps, Shiitake Mushrooms and Garlic; Chicken with Taleggio and Tarragon; and Duck Sausage with Prunes in Cognac and Foie Gras. Mary, always ambitious, made three very different types of sausage: Gyro Lamb Sausage, Churrasco Beef Sausage, and Banh-Mi Style Pork Sausage.

We both designed our sausage presentations - the sauces and the breads and the condiments. The menus, which I placed around the house, made clear the purpose of our dinner: Sox and Sausages:

Along with the sausage, I made ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut, pickles, tapenade and cabbage and carrot salad. My mother made her famous (at least amongst my sister and me) hot clam dip. There's something just so 70s about hot clam dip. Mary and I made the sauces and condiments for our respective sausages. Mary even made a moist (and gluten-free) Brazilian-style pan queijo.

Here's my "Olive Bar Tapenade" - basically 3/4 lb of pitted olives and anything else that looks good on the olive bar at Whole Foods or similar upscale market, blended together - served with some homemade bread toasts dusted with Za'atar.

The 48-Hour Pickles (cukes + vinegar + salt + sugar + water + spices - no time for a nice fermented pickle, sadly):

And the cabbage and carrot salad (don't call it Cole Slaw - there was not a lick of mayo to be found anywhere):

Ambitions Nearly Thwarted: Duck Fat Fries

My one major ambition for the night was to make and serve hot, fresh hand-cut french fries cooked in duck fat. And this ambition, would, for me, prove to be my achilles heel.

Finding the fat was easy. My local butcher, Concord Prime, keeps duck fat in stock and was able to sell me 6 lbs of the stuff, enough for my evening of deep fat debauchery. 

But I was missing two keys to having my fries ready to go at the sounding of the dinner bell: time and a deep fryer. 

For fries to be crisp - really crisp - you need to blanch them in 325 degree F fat first and then turn the heat up to 375 and fry them until crisp and golden. But almost day-long event at Taza Chocolate in Somerville, ending just an hour before the dinner, would make advanced work impossible for me. That and the lack of a deep fryer.

At 4:15, 45 minutes prior to the arrival of the guests, Mary arrived with her sausages and her turkey deep fryer. 

At 4:45 we still had not set it up.

At 5:00  the fat was beginning to melt. Guests began to arrive. Hi Rich! Melissa! Adam! Bekka! Elliott! Seth arrived an hour later. Rebecca 2 and Amy arrived even later, thanks to faulty directions from Google Maps.

At 5:15 we were able to turn the deep fryer on at the base of the stairs on a slab of concrete. I would not be burning down my house today, thank you very much:

Meanwhile, at the top of the stairs on the deck, Mary started cooking some majestic-looking sausages (I went for tiny-sized with the hope that my guests would have the opportunity to try many. Mary went for the volume play).

While she cooked, I blanched and fussed with the extremely thick fries. I blamed my mutton-handedness on my aching wrists - I had been madly cooking for days and between the sausage fest and prepping and shooting a series of How-tos (for How2Heroes) and I just didn't have it in me to cut the perfect bistro fries.

They were sort of clunky:

Cooking took a long time. A very long time:

I had an audience:

Which broke up the monotony of frying batch after batch of slightly-too-large duck fat fries:

Meanwhile, Mary tended the grill and served up lamb, beef and pork sausages. 

My baked beans, which were actually stove top beans, sat unloved on the stove top next to the grill:

Turns out people really aren't into baked beans, even when they can locate them on the buffet table. Except for my mom, who ate them to humor me.

My sausages, which I'd placed on a sizzle platter on the grill, were slightly charred and  overcooked by the time I came up for air. The duck fat fries (and the fear of burning the fries, the dog, or the kid) kept me virtually a prisoner of the deep fryer.

Oops. I still managed to sample a few (they tasted good!) and dish out a couple more, dressed, to the hapless guests. Chicken Paprika sausage with Apple and cheddar, topped with Romesco and a yogurt and pickle sauce:

This plate had a little bit of everything - duck fat fries, 'baked' beans, duck foie gras sausage with apple slaw & pine nuts and grainy mustard, Chicken paprika sausage, and a lone banh-mi style sausage with some of Mary's not-so-secret sauce. Mary made a few composed salads, too, which were a big hit - chayote-avocado salad and white bean salad. Notice the baseball themed plates? Go Sox!

Mary's sausages were utterly gorgeous:

The hit of the party was Mary's Banh-Mi Pork Sausage. Here's how she put it together:

Banh Mi Sausage

Inspired by the flavors in a banh mi sandwich, this sausage is great on a baguette with traditional banh mi accompaniments.

For each pound of ground pork (Mary used ground pork butt), mix together

• 1 pound ground pork
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons Sriracha
• 1/4 cup minced cilantro
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice

Accompaniments: baguette for sandwiches, shredded carrot, shredded daikon, pickled shallots, chopped cilantro, sliced cucumber, Mary's banh mi sauce (recipe follows) and fish sauce

Mix everything together well and then fry up a small portion (about a tablespoon) to check seasoning. Add more saltiness with additional fish sauce, more heat with Sriracha, etc. There should be a pronounced sweetness from the brown sugar: if not add more.

Stuff into sausage casings if you wish. Alternatively, as more easily, you can more handfuls into patties. Grill or pan fry until cooked through.

Serve on a baguette with your choice of accompaniments.

Mary's banh mi sauce

Far from authentic Vietnamese. This sauce provides a nice creamy, spicy addition to the sandwich. Stir together:

• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• generous squirt of Sriracha (depending on how much heat you want)
• squeeze of lime juice

Taste and adjust seasoning by tweaking the ingredient amounts. The sauce should be creamy from the mayonnaise with an earthiness from the fish sauce and a goodly amount of heat.

For dessert I served some gluten-free treats - whoopie pies and cupcakes, left over from my How2Heroes shoot:

and Mary made brown sugar & walnut marshmallows:

Oh yeah. And about the game?  Remember, the Sox-Yankees match-up? We won. Squarely.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Graham Crackers...and they're vegan, too!

I was never one of those tots easily mollified by graham crackers and apple juice. I don't even think I liked graham crackers. There were more enticing choices. There were always more enticing choices. Except when in combination with chocolate and marshmallow. I've always had a soft spot for the s'more.

Sometime in my 20s I began to appreciate the simplicity of a graham cracker. They were slightly sweet and crunchy and versatile. When paired with coffee or tea, they were a pleasant - and dunkable! - counterpoint. I bought a box of organic graham crackers from time to time but almost never finished them.

When I started making my own I developed a genuine love for the graham cracker. I didn't have cravings, but when a still-soft graham worked its way into a s'more, I became aware of its subtle pleasures.

During the summer I lived on a goat dairy, I'd make goat cheese cheesecakes and sell them at the local farmers market for a couple dollars a slice. The crusts were always made with graham crackers. Nothing beats a graham cracker crust for cheesecake. I've had nut crusts before but they never met my expectations for texture and sweetness.

Now that I'm gluten-free, I decided to convert a graham cracker recipe I developed about 11 years ago. I removed the butter from the original recipe as well as the honey. It is now completely vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, corn-free and potato-free. It is also packed with good ingredients (organic extra virgin coconut oil, whole grains, brown rice bran, rapadura - evaporated cane juice). I wanted the recipe to be delicious, made in the spirit of the original graham cracker, and crunchy enough to be easily ground down into crumbs that I could use in a crust. I think I've accomplished that.

Graham crackers may be one of the easier recipes to convert - an ideal graham cracker has little to no gluten development and is made with whole grains. There's virtually no need for starches and almost any flour combination will work.

A few notes about this recipe:

1. You'll need a scale to make this properly.
2. Although I recommend specific flours (which tasted great), if you have a favorite blend you like, feel free to use it UNLESS it has a leavener in it.  You'll need 12 ounces total.
3. If you like a slightly less leavened cracker, omit 1/4 t Baking Powder and 1/4 t Baking Soda

Cake & Commerce's Gluten-free Graham Crackers...and they're vegan, too!

Dry Ingredients:

6 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
2 oz Teff Flour
2 oz Sweet Brown Rice Flour
2 oz Rice Bran Flour
2 oz Rapadura Sugar (or Brown Sugar)
1/2 t Baking Powder
1 t Baking Soda
1 t Salt, fine

Wet Ingredients

3 oz Virgin Coconut Oil, melted and slightly cooled
1/3 C Amber Agave Syrup (Honey or Maple Syrup will also work)
1/3 C Water, slightly warm
1 T Vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 (if convection, preheat to 300)

Combine Dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor or mixer. Combine wet ingredients together and mix until blended. Pour wet ingredients in food processor over dry ingredients. Pulse until well combined. The dough will be a slightly sticky mass.

Allow to sit for at least 30 minutes for the flour to absorb some of the liquid.

If the dough is still wet, knead in a little more teff or buckwheat flour. It should NOT be wet to the touch.

Roll out to about 1/8th of an inch on a sheet of parchment. With a knife, score dough into a graham-cracker-sized grid (or cut with round cutters if looking for another look). Dock dough (make holes in dough) with a fork or docker (if you happen to have one). Transfer to a sheet pan.

Brush surface with water and sprinkle with rapadura or sugar. Allow to sit for 5 minutes.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until dry. Do not burn - it gets VERY bitter if overcooked.

If you suddenly realize you want to cut it into shapes, when it is still hot, cut with a shaped cutter or with a knife.

Cool. And turn off oven. For drier grahams (you'll use them to make crumbs), place back in oven when it is cool and allow to dry out.

Eat, use for s'mores, grind and use for graham cracker crusts etc.

Store in an airtight container in a cool place. They will keep for a long time, several weeks, but if stored in a warm place the fat may oxidize over time and make it taste slightly 'off'.

If they get stale, place in 250 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes.

If you want to see how I do it, watch this video made by my friends at How2Heroes.com:

Passover cooking: Gluten-free Gefilte Fish

Until about 6 years ago, I turned my nose up at gefilte fish. I was repulsed by the anemic white snowballs masquerading as fish that came out of jars quivering with gelatinized stock. It was easy to say no to that course.

And then my mom brought home a piece of fish terrine - gefilte fish terrine - from a deli in Brookline that was bringing it in from a Russian deli in Brooklyn. It was a small piece of heaven. I was, at last, hooked.

Of course, I didn't go from terrine to jar after I finally learned to love the gefilte fish. I had to make my own.

The first few times I followed recipes. It worked. People liked the results. Then I started to improvise. Not a lot, but enough to make the recipe my own.

Let's get this out in the open: I hate raw onions. Not only do I hate raw onions, I hate onions that are still slightly crisp. They make me shudder. And cry. Traditional gefilte fish recipes use raw onions in the mix, and I simply can't take the risk that there may be some give when I sink my teeth into it.

That said, this isn't a traditional version of gefilte fish at all.I also have an aversion to lake fish (pike, carp and the like), from which gefilte fish is traditionally made. So I found a recipe online about 5 years ago called "Alaskan Halibut and Salmon Gefilte Fish Terrine" and improvised around it. I've changed everything about it except for the ratios of fish to onions and carrots.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free Gefilte Fish
Makes 10-11 patties

• 3/4 lb Salmon (wild/Pacific only) - pin bones and skin removed
• 3/4 lb Halibut (wild/Pacific) skin removed
• (or substitute 1.5 lbs of your favorite local, sustainable fish)
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• picked leaves of one sprig of thyme
• 2 T  sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1/4 t white pepper
• pinch of cayenne
• 3 egg whites
• 1 T potato starch

Saute diced onions in vegetable oil. Cook until soft. Set aside and allow to cool

Make sure small pin bones are removed from salmon. Run your hands over the fillet. If it feels hard and bumpy in places, you will need to remove the pin bones. Since you are cutting up the fish, cut right near the bones and remove them with your fingers (or you can remove them with a tweezer). Keep cool!

Place fish, lemon juice and zest, thyme leaves, sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne in bowl of food processor and pulse 15 times.

Remove half of the mixture and place in medium sized bowl. Add to remaining fish in bowl of processor the  egg whites, lemon zest and lemon juice, potato starch and onions and run continuously until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 20 seconds.

Add mixture to medium sized bowl with rest of mixture and mix with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes, or until consistent and a little sticky.

Form into palm sized patties and poach for 10-14 minutes in seasoned fish stock, below.

Serve cool, topped with onions and carrots from stock. Enjoy alone or with fresh horseradish.

Fish Stock for Passover
Makes about 1-1/2 gallons of stock, which freezes well

• 5 lbs fish bones from a non-oily fish (halibut, other white fish etc)
• 2 Onions
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Stalks Celery
• stems from 1 bunch of parsley
• 1 t peppercorns
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 sprig thyme
• 3 cloves garlic
• Water to cover
• (Optional - 1 C White Wine, kosher for Passover)

Combine all of the above ingredients in a large stock pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer and allow to simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour. Strain and reserve (you will have extra, so freeze what you do not use). I left out white wine in this recipe out, although you can add kosher for Passover wine, which I did not have on hand. If you choose to use white wine, add about 1 cup to the above recipe.

At this point you can put the stock away OR, if you are ready to poach your gefilte fish, make:

Seasoned Fish Stock for Gefilte Fish

• 8 Cups Fish stock for Passover, above
• 2 whole onions, cut into rounds about 1/3" thick (as if for onion rings)
• 5 carrots, cut on the bias - diagonally - into disks about 1/4" thick
• 2 T sugar
• 2 t salt
• juice of one lemon

Combine all ingredients. Simmer until onions are soft. Reduce heat just below simmer. Add in patties one at a time.  After 10-13 minutes, remove form heat. Place gefilte fish patties in tall container and pour stock and onions over it to cover. Cool for about an hour and place in refrigerator with a lid, making sure all gefilte fish is below the surface of the stock. Serve chilled.

Japanese-style Egg Custard (chawanmushi) steamed in an egg cup

Another Recipe from my post, "The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner".

This custard, made from a combination dashi broth (kelp and bonito) and chicken reduction with mushrooms, contained three surprises: tiny shreds of local storage parsnips and shiso leaf, and a sauteed cepe.

Chawanmushi steamed in egg cups with parsnip and shiso

• 10 eggs, topped (tops removed)
• 3 whole eggs
• 1-1/2 C stock (mine was 1 C dashi plus 1/2 C mushroom chicken stock)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t sake
• 1 t sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1" parsnip section, finely shaved into thin slivers, raw
• 1 shiso leaf, fine chiffonade
• 10 pc mushroom of your choice, very small, sauteed (I used cepes)

Combine eggs, stock, soy sauce, sake, sugar, salt. Whisk together, do not overwhisk. Strain mixture through china cap, chinois, or strainer.

Prepare a steamer basket.

Using strips of aluminum foil, create egg holders. Make sure they are secure. Place eggs in egg holders.

Place a small pinch of parsnip, a piece or two of shiso, and one mushroom piece in the egg cup (feel free to change up your vegetables and herbs to reflect what is in season). Pour in egg mixture so it is almost, but not quite, at the top. Place in steamer.

Steam 10-15 minutes, or until custard is no longer translucent. Serve in an egg cup or edible cup holder (I use cooked potato cubes or Spanish tortilla) and eat.

This custard may also be steamed in a tea cup or other deep bowl of your choice.

You can watch me make it here:

Miso, sake and lime cured Arctic Char (or Salmon or trout or....)

Miso-cured Arctic Char

• 1/2 lb Artic Char or other fatty fish
• 1 heaping tablespoon red miso
• 2 T Sake or Soju
• Zest of one lime plus 1 t lime juice
• 2 t Salt
• 1 t Sugar

Combine miso, sake, salt and sugar. Spread on top of char. Wrap char in plastic wrap and then place in ziploc bag.  Skin side up, place about 1 lb of weight on it (a box of butter will do) and place on a flat surface in the refrigerator for 2-3 days, checking once a day to make sure the cure is evenly distributed. Flip at least once a day. Slice thin and serve with creme fraiche or yogurt sauce.

Lime and Sake Yogurt for cured fish

• 3 T Plain yogurt
• 1 T sake
• 1/2 lime, zest and juice

Combine all three ingredients. Serve with Char or similar fish.

Gluten-Free Toasted Almond Semifreddo with Lemon Curd and creme chantilly

photo by sam d

(the following is the semifreddo recipe I used in my blog post Foodbuzz 24,24,24: The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner)

I love semifreddo. The cold/soft/melty texture, made by combining whipped eggs and whipped cream, is light and fanciful and satisfying.

I also love lemon curd. I love its tartness, its texture, and, when made with Pete & Jen's eggs, its fluorescent yellow color.

I also love almonds. I love almonds in all its' forms: paste and marzipan and raw and toasted and milk and brittle and cookies and frangipane etc. I've never met an almond I didn't like.

So I combined them.

From the outside, the semifreddo was, well, boring. It had a dull yellow color, a product of the yolks in the whipped meringue and the toasted almonds. It was round, providing absolutely no visual interest. To give a hint about its contents, I placed a dollop of lemon-curd infused creme chantilly on it and added a drop of pure, unadulterated lemon curd to the side.

Once hit with a fork and broken into, the semifreddo reveals its contents: two chewy, slightly crunchy almond meringue cookies and cool disk of lemon curd wedged between. It is an addictive dessert.

Toasted Almond Semifreddo with Lemon Curd

Decide ahead which mold you are going to use for your semifreddo. You can use anything you like, really. You just need to know for the almond meringue shape. I used a 3" round, which was huge. Line your mold with parchment - if you don't, it will be very hard to remove your semifreddo without melting it too much.

Make ahead:

Almond Meringue cookie

• 1 C sugar
• 1/2 C egg whites
• 1 C ground Almonds
• 1/4 t salt
• 1/2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Trace the mold you are going to use onto parchment paper. You will need two layers per semifreddo (or more, if you are working with a loaf pan and like meringue), so trace it enough times to produce the requisite number of pieces you'll need (number of molds you are using x 2 at least). Place on sheetpan(s), marker side down (no icky ink on your meringue, please).

Combine sugar, salt and eggs and in a double boiler whisk over heat until about 140 degrees. Whisk until soft peaks form. Add in bitter almond extract. Fold in almonds. Pipe immediately into traced mold template.

Bake for 1.5 to two hours, or until dry. It will soften up in the freezer over time. Just don't overbake or burn it.

If you are not using it right away, store in an airtight container. Holds up to 3 days.

Lemon Curd - Makes approximately 1-1/2 Cups

• 5 egg yolks
• 1 C sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• Zest and Juice of two large lemons, approximately 1/2 C
• 4 oz butter

In a bain marie (double boiler) over simmering water OR directly over heat in a heavy-bottomed pan, combine the butter, egg yolks, zest, sugar, salt and juice. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until thick. Push through a strainer to remove zest and and coagulated egg.  Allow to cool then use immediately or store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

You'll use about 1/2 of this recipe in your semifreddo.

Toasted Almond Semifreddo

• 3 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1-1/3 C heavy cream
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 3/4 C toasted almond flour (toast almonds and grind them or use almond flour and gently toast in a skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly until light gold in color)
• 1/2 t bitter almond extract
• 1 T B&B Liqueur

Combine eggs and salt and sugar in bowl of stand mixer and whisk over a bain marie until sugar is dissolved and mixture feels hot to the touch. Mix on med-high speed until cooled and slightly firmer than ribbon stage. Fold in almonds and B&B Liqueur.

Whip cream with almond and vanilla extracts until almost firm - do not overwhip.

Gently fold the egg mixture into the whipped cream.

TO ASSEMBLE THE SEMIFREDDO:

In your parchment-lined mold or molds, place a meringue cookie.

Spoon in enough semifreddo mixture to cover it.

Using a pastry bag or a spoon, place a dollop of lemon curd in the center of the mold (or, if you are using a loaf pan, put a long thick line down the middle). Cover with semifredo.

Place another cookie on top of the semifreddo, and spoon more semifreddo over top to cover. Freeze for at least 6 hours before serving.

Remove from freezer at least 2 minutes before serving to allow semifreddo to soften up.

Here's what it looks like when made in a loaf pan:

Watch me make it here:

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner

Eggs are the wallpaper of the food world.

They're always around but seldom noticed. In 94% of US homes, eggs are kept on hand as an ingredient, though called on from time to time to serve as a centerpiece, usually in breakfast or lunch.

With the decline of the economy and the recession, the egg has come into sharp focus as a cheap source of high quality protein, fat, and nutrients. One egg has approximately 75 calories, contains 6 grams of protein (mostly in the all-albumin egg white) and...211 mg of cholesterol, along with a host of vitamins and minerals. On its own, an egg is tasty, though rather plain. When coupled with other ingredients, the egg transcends the everyday and becomes one of the stars of the culinary world. Souffles, custards, quiches, meringues, macarons and macaroons, challah, brioche, buttercream, mousse, sauce anglaise, ile flotant...all benefit and thrive thanks to the frothy miracle of eggs.

Eggs are also a traditional symbol of the spring. Major world religions symbolically celebrate renewal and sacrifice through the ritual preparation and consumption of eggs. Easter, Passover, and Nawruz (the Iranian new year), for example, all feature eggs on the holiday table. 

So what better way to celebrate new beginnings than a Foodbuzz 24,24,24 with good friends, good food, and eggs?

Five miles from my house, located 21 miles west of Boston, is a small free-range egg operation, Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds, run by Pete and Jen, two agriculturalists with a passion for organics and real food. Here's their egg-laying brood enjoying an early spring day:

Pete and Jen sell their eggs around Boston. They also have a small 24-hour store, little more than a storage shed stocked with their products (beef, pork and eggs) with payments made on the honor system. I picked up 6 dozen eggs there over a few days to make my dinner happen (I ended up using almost 60 eggs - I spent $30 on eggs alone).

Pete & Jen's eggs are extraordinary. The ladies of the laying brood are treated exceptionally well, given organic grains, and pastured for the bulk of their laying life (in the winter it gets a little chilly). The eggs are not inexpensive, but there is great value in knowing that the product is consistently great and the chickens that lay them have not been raised in battery cages or abused. And maybe, just maybe, as in the case with wine, a higher price increases the enjoyment of the eggs. For me, the satisfaction of buying locally-produced and pastured eggs is worth the price of entry.

In Massachusetts, where I live, we are accustomed to buying brown eggs, which perhaps we were cajoled into by the sing-songy jingle that ran on local television for what seemed like decades and decades: "brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh!" Pete and Jen's eggs are mostly brown, with a few pastel-colored eggs thrown in for seasoning.

With my eggs purchased, I set to work thinking about my menu. I wasn't sure exactly what I would make, though suggestions came in from friends and family, all eager to influence the menu.

What I ended up with was a synthesis of their suggestions and my ideas. When I cook, I make food I'd want to eat - I like it fairly simple but interesting enough to hold my interest. I don't need new or flashy, I just need balance: textures and flavors must both stand out and work in harmony. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don't. Most of my work is improvisation, and at the last minute I'll adjust the plate.

The centrality of the egg made planning easy; additional proteins had to match the egg preparation in some way, not fight it or leave my guest wondering why I served it. I did not want the additional elements on the plate to drown out or over-accessorize the egg.

The menu came together one rare free morning this past week as I sipped a coffee at my local coffee roaster, Karma Cafe. It evolved and simplified over the following days to a tidy plated 5-course meal:

The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner: March 28th, 2009

Menu

Steamed Japanese-style egg custard with miso-cured Arctic Char, chili-lime hijiki salad and sake-infused yogurt

Cassoulet strada with flageolet beans, home-made chicken sausage, duck confit and rich chicken broth

Poached egg with pan-seared scallops in a spicy bay and curry leaf beurre blanc with mango chutney

Egg and caramelized onion napoleon with sauteed foie gras and cepes, pickled shallots and frisee salad

Toasted almond semifreddo with lemon curd and creme chantilly

Of course I didn't have the menu together in time to send out to the guests. They'd have to just trust me. Or something.

I spent a few hours each night after work pulling together pieces of the meal. Since dessert was frozen, I was able to make that ahead. I cured the char three days ahead. I made the sausage a week ahead. And you know the drill...

One of the more labor-intensive parts of the meal I assigned to my friend (and dinner guest and dinner sous chef) Mary Reilly, a personal chef and caterer who blogs at Cooking 4 the Week. Neither of us owns an egg-topper (popularized by Stefan on last season's Top Chef) though the Japanese egg custard - chawanmushi - was to be steamed inside an egg shell (thank you Mary for that suggestion). So Mary, dremel tool in hand, took to her basement and drilled open 24 eggs, sending burning, stinking pieces of egg and shell all over her walls (and clothes and eyes and hair).

I'd like to think her sacrifice was not made in vain.

On Saturday the 28th,  Mary arrived at noon to help me with preparation. What would have been an unbelievably stressful day of solo cooking was elevated to a merry, social, food-oriented gossip session once Mary pulled her catering van into the driveway.

Unlike me, Mary is unbelievably organized. She immediately grabbed Post-it Notes and wrote down each course on a single piece of paper. Without which I would have really struggled to put the plates together.

Mary gave helpful advice about the plates and made quick work of slicing, poaching, chopping and prepping. I'd never pulled off a meal before with such a capable second. It was a real pleasure to have her there.

At five o'clock the guest began to arrive, some with children in tow.

I asked my guests to bring something to honor the egg. Sam and Leslie and their two kids Malcolm and Eleanor brought the preparations for wax-resist Easter eggs. Melissa and her daughter Azusa brought egg-shaped cookies and a drawing of two Easter eggs. Mary and her husband Dave volunteered to make Pisco Sours for the guests, made, of course, with egg whites.

Adam and Bekka, newly arrived in Boston with their 4 month old Elliot in tow, added an Adam-penned ode to Bad Eggs (click on it to enlarge and read all of its bad eggy goodness).

Mom opened up the wine.

With the kitchen still in a state of near-chaos, Dave and Mary began whipping up Pisco Sours while the kids started their Easter-egg party:

Photo courtesy of Sam

The Pisco Sours, made with Peruvian Pisco Rum, lime juice, simple syrup and egg whites and topped with delicious Fee Brothers whiskey-barrel aged bitters, was a refreshing palate opener and a great contrast to our snacks - a cheese and blueberry jam-filled brioche and cheesy custard bites (a renaming salvaged these failed gougeres).

The blueberry-cheese brioche

photo courtesy Sam

photo courtesy Sam

Once the kids were occupied and the Pisco Sours were downed, the adults were ready to eat.It was almost 6 pm.

First Course: Steamed Japanese-style egg custard with miso-cured Arctic Char, chili-lime hijiki salad and sake-infused yogurt

The steamed custards, hidden in a pan covered in aluminum foil (our ad hoc steamer), were ready to go. We prepared a few extra, just in case any of them broke or failed.

photo courtesy Sam

Mary and I  plated up the first course and Mary garnished the plates with chives from her garden:

And, finally, at the table, accompanied by Peter Michael Clos du Ciel Chardonnay, 1995:

The custard, made from a combination dashi broth (kelp and bonito) and chicken reduction with mushrooms, contained three surprises: tiny shreds of local storage parsnips and shiso leaf, and a sauteed cepe. The egg was held on the plate by a simple Spanish tortilla with an indent cut in just for the occasion.

Second Course: Cassoulet strada with flageolet beans, home-made chicken sausage, duck confit and rich chicken broth

The next course had a touch of the silly: a cassoulet strada. Strada is a simple savory bread pudding made with a royale batter, which was, for many years, my mother's staple for Sunday brunches. I decided to dress it up a bit by turning it into a vehicle for duck confit, my own chicken sausage, and buttery flageolet beans. The plating was, arguably, even sillier than the concept: a round of bread pudding held aloft by a round of sausage, casing removed, standing like a tower above a moat of rich duck and chicken stock reduction. It was so very...1997. The crunchy pea greens, tossed in a delicate, low-acid chestnut honey vinegar, toned down the fattiness of the dish and were a welcome contrast to the softness of the strada.

photo courtesy of Sam

photo courtesy of Sam

Third Course: Poached egg with pan-seared scallops in a spicy bay and curry leaf beurre blanc with mango chutney

A few months ago I made a spicy lentil curry with fresh curry leaves. It was aromatic with cardamom, ginger, chilies, bay leaves, cumin seeds, and a large handful of curry leaves.  I decided that the aromatics would make an elegant and interesting beurre blanc. The color, created by the use of turmeric, was a shockingly bright, egg yolk-yellow.

I settled on a poached egg atop scallops - I figured that the butter and the yolks would bring down the heat of the sauce with the fat. When broken up, there would be an interesting interplay between the sauce and the yolks, which had nearly identical colors.

A la minute we pan-seared scallops, whisked the butter into the beurre blanc (which I then spilled and Dave very kindly cleaned up after me...turmeric is an ordeal to clean up!), dressed up a few more pea greens (oops, I forgot to think ahead on my garnishes), and set a two-day chutney on the plate.

photo courtesy sam

Dave takes a picture:

Barely a drop was left on the plates:

At this point we switched to a bottle I'd be holding on to for a while: E. Guigal La Turque Cote Rotie, 1994. It was disappointly spent. The qualities I had been so fond of in the mid-90s were all but gone (a day later, it has opened up a bit more and has a great finish, but the front end is muddled and dull).

Fourth Course: Egg and caramelized onion napoleon with sauteed foie gras and cepes, pickled shallots and frisee salad

After watching my former boss David Kinch create a napoleon from cabbage on a recent Iron Chef America, I decided to make an egg napoleon. I thought back to childhood breakfasts my mother would make on special Sundays: eggs scrambled with caramelized, almost burnt onions and smoked salmon. Because the onions took so long to cook, she didn't make the dish often.

I combined the idea of the napoleon with the caramelized onions from my mom's egg dish. I made thin layers of egg (into which I beat heavy cream, salt, and pepper) by cooking them, crepe-like, in a brand new non-stick pan,  and spread each of them with caramelized onions. I built up many layers so it looked like a stacked crepe, and then cut it into squares:

I bought an entire "B" lobe of foie gras (the remainder lives in the freezer now) and Mary cleaned it up and sliced it into small pieces, so that each person would receive two on their plate. I cooked shallots in a strong Doktorenhof  elderberry wine vinegar and chilled them down. I tossed frisee in vinegar and after we cooked the foie gras, I added some of the fat to the frisee and vinegar to make an impromptu dressing. I sauteed a few more cepes and served them alongside the foie gras.

Before sending the plates to the dining room, we garnished it with chopped thyme, grated egg white and grated egg yolk.

Dave takes a picture of the egg napoleon plate:

Dave's picture of the egg napoleon plate:

Me taking a picture of the plate, captured by Sam (note to self: long bell-shaped sleeves are not okay for plate-up):

And my view of the plate:

And my view of the finished, totally finished, plate:

(I'm not wild about still-crunchy shallots, whether or not I cooked them).

Final Course:Toasted almond semifreddo with lemon curd and creme chantilly

I love semifreddo. The cold/soft/melty texture, made by combining whipped eggs and whipped cream, is light and fanciful and satisfying.

I also love lemon curd. I love its tartness, its texture, and, when made with Pete & Jen's eggs, its fluorescent yellow color.

I also love almonds. I love almonds in all its' forms: paste and marzipan and raw and toasted and milk and brittle and cookies and frangipane etc. I've never met an almond I didn't like.

So I combined them.

From the outside, the semifreddo was, well, boring. It had a dull yellow color, a product of the yolks in the whipped meringue and the toasted almonds. It was round, providing absolutely no visual interest. To give a hint about its contents, I placed a dollop of lemon-curd infused creme chantilly on it and added a drop of pure, unadulterated lemon curd to the side.

Once hit with a fork and broken into, the semifreddo revealed its contents: two chewy, slightly crunchy almond meringue cookies and cool disk of lemon curd wedged between.

I enjoyed my dessert so much (I have a wicked sweet tooth) that I ate most of Leslie's plate while she was off with the kids, and dug into Mary's plate (luckily for me she doesn't have a sweet tooth) once Leslie's was gone. When Leslie sat back down at the table, she called me out.

Guilty.

At 9 pm our meal was finished. We spent three hours at the table, the kids somehow keeping themselves busy in a house with virtually no toys (how a 5, 7, and 9 year old managed to entertain themselves for that long will remain a mystery - though a near-endless supply of cookies may have something to do with it). The adults were, as far I could tell, satisfied but not stuffed. Even I was pleasantly full.

Thank you to all who came to dinner - Dave, Adam, Bekka, Elliot, Sam, Leslie, Eleanor, Malcolm, Melissa, Azusa, Mom and Mary. I hope we get to do it again soon!

And Mary, thank you so much for helping me. It couldn't have happened as smoothly without you.

Sam, Dave, and Mary - thank you so much for taking pictures. Your work supplemented my own and filled in major gaps in my documentation process.

Mom, thank you for letting me take over your kitchen and your home. Your patience is appreciated more than I could possibly express without sounding disingenuous.

And Kio, thank you for your generous gift of tomago maki. I added it to the chawanmushi plate. Everyone loved it!

Recipes:

First Course:

Miso-cured Arctic Char

• 1/2 lb Artic Char or other fatty fish
• 1 heaping tablespoon red miso
• 2 T Sake or Soju
• 2 t Salt
• 1 t Sugar

Combine miso, sake, salt and sugar. Spread on top of char. Wrap char in plastic wrap and then place in ziploc bag.  Skin side up, place about 1 lb of weight on it (a box of butter will do) and place on a flat surface in the refrigerator for 2-3 days, checking once a day to make sure the cure is evenly distributed. Flip at least once a day. Slice thin and serve with creme fraiche or yogurt sauce.

Lime and Sake Yogurt for cured fish

• 3 T Plain yogurt
• 1 T sake
• 1/2 lime, zest and juice

Combine all three ingredients. Serve with Char or similar fish.

Chili-lime Hijiki with Burdock root

• 2 T Hijiki
• 2 inch section of burdock root, peeled and julienned
• 1 T sesame oil
• 1 t vegetable oil
• 1/2 lime, zest and juice
• 1 t Aleppo pepper (or other mild chili)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t mirin
• 1/2 t sugar
• salt to taste

Cover hijiki with hot water and allow to rehydrate, about 5 minutes. Pour off excess water.
Place vegetable oil and sesame oil in hot saute pan, add hijiki and sautee until shiny. Add burdock root. Cook for about two minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. Balance flavors with soy, lime, or salt as necessary. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Chawanmushi steamed in egg cups with parsnip and shiso

• 10 eggs, topped (tops removed)
• 3 whole eggs
• 1-1/2 C stock (mine was 1 C dashi plus 1/2 C mushroom chicken stock)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t sake
• 1 t sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1" parsnip section, finely shaved into thin slivers, raw
• 1 shiso leaf, fine chiffonade
• 10 pc mushroom of your choice, very small, sauteed (I used cepes)

Combine eggs, stock, soy sauce, sake, sugar, salt. Whisk together, do not overwhisk. Strain mixture through china cap, chinois, or strainer.

Prepare a steamer basket.

Using strips of aluminum foil, create egg holders. Make sure they are secure. Place eggs in egg holders.

Place a small pinch of parsnip, a piece or two of shiso, and one mushroom piece in the egg cup. Pour in egg mixture so it is almost, but not quite at the top. Place in steamer.

Steam 10-15 minutes, or until custard is no longer translucent. Serve in an egg cup or edible cup holder (I use cooked potato cubes or Spanish tortilla) and eat.

Second Course

"Cassoulet" Strada

• 5 Eggs
• 3 C milk
• 1/2 loaf sliced fresh baked bread - I used sourdough, but use what you have (gf is fine)
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1/2 C slightly overcooked flageolet beans
• 2 confit duck legs, meat removed and shredded
• 2 sausages of your choice (I used chicken), thinly sliced, casing removed if possible
• Bread crumbs for topping (gf crumbs are fine)

Preheat oven to 350.

Line a 9 x 9 baking pan with parchment.

Whisk together eggs and milk. Add salt and pepper.

Place a layer of bread at the bottom of the pan. Cover with thinly sliced sausage. Add another layer of bread. Cover with beans and duck. Cover with a final layer of bread. Pour egg mixture over top. Place in oven.

At the 30 minute mark, spinkle bread crumbs over top to create a thin layer.

Bake until strada is no longer wet when pushed with your fingers. Allow to cool ten minutes and serve. Tastes great cold.

Third Course

Spicy Beurre Blanc (butter sauce) for Seafood or poached eggs

• 1 large piece of ginger (about 4 ounces, peeled)
• 6 chilies (I used dried arbol - go with your preference)
• 2 T clarified butter or oil of your choosing
• 3/4 t cumin seeds
• 1/2 t ground asafetida
• 6 cardamom pods
• 15 curry leaves
• 5 bay leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 4 oz butter, room temp

In a food processor, combine ginger and chilies until a uniform paste is formed. In a saucepan, heat oil. Add cumin and cook until it turns red and aromatic. Add ginger/chili mixture and saute for about 5 minutes, or until chilies darken a shade. Add in cardamom, curry, bay, and turmeric and saute for another 2 or 3 minutes. Add salt and white wine. Simmer until white wine is reduced by half. Strain.

Return strained mixture to heat until it simmers. Remove from heat. With a whisk, beat in the 4 oz of butter one small pinch at a time, until a uniform butter sauce forms. Use immediately.

If you do store it, you will need to re-emulsify it.

Fourth Course

Egg and Caramelized Napoleon

• 5 eggs
• 1/3 C heavy cream
• 2 T milk
• Salt to taste
• Fat, preferably clarified butter or duck fat
• 1-1/2 cups caramelized onions (about 4-5 medium-large onions), chopped up

Barely whisk together eggs, cream, milk and salt.

Spread a piece of parchment next to your stove on a flat surface such as a sheet tray or a cutting board.

On medium heat  place an unscratched non-stick pan (I used a small one) on the stove. Add the fat of your choice (I used duck fat). Ladle in about 1/3 cup of egg mixture.

Cook until the egg has just set. DO NOT OVERCOOK or your will get very rubbery eggs. The ideal is no color at all.

Using a spatula and your fingers, loosen the egg sheet from the pan and slip onto parchment (or bang it down). Spread with about 2 T of the caramelized onions.

Repeat until you have used up all the egg and onion, finishing with a topping of egg. Allow to cool.

Slice into desired shape when cool. Can be served room temperature or gently heated in an oven or a microwave to reheat.

Fifth Course

Toasted Almond Semifreddo with Lemon Curd

Decide ahead which mold you are going to use for your semifreddo. You can use anything you like, really. You just need to know for the almond meringue shape. I used a 3" round, which was huge. Line your mold with parchment - if you don't, it will be very hard to remove your semifreddo without melting it too much.

Make ahead:

Almond Meringue cookie (approximate recipe - I can't quite remember what I did!)

• 1 C sugar
• 1/2 C egg whites
• 1 C ground Almonds
• 1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Trace the mold you are going to use onto parchment paper. You will need two layers per semifreddo (or more, if you are working with a loaf pan and like meringue), so trace it enough times to produce the requisite number of pieces you'll need (number of molds you are using x 2 at least). Place on sheetpan(s), marker side down (no icky ink on your meringue, please).

Combine sugar, salt and eggs and in a double boiler whisk over heat until about 140 degrees. Whisk until soft peaks form. Add in bitter almond extract. Fold in almonds. Pipe immediately into traced mold template.

Bake for 1.5 to two hours, or until dry. It will soften up in the freezer over time. Just don't overbake or burn it.

If you are not using it right away, store in an airtight container. Holds up to 3 days.

Lemon Curd (approximate recipe)

• 5 egg yolks
• 1 C sugar
• 1/4 t salt
• Zest and Juice of two large lemons, approximately 1/2 C
• 4 oz butter

In a bain marie (double boiler) over simmering water, combine the butter, egg yolks, zest, sugar, salt and juice. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until thick. Push through a strainer to remove zest and and coagulated egg.  Use immediately or store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Toasted Almond Semifreddo

• 3 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1-1/3 C heavy cream
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 3/4 C toasted almond flour (toast almonds and grind them or use almond flour and gently toast in a skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly until light gold in color)
• 1/2 t bitter almond extract
• 1 T B&B Liqueur

Combine eggs and salt and sugar in bowl of stand mixer and whisk over a bain marie until sugar is dissolved and mixture feels hot to the touch. Mix on med-high speed until cooled and slightly firmer than ribbon stage. Fold in almonds and B&B Liqueur.

Whip cream with almond and vanilla extracts until almost firm - do not overwhip.

Gently fold the egg mixture into the whipped cream.

TO ASSEMBLE THE SEMIFREDDO:

In your parchment-lined mold or molds, place a meringue cookie.

Spoon in enough semifreddo mixture to cover it.

Using a pastry bag, place a dollop of lemon curd in the center of the mold (or, if you are using a loaf pan, put a long thick line down the middle). Cover with semifredo.

Place another cookie on top of the semifreddo, and spoon more semifreddo over top to cover. Freeze for at least 6 hours before serving.

Remove from freezer at least 5-10 minutes before serving to allow semifreddo to soften up.

Enjoy!

Daring Bakers March Challenge: Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna - the Gluten-Free Version

lasagne, just out of the oven

When I went gluten-free, lasagne was not one of the foods I craved. It isn't that I don't love lasagne - during my brief stint as a vegan (I was young and in love and had yet to discover the pleasures of local eggs, cheese, and proteins) I figured out how to make a version of the dish that even non-vegans could enjoy (though I'm still not convinced that soy bechamel actually tastes good).

My reason for not missing lasagne is quite simple, actually. I didn't grow up eating it. In my parents' home, comfort food was stuffed cabbage, potato pancakes, meat-and-tomato-and-biscuit casseroles - the perfect melding of Jewish diaspora staples and 1970s Family Circle dining. Lasagne was something I ate at other people's homes. I didn't like the ricotta included in most American-Italian recipes (it was too sweet and grainy) and the tomato sauce was usually bland and - tomatoey.

Until I was a teenager, I hated tomato sauce.

I'm baffled by this now. How could anyone dislike the savory and bright flavors of tomato? How could anyone ask for pasta with butter when cauldrons of tomato sauce bubbled in a back kitchen?

I think part of the reason I hated tomato sauce was the trap my mother set when she made hers. It was full of onions. More than any other food, onions were my enemy. Raw or cooked, they represented a threat to my eating enjoyment. The only way onions could be made palatable - something I discovered only as a teenager - was if they were cooked within inches of their oniony lives. Caramelized to the point of mush. If, after cooking, the onion maintained any kind of structure, it was pushed to the side of my plate. The way my mother made tomato sauce, I'd end up with a small pile of onions on my plate at the conclusion of the meal. I had it in my head that tomato sauce was an enemy, concealing nemesis onion from me just enough to trick me into biting into some.

Tomato sauced ceased to be an enemy when I (finally) discovered a recipe that contained exactly zero onions. It was a simple recipe that to this day my sister and I use as our 'house' tomato sauce when fresh tomatoes are unavailable: In 1/2 C olive oil, saute 1 head garlic. When cooked but not browned, add  1 T parsley flakes, 1 t basil, 1 t salt, 1 T sugar, 2 cans of San Marzano tomato puree. 2 cans of water, black pepper or red pepper to taste. Cook until reduced by half. Enjoy.

And just like that, tomato sauce became my friend.

This month's Daring Baker challenge had nothing, in fact, do do with tomato sauce. The challenge's goal was to teach everyone how to make fresh pasta dough - and learn a delicious ragu recipe in the process.

I'm pretty fluent in pasta dough. One of my favorite recipes is one I learned from Chef David Kinch of Manresa back when I worked for him at Sent Sovi. It was my duty to make pasta dough for the restaurant. The restaurant I used was one the chef learned while working at a Michelin-starred Italian restaurant in Germany. It was fragrant and herbal and came out perfectly every time.

But I did not have a gluten-free version I liked. I don't eat corn or use potato starch in my cooking so most of the recipes I researched wouldn't work. The recipe offered in the challenge was corn and potato-based. It wouldn't work for me. So I started experimenting, which I documented here.

I ended up with a recipe that not only made beautiful pasta sheets, but it became a lovely ravioli, and, I imagine, a devious fresh pasta. It needs to be cooked before it is used - I found that when used raw, the pasta became mushy and lacked bite.

The ragu recipe in the challenge also wasn't going to work for me. I don't eat red meat (though I do cook it for clients when they ask). So I adapted the recipe for chicken thighs (not trimmed of fat at all) and omitted the milk and added butter. For smokiness I added smoked paprika. It was possibly one of the best chicken-based sauces I've ever eaten. Mom loved it too.

The bechamel was the worst part of the recipe for me, mostly because I decided to do something REALLY dumb - I used rice flour instead of an all-starch mixture. The benefit of rice flour is that it is VERY stable. The downside is that it takes FOREVER to cook - unless it is fully gelatinized, rice has an unpleasant grainy mouthfeel (why I don't use it in most baked goods...). So do yourself a favor. Use your favorite starch in your bechamel recipe. Don't do what I did unless you have at least 30 minutes to cook it.

I ended up putting the recipe together twice - once with my unsuccessful, uncooked pasta dough and once with my successful pasta dough. The first one tasted great when fresh from the oven, but was a mess when reheated the next day. It looks pretty jolly, though (I baked it in a loaf pan to conserve the sauces for another attempt the next day):

The successful pasta dough worked much better. The dough kept its bite and held up well on the second day. If I could have done anything different, it would have been to not have made the unsuccessful lasagne at all.

Here's how the successful lasagne looked:

From above:

The lasagne, in the terrine.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free, beef and pork-free adaptation of Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna

Serves 6-8 people, depending on appetite

Lasagne Assembly:

• 1 cup fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 1 recipe pasta dough, sheeted and cooked (see below)
  
• 1 recipe Ragout/Ragu (see below)
  
• 1 recipe Bechamel (see below)

Preheat oven to 350 F

Oil or line with parchment (depending on how much you like scrubbing pans) a casserole (glass/metal/ceramic). Spread bechamel all over the bottom. Place several slightly-overlapping COOKED sheets of dough on the bechamel. Spread bechamel, followed by ragout/ragu over the sheets of pasta. Place dollops of bechamel on the ragout, and sprinkle with cheese. Cover with pasta sheets. Repeat spreading of ragout/bechamel/cheese until most of the ingredients are used up. To finish the lasagne, spread remaining sauce and heavily garnish with cheese. Bake at 350 F until bubbly and heated through. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before serving. Lasagne may be a bit slidy-rustic looking when you serve it immediately. But it will taste delicious.

Will make enough to feed a small army. Or your friends and family.

The Pasta

• 3 oz (NET) spinach or kale, cooked and squeezed dry
• 2 C Brown Rice Flour
• 1/2 C Tapioca Starch
• 1/4 C Garbanzo bean flour
• 3 T Guar Gum
• 1 t salt
• 2 T melted butter  OR olive oil(for added flavor, melt the butter with fresh thyme & black pepper & strain out)
• 3 Whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
• 3 T water, cold

Procedure:

Combine all the dry ingredients  in a food processor. Process until flours look green and sandy about 2 minutes. Add in wet ingredients and process until dough starts coming together.

Place dough in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle. On low speed, mix the dough until it starts to come together. Turn off mixer and finish kneading with hands. Allow dough to sit for an hour in refrigerator. At this point the dough can sit overnight.

When you are ready to roll it out, pull off a small piece and work it with a rolling pin on a well-(tapioca) floured surface. It should roll out quite thin - if you put your hand under it, you can see the outline of your hand if you hold it up to a light source. You can also roll it out in a pasta maker if you prefer.

At this point the pasta can be used in any application you like. Ravioli, pasta, tortellini -  it is a little more fragile than wheat flour pasta, but it will hold up nicely to filling and cooking. If you are making lasangne, cook for about 2 minutes in boiling salted water and remove from the water with a slotted spoon, a fine mesh strainer, or any handy device you may have. If you are going to let it sit, oil it with a little olive oil and place on plastic wrap or parchment, covered, until you are ready to use it.

The Chicken and Mushroom Ragout (no beef, no pork, no milk)

• 1.4-1.5 lbs chicken thighs, ground in food processor
• 2 T butter OR 2 T olive oil
• 1 carrot, peeled
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 small onion
• 3-4 cloves of garlic (not traditional, but I like it)
• 10 small crimini or "brown bella" mushrooms, sliced thin
• 1/2 t smoked spanish paprika
• 1-2 C White Wine
• 2 C Chicken Stock
• 1 C tomato puree
• 1 sprig of thyme
• 3 T butter

Procedure:

In the bowl of a food processor, chop up carrot, celery, and onion. Once coarse, throw in garlic. Heat 2T butter or olive oil in large heavy-bottomed stock pot. When hot, add carrot, celery, onion, garlic mixture and sprinkle the paprika over it. Allow to cook until translucent and fragrant. 

Separately, saute the mushrooms until cooked and slightly browned. Add a bit of water (a tablespoon or two) to deglaze the pan. Put aside until chicken has been cooked (below).

Pushing vegetables to the side, add in ground chicken and a little more oil or butter and allow to brown - it is okay if the bottom browns a bit, but you should scrape it down with a wooden spoon to prevent actual burning. You don't want burned fond (the name for the wonderful caramelized proteins at the bottom of the pan. Thank you maillard reaction).

Once the chicken has browned, add in the mushrooms add in 1/2 of the wine, stir to release the fond from the bottom of the pan,  and allow mixture to cook down by half. Add in the second half,  cooking down again. Add in chicken stock and tomato and sprig of thyme. Continue to simmer mixture until reduced by about 3/4 - at least an hour. Finish by whisking in 3 T butter. Use right away. Can be refrigerated or frozen, though some separation of fat may occur.

The Bechamel

• 3 T rice flour
• 1 t tapioca flour
• 4 T butter
• 3 cups milk
• pinch of nutmeg, cayenne, black pepper, white pepper, salt
• 1/2-1 Cup fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

The most important thing you must know before starting this recipe is that it is nothing like bechamel made with wheat flour. Rice flour does not gelatinize like wheat flour, it is less fine, doesn't brown as fast, and more slowly absorbs liquids. You'll need more milk and more time to cook this bechamel than you would if you used a straight starch. I chose rice because it is more stable than corn starch (unless it is a cornstarch specifically for industrial applications with little shear), which has a tendency to become wet and runny when subjected to temperature changes (especially freezing).   With rice, little lumps are par for the course unless you use an extremely fine rice flour, or, better yet, a rice starch. I added tapioca just for a little more instant gelatinization and stability. You'll end up letting this bechamel cook for a long time to break down the rice granules.

So if you want to do yourself a favor, substitute your favorite starch in place of the rice flour. It cooks in a fraction of the time.

Procedure:

Melt Butter. Whisk in starch/flour. Whisk continuously for a few minutes. If you've made wheat-based bechamel before, this stage will look nothing like the same stage with wheat. It will not look like sand, as the rice granules don't absorb the liquid very quickly. Add cold milk to the starch/butter mixture, whisking all the while. At this point I switch to a wooden spoon or a heat-resistant rubber spatula. As the sauce simmers, whisk. If you are using rice flour, to get the texture just right, you'll need to simmer it gently for about 30 minutes (!!!!!!!!!), whisking every couple minutes and keeping the heat low enough so that the bottom doesn't burn. If you are using starch, it should be ready in 3-5 minutes.

When it is the viscosity and texture you desire, turn off the heat. If you made the rice and it has lumps, whisk it more. Or use a hand blender for a few minutes. Whisk in cheese and balance out salt & pepper.

 

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

Dairy-free Chocolate Syrup - three ingredients, so simple

When I moved back to Boston after 4 years in Chicago I had to reset my food knowledge base. I had a vague sense of what I liked, but I no longer knew where I wanted to eat or what I wanted to eat. Every venture out to a store or down the street for a drive was a safari of discovery. I had no idea that locally, food artisans were producing amazing products that I had never knew existed until I saw them and wondered, 'what is this?' And then, upon tasting, thought, 'I need to meet these people'.

So I did what I did when I was in Chicago, one of the friendliest major cities in the world: I reached out to the artisans. But I had forgotten something about my people, the New Englanders: in general, New Englanders are wary of strangers. Glad to know you like what they do, but distanced and possibly slightly suspicious unless they know you.

Unsurprisingly, I heard nothing in reply.

So I hit the reset button and started over. Tabla rasa.

One of the small miracles of local deliciousness I experienced and was astonished by was Taza Chocolate's Mexican Chocolate Salted Almond round. It was remarkable. It had a slightly gritty texture (they use Mexican stone grinders called molinos to make the chocolate) and a bright acidic chocolate flavor that was beautifully offset by finely ground  - and slightly salty -toasted almonds. Soy-free (soy-free!!! hear that soy allergy sufferers - Taza is soy free!) direct-sourced and organic, the chocolate is earthy and aromatic. And potent. One night, after eating an entire bar at four in the afternoon, I found myself unable to sleep until nearly 5 in the morning. The theobromine corsing through my veins kept me powerfully and cleanly awake. Though a bit rattled the next afternoon when I finally woke up, I wanted to blog about this Taza chocolate. And take pictures.

Casting aside my pride, I pleaded with Taza via Twitter (again that scourge!) to let me visit them with my camera. I told them I'd be unobtrusive. I'd not bother a soul. They wouldn't have to entertain me. I promised!

Not effective. They were busy and had no time or capacity for a visit. Ah well, at least they responded.

Fast forward to yesterday. I've been working on the beverage menu for a Thai restaurant in Somerville and by chance started getting help from someone called The Boston Shaker. Or rather, his business is called The Boston Shaker. He is called Adam.

So Adam was helping me build cocktails (he made the first version of a drink I had never seen before, the Thai version of the Michelada). I knew he knew the folks at Taza, but I didn't know him well enough to ask him to ask them to...well, you know.

And by chance, reading Taza's Tweets on Twitter (I can't believe I even wrote that phrase), I came upon a discussion of chocolate syrup.

(Yep, I'm getting to the point of this post. FINALLY).

Seems they were trying to make a chocolate syrup using Taza's chocolate for a home-made chocolate creme de menthe liqueur that Adam The Boston Shaker is planning to serve at a Taza/Grand (it is a chic design boutique in Somerville) event this coming weekend. Success had been elusive. I thought about it for a moment, and using the semi-sweet chocolate I keep at home for icing, I made a cream-free ganache using simple syrup. It was simple and effective.

I presented it to Adam when we met again to discuss cocktails for the Thai Restaurant. We made another batch of the syrup together using about an ounce and a half of Taza chocolate. What is interesting about the Taza chocolate syrup is that it isn't completely smooth - because they use the whole bean in their chocolate making, there are flecks of beans in the syrup, insoluble pieces of nib that serve to remind of the chocolate's origins.

Last night - via Twitter, of course - Adam let me know that the liqueur worked beautifully. And I think, just maybe, I may be getting to visit Taza with my camera. I'll stand in a corner and just observe. I promise!

Cake & Commerce's Chocolate Syrup

Chocolate Syrup is a great, long-lasting addition to your refrigerator. It can be used to sauce up ice cream, though it isn't nearly as rich as chocolate fudge. It can be used in chocolate cocktails. It can be combined with soda water to make an egg cream. It can be eaten right off the spoon for a quick pick me up.  Combine it with almond or rice milk for a vegan chocolate milk experience. Or used as an ingredient.

• 1 Cup Simple Syrup* (or, if you prefer, 2/3 C Agave Syrup + 1/3 C water)
• 3 oz Taza 80% Chocolate (if you don't use Taza, make sure you use a very dark chocolate)
• 1/8 t salt

*To make the simple syrup, combine 1 C water with 1 C sugar in a saucepan and stir until dissolved. Heat until simmering. Remove from heat and set aside OR use immediately in this recipe

Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a metal bowl along with the salt. Pour just-off-the-boil simple syrup over the chocolate and stir until melted.

The chocolate will not yet be completely emulsified.

Using a blender or a hand blender, mix the syrup/chocolate for about 10 seconds. Pour into an airtight container and allow to cool. Cover and store in the refrigerator.

Keeps for several weeks - there's not much in it that will spoil.

To make the syrup thicker, add more chocolate OR  add more sugar to the simple syrup (or remove the water from the agave mixture).

Let me know how it works for you.

Gluten-Free Whoopie Pies - a deliciously decadent indulgence

This article in the New York Times got me thinking about Whoopie Pies again. I hadn't given much thought to the Whoopie Pie since a week-long trip to Maine last summer, where the highlight of my day was a drive to a nearby farm where I'd pick up just-picked produce and just-baked Whoopie Pies, those chocolately little cakes filled with oozy buttercream.

So I started to wonder: are there any good Whoopie Pie recipes out there for those of us who don't do the gluten or the potato or the corn? I did a quick perusal of the web and found a few recipes, but none of them made the cut. If it wasn't the ingredients, it was the photograph accompanying the recipe. I wanted to make something that looked and tasted great, not something that looked like a rock and was merely adequate.

Before I started on my own recipe, I decided to take a tour of the wheaten Whoopie Pie world, including the New York Times recipe. I eventually tried a Menonite recipe which worked well, so I decided to base my gluten-free recipe on it. After a few tweaks here and there, I came up with a formula that worked for me. I tried a version using Guar Gum (which is derived from a legume) and it had nice rise and didn't spread too much. The version I made without gum also worked well, was a little more tender, but spead out considerably.

A quick explanation of my flour choices for first timers to Cake & Commerce: in my gluten-free cooking and baking, I do not ever use potato, corn, or sorghum flour. I don't use potato because I don't like the flavor; I don't use corn because it makes me ill; I don't use sorghum because even though it is fairly versatile, wet-cooked sorghum (baking etc) does not eliminate two proteins in sorghum that people cannot easily digest - the results will catch up with you in 8 hours (fermentation makes it easier to digest). I use rice flour sparingly and only in certain applications - in baked goods in large quantities it is usually too grainy. I do not use pre-made baking mixes. Ever.

So I tend to use a lot of LIGHT buckwheat and tapioca in my baking. Sometimes I use certified gluten-free oat flour, but the flavor is pretty strong so its uses are limited. Lately I've been playing with whole ground Teff Flour (the basis for Ethopian Injera fermented bread) and have liked the result. I also like arrowroot as a thickener and garbanzo flour - but only in small quantities. I never use quinoa flour because of its strong aftertaste. This post shows what happened when I used it. without any understanding of its strong flavor.

Cake & Commerce's Whoopie Pies

Makes approximately 12 filled Pies

• 4 oz (1 stick) butter
• 1 Cup Sugar


• 1 Egg + 1 Egg yolk
• 1 C Buttermilk
• 1 t Vanilla extract

• 2 t guar gum (optional - if you don't use it, your pies will spread out more)
• 3/4 t Salt
• 1-1/2 t Baking Powder
• 1/2 t Baking Soda
• 1/4 C + 2 T Tapioca flour
• 1-1/2 C light buckwheat flour
• 1/2 C Cocoa
• 1/2 C Almond flour (as fresh as possible - grind your own if possible)
• 2 T Rice Flour

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 350 F. 

Sift all dry ingredients together.

Mix sugar and butter until fluffy. Add eggs and mix until combined. Alternate additions of dry ingredients and wet ingredients, until everything is in the mixing bowl. Mix briefly, until all ingredients are evenly and thoroughly combined. Make sure dough is fairly firm - it should not be wet or gooey at all.

It should look like this. If it doesn't add a little more flour.

Using an ice cream scoop (I use a smaller size - remember, it spreads!), scoop out balls of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Make sure there is space for the cookie to spread. Here's what it will look like in the oven when the cookies are done baking:

Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out dry or the top of the cookie does not retain a mark when touched with your finger. I prefer the pies a little more fudgy and less dry, so if you want a slightly more fudgy cake, pull it out of the oven before the top feels hard.

Allow to cool completely before icing. When ready to ice, use a pastry bag fitted with a star tip or a round tip to create a pretty pattern or just spread a dollop of icing on the cookie with an offset spatula or anything handy you happen to have around your kitchen.

When you are done, if you wrap the whoopie pie in plastic, it will start softening up. In my opinion, Whoopie Pies taste best when they are softer after they've sat in plastic for a day.

Basic Vanilla Filling for Chocolate Whoopie Pies

Yield: enough to ice your Whoopie Pies and your cupcakes, if you have them. So halve the recipe if you don't have an overwhelming need for a surplus of icing.

• 8 oz Butter (2 sticks)
• 6-8 C Confectioners Sugar
• 1/2 C Buttermilk
• 1/2 t salt (dissolve in buttermilk, if possible)
• 1-2 t vanilla extract (depending on how much vanilla flavor you want)

Procedure:

Combine butter and 4 cups of the confectioners sugar and mix until it resembles corn meal. If it combines completely, that's okay. Add the buttermilk with the salt and the vanilla. Mix until completely incorporated. Add 2 more cups of confectioners sugar. Mix again. If the mixture is still wet, add another cup or two of sugar. When it is spreadable but holds its shape, it is done.

For chocolate icing, I use the icing recipe here

Enjoy!

By the way, after I made this batch, I tasted the cake side-by-side with the full-gluten recipe. It wasn't quite the same, but with a healthy dollop of icing, the two were nearly indistinguishable. My mom ate nearly half of one before she realized it was gluten-free and kept eating it even after learning that. I found myself unable to stop eating the cake once I started. It was rather gluttonous of me. Is it any surprise I've gone up a size this winter?

And you can see the results in this video:

Tender and delicate gluten-free savory tart dough

I had two hours to put together a treat for a Boston blogger get-together last week and didn't really know what I was going to make. The directive was for finger foods - finger foods? I'm not much of a finger food girl. I asked my friends - via facebook - what they thought I should do. They came up with about 15 different ideas - some tea sandwiches, many bacon ideas, a few amazing tips for pre-made puff pastry dough. In the end I decided to stick with gluten-free and low cost - being unemployed, I can't really afford to spend money on putting together expensive treats. I scoured the refrigerator for ingredients - I found local ricotta, eggs from Pete & Jen's Backyard Birds (our local micro-farm eggs), some olives and a little Parmigiano-Reggiano. 

I had just seen a recipe for a sweet almond crust, so I decided I'd improvise a sweet one. I knew roughly the ratio I wanted to use. The resulting crust was very tender, a touch crumbly, but quite delicious. The crumbliness is easily addressed by the addition of an egg yolk. Here's the recipe I used. It makes one large quiche crust or about 24 small tart shells.

Cake & Commerce's Savory Tart Dough

• 3/4 C Whole blanched almonds
• 1 C Light buckwheat flour
• 2 oz COLD butter (1/2 stick)
• 1.5 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1/4 t cayenne
• 1 egg yolk OR 1-2 tablespoons water

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a food processor, using the blade, grind the almonds and the Parmigiano-Reggiano together until both are reduced to powder. Add in buckwheat flour and continue to grind until well combined. Add in egg or water. Mix until well combined and dough forms a ball (if it doesn't, add water, a drop or two at  time. Don't worry - you won't overwork it!):

Because there's not gluten in this dough, you don't need to let it rest. Taking a pinch of dough, place it in a mini tin and with your fingers shape it to fit the mold, with a little lip at the top:

It doesn't need to be perfect, but you should definitely make this neater than I did!

If you can, blind bake the shells (place parchment paper on top and weigh down with baking weights or beans). If not, you'll want to pull out the shells after they've warmed but before they've browned to push down the dough with your fingers. Blind baking works better....

They'll look like this after about 10 minutes:

You'll want to pull them soon thereafter, as you are going to fill them and bake them again. While the pan is still hot, I remove the shells VERY GENTLY from the pan and place them in baking cups:

Because the pan I use to bake the mini tarts are a little tough to maneuver once the tart is baked, I like to bake them, filled, inside a paper baking cup - it prevents breakage when the tarts are finished.

In this version, I put together a ricotta mixture made with 2 yolks, 1/2 lb ricotta, my favorite spices, some grated parmigiano-reggiano, a little milk, caramelized onions, salt, pepper, a squeeze or two of lemon juice and a little goat cheese in the middle. I filled each of the shells and topped them with finely shaved olives and baked them until they were mostly set, about 10-12 minutes.

Eat while warm or serve at room temperature. They also heat up nicely. Enjoy!

Daring Bakers February Challenge: Flourless Chocolate Cake

[And now for the requisite Daring Bakers Blurb: The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge ]

There seems to be a recurring theme with me: I hate recipes that other people love. I guess I'm peculiar. Not really a surprise.

I've always known this. I've been weird since I took my first breath. Tell me, do you know children who hate pizza? Me! Or won't chew gum? Again, that was me. Or refused soda in favor of milk? Yep, I'm that girl.

What others swoon over I find dull or unappealing. I've despised Flourless Chocolate Cake ever since "Chocolate Decadence" blazed its way across every menu in America in the early '90s. I don't like the texture. I don't particularly like the flavor (why would I ruin a good chocolate bar by adding eggs and butter to it?). And the calories? Do I really need pack even more fat per square inch into my chocolate than is there in a bar already? It is too dense, too sticky, too intense, and too mouth-coating.

So yeah, I'm a grump when it comes to flourless chocolate cake.

This month's challenge was a bit of a letdown for me. In my time as a pastry chef and passionate sweets eater, I've found only one recipe that induced anything even resembling a swoon: L'Esperance's Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe, which I was given for use on our Mother's Day menu when I was (briefly) the pastry chef at David Kinch's first restaurant, Sent Sovi. It is a slightly more complicated recipe, less chocolately, but definitely delicious. And the texture isn't like weirdly eggy fudge. Here's that recipe:

L’Esperance’s Flourless Chocolate Cake

Prep Time: 60 minutes

 

Ingredients :

 

6 ½ ounces 70% or higher chocolate

6 ½ ounces butter

6 ½ ounces sugar

6 ½ ounces egg whites

6 yolks + 1 egg

Pinch of Salt

 

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Grease, line, and sugar 2 ea 9” cake pans
3. Melt chocolate and butter together over double boiler. Cool.
4. Combine 1/3 of the sugar with the egg whites in a mixing bowl. Warm over a double boiler, until sugar is dissolved. Whip until stiff.
5. Combine rest of sugar with egg yolks and beat until ribbon stage. Add 1/3 of egg YOLK mixture to chocolate, incorporate completely.
6. Fold this mixture back into the YOLK mixture.
7.  Fold 1/3 of whipped whites into the yolk/chocolate mixture. When yolk mixture is light, add this back to whipped whites, folding gently.
8. Pour into prepared pans.
9. Bake approximately 30 minutes. A toothpick should come out fairly dry __________________________________________________________

It is a great recipe, but it was not the recipe for the challenge. The recipe for the challenge was a very expensive flourless chocolate cake with completely different ratios - including a POUND of chocolate. Not one to skimp, I purchased and combined a little heavy-duty Valrhona with some ScharffenBerger, nearly a $18 investment (and very painful, considering I'm unemployed and unconnected to the world of cheap retail).

It is an easy recipe. Melt, mix, mix, bake, cool, eat. If you love this sort of thing, it is a good recipe. If you don't, you, like me, will end up giving it away to your friends on Movie Night (thank you Doug and Nell). I'll admit, here and only here, that when served warm, this cake is pretty tasty - and soft. A few seconds in the microwave does the trick.

The one saving grace is that the this month's challenge required that we also make an ice cream recipe of our choosing. So I used this one, which I developed earlier in the month. It is a deep, rich, decadent and sweet chocolate custard that can be made without an ice cream maker. Mom, the diabetic rebel (she still won't live her life as a diabetic, shaving years off her life, I'm sure), give it two thumbs up.



Here's the Daring Bakers Recipe for February:

Chocolate Valentino

Preparation Time:  20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

(CERTIFIED) Gluten-Free Oaty Chocolate Chocolate Chunk Cookies

There's not a long story behind this cookie. I was going to movie night at Nell and Doug's house on Monday night when I realized that I had nothing to bring them. The refrigerator was bare - well, except for the gross of Peruvian asparagus that I did not buy - and I wasn't feeling inspired by the vegetable crisper. No, it was time for cookies. Gluten-free cookies. Gluten-free cookies that didn't taste sandy (no rice flour) and didn't have a weird "celiac" flavor (that's the adjective we would use at my old job to describe the slightly off finish of many gluten-free and allergy-friendly foods).

I don't use some of the more neutral tasting gluten-free flours and starches  - potato flour or corn starch - in my baked goods. I, personally, do not like the flavor of potato flour and I eat very little corn and don't like how chalky corn starch can taste. So the flours I do end up using - mostly tapioca, buckwheat, certified gluten-free oat, the occasional brown rice and, rarely, garbanzo flour - have to be balanced out to limit their flavor or texture. Alternately, they can be exploited for their flavor. I don't believe in all-purpose flour mixes - I can't control what is in them and my ratios change all the time. I don't believe any single GF mix can be a 1 for 1 substitute for wheat flour - different flours have different properties and can be mixed and matched depending on

the type of recipe you're making. I also don't like to use gums unless there's need for springiness - breads and muffins and some cakes benefit from gums, ground flax, ground salba or ground chia. They need to be used with some caution - too much can cause a gummy net that collapses when the product cools.

[And yes, doubters, for most with CD, CERTIFIED GLUTEN-FREE OATS can be tolerated. Don't believe me? Check out the findings from Health Canada, who have summarized human trials and a number of studies on this website. Their conclusion?

"...the safety/benefit evaluation for the introduction of oats in the gluten-free diet of patients with CD indicates that moderate amounts of pure oats are well tolerated by the majority of individuals with CD and dermatitis herpetiformis.The term "pure oats" is used to indicate oats uncontaminated with gluten from other closely related cereal grains, including wheat, barley and rye as detected using current test methods. Based on clinical trials in the published literature, the amount of pure oats considered within safe limits is 50 to 70 g/ day for adults and 20 to 25 g/day for children."]

Anyway, so I wanted to make cookies that would 'pass'. I mean, I wanted them to taste so good no one would think there was anything different -ahem, gluten-free - about them. So I started with a chocolate chip base recipe that I really love - from the Village Baker's Wife. I then altered it completely. I added unsweetened melted chocolate and a combination of -what else - buckwheat and tapioca flours, hydrated oats, and dry oats. And chocolate chunks. The results - a completely different cookie that is tender, chewy (if you don't overbake it) and very, very oaty. So you better like oats. A lot.

When I brought them to the party later that night, I told only a couple people the cookies were gluten free.  They were a big hit. Many had no idea the cookies were gluten-free and along with everyone else, took seconds. The next day, after they'd been sitting out all night, my mother (the diabetic) tried them. And, as she chewed on her second cookie, she smiled and said (sarcastically), "Oh, they're gluten-free? Then I guess they're good for me."

I wish.

Cake & Commerce's Gluten-free Oaty Chocolate Chocolate Chunk Cookies

• 2 sticks (8 oz) room-temperature butter
• 1-1/4 C packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 c granulated sugar
• 2 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 2 eggs
• 2 t vanilla
• 1 cup of CERTIFIED GLUTEN-FREE hydrated oats  (combine 1 C hot water with 3/4 C + 2 T Oats)
• 1 C dry instant oats
• 2 c light buckwheat flour
• 3/4 c tapioca flour
• 1/4 c brown rice flour
• 2 t baking soda
• 1-1/4 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 2 C chocolate chips or chunks

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream together the the sugars and 1-1/2 sticks of the butter.
Add in eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Scrape the bowl and mix a couple more times.

Melt the other 1/2 stick of butter with the 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate. Allow it to cool.

If you haven't already, pour 1 cup of boiling hot (or instant hot) water over 3/4 + 2 T oats and allow to hydrate. Stir occasionally. Allow to cool.

Meanwhile, sift all of the dry ingredients together.

Once the chocolate/butter is cooled, add it to the batter, stirring as it is added. Follow with the hydrated oats. Once thoroughly mixed, add in the dry ingredients. Once the dry ingredients are completely incorporated, scrape the bowl and give a few more stirs. Add the chips.

Allow the dough to sit at least an hour or overnight. If you do allow it to sit overnight, you'd should pre-portion the scoops OR roll it into a cylinder.

Bake for 9-12 minutes. The less you bake them, the softer and fudgier they will be. I'm a fan of the chewy cookie, so I pull them around the 9-10 minute mark.

Some variations:

• For a softer cookie, leave out 1/4 C buckwheat and 1/4 C dry oats
• For a plain chocolate chip cookie, leave out the chocolate, but use the same amount of butter
• Add nuts of your choosing
• Replace vanilla with liqueur of your choosing
• Add in dry fruit like cranberries or dried cherries

Enjoy!

Gluten-free Gnudi -- lighter-than-air ricotta dumplings

It sure looks like a pillow, doesn't it? A pillow with flecks of thyme.

Gnudi, a 'naked' dumping - essentially ravioli filling without the pasta to envelop it- won a huge following in the US after the Spotted Pig, the restaurant that introduced the term 'gastropub' to America, presented them on its first menu (where gnudi remain to this day). It was love at first bite - even for me. I adored the little plump, impossibly soft dumplings. And promptly forgot about gnudi. For nearly 5 years.

And then a visit to Sportello reminded me of how much I loved gnudi (though I wasn't crazy about Sportello's accompanying bitter walnut sauce). How could ricotta taste so heavenly? The soft, supple texture was just so darn appealing, I couldn't stop eating them. I didn't really want to share them with my dining companion. But I played nice. And give him a couple.

I don't know what came over me this week, but I was suddenly hit with the urge to make gnudi - and make them gluten-free. I looked at a few recipes - all of them had flour. Some had semolina and white flour. Some just had white flour. Gnudi don't depend on flour for texture but for binding. So a conversion to gluten-free was rather simple.

When I make gluten-free conversions, I don't use a one-size-fits all 'all purpose' mix. Because I don't like the taste or texture of potato starch and try to avoid corn because of inflammatory issues, I don't include either in my recipes. I avoid rice flour unless I can hydrate it prior to use, which is impossible in most baked goods (the rice flour makes the product taste sandy). Though some don't like it, I find that buckwheat, especially light buckwheat, has a mild flavor when part of a gluten-free combination of flours. In this gnudi recipe, I used light buckwheat, tapioca starch, and, for dredging the gnudi (coating in flour) I used rice flour. Because the gnudi are cooked by poaching, the rice flour actually forms a nice seal around the outside of the dumpling.

gnudi with walnut-parmiggiano sauce

To make the gnudi, you combine ricotta with egg and Parmiggiano-Reggiano, an herb of your choosing, a little salt and pepper, and some flour for binding. The dumplings are then poached (rather than boiled) in hot water and then sauced. Because they are extremely delicate when they first come out of the water, they need to be handled with care. If allowed to sit, they will toughen up a bit as they cool (thanks to the starch matrix) and can be finished in sauce later on.

Add too much flour, and the delicate pillows become a little more chewy. Add not quite enough, and the gnudi fall apart when you attempt to lift them out of the water. Never try to drain the gnudi in a colander - you'll just make a mess. A slotted spoon is your friend. Not literally. I mean, it could be. That would be kinda odd. Ahh, who am I to judge?

Gnudi can be made ahead, though I don't recommend holding them any longer than overnight. They'll need to be refreshed - poached in water or simmered in sauce - and they'll lose some of their suppleness. In an ideal world you'd make and serve them immediately. Since few of us actually live in that ideal world, making them ahead by an hour and holding them at room temperature until you are ready to finish them will work well without compromising them too much.

You'll want to give yourself a few hours to make the gnudi - not because they are complicated but because you'll want them to sit twice - one after you've mixed them and again after you've dredged them in rice flour. The sitting time gives the flour time to absorb some of the moisture and helps the gnudi bind a bit better.

gnudi with brown butter and kale

I haven't written down any formal sauce recipes here. I believe you should serve your gnudi with the sauce of your choosing. If you Google "gnudi", you'll find a range of sauces and suggestions. I enjoyed mine in two sauces - a walnut/parm/olive oil 'pesto' and in a simple brown butter sauce augmented with the juice of the pink lemons I purchased yesterday. You can serve gnudi with just about anything - as the cliche goes, you are only limited by your imagination.

One last thought: you can test your mettle by reducing the amount of buckwheat in the recipe by 1 to 2 teaspoons. Obviously the less flour in the dumpling, the more delicate it will become. Good luck!

Gnudi with butter, kale, lemon, capers, chicken stock, parmigiano-reggiano

Cake & Commerce's Gluten-free Gnudi

Preparation time: start to finish, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

For the dumplings:
3/4 lb Fresh, local Ricotta (sheep is preferable...cow is fine)
3 to 4 oz  Parmigiano-reggiano, grated
1/2 t salt
pepper to taste
1 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon fresh thyme, tarragon, or the herb of your choosing, cut into near-dust
fine zest of a single small lemon or 1/2 a large lemon
squeeze of lemon, about 1/2 t lemon juice, fresh
2 T Light Buckwheat Flour
1 T + 2 t Tapioca Flour

For dredging gnudi before poaching:
2 T Rice flour
1 t Tapioca flour

(To make these with conventional flour, substitute scant 1/2 cup flour for the buckwheat and tapioca and dredge in wheat flour instead of rice and tapioca).

Procedure:
Before starting, make sure ricotta is relatively dry. If it is wet, place ricotta on a few paper towels inside a colander and drain. If it is dry and drained, it will not leave marks on the paper towel. Allow to drain for about an hour if wet.

To make gnudi, combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix with a spoon until well combined. Let the mix sit for about 30 minutes - the flour will absorb some of the moisture and the dough will become stiffer and slightly easier to handle.

Combine rice flour and tapioca flour together in a mixing bowl. Wetting your hands beforehand, pinch off a piece of the gnudi dough and roll into an oblong shape not unlike a football. Roll the gnudi in the rice flour and tapioca flour mixture, making sure gnudi is coated. Place gnudi on a sheet pan lined with parchment. If you use a lot of flour, you will have no sticking issues. Allow gnudi to sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes - again, the flour must absorb some of the water on the surface of the gnudi.

At this point you can set gnudi aside for a few hours if you aren't ready to cook them yet. If you are planning to serve them as part of a meal, it is actually easier to cook them ahead and store them in the refrigerator - as long as overnight (though I don't recommend that. I actually left them for two nights, and by the second day they lost some of that 'lighter than air' quality I liked about them immediately after making them).

To cook the gnudi, bring a pot of water to a simmer. DO NOT BOIL - the gnudi could fall apart! Gently simmer the gnudi for about 2 minutes or until they float to the surface, and remove from heat with a slotted spoon. VERY GENTLY place on a parchment lined pan. If you want to get fancy, you can rub a little olive oil on the parchment for the perfect non-stick surface.

At this point you can store the gnudi - overnight at most - or finish your dish. It is okay to hold them out for an hour - they will start to dry out, so keep them covered with a little bit of plastic.

Here are some idea for sauces for you. I don't have a single suggestion for a sauce - there are many great recipes out there that will pair well with the gnudi. A few suggestions:

Pesto
Tomato Sauce
Sage Brown Butter
Toasted Walnut Brown Butter Sauce
Cream Sauce
Poached lobster sauce (please kill them humanely, okay?)

I tossed mine in brown butter and garlic with thyme, Aleppo pepper, parmigiano-reggiano, and kale. It was delicious. The walnut/parm pesto was really good, too, but it was a little too heavy for the gnudi. I'd prefer something a little lighter. maybe something with a shellfish stock or poultry stock.

Toasted walnuts: don't toast them too long or they get bitter! And take as much of the skin off as you can.

Enjoy.

Thank you to Ms. Jacqueline Church of The Leather District Gourmet for featuring this recipe on her S/O/L/E Food Tuesday post.

Making ketchup at home: easy as...ketchup

I love ketchup. I think ketchup is a gorgeous condiment and I can't resist how it tastes with eggs and fries and anything on a bun (except hot dogs. Never hot dogs). And, for reasons I cannot even begin to understand, I've never thought of making ketchup at home. I've made mustard, cured olives, bottled pepper sauce - if it can be made, I've made it. Or so I thought.

Browsing Tastespotting one day, I noticed a picture and a recipe for home-made ketchup. Ketchup? Ketchup! My friend Lynda, too, started making ketchup at home, using Sally Fallon's recipe for fermented ketchup.

I looked at a few recipes online and decided to go with my gut rather than follow someone else's well-worn path. I also wanted it to be cane sugar-free and vegan. Ketchup recipes usually contain Worcestershire sauce, which contains anchovies, or fish sauce. I'm not vegan, but I wanted to create an alternative to the standard ketchup recipes out there.

The recipe below is strongly seasoned - I'd recommend cutting the spices in two if you like slightly more subtle ketchup. And leave out ingredients you don't like. I'm a firm believer in tailoring dishes to your own taste and trimming, cutting, and adding ingredients where it makes sense. Except in baking. So feel free to play with the recipe.

Cake & Commerce's Tomato Ketchup (never call it catsup!)

• 24 oz pureed tomatoes
• 10 oz water
• 1/4 C agave syrup
• 1 T Molasses (Grandma's or similar)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed

Whole spices (place these in cheesecloth and tie with string or your life is gonna get tough):

• 1 t whole cloves
• 1 t whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 t whole allspice
• 1/2 t whole mustard seed
• 1 t whole green cardamom
• 1/2 stick cinnamon
• 6 slices ginger, about 1" diameter each

Ground spices - combine:

• 1/4 t cumin, ground
• 1/2 t coriander, ground (not cilantro)
• 1/4 t paprika
• 1/4 t cayenne
• 1/4 t ground white pepper
• 1/4 t turmeric

Finishing:

• 1 6 oz can of tomato paste
• 1 T sherry vinegar
• 3 T sauerkraut juice (substitute vinegar)
• 1 t salt 

Procedure:
Sweat (saute until translucent) the garlic and onions. Add in tomato puree, water, agave and molasses, and soy. Stir in ground spices (cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne, white pepper, and turmeric) and add sachet of whole spices and ginger to the mix. Bring to a simmer.

Depending on how spiced you like it, either remove the spices after 15 minutes or, if you are like me, leave them in for up to an hour while you are reducing the sauce.

At the one hour mark or after you have removed the spices,  you'll want to blend up the remaining mixture - the preferred method is the food mill. If you don't have one, you can use a hand blender (buy one if you don't have one) or a blender or a food processor.  Puree until smooth. No chunks!

Check the viscosity. If it has reduced by 30%, add in 6 oz of tomato paste and simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Recheck viscosity. If sauce is thick enough to form a firm peak when a spoon is removed from the sauce, it is good. If not, let it simmer a bit more.

Once it is cooled, add in vinegar, the sauerkraut juice (if you have it - if you don't substitute more sherry vinegar), and the salt. Adjust flavors as necessary. If you like it sweeter, add another teaspoon or two of agave (remember, it is very sweet!).

Allow to sit out at room temperature for 24 hours (no higher than 68 degrees f). If you aren't loving the flavor, augment with a little tomato paste, tasting with each addition. The paste can taste metallic  and 'raw' (not literally, but it isn't a 'mellow' flavor), so you'll want to add carefully.

It will keep in refrigerator for a few weeks. You could also hot process it if you like for shelf-stability. But that's tricky and not for the faint of heart. Or for me to explain here. Or you could freeze some of it. It makes quite a bit, probably more than you'll use in a few weeks.

This morning I tried this ketchup with eggs. And it was deeelightful. I hope you'll use this recipe as a starting off point for your own ketchup. Feel free to change it up and make it your own.

 

This post was part of the Food Renegade's FIGHT BACK FRIDAY, April 10th, 2009

Kinpira - burdock and carrot, Japanese Style

Every Monday night, Nell and Doug host a movie night in the screening room of their house in Cambridge. I don't know how many years they've been doing it - I've been going off and on since the early 2000s, but I know it has been going on even longer. They take a break over the summer; the rest of the year, a rotating cast of friends, recent and historical, curate 8 week 'series' of loosely connected films. The movie night is open to all - well, at least all who know someone who knows Nell and Doug.

Before the movie, a vegan meal is served, though cheese and other non-vegan condiments are available. Doug and Nell have an uncanny memory for the dinners they serve. When I showed up at their house two weeks ago, Doug, recalling a meal I had shared with them in late spring, apologized for serving pasta again. Of course I remembered that meal (it was a very good pesto) but Doug, who has since served dozens of movie night dinners to legions, recalled it with startling acuity. 

It is hard if not impossible to attend movie night without a treat in hand. Guests' contributions vary. This past week, before a screening of the early Jack Nicholson flick Five Easy Pieces, one guest brought a just-baked chocolate and banana bundt cake, another brought candied kiwis. There were assorted small containers of wasabi peas and a few other things I didn't even see because I arrived a little late (argh! Why do the suburbs have to be so far from Cambridge? Don't answer, it is just me whining). I'm not sure how I had been wasting my day, but suddenly I looked at the clock and it was 5 pm. I had to leave by 6:30 to get there in time, and I had no time to shop or bake or do anything remotely well-planned.

I considered asparagus souffle.  But the idea of bringing not-yet-in-season produce to the dinner brought me down. Plus I would probably screw it up and end up bringing some rubbery, mockable mess. Rooting around the produce drawer (I'm trying to use up as much of the vegetables as I can before my mom gets home from Florida), I found a forgotten stash of burdock, one of my favorite crunchy vegetables. It was left over from a dinner party several weeks earlier and now was just sitting there, sad, waiting to be eaten. So I complied. Kinpira Gobo was going to be my contribution to the meal.

Kinpira Gobo (金平牛蒡),  sauteed and simmered burdock root with, usually, carrot, is one of my favorite Japanese side dishes. First exposed to it during a homestay outside of Tokyo when I was 16, I continue to make it whenever I happen to notice burdock in the store. Which is not all that rare, as I tend to shop the Japanese grocery stores whenever I can (it is also available in Chinese markets - I haven't checked Korean markets so you'll have to tell me if it is stocked there too).

Burdock, a long, thin, bark-colored root that measures anywhere from 1 to 3 feet, is an easy-to-cultivate thistle, renowned for its 'blood purifying' and diuretic qualities when concentrated in its dry form. Its' dark, woody exterior must be peeled off before use, and the white flesh of the root oxidizes quickly (and browns) if left out. This isn't a problem - as it cooks, it browns all over and becomes a golden straw color (my friend Becky wants you to know that raw burdock can stain your hands, though I've never experienced it. Wear rubber or plastic gloves if you are concerned).

The crunch of the cooked burdock root pairs well with its mild flavor. The simmer sauce/glaze - basically a combination of soy and sake and sugar (in the ratio of 3:3:1) is finished with a bit of sesame oil and, if desired, a dash of shichimi togarashi (seven spice blend) or, if unavailable, cayenne.

"Kinpira" - the cooking technique - is a saute followed by a simmer. Kinpira is a fast cooking technique and imparts a ton of flavor in a short period of time. It is always the same regardless of the dish cooked in that manner.  I like a version with hijiki seaweek, carrot, and tofu - it may, in fact, be one of my favorite dishes of all time. In this recipe I pair carrot with the burdock - a very traditional combination. The sweet softness of the carrot is an appealing contrast to the subtle flavor and harder crunch of the burdock.

Here's the basic recipe I used:

Cake & Commerce's Kinpira Gobo

• 1-2 large carrots, Julienned
• 1 large burdock root, Julienned (you can soak in water after cutting if you don't want to watch it oxidize - remember to dry as much as possible before cooking).
• 1 t sesame seeds raw (toasted is fine too)
• 2 t sesame oil + 1 t peanut oil
• 1 T sake
• 1 T soy sauce (gluten-free for all my celiac pals)
• 1 t sugar (substitute coconut sugar or agave syrup)
• 1/4 t OR LESS cayenne or shichimi togarashi (optional, but makes for a nice kick)

Combine sake, soy sauce and sugar. Heat oil in large saute pan with lid. If using raw sesame, add to the oil and allow to cook for a couple minutes - add carrot and burdock when sesame is no longer translucent. Saute for about 2-3 minutes. Add in soy/sake/sugar combo, and simmer gently with a lid for about 10 minutes. Check from time to time to make sure liquid has not entirely evaporated and give mixture a stir. When the carrots and burdock are mostly cooked, uncover pan and allow to finish cooking - there should be no liquid left in the pan. Finish with the cayenne (or shichimi) and a touch more sesame oil if desired.

Serve at room temperature.

The forgiving crowd at movie night downed the kinpira in record time even though it clashed with the main dish of the meal - a killer vegan chili, made by Doug. Nell chastised me for not having the recipe up on the blog. So Nell, for you, the recipe. A few days late, but I hope not too late.

Valentine's Day S'mores

Take a soft and chewy cookie. Roll it out. Cut it into a heart or use a cutter. Place a square of your favorite chocolate on it and a marshmallow. Microwave in 15 second increments until marshmallow becomes gooey.

Eat and Enjoy. Here's how to do the gluten-free version (pictured above). I took the picture on the site. I kinda like the one above better.