The Iron Foodie Contest

1. Why do you want to compete in this challenge?

Well, to be honest, I have just about everything anybody could want in life: a wonderful husband and two sweet boys, work I love, a comfortable home, wonderful family and friends...the only thing I've longed for is to be an Iron Chef. I think the Iron Foodie is as close as I am going to get!

2. Limitations of time/space notwithstanding, whose kitchen would you like to spend the day in & why? Julia Child, Thomas Keller, Ferran Adria, James Beard, Marie-Antoine Careme, or The Swedish Chef?

I think it would have to be Julia Child. I have a soft spot for her and great admiration for her work.

3. What morsel are you most likely to swipe from family & friends’ plates when they aren’t looking?

Olives.

4. Sum your childhood up in one meal.

Stuffed bell peppers.


5. The one mainstream food you can’t stand?

Hot pockets.

Cures for the Lunch-time Blues...

Here are some cool tips for lunch packing!

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/nutrition/nutrition-kids-lunch.php

http://lunchinabox.net/

http://www.lhj.com/recipes/easy/cooking-for-kids/healthy-lunch-tips/

Back in business

...with a new iPhone and a creamy, manchego-cheesy, yellow tomato risotto for dinner. Look!

What Would You Cook Today, If You Could?

Chorizo slices, hot and caramelized, with sherry
Fava beans with pasta and cream fraiche and lemon
Lentils with ham
Potato Soup
Pizza with eggplant slices
Egyptian Tomato Soup
Arroz a la Cubana
Veal Saltimbocca
Lavender shortbread cookies
Peach ice cream
Chocolate mousse
Fresh bread

And I would also like spinach salad with red onion, big handfuls of juicy red grapes, avocado slices with oil and salt, macadamia nuts, dried sweet cherries, coffee with hot foamed milk, some tempranillo, syrah, cabernet franc....

Can you tell that I'm on a diet? 5 pounds already gone.....

So-called Superfood Really is Super!

Spring got here, and we've been outside a lot. This is pretty much our only outdoors time for a while, because summer will be so cold we'll have the heater on again between Memorial Day and Labor Day!

To take advantage of the fun and sun, I thought I'd try this Superfood salad from the Leon Cookbook for a backyard luncheon. It is every bit as good as they say!




Superfood, from the Leon Cookbook by Allegra McEvedy

200g broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets

120g peas, fresh or frozen

100g cucumber, cut into slim batons

100g good-quality mozzarella, cubed

20g alfalfa

20g toasted seeds (we use sesame, sunflower, flax and pumpkin)

50g avocado, cut into pieces

30g quinoa, Fairtrade if possible

Small handful flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped

Small handful mint, rough chopped

juice of 1 lemon

4 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

Wash the quinoa well and put in a small pan. Cover with cold water plus about an inch then let it gently simmer until the water's gone - about 15 minutes. Spread it on a tray to cool to room temperature.

Put an inch of hot water into a saucepan with a pinch of salt and cover it. Once boiling, drop in the broccoli and peas and put the lid back on. Drain after three minutes and run the veg under cold water to take all the heat out and keep them good and green.

Now build your salad in layers, starting with the first ingredient on the list and ending up with the dressing (but only dress it just before you eat it).

Chocolate Guinness Goodness

Okay, lately I've been saying that everything is the best, but this *really* is the BEST!

Chocolate Guinness Goodness from Bon Appetit

* 8 large egg yolks
* 1 cup sugar
* One 14.9-ounce can Guinness Draught
* 3 cups heavy cream
* 7 ounces high-quality bittersweet (70 to 72% cacao) chocolate, finely chopped [NOTE: I actually used cocoa powder here, Valrhona, 3/4 cup]


* Special equipment: Six 8-ounce old-fashioned glasses

In large nonreactive mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar.

Open can of Guinness and slowly pour into 4-cup measuring cup, pouring down side of cup to reduce foaming. Pour half of Guinness (about 7/8 cup) into heavy-bottomed 3-quart saucepan. Add 2 1/4 cups cream and whisk to combine. Set over medium heat and heat, whisking occasionally, until bubbles just begin to form at edges. Remove from heat, add chocolate, and whisk until smooth.

Slowly pour hot chocolate mixture into eggs, whisking constantly to prevent curdling. Return mixture to saucepan and set over moderately low heat. Cook, whisking constantly, until mixture thickens and coats back of spoon, about 15 minutes. (Pudding will look separated.) Pour into blender and blend on high for 1 minute. [NOTE: My pudding didn't look separated -- wonder if the cocoa powder had anythign to do with that -- so I skip the blender step.] Divide pudding among glasses, leaving at least 1 inch of space at top of each. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled and set.

Meanwhile, pour remaining Guinness into small saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to moderately low and simmer, uncovered, until reduced to 1 tablespoon, about 20 minutes. Pour syrup into small bowl and let cool.

Beat remaining cream until soft peaks form. Add Guinness syrup and beat until combined. Divide cream among 6 glasses of pudding and serve.

Grab your Crockpot and Try This!

This is the best thing that we have made in a long time! And I was so happy with it because I thought it was a really healthy dinner apart from the 2 tablespoons of cream that get stirred in at the last minute. And then Rafa reminded me that the chicken was sauteed first in a lot of butter (yes, he made this for us for dinner!). So okay, it has its share of butter and cream, but it is still home-cooked, super-easy, and delish!



Chicken with Golden raisins
from: Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 bone-in chicken thighs
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup red wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup golden raisins

One piece at a time, dredge the chicken in the flour, coating both sides and shaking off any excess.

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When it foams, add the chicken and cook until deep golden brown on both sides, 5 to 7 minutes per side.

Transfer the chicken to the slow cooker. Add the wine to the pan, bring to a boil, and cook, scraping up any browned bits stuck to the pan. Pour over sauce the chicken and season with the with the salt and pepper. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 hours.

Stir in the cream and the raisins. Cover, turn the cooker to HIGH, and cook until the chicken is tender and cooked through, another hour.

Serve the chicken hot, with the raisins and sauce.

For the Love of Food

On January 26 we celebrated the love of food in honor of a wonderful friend. Here are some of the photos of the family and friends who gathered together to celebrate and share.

In San Francisco:








In Marin:









In San Diego:

photo coming soon!

Lemon and Soup Season Together

It's been blustery and rainy around here for a long stretch. Real soup weather if there ever was. At the same time, we have a bumper crop of lemons on our old lemon tree, so it was fun to try to combine the two.

Avgolemono Soup is a creamy, homey, lemony soup that was perfect to warm us in the cold weather and a good use of some of the lemons. This recipe is a combination of two recipes from the Silver Palate cookbooks. In one recipe they called for greens, and since we had some spinach, and it's always a good idea to eat spinach, I added it.



Avgolemono Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
6 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
1 handful of rice
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
2 cups of baby spinach

In a large soup pot, saute onion in olive oil for 5-7 minutes. Stir in rice and spinach and cook for 2-3 minutes. As spinach wilts, add chicken broth and simmer for 20 minutes until rice is softened.

Meanwhile, beat egg yolks with lemon juice. After broth has simmered for 15-20 minutes, slowly add 1/2 cup of broth to egg mixture to temper eggs. Whisk tempered egg mixture back into hot broth, taking care not to bring it to boiling.

I served this hot, but you can also serve it cold. Salt and pepper to taste, although we found that it didn't need any salt or pepper, it was that flavorful!

Coq au Champagne

Check out the Royal Foodie Joust this month. The ingredients are champagne, orange, and mushrooms. This is my submission:



Coq au Champagne

8 ounces lardons or cubed pancetta
white parts only of 2 large leeks, thinly sliced
1 large shallot, peeled and chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped
10 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
zest and juice of 1 orange
1 bottle sparkling wine (I used Mumm Napa Brut)
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley

Saute pancetta, leeks, shallots, and mushrooms in 2 T olive oil until softened, about 10 minutes. Add chicken pieces, orange zest and juice, and wine to pan and bring to a boil. Partially cover, turn heat to low, and simmer for 1 hour.

For best results, cool, and refrigerate overnight. Reheat gently over low heat, sprinkle with parsley before serving with rice or noodles or nice crusty bread.

Cinnamon-Sesame Ice Cream

Every year we get a big box of goodies delivered to the door from Spain, and this year was no different. The Christmas season is a traditional time for baking of special sweets and candies, and my mother-in-law does her shopping for us, packs it all up in a big box, and ships it off to us, and a week or two later we enjoy marzipans, turron, polverones, and my favorite, mantecados.

Mantecados are crumbly cookies flavored with cinnamon and sesame, and they contain 7 million calories per cookie. Since I usually have a significant calorie deficit racked up toward the end of December, I can take in as many mantecado-calories as I want with impunity. Right, in my dreams. Anyway, we went through the mantecados pretty fast, and by New Year's Eve they were all gone. What to do except make up an ice cream recipe that would taste like mantecados with my fancy new ice cream maker?

If you've cooked with sesame oil, you know that it is very fragrant and a little dash goes a long way. So this is a cinnamon-flavored ice cream recipe with just a dash of sesame oil. It may sound strange to you, but the hint of sesame off-sets the cinnamon and sugar beautifully. It's one of my favorite combinations. This would be a wonderful dessert after a paella, or a meal of moroccan flavors.




Cinnamon-Sesame Ice Cream

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1-1/2 cups whole milk

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix until smooth. Pour immediately into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer instructions, usually 20-30 minutes. Pack ice cream into a freezable container if you are not going to serve it right away, and store in the freezer. Obviously.

Pizza Lorraine

I had some ham and leeks left over from Quiche Lorraine for Christmas, and also some creme fraiche, and thought I would try it in a pizza-tart type thing. It turned out very nicely. Try it for a quickie dinner or a nice hors d-oeuvre for New Year's.



Pizza Lorraine

Ingredients for two 8-inch pizzas:
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced thinly
1 shallot, sliced
1/2 cup cubed prosciutto or pancetta
1 container of creme fraiche
1/2 lb grated mixed cheeses (provolone, mozzarella, asiago, etc.)


Use your favorite pizza crust recipe, such as this, or use a pre-made crust.  Once again, I used a pre-made Vicolo cornmeal crust.

Preheat the oven to 425, or as directed for your pizza dough.

Saute the shallot and cubed prosciutto in a little olive oil, adding the leeks after 3-4 minutes. Stir occasionally and continue to saute until leeks are softened and just starting to turn golden.

Place your pizza crust(s) on a cookie tray or baking dish. Spread the creme fraiche evenly over the pizzas, and top with half of the leek mixture for each pizza.  Sprinkle abundant grated cheese over the top.

Bake as directed for your pizza crust and then let sit for a minute or two before slicing.

New Best Cake

Since there are so many peaches lying around (and by the way, they come from my cousin's garden, not mine), I needed to something quick to cut up and use the ripe ones. I started a bowl full of sugar and peaches for jam last night, and I also made this cake. It was delicious. I used the base from a recipe that I've made many times which came from The Wednesday Chef last year some time, but I added pureed peaches to it. Since it has relatively little butter and sugar, plus whole wheat flour, I don't mind letting the boys eat it for breakfast.




5 peaches, peeled, roughly chopped, and pureed in blender
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease the baking dish. I used a 9 inch Pyrex dish.

Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk, yogurt, egg and vanilla together.

Scrape down the sides of the butter bowl and alternately add the dry and wet ingredients; do not overmix. Gently fold in the pureed peaches.

Pour/spread into the baking dish and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Peaches in October

We had such a cold summer in these parts that the peaches didn't ripen until October. Can you imagine picking peaches and making peach pie in October! It's almost Halloween!

Believe it or not, Sunday was peach pickin' day.



What should we make? We've thought about peach pie, peach jam, peach chutney, peach cobbler, peach bread, peach ice cream, peach bellinis, peach cordial, peach vinegar, and good old peaches'n'cream. Any other suggestions?

Coq au Riesling

I made a few changes to this dish from Nigella Lawson's column in the New York Times, adding potatoes and shallots, and using prosciutto instead of bacon.

8 ounces lardons or cubed prosciutto
white parts only of 2 large leeks, thinly sliced
1 large shallot, peeled and chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped
10 mini Yukon potatoes, washed but not peeled (the little tiny ones)
10 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 bottle riesling wine
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley

Saute bacon, leeks, shallots, and mushrooms in 2 T olive oil until softened, about 10 minutes. Add chicken pieces and potatoes to pan along with the wine, and bring to a boil. Partially cover, turn heat to low, and simmer for 1 hour.

For best results, cool, and refrigerate overnight. Reheat gently over low heat, sprinkle with parsley before serving.

This was really delicious and hit the spot on a cold autumn night. Plus it was a great make-ahead dish. I love that Nigella Lawson's recipes are so practical for family life!

Oh, and we did have the caipirinhas, for Mama Goose!

Please Help Choose the Menu.....

Okay, so I need a little advice on menu-planning for the weekend. Which sounds like the better option to you on a fall evening when I get home from work and have 30 minutes to pull together dinner for 8 people?

Menu #1
Caesar Salad
Seafood Cioppinno
Garlic Bread
It's It bars
wine: Zinfandel
cocktail: cosmopolitans

Menu #2
Endive and Roquefort Salad
Coq au Vin
Apple tart
wine: Cabernet Sauvignon
cocktail: champagne


Menu #3
Garlic Soup
Seared Tuna sandwiches on Rosemary Bread
Green Beans
Cheesecake
wine: Pinot Noir
cocktail: caipirinhas

Eggplant and Manchego Pizza

Did you know that eggplants were introduced to the Mediterranean from North Africa during the Middle Ages?  That there is no Latin or Greek word for eggplant, only the Romance albergínia, aubergine, berenjena, and beringela, from the Arabic al-badnijan?  (So why do the Italians call it melenzana?) 

(I lost the photos of the eggplant and manchego pizza, and can find only a nice photo of some mozarabic pottery and glass, so I'm trying to tie this all together. We didn't really have a linguistic discussion over this pizza, we just ate it all up and washed it down with some nice Ribera del Duero.)

Eggplant and Manchego Pizza

Ingredients for two 8-inch pizzas:
One eggplant, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup tomato sauce (plain, no added italian seasonings, or basil and onion combo, etc.)
1/4 lb Manchego cheese
1/4 lb Mozzarella cheese
3-4 basil leaves, julienned
Use your favorite pizza crust recipe, like this or this, or use a pre-made crust.  I used a pre-made Vicolo cornmeal crust.


Lay the eggplant slices on a large plate and sprinkle both sides with coarse salt.  Let sit for 30 minutes or so.

After 30 minutes, wipe the salt off the eggplant slices and dredge them lightly in flour.  Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet and fry the eggplant for approximately 5 minutes each side, depending on thickness.  Add additional oil as necessary, but there is no need to submerge the eggplant slices.  Drain the cooked slices on paper towels as you remove them from the skillet.  This can be done an hour or so ahead.


Preheat the oven to 425, or as directed for your pizza dough.

Place your pizza crust(s) on a cookie tray or baking dish, and spread tomato sauce on top.  Sprinkle the Manchego cheese evenly over the pizza, and place as many eggplant slices as fit without overlapping on top.  Sprinkle the mozzarella over the eggplant.

Bake as directed for your pizza crust.  When the pizza smells good and looks lovely, remove from the oven.  Let sit for a minute or two before slicing, seasoning with salt, and sprinkling with basil.  

There are words for basil in Greek (basileus) and Latin (basilicum), by the way.

Geek.

Boy Convinces Grandmother to Feed Him Peanut Butter From a Spoon

We live with a boy who loves peanut butter. He would eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if I let him.



Here he is talking his grandmother into skipping the bread and feeding it to him directly with the spoon. Look how excited he is.



Boy = very happy.

Mama = not so happy!

(photos by Dudley Poston, Jr.)

Secondary Injuries and Oatmeal Cherry Walnut Cookies

Have you ever counted how many times in the course of a day you can be mildly injured by little boys? If it isn't someone banging his head into the corner of your glasses or dropping a train on your kneecap, it's someone else stepping on your little toe with a sneaker or running up the back of your heel with a big wheels. Sometimes it's stepping on a lego in the middle of the hall or sitting on a tow truck under a blanket on the sofa. Little raggedy fingernails scratch your face in the middle of a hug, and little teeth bite your finger because they're so excited about oatmeal cookies.



Oatmeal Cherry Walnut Cookies

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups uncooked oats (quick or old fashioned)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1/2 cup dried cherries

Heat oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, beat brown sugar, shortening and granulated sugar until creamy. Add egg, water and vanilla and beat well. Combine oats, flour, salt and baking soda. Add to rest of ingredients and mix well. Stir in cherries and walnuts.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Move to wire rack to cool.

If you feel like you've been run over by a truck at the end of the day, these will probably help!

Fence-post French Fries

Pa has been laying fence-posts all week so I made him some french fries for lunch.



I mentioned a while back that we were redoing our backyard. Because we live with two people who love to run and run and run and run, we needed to build a fence near the stairwell in order to relax when we're out in the backyard with said two people.

Pa is doing this this work, so I started peeling potatoes.

I used nice big russets, and sliced them into long strips. Then I put them in a bowl of water to soak. Soaking them in water for 10 minutes before frying gets them nice and crispy.



So does Evil Chef Mom's method, which I tried today. ECM recommends frying the fries twice--and you know what, ECM is right! This is a really great way to make french fries. (Of course, ECM is always right!)




Here they are frying happily the second time around.



Don't they look yummy? Nothing better than potatoes, oil, and salt...