June 2008 Archives

I have the worst luck.  Sort of.

I've made a souffle once.  It came out awesome.  I mean, it was unbelievable.  Especially for someone who hates working with eggs and who never made a souffle before.

I was thrilled beyond belief.

I mean, go look at those souffles.  Really, go look.  I'll wait here.

Back?

So, the second time, they were still good.  Maybe not quite as good as the first, but still good.

It was time to try something different.  And this is where my worst luck comes into play.  The first time I do something I've never done before?  Comes out great.  But I'm never able to quite reproduce that first time masterpiece.  Happened with Amazing Chicken too. 

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I thought it was time to make a sweet souffle, as opposed to a savory.  Especially when I saw the yogurt cheesecake souffles on Baking Bites. 

Greek yogurt?  Vanilla flavor?  Awesome.

Let's go to the recipe, then we'll talk.

Ingredients

• 1 cup greek style yogurt
• 3 large egg yolks
• 3 large egg white (room temp)
• 3 T all-purpose flour
• 1/8 t salt
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1/8 t cream of tartar
• 1/4 c sugar
• butter
• 6 ramekins and a baking sheet

Well, local wise, not so great.  Salt, vanilla extract and sugar aren't exactly local here in the Pacific NW.  And until I read this, I had no idea where cream of tartar came from and I still don't know where I could buy local versions of it.  You'd think up here in wine country, wineries would just package it.  I mean, wineries have devoted followings generally, wouldn't people be more willing to shell out extra money for Stag's Leap Cream of Tartar?  Annnnnyways.

1. Preheat the oven to 375F
2. Butter the ramekins relatively liberally.  Put a couple dashes of sugar into each ramekin and give them a shake to spread the sugar around the interior.  Throw the ramekins on a cookie sheet.
3. Whisk the yogurt, egg yolks, flour, salt and vanilla extract together in a bowl.
4. In a different bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until it's foamy and then slowly pour in the sugar and beat to the soft peak stage.
5. Gently fold in a third of the mixture from step 2.  Once the egg whites are fully incorporated, fold in another third (which would also be considered half of the remaining).  And then, fold in the rest of the egg white mixture.
6. Divide the mixture amongst the ramekins, about a half cup into each.
7. Bake until risen and lightly browned on the edges, about 15 minutes.

That picture up there? 

That's the end product, coming out of the oven.

Were they tasty?  Hell yes.

Did they rise?  Hell no.

My theory is that I screwed up by trying to third the recipe.  I mean, it's just two of us, and souffles aren't exactly a leftover ready dish.  I had planned on making this for our parents this past weekend, unfortunately, things just didn't work out (ok, apparently our parents have stopped feasting on actual food and now subsist merely on the suggestion of food).  Someday, we'll have a dinner party with two other couples (or, at the very least, four other people) and I'll try this again.

After all, I can't fail every time, right?

I've already introduced you to one of my favorite asparagus recipes. In fact, I have a really hard time cooking asparagus any other way. I just don't think these tender stalks need much accompaniment. Though when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to try it. After all, what better accompaniment to just about anything than cheese!

Gruyere cheese is a smooth, rather strongly flavored cheese, reminiscent of Swiss. Though strangely, I don't much care for Swiss cheese (gasp!), yet I'm very fond of Gruyere. This tart was very easy to make, yet not the easiest thing in the world to eat. Still, I'll make it again.

Asparagus and Gruyere Tart from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast
Serves 4

• 1 sheet puff pastry
• 6 ounces Gruyere cheese, shredded
• 1-1 1/2 pounds fresh asparagus (From Homestead Organic Produce)
• Olive oil
• Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400. 
2. Lightly flour the counter or work surface and roll out the pastry until it measures 16x10 inches.
3. Score the pastry dough about an inch from all edges.
4. Use a knife or fork to pierce the the dough inside the score marks at regular intervals. This will prevent the pastry dough from bubbling in the oven.
5. Bake the dough for 15 minutes.
6. Remove the baked dough and sprinkle with the cheese (don't be shy, use as much as you want!)
7. Trim (or break) the asparagus and lay the spears over the cheesey dough in a single layer.
8. Brush with olive oil and season with some salt and pepper.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the asparagus is tender.

Patricia's Notes: I wasn't happy with how the puff pastry behaved. When I cut the tart to serve it, it was difficult to cut through all of the layers and the pastry was a bit dry. I'll look for a light dough recipe and make my own next time. The creamy cheese blended with the asparagus quite well. I sprinkled some leftover Gruyere on top of the tart before I baked it and that was a nice addition. While I will likely continue to simply roast my asparagus with a little Parmesan cheese, this was a beautiful presentation and would work great for a party.

Hi there hey there ho there, friends and neighbors.  It's the other half of Cook Local here, the Mister to the Missus.  And I'm here to talk about bisexual Scottie dogs.

...

Sorry, I've just been informed that there wasn't actually a space in the email, scotti wasn't a typo, and I'm actually supposed to be talking about biscotti.  My bad.

Which, I guess, is good, because I wasn't sure how cornmeal and apricot worked into the dogs and I'm not sure I actually wanted to know.

Recently, during a bout of worklessness in my life, P and I sat down and looked at what we spent money on and we realized that coffee and our morning snack was a serious money drain, but we weren't particularly willing to give up that daily passion of ours.  As our wedding rolled around, we started looking at home espresso makers.  Since I was unsure of my ability to learn how to make a proper espresso with a manual machine, I was pushing for an automatic machine, which we promptly put on our registry.  While we didn't get it for our wedding, we did get it for Christmas, thanks to my wonderful in-laws, a scant 3 days later, along with a small outlay of cash from our own accounts.  We realized that the machine we put on our registry wouldn't be sufficient for our needs, but the most inexpensive machine we could use was still too expensive for a gift.  So, the in-laws got half, we got half.  Happy news is that we have actually paid it off already in savings on our daily purchases of coffee.  Hooray for us!

But, this is all background, a rich Columbian (and Costa Rican, Konan[?], Rwandan, Panamanian and who knows where else) tapestry, if you will, leading to what I'm supposed to be talking about.

So, in addition to making our own coffee, we still needed our morning treat.  After all, my blood sugar tends to dip in the morning after our workout and a little protein snack we've previously shown you how to make.  So, we started making our own biscotti.  We've gone through probably seven or eight different recipes trying to not only find a great one, but also not to get bored.  And we think we finally have one we'd like to share.

But wait, there's still more background.  Seattle has a very, very wonderful bakery called Cafe Besalu.  One of their items is a cornmeal, apricot and sage cookie, and it was such a novel, unique taste, we've tried to replicate it in so many different ways.

Which lead to me doing a Google search for cornmeal biscotti and, eventually, led me to this recipe (which, of course, we'll be writing up below in our own style, along with a couple changes and planned changes.  In fact, make sure you read to the end first, because this recipe wasn't as perfect as we wanted it and I'll share some tips about what we're going to do next to, hopefully, make it better.

So now, to make a long story even longer... The recipe. 

Cornmeal Apricot Biscotti

adapted from Pittsburg Needs Eated who adapted from Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies

Ingredients

1.5 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
.5 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1 cup chopped dried apricots

Now, looking at that list, we didn't do too well on the locavore front.  We didn't use a local flour, we don't even have a clue if you can get local cornmeal (we're working on it tho), salt and sugar are both non-local staples.  Heck, I think, generally speaking, the only local in this was the eggs, the butter and the apricots.  We can do better, of course, with a local flour and cornmeal.  We could fudge the lemon if we have my in-laws zest some of their lemons next January and we figure out how to store lemon zest for the long term.

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar just until blended.
4. Add eggs, vanilla and lemon zest and beat until light and fluffy.
5. Add mixture from step 2, stir until all ingredients are moistened.
6. Add apricots and mix just until blended. 
7. Spread some cornmeal on a cookie sheet.
8. Flour up your hands and form the dough into a log, about 6 inches wide, an inch tall and whatever length it comes to.  It isn't that hard to figure out when you're doing it.
9. Throw the cookie sheet on the middle rack for about 35 minutes.  The top should be cracked and golden brown.
10. Carefully slide the biscotti onto a cooling rack.  If the innards of the biscotti loaf didn't fully cook, it will break apart.  But it will still be good to eat.  Let cool for about 5-10 minutes.
11. Using a serrated knife, cut the loaf diagonally in slices about half an inch thick.  Give or take.  It isn't science.
12. Now you have two options for crisping the biscotti
    1. Lay the pieces cut side down on a baking sheet, bake for five minutes or until browning at edges.  Flip pieces, bake for five minutes, or, again, until browning at edges.  Remove and cool on a rack.
    2. Lay the pieces cut side down on an oven safe rack, bake for 10 minutes, or until browning at edges.  Remove and cool.

Makes roughly 18 pieces, give or take, and should last for 2 weeks in an airtight type container.

You know, even if you screw this up, it'll still be tasty and, honestly, it's a very inexpensive recipe, especially if you go to the bulk section.  Heck, the most expensive thing are the apricots, and those are barely $7 a pound.

Now, if you look at the 'original' recipe we used, you can see that we changed it a little bit.  To be honest, the above recipe is our second attempt at the recipe, the first just followed the Pittsburg Needs Eated recipe. 

The next time we make it, we're going to cut .25 cup of flour and add the same amount of cornmeal.  The above ingredient list produced a biscotti that was just a little... dry?  That's not the best word.  The best word I can come up with is it just tasted too much of flour and not enough of cornmeal.  The original recipe had equal amounts cornmeal and flour, so I think we need to switch back to that ratio.  Cutting back the sugar, however, didn't seem to have a negative effect.  Perhaps we'll use stevia or agave nectar instead.  I'm also thinking these could be made into excellent cookies, something I'm going to try this Sunday, I think.

Rhubarb is one of those foods that I never wanted to try. As my dear husband puts it, "It looks like celery and you make dessert out of it? WTF?"

I'd seen people make pie, and coffee cake, and sauces, and jam out of it. It was a beautiful color, but beyond that, it held no interest. Why in the world would I bake a vegetable into a pie?
Now that I've decided that vegetables can actually taste good and I want to eat more of them, I've decided to try my hand at the epitome of all rhubarb dishes, rhubarb crumble.

Rhubarb Crumble adapted from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast
Serves 6

• 1 1/2-2 pounds rhubarb stalks (from Anselmo Farms)
• 1 1/4 cups Emmer flour (from Bluebird Grain Farms)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 400.
2. Slice the rhubarb into pieces that are no more than about half an inch thick.
3. In a 13x9 glass baking dish, mix the rhubarb pieces, the sugar, and 1/4 cup of the flour.
4. Cut the butter into chunks.
5. In a food processor, combine the butter and the rest of the flour. Pulse until the butter is reduced to small pearls.
6. Add the oats and the cinnamon and pulse to combine.
7. Pour the topping over the rhubarb and bake for 35-40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown.
8. Cool slightly and serve.

Patricia's Notes: I was nervous about this recipe, but I've made it twice within a week and it's very good. I think rhubarb tastes a lot like a sour apple, so it lends itself very well to a crumble or crisp. There is a lot of sugar in this recipe, but I did replace about 1/3 of a cup of the sugar with an organic sugar substitute and the taste didn't suffer. We reheated the crumble several times for dessert and even ate it cold one day. If you heat it, pairing it with some rich vanilla ice cream would be excellent.