Double Apple Bundt Cake

I'm swimming in apples.

One of the best things about Southern California is that we have fresh produce year-round. D. and I are members of an amazing CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) with Be Wise Ranch. Our biweekly boxes are filled with gorgeous vegetables, including big and sweet apples. We've had apples up the wazoo, so baking is one of the best ways to use them up quickly.

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Cheese and Chive Bread: A Fabulous Appetizer or Side

There are so many posts out there for the Super Bowl. Lots of great ideas for the ultimate party. We're hoping to have a Super Bowl shindig ourselves and it's going to be difficult figuring out what to make! If you're in the same boat, check out these great posts for inspiration:

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Easy Irish Soda Bread

I'm lucky to have married a man whose nickname is Martha. The man cooks. He cleans. He launders. In the last five years, I have bought him not one, but two vacuums for Christmas. D. is, unabashedly, a domestic god.

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Lime Olive Oil and Sherry Pound Cake Bundt

It's National Bundt Day! And it's the end of Mary's I Like Big Bundts, a 30-day run of daily bundt-baking that ends on National Bundt Day. Check out her amazing blog and all of those awesome bundts! She also posted a bundt baked in a Heritage bundt pan, which I saw, squealed like a little kid, and ran out to buy it. Never mind that I don't usually bake bundt cakes... it's a pretty cake pan, dammit!

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On Roasting Chicken...

Of all the cooking techniques that I've learned, I think one of the most important is roasting a whole chicken. It's really easy, really tasty, and one chicken can lead to multiple meals. Sure, a lot of grocery stores offer rotisserie chickens and they're great, but roasting my own means the chicken's never met a heat lamp or tray.

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Blueberry Crumb Cake

I love crumb toppings. There's just something about sugar, flour, and butter baked together until it's crunchy. I'm especially fond of coffee cake, with the dense moist cake and dry crumbly topping. With my massive box of blueberries waiting in the fridge, Ina's blueberry crumb cake was definitely a recipe to try.

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What does one do with 2 3/4 pounds of blueberries?

There are many options, but there's at least two courtesy of Ina Garten.

Blueberry buttermilk muffins with streusel (from Back to Basics)

Blueberry sour cream crumb cake (from episode "Weekend Lunch" and Barefoot Contessa at Home)

More to come soon.

Croque Monsieur

I'm a big fan of Ina Garten's. When I started cooking, she was one of my favorite TV chefs to watch. As I became proficient, I began to understand the difference between good recipes and bad recipes. Hers were usually good and the show's episodes always had little tidbits about basic techniques. Fast forward nearly a decade later (eek!) and I'm still using her recipes.

It was the World Cup final and I wanted to make a simple and delicious lunch for the game. Along came Ina with her croque monsieurs and I almost had all of the ingredients on hand. So, with that, we settled in to watch whether Paul the Octopus was correct about the outcome.

Ham and cheese sandwich, drenched in bechamel and more cheese, and baked until bubbly and golden brown. Fresh sliced honey ham, Gruyère and sharp white cheddar, Dijon mustard, and a little fig jam are the key players. Bread is Honey White from Charlie's Best Bread. The fig jam was something I had on hand and I thought it balanced the Dijon mustard nicely.

I knew the sandwiches needed some kind of side and I had the ambitious idea of doing sweet potato fries. Right. Frying during the World Cup final... as if. I went for one of my favorite cheats: the local McDonald's. I love their fries and any time I want fries as a side dish, I run over for a couple of orders. It's really close, so the fries don't become soggy as long as I serve them right away.

This little trick was definitely not my idea and I picked it up from someone who appears on Food Network. Oh, c'mon, do you think I heard it from Ina? I don't think fast food is très elegant enough for her. I picked it up from, of all people, Jeffrey Steingarten of food writing and Iron Chef America-judging fame. He wrote in The Man Who Ate Everything that he needed fries for one of his food projects and stalked the local McDonald's for a fresh batch.

It's the best idea ever. Really, do homemade fries ever come out as good as when they come out of an industrial deep fryer?

Here's the recipe with my little adjustments... I should add that I feel more ham would have made this sandwich much better, so go for two slices per sandwich instead of one.

Croque Monsieur

(adapted from Ina Garten, Barefoot in Paris)

nocoupons 

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups hot milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch nutmeg
2 cups grated Gruyère
3 cups grated sharp white cheddar
12 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed
Dijon mustard

Fig jam (available in many grocery stores or specialty markets)
8 ounces baked Virginia ham, sliced but not paper thin  

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and add the flour all at once, stirring with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Slowly pour the hot milk into the butter–flour mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened. Off the heat add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1/2 cup grated Gruyère, and 1/2 cup grated sharp white cheddar and set aside.

To toast the bread, place the slices on 2 baking sheets and bake for 5 minutes. Turn each slice and bake for another 2 minutes, until toasted.

Lightly brush half the toasted breads with mustard, add two slices of ham to each, and sprinkle with the remaining Gruyère (if you run out, grate more or use the cheddar). Spread fig jam on the other piece of toasted bread and place it on top, jam side down. Slather the tops with the cheese sauce, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, and bake the sandwiches for 5 minutes. Turn on the broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the topping is bubbly and lightly browned. Serve hot.

And we're back!

To quote one of my all-time favorite racers on The Amazing Race: "Oh, my gravy."

That's pretty much the MCAT in a nutshell. I was prepared, pumped (if blasting "Eye of the Tiger" doesn't get one going, I don't know what will), and promptly ran into some time-management issues with the first section. Never had time-management issues on any of the practice tests and found myself scrambling to finish that section. Finished in time, but sheesh. I recovered to calmly finish the following sections in a much more timely manner.

Thank you for the well wishes! Everyone's kind words certainly helped with the confidence level that morning.

Now I wait. The score's coming out around the end of May.

The application is out, I'm embarrassed by my GPA, and I'm convinced the admissions committees may just send me a video of themselves laughing really, really hard instead of a rejection letter. It ain't over until the rejection letters sing, so I'm forging ahead with my best foot forward. Until then, let's talk about food, shall we?

My first free weekend after the MCAT, D. and I ran errands and cooked. I haven't cooked or baked at all in the last four months, so it felt good to stretch out the ol' muscles. D.'s been the domestic heavy-lifter... cooking, cleaning, making sure I don't hyperventilate too often. Being the cheeky bastard that I am, I would crave something, find a recipe for it, and sweetly show it to D. He would patiently get the hint and make said recipe.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... he's a keeper, folks.

One of those recipes was for chicken marsala. D. knocked that one out of the park. In fact, we both liked the recipe so much that he decided to make it again.

Woodsy from the mushrooms, sweet from the wine, savory from the chicken... there are so many good things to this sauce. Served with a side of capellini dressed simply with butter and a little sprinkle of green-canned Parmesan. Hey, D. likes the stuff and he's cooking, so I can't object much. The green-canned Parm can be a little horrifying, but with a light sprinkle, it brings a nice saltiness to the pasta and keeps it from being a bland hunk of carbohydrate.

I decided to try one of Gina DePalma's recipes from Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen. Her Zucchini Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Crunch Glaze (page 94) is absolutely worth trying. Zucchini from our Be Wise Ranch CSA box, olive oil from Pasolivo, and Meyer lemons from a coworker.

The olive oil and zucchini give it a fantastic texture and the overall effect is a cake that's outrageously moist and not too sweet. For the cake, I used 3/4 cup of Pasolivo's extra virgin olive oil, plus 1/4 cup of their Meyer lemon oil. The glaze has both confectioners' and granulated sugar, with the latter providing the "crunch". The recipe calls for glazing the cake while it's still warm, so I would glaze, let the glaze run off, then scoop up the glaze and drizzle it back over the cake. I repeated that 5-6 times to form a nice crunchy shell.

Straining Meyer lemon juice for the glaze. Here's proof that some of the most useful kitchen tools need not come from specialty stores... I found this little strainer at Big Lots for a dollar. It's never rusted and has come in handy countless times.

Bear, celebrating my return to the kitchen by laying right in the middle of it the entire time I was prepping the cake.

Definitely check out Dolce Italiano, which has all sorts of interesting recipes. I'm going to be plugging away on medical school applications, but I'll take some time to try more recipes from this book. Meanwhile, here's the Chicken Marsala recipe.

D.'s pasta is pretty straightforward: boil pasta in heavily salted water until al dente, drain, then transfer to a skillet with several tablespoons of butter (about 1 tbsp. per cup of pasta) and toss until pasta is reheated and separated. Transfer to plates and sprinkle with green can Parmesan.

Chicken Marsala

(from Paul Grimes via Epicurious.com)

1 3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth (14 fl oz)
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
10 oz mushrooms, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (2 lb total)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons dry Marsala wine
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 200°F. 

Bring broth to a boil in a 2-quart saucepan over high heat, then boil, uncovered, until reduced to about 3/4 cup, about 20 minutes. 

Cook shallot in 3 tablespoons butter in an 8- to 10-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until shallot begins to turn golden, about 1 minute. Add mushrooms, 1 teaspoon sage, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid mushrooms give off is evaporated and mushrooms begin to brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from heat. 

Put flour in a wide shallow bowl. Gently pound chicken to 1/4 inch thick between 2 sheets of plastic wrap using the flat side of a meat pounder or a rolling pin. 

Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour, 1 piece at a time, shaking off excess. Transfer to sheets of wax paper, arranging chicken in 1 layer. 

Heat 1 tablespoon each of oil and butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté half of chicken, turning over once, until golden and just cooked through, about 4 minutes total. Transfer cooked chicken to a large heatproof platter, arranging in 1 layer, then put platter in oven to keep warm. Wipe out skillet with paper towels and cook remaining chicken in same manner, then transfer to oven, arranging in 1 layer. 

Add 1/2 cup wine to skillet and boil over high heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits, about 30 seconds. Add reduced broth, cream, and mushrooms, then simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce is slightly thickened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add lemon juice and remaining 2 tablespoons wine and 1/2 teaspoon sage. 

Serve chicken with sauce and pasta.

Purée of English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil and Parmesan Crisps

D. and I decided to revive our supper club and, for the occasion, I thought I'd throw a Keller recipe into the menu. However, with the Chem GRE studying going on, I didn't have time for anything too time-consuming, which ruled out 99.9% of the recipes in Bouchon and The French Laundry Cookbook.

And the Keller cookbook collection is going to get bigger... my copy of the recently released Ad Hoc at Home is due to arrive tomorrow. So excited!

Anyway... right, a Keller recipe that didn't take until my 30th birthday to complete. The winner was Purée of English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil and Parmesan Crisps. This is probably one of those times when I should be extra-happy that I live in Southern California, because they're still available. Not super-sweet, but they were pretty good. Buying the peas and truffle oil also gave me a chance to visit Specialty Produce, which is a wholesale produce playground that's open to the public.

After buying 5 pounds of peas and a bottle of white truffle oil, I came home and enlisted D.'s help in shelling them. I followed the cooking instructions to the letter, adding just enough peas to the boiling water to form a single layer. While I waited for the peas to cook, I grated Parmesan cheese finely for the Parmesan crisps. I made sure they were big enough to be a "lid" on the mugs that I would serve the soup in.

 

After the peas were cooked and puréed in the food processor, the recipe calls for it to be scraped through a tamis. I don't have one, so I used our fine-mesh strainer and a spatula. One note with the food processor, I had to use a little water to make the purée less pasty and easier to work with.

 

Ok, I understand that the fine mesh makes a smoother purée, but sheesh, this took a little time and muscle. In the end, I had a little over 3 cups of smooth purée and less than 1 cup of the larger-particled pea detritus. I saved it, hoping to use it for risotto.

 

Once I had the purée, it went into the blender with some vegetable broth, but it was still pretty thick. However, I didn't want to compromise the flavor with too much broth or water, so I kept it thick. On the stove it went for a gentle heating, where I seasoned with salt and white pepper. When I was ladling it into mugs for serving, I drizzled a little bit of truffle oil on top of the soup and had my guests give it a good stir. A small amount of chives for garnish and a Parmesan crisp to cover the mug.

 

Blasted auto-focus caught the mug and the crisp, but the soup is blurred. Ah, well... the soup was delicious, with strong pea flavor balanced out by the truffle oil and Parmesan crisp.

Check out Carol's version of the soup. I didn't look for her entry until after the dinner party and was so glad to see that I followed her footsteps with the "mugging". I'm also glad I managed to cook the peas correctly and that her soup ended up being pretty thick. I guess thinning it out is an option, but that strong, sweet pea flavor is going to fade away.

It's easy, fabulous, and the Kermit-green of the soup makes for beautiful presentation. Grab a copy of the book and see for yourself.

Cookbook Series: Bœuf bourguignon, Potatoes Gratin from Thomas Keller's Bouchon

So... I'm back.

It took a while to recover from the Chem GRE. Imagine having brain freeze for about a week or so. Even though it's not the longest nor the most comprehensive test, it's definitely one of the most brutal. My version of the test was 130 questions with 170 minutes to answer them. Do the math and that leaves roughly 0.76 minutes or 45.6 seconds per question.

45.6 seconds for p-chem?! As if.

I managed to look at and think about all of the questions, which is supposedly a small victory in and of itself. How did I do? I don't know... I was numb walking out, both from the mental lashing and the freezing test center.

Then, it was time for the regular GRE, which is a lot like the SAT. To my vague horror, I realized that I would be taking the GRE almost 10 years to the day of my last attempt at the SAT. Geez, I feel old.

Anyway, we're here to discuss food.

D. was traveling and, for his return, I decided to make Keller's bœuf bourguignon. D. has eyed the recipe for a while and with fall rolling in (although it was beach-worthy weather in San Diego), it seemed like a nice dish.

Anyone who has ever cooked a Keller recipe can tell you that the man is nothing if not detailed. I found this old article about Bouchon and I have to agree that it's fussy, it's crazy, but the result is so utterly worth the effort that one bows reverently to King Keller and makes more of his recipes.

It starts with boneless beef shortribs, which I stupidly overbrowned. Instead of turning into tender stew meat, it came out a bit tough.

However, I'm a little ahead of myself. The bourguignon really begins with a red wine reduction. Red wine cooked with a ton of aromatics until it had reduced into a thick sauce. After the reduction is complete, more aromatics are added and topped with a cheesecloth. The browned meat is added on top of the cheesecloth. Keller apparently dislikes debris clinging to the meat, so he recommends using the cheesecloth as a "basket" for the meat. The meat cooks in the reduction, aromatics, and beef stock for a couple of hours, then the meat is lifted out and the veggies strained and discarded.

After removing the meat and discarding the aromatics, the broth is strained over and over. In the end, I strained this lovely broth eight times. Eight. Keller would be proud. That might make up for the massive sin I commit against his greatness: I use store-bought beef stock.

That thud you heard was Keller hitting the ground.

Anyway, I'm too lazy and lack enough foresight to make stock ahead of time. One of these days, I'll make a ton of stock and freeze it. Overall, the broth was excellent and clear as a summer's day.

The vegetables are cooked separately, but with enough herbs and spices that they taste like they were cooked with the meat. It's fussy, but the vegetables stay bright, vibrant, and firm, just like Keller said.

D. loves potato gratin, so we made Bouchon's recipe. Lots of thyme and Emmentaler make it fabulous. Keller uses panko crumbs for the topping, which creates a more delicate crust.

Our table, complete with the epi baguette from San Diego's Bread & Cie.

Posting the recipes, even abbreviated versions, would take forever. So, buy the book and pay homage to the fabulousness that is Thomas Keller.

Supper Club: French Bistro Night, Lemon Cheesecake

D. and I are lousy members of our supper club. After our first meeting, we proceeded to miss the next two monthly meetings. To ensure we wouldn't miss another one, we wanted to host the fourth meeting. There was German night and Mexican night, so we decided to stick with the cultural theme and have French night. One of the reasons we picked it was that we enjoyed the dishes from D.'s birthday party and wanted to make them again.

Instead of the ratatouille, D. picked the glazed vegetable dish from Bouchon. I enjoyed this dish, but I think the glaze is a bit too mild to alleviate the tubers' earthiness. Root vegetables are best for this recipe, so we went with carrots (both orange and golden), rutabagas, turnips, and beets. The result was a visually arresting dish.

Glazed Vegetables
(adapted from Bouchon by Thomas Keller)

Various root vegetables (carrots, turnips, rutabagas, beets, etc.)
Sugar (1 tbsp. per 2 cups vegetables)
Butter (1 tbsp. per 2 cups vegetables)
Thyme (1 sprig per 2 cups vegetables)
Rosemary (1 sprig per 2 cups vegetables)
Bay leaf (1 per 2 cups vegetables)
Chives, diced and trimmed to 2 inch "batons"

Place the vegetables in a single layer in a sauce pan or skillet. (Note: Keller advises cooking each vegetable separately for even cooking, but I was short on time and mixed them with no adverse effects.) Add enough cold water just to cover the vegetables. Heat on high until water boils. While heating, add sugar, butter, thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf. Once water boils, lower heat to medium-high and cook vegetables at a hard simmer/soft boil. Cook until all of the liquid is reduced to glaze and toss vegetables to glaze. Transfer to serving dish and sprinkle chives over.

If vegetables begin to turn mushy, remove from liquid and continue to reduce. Return vegetables to pan when liquid has been reduced to a sticky glaze.

Much to my chagrin, I'm now a fan of beets. However, I wouldn't do beets and rutabagas in the same dish, because they taste quite similarly and it's a little too much of a good thing. Pretty colors, though.

D. made fries again, which turned out beautifully. Fries at home are worth the trouble if one has patience for the heating times and the mess. The oil takes a long time to heat and cools rapidly when the fries are added. Mandolines make slicing infinitely easier and faster.

For dessert, D.D. and D.B. gave me lemons from their tree, so I made lemon cheesecake. This recipe was one that I made over and over again during '06-'07, then stopped because I tired of it. Still as good as I remember. It's a Paula Deen recipe, but she used Splenda and fat-free cream cheese, sour cream, and egg substitute. Although D. is diabetic, he's not a fan of Splenda-based desserts. For him, it's better to have a small portion made with sugar than a typical portion made with Splenda. (Disclaimer: This works for him and I realize all diabetics handle their regimens differently, so please understand that this is not to be applied to all diabetics.) When he saw this recipe, he shrugged and asked if I could substitute real sugar back into it. It worked really well. I also use real eggs, but I like to use light cream cheese and light sour cream.

Lemon Cheesecake
(adapted from Paula Deen's Joanne's Almost Fat-free Lemon Cheesecake)

Crust:
1 3/4 cup crumbs made from Trader Joe's Butter Almond Thins (just about any butter-based cookie or wafer works, but I like the Butter Almond Thins)
1/4 cup butter, melted

Filling:
3 x 8-oz. packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup sour cream
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons lemon zest
6 tablespoons of lemon juice (I accidentally added 6 tablespoons once, which was meant for the lemon curd, and I found it works really well... for a lighter lemon flavor, use anywhere from 2 to 6 tablespoons)

Lemon curd:
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest
6 tablespoons lemon juice
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits
(Note: I find that store-bought curd tastes just as good as homemade, so it can be substituted in a pinch)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Crush Butter Almond Thins in a food processor. Measure out the crumbs, then mix with melted butter. Press into a greased springform pan, using the bottom of a drinking glass to even out the mixture. Bake for about 10 minutes or until edges have darkened and crust is set. After baking the crust, wrap aluminum foil around the bottom and sides of the springform pan, creating a barrier to prevent water from soaking the pan/crust.

While preparing the filling, heat water for a water bath. It just needs to be hot enough so the bath doesn't take too long to reach oven temperature. Do not allow the water to boil.

Combine cream cheese and sour cream and beat with an electric mixer on medium-high until fluffy. For stand mixers, the paddle attachment works best. Add sugar gradually and continue beating until mixture is smooth. Lower mixer speed and add eggs one at a time. Beat only to incorporate. Gently beat in juice and zest. Pour into crust.

Set the springform pan into another pan (roasting pans work well) with high walls. Place pan in oven. Very carefully, add enough hot, not boiling, water to reach the middle of the springform pan. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hr. 15 min. or until filling is set and slightly jiggly. The water bath is essential for prevention of cracked fillings.

When cheesecake is done, be very careful while lifting the springform pan out of the water bath. Turn off oven and leave water bath inside to cool. Cool cheesecake completely and transfer to refrigerator.

In a double boiler, combine every ingredient for the lemon curd, except for the butter. Whisk until hot and frothy. Add butter gradually and continue whisking until mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Remove from heat and cool. Curd should be jelly-like after it cools. Spread curd over cheesecake, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Our next supper club meeting: brunch!

Cookbook Series: Birthday Cakes!

D. and R.'s birthdays fell within a week of each other, so I had the opportunity to work on my cake skills. D.'s cake actually went first with his Bouchon dinner and I had hoped to recreate his favorite: yellow cake with chocolate frosting. He told me to make it from a cake mix with canned frosting and I was pretty horrified at the idea. Turns out it might have been better. I used the recipe in Kathryn Kleinman's Birthday Cakes (see sidebar) titled "Gold Cake with Grandma's Fudge Frosting".

To be fair to the recipe, the cake sat on the counter for a long time. I baked it the night before and left it out to cool. While I prepped the next day, it sat on a cooling rack until I had time to frost it. I've done this before with other cakes and had no problem.

It tasted great with a warm eggy flavor. However, it was dry as sand by the time we sliced it. I frosted it with the accompanying fudge recipe, which was really good. It was so dry, in fact, that I suspected that it was overbaked, even though I baked it for the recommended amount of time. I'd try it again, but decrease the amount of cake flour (maybe 2 cups instead of 2 1/4) and frost as soon as it cools.

R.'s birthday cake came out with better results. It's the lemon olive oil chiffon cake from Lori Longbotham's Luscious Lemon Desserts.

It's baked in an angel food cake pan, but chiffon cakes have some egg yolk versus angel food cakes, which are egg-whites only. It was incredibly good, with the olive oil serving up a subtle richness. It was topped with a lemon glaze, which was brain-searingly tart and good.

The chiffon cake was awesome. It was very light, but rich in flavor. The texture was perfect, fluffy and spongy. It was slightly dry, but the glaze helped with that. My parents like to make butter chiffon cakes, so it reminded me of childhood.

Cookbook Series: Happy Birthday, D.!

For D.'s birthday, we had a small dinner at home using recipes from Thomas Keller's Bouchon. It is a beautifully photographed book focusing on French bistro-style cooking. Since we dined at the restaurant, I've been interested in recreating some of the recipes. For D., I thought I'd make his favorites: the steak frites, French onion soup (which he nearly ordered at Bouchon), Provencal vegetables, cauliflower gratin (not pictured), and yellow cake with chocolate frosting. First, the French onion soup, which required an ungodly amount of onions. They cooked for 6 hours and still weren't done. Keller advocates really slow cooking to maximize caramelization. It's probably best to do the onions one day before, then reheat them and add the broth.

For a vegetarian version, I separated a batch of onions post-caramelization, then continued with the recipe using vegetable broth. Both veggie and beef broth were store-bought. The veggie version is much sweeter, but very good.

The cookbook called for Emmentaler or Comte cheese. Costco carries 1 lb. wedges of Comte for about $11 each. Trader Joe's carries Emmentaler. The croutons are baguette slices placed under the broiler, then put into the soup. Grated and sliced cheese is placed over the baguette to ensure maximum coverage, then the bowl is placed under the broiler again. The long cooking time was well worth it, as the soup was amazingly sweet with a nice salty kick. I'm especially proud of the Provencal vegetables (confit byaldi), which require thinly sliced veggies layered on top of sauteed red, yellow, and green peppers and onions. I sliced by hand, which wasn't so bad, thanks to improving knife skills. Once I assembled the dish, I realized that it resembled the ratatouille from the Disney movie of the same name. In the recipe, Keller mentions that this is a refined version of ratatouille and the Wikipedia articles claim that this dish was designed for the film (there's a supporting citation to that claim).

It's an incredibly gorgeous dish and tastes the way it looks. Olive oil, garlic, and panko crumbs are spread on top to give it a slight crust. Baking time is 2 1/2 hours at 275 degrees F, so the veggies are very sweet and soft without turning into slop.

Where's Anton Ego? Hehe. The steak frites turned out beautifully, but the damned frites really threw a wrench into the schedule. D. was in charge of the frites, but both of us underestimated Keller's frite recipe. It says a first fry is about 3 minutes and the second fry is about 5 minutes. What we didn't take into account was the oil cooling significantly during the frying. Bringing the oil back up to temperature took a while. Our pot wasn't too big, either, so we had to do them in batches. It took nearly 2 hours to complete the frites. Shit.

However, they were really, really good. Worth the wait? Maybe not. The flatiron steaks were from Iowa Meat Farms and they were delicious. Seared on each side and roasted until rare, they were juicy and butter-soft. They were topped with shallots cooked in the searing pan and roasted with the steaks. Also, I made maitre d'hotel butter, a compound butter that includes parsley and lemon juice. In the photo, the butter had melted, but added so much to an already-delicious steak.

The cake will be in a separate post, since there was some birthday cakeage that week for D. and R.

Happy Birthday, D.!

Cookbook Series: Challah from Baking With Julia

I've done challah before. I have yet to perfect my technique with it. My past efforts have resulted in breads that were too dry, too glutenous, too moist (that was pretty good, actually). I'd been using the recipe from Labensky and Hause's On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals, but this time, I decided to try the one from Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

For my generation, cooking legends aren't what they used to be. My mother, however, is a passionate fan of Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, and Madeleine Kamman (known simply as "Madeleine" to Mom). Thank goodness, because I can borrow her cookbooks. Between her books and my own ragtag collection, I am hoping to write a series where I try recipes from various books.

This book is a compilation of recipes featured on Julia Child's PBS show of the same name. The baker who provided the challah recipe is Lauren Groveman.

The recipe calls for high-gluten flour, bread flour, or unbleached all-purpose flour. I had about 4 cups of bread flour left, so the rest was unbleached all-purpose. I am taking a small risk by mixing the flours, but since the recipe wasn't too specific, I figured it didn't have a huge impact on the result. Plus, I had a lot of different flours and I wanted to use as much of my stock as I could.

The yeast is revived in warm water. One thing about yeast: buy a thermometer. Use it. Don't let the tip touch the container, but keep it solidly immersed in the water. This recipe called for 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit and the yeast I had worked best from 90-110 degrees. I have committed yeast genocide by heating my water too hot, so it's best to measure carefully.


I cheat on the kneading by using my stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. I found it's best to not let the machine do all the work or else the bread can be overworked, which makes it tough. I like to incorporate everything with the machine on the "stir" setting, then let it knead until the dough starts to pull from the sides of the bowl. Then, I dump it out on a floured board and finish it by hand.

Challah dough is very moist and sticky. During one of my first attempts, I kept adding flour to dry it out so I could work with it. Needless to say, the bread was dry and tough. Keep the surface and hands floured and it will be fine.

Since the mixer did the majority of the required kneading, all I had to do was give it a few turns with my hands and neatly round out the dough. Look for it to be smooth, elastic, and with a few blister-like bubbles on the surface. Do not beat the shit out of the dough.

After two rises (about 2 1/2 hours total), the dough was ready for braiding. It's partitioned into three equal pieces.

Eyeballing works or one can be really anal and weigh each piece. I tend to be a little off when I eyeball, so one hunk of dough is a little bigger than the other two. Roll each piece into a tube and braid. This recipe offered an excellent suggestion: start the braid from the middle of the tubes. Work to one end, turn the bread around, and finish braiding to the other end.

The one thing that was off about this recipe was the baking time. At least, that was the case with my oven. It said to proof the dough (the last stage where the dough is shaped, then left to rise one last time), brush it with egg wash, then bake for 20 minutes. Take the breads out and brush the expanded dough with more egg wash, then bake for another 20 minutes. I should have halved that second bake time, because after 40 minutes total, the challah was overdone. It was a bit dry, but tasted pretty good.

Cross-section:

It was a bit too dry to eat straight, so we're going to use it for things like toast, paninis, and French toast. Tonight's dinner: paninis with soup and salad.

This week's CSA box had heads of frisee, so I washed the leaves, topped them with a mix of candied walnuts and plain walnuts, then drizzled Newman's Own Raspberry Walnut Vinegarette over it. Fantastic stuff, especially since it's store-bought. D.'s mom E., who introduced us to this salad, adds slices of pear to it, but we didn't have any on hand.

The paninis were filled with ham, sharp cheddar from grass-fed cow's milk, sharp provolone, and havarti. Soup was roasted red-pepper/tomato (Pacific Natural Foods, organic, available in grocery stores and in bulk from Costco) with Trader Joe's smoked corn and teaspoons of dried oregano, marjoram, parsley, black pepper, and onion flakes.