What I Ate…

OK, it’s been long enough since I posted the trout picture…even though it’s a funny picture, I don’t like seeing it every time I open my browser.

Here’s a quick post about what I ate for breakfast yesterday: Persimmon Almond Oatmeal. Earlier this week I was snacking on almonds and persimmon sprinkled with cinnamon and was inspired to incorporate these foods into oatmeal. Oatmeal with brown sugar was my staple breakfast in college, which I grew rather tired of eating. Now if I have oatmeal, it has to be made on the stove and have all sorts of sweet, savory and crunchy mix-ins, and that is exactly what this oatmeal has.

Persimmon Almond Oatmeal

Ingredients:

1 c. water

1/4 c. rolled oats

1/4 c. rolled multigrain cereal (such as Country Choice Multigrain Hot Cereal from Trader Joe’s)

1 small persimmon, peeled and chopped into small pieces

1 tablespoon ground flaxseed

1 tablespoon shredded, sweetened (!) coconut

2 tablespoons roasted almonds, chopped

generous sprinkling of cinnamon

milk

Method:

1. Bring the water to a boil in a small pot, adding a pinch of salt.

2. Add oats, persimmon, flaxseed and coconut to the water, stirring frequently  so it doesn’t overflow.

3. Once the water is evaporated, spoon oatmeal into bowl and garnish with almonds and cinnamon. Serve with milk.

And there you have a filling, warming, Autumn-inspired bowl of oats to carry you through a busy morning.

What I Ate For Dinner

This harrowing photo discloses what I ate for dinner on Monday night: trout.

When Sam pulled the trout out from the broiler and called me to look at it, I couldn’t help but smile and reach for my phone to take a photo (hence the photo quality). The trout was staring right at us with his milky white eyes, fishy-lips parted, imploring us, “Why?! Why did you splay me open and subject me first to a torrential downpour of ground black pepper and then proceed to broil my delicate white flesh beneath those merciless coils?” But we didn’t feel too sorry for this trout. Or his three trout brothers.

Silly fish faces aside, trout makes a wonderful meal. In this June 2009 post I wrote about how we like to grill trout with a little olive oil and black pepper. Since then we’ve also tried pan-frying trout and broiling it. All our trout cooking techniques must be attributed to the fishmonger at our local Whole Foods. Every time we order trout he stops what he is doing, looks us in the eye and says, “You know a real nice way to prepare trout is to…” We smile and nod, remembering that last time he told us the exact same thing: how great it is to grill trout because you didn’t have to turn it and that it is wonderful stuffed with scallops and wrapped in bacon (“It’s got a cavity, right? So you might as well use it and stuff it with scallops. Wrap it in bacon–like you’re wrapping it with string–and when the bacon flavor goes in the trout it’s real nice…”). I guess it doesn’t hurt to hear one more time how a man who knows his fish likes to eat it.

In closing, I’d like to say this: don’t be offput by trout because when you buy it comes with the head attached, eyeballs in place, those fishy-lips. Give trout a chance and maybe, just maybe, your trout will have something interesting to say to you.

Good Old American Apple Pie

With Veteran’s Day on Wednesday, celebrate those who served our nation with something very American — apple pie. Using both sweet and tart apples in the pie filling creates a perfect balance between sweet and tart. I used Fuji and Granny Smith apples and couldn’t imagine a tastier filling. I also added a couple handfuls of fresh cranberries to the filling, which added a pop of color and tartness.

Make the Pie Dough

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup cold vegetable shortening
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4-6 tablespoons ice water

Blend together flour, butter, shortening, and salt in a bowl with your fingertips or a pastry blender (or pulse in a food processor) just until mixture resembles coarse meal with some small (roughly pea-sized) lumps of butter. Drizzle 4 tablespoons ice water evening over mixture and gently stir with a fork (or pulse) until incorporated.

Squeeze a small handful of dough: if it doesn’t hold together, add more ice water 1/2 tablespoon at a time, stirring (or pulsing) until incorporated. Do not overwork dough, or pastry will be tough.

Turn dough out onto a work surface. Divide dough into 8 portions. With the heel of your hand, smear each portion once or twice in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather all dough together, with a pastry scraper if you have one. Divide dough in half, form each half into a ball, and then flatten each into a 5-inch disk. If dough is sticky, dust lightly with additional flour.

Make the Pie Filling

• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
• 2 1/2 pounds apples, peeled, cored, and each cut into 10 wedges
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• Basic Pastry Dough for a double-crust pie
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten, for egg wash

Put a large baking sheet on middle oven rack and preheat oven to 425*F.

Whisk together flour, zest, cinnamon, allspice, salt and 2/3 cup sugar in a large bowl. Gently toss with apples and lemon juice.

Roll out 1 piece of dough (keep remaining piece chilled) on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into a 13-inch round. Fit it into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim edge, leaving a 1/2-inch overhang. Refrigerate shell while you roll out dough for top crust.

Roll out remaining piece of dough on a lightly floured surface into an 11-inch round.

Spoon filling into shell. Cover pie with pastry round and trim with kitchen shears, leaving a 1/2-inch overhang. Press edges together, then crimp decoratively. Lightly brush top of pie with egg and sprinkle all over with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar. With a small sharp knife, cut 3 steam vents in top crust.

Bake pie on hot baking sheet for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375*F and continue to bake until crust is golden and filling is bubbling, about 40 minutes more. Cool pie on a rack to warm or room temperature, 2 to 3 hours.

Recipe from The Gourmet Cookbook.

Hearty Chicken Vegetable Soup

Every day my inbox gets flooded email newsletters. There are a few, however, that I secretly love to read. One of those is the Epicurious Recipe Flash, which gives a sneak peek at Epicurious’ new recipes and featured articles. Yesterday the “6 Foods to Fight the Flu” guide caught my eye. Sam and I decided to make the Hearty Chicken Vegetable Soup featured in the guide. Like many of the people who made comments on the recipee, we decided to make a few changes of our own: we switched the amounts of chicken broth and water; added a chopped potato, a glug of Marsala wine, plenty of fresh herbs; and Sam insisted we add diced jalepeno to give it kick (and I’m glad we did!). The recipe below reflects our changes, but feel free to change it however you like.

 

Hearty Chicken and Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 3/4 cups water
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 medium carrots, cut diagonally into 1/3″ thick slices
• 2 medium celery ribs, cut crosswise into 1/3″ thick slices
• 1 medium potato, cut into 1/2″ cubes
• 2 tablespoons Marsala wine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
• diced jalepeno for garnish

Directions

1. Bring water and broth to a simmer in a 2- to 3-quart saucepan. Add chicken and simmer, uncovered, 6 minutes. Remove pan from heat and cover, then let stand until chicken is cooked through, about 15 minutes. Transfer chicken to a plate and cool 10 minutes. Reserve poaching liquid, uncovered.
2. While chicken is poaching, cook onion in oil in a 4-quart heavy pot, covered, over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add carrots, celery, salt, and pepper and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until softened, 8 to 10 minutes. Add poaching liquid and marsala wine and simmer, covered, until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
3. While vegetables are cooking, shred chicken into 1/4-inch-wide strips (about 1 inch long). When vegetables are done simmering, stir chicken into soup along with parsley, herbs and jalepeno.

Recipe adapted from Epicurious. Read the Flu Foods Guide.

A Little Nightcap

November brings cooler days, darker evenings, anticipation of the holidays and–drat it!–colds and the flu! I have been very fortunate to not have more than a sore throat in the past few days because Sam has had an awful cold and over half of my mom’s 5th graders are sick with the flu! In addition to get getting lots and lots of sleep and taking my favorite Wellness Formula (it’s more effective than Airborne!), I’ve been drinking lots of hot water with lemon and honey to soothe that tickle in my throat. A couple days ago I discovered that a schluck of Brandy in my honey lemon water adds a delicious flavor (and calms that sore throat, of course!). This evening I had my little honey-lemon-Brandy nightcap in a lovely, wistful teapot from my Aunt Linda. There used to be a cup on the bottom, but it broke during a move. Not to worry, though, because I love to use my “A” cup that Dani gave me for Christmas last year. If you’re feeling under the weather, have a little nightcap tonight and stay tuned because tomorrow I will expound the wonders of Wellness Formula.

Very Sticky Caramel Corn

From 7th – 9th grade I wanted to be a chef. We were receiving subscriptions to cooking magazines for the first time (Cooks Illustrated and Cooking Light) and I spent my weekends making cinnamon rolls and lemon blueberry pound cake. Erica was my parnter-in-crime: we went to different schools, but every time we were together we baked or cooked some sweet treat.

Sometime during those years my late grandmother Charlotte, who was an excellent seamstress, made me a white chef’s jacket and chef’s hat. I outgrew the small chef’s jacket, but luckily she had made a second chef’s outfit, which eventually found its way to me. For Halloween this year Sam and I decided to indulge our love of cooking and dress up as chefs. Sam is wearing one of the chef’s jackets my grandmother made and we are both wearing hats she made. You can’t see so well in this picture, but I am wearing official chef’s pants with pictures of kitchen utensils that I got from the Culinary Institute of America in New York.

We figured it would be a shame to wear such stylin’ chef’s outfits and not cook in them, so we made a batch of very sticky caramel corn from Marthastewart.com. The caramel corn wasn’t supposed to be as sticky as it was, but we didn’t have enough time to wait for the caramel mixture to reach the hard crack stage (290*f), so we stopped at the hard ball stage (250*f). That said, the recipe below has excellent flavor, though I’m not sure if waiting till the caramel reaches 290*f is realistic; we cooked our caramel for at least 40 minutes. Alternative recipes that I’ve seen simply have you bring the caramel mixture to a boil, pour it over the popcorn and bake in the oven for an hour, stirring every 10 minutes. I’m planning to try another batch of caramel corn this month using this method, so check back for updates!

Caramel and Fleur de Sel Popcorn

Ingredients

Makes 16 cups

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup popcorn kernels
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• Vegetable-oil cooking spray
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fleur de sel

Directions

1. Coat a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add popcorn, and cover. Cook, shaking pot frequently, until corn has finished popping. Transfer to a large bowl.
2. Heat butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved and butter has melted. Clip a candy thermometer to side of pan, and cook until mixture reaches 290. Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla and baking soda.
3. Drizzle syrup evenly over popcorn, and toss to coat. Spread popcorn on prepared baking sheet, and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Let cool completely, then separate popcorn into pieces. Popcorn can be stored in airtight containers for up to 3 days.

Recipe from Marth Stewart Weddings.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Bread pudding has to be the ultimate comfort food dessert . Add pumpkin and this dessert will melt your worries away (not that I am encouraging emotional eating;).

So instead of saving that loaf of day-old bread to feed to the ducks (which you know you’ll never actually do), put that bread to good use and make pumpkin bread pudding.

The method is simple: toss bread cubes with some melted butter; pour over a mixture of milk, eggs, pumpkin and spices; and bake.

The recipe I used is from the blog Smitten Kitchen. I even followed Deb’s modifications for an even simpler recipe because, you know, comfort food should be simple.

The recipe.

I think this recipe would also make excellent pumpkin French toast — any takers?

How to Poach an Egg

They say the third time is the charm, and I’d agree: it took three encounters with poached eggs to compel me to take a break from my usual scrambled eggs and try my hand at the somewhat slippery but oh-so-rewarding poached egg.

Instance #1: While watching Julie poach eggs on “Julie & Julia,” I, along with everyone else in the audience, thought,  I can do that! Instance #2: Last week at The Sideboard Cafe in Danville I ordered their lovely poached eggs: the yellow yolk seeping into the holes in the crisp toast, topped with fresh herbs and a bit of Parmesan–splendid! Instance #3: Last night I was reading Sam’s and my new Bride and Groom Cookbook (it’s written by the chefs of Foreign Cinema!) and saw a recipe for poached eggs on frisee, an alluring alternative to the scrambled eggs on romaine I had eaten for lunch that day. Thus when I went to bed last night,  I knew that in the morning it would be poached eggs or nothing.

How to Poach an Egg:

(1) Fill a large, shallow pan with about 2 inches of water. The diameter of the pan you choose will depend on how many eggs you are poaching. Each egg needs room to expand while cooking.

(2) Add a little bit of vinegar to the cooking water, as this makes the whites set faster. I added Sherry Vinegar, but next time I’ll dig deeper into the cupboard to find the white vinegar.

(3) Bring the water barely to a simmer.

(4) Crack each egg into a ramekin or small bowl. Then gently slide the eggs one-by-one into the water. Do not worry when the egg sinks to the bottom! It will be fine. As Ruth Reichel writes in The Gourmet Cookbook, “a poaching egg is pretty good at taking care of itself.” Just keep an eye on it.

(5) When the white looks firm but the yolk is still runny (it’s a guessing game at first!), use a slotted spoon to lift the egg out of the water. Blot the underside of the egg with a paper towel to remove any excess water.

(6) Slide the egg onto your toast, sprinkle with fresh thyme and a few shavings of Dubliner cheddar and voila! You have a delicious, warm and satisfying poached egg.

An Unlikely Milkshake

Chocolate. Strawberry. Vanilla. Those are the usual flavors. Maybe you could get a mint Oreo milkshake or chocolate peanut butter milkshake at one of the more sophisticated ice cream parlors.

Today I am going to tell you about an unlikely milkshake.

A month ago I went to L.A. to visit my good friends Laura and Ben. The stars had aligned for the blending of the milkshake we were about to make: one of Laura’s roommates had brought home a blender and Ben had scooped up several very ripe avocados from a sale at the grocery store. Yes, dear readers, we were about to experience the creamy, velvety, elusive avocado milkshake. Now, I’ve made a few milkshakes before and somehow they always involved lots of chocolate or vanilla ice cream and some flavoring. Not so the avocado milkshake. I had failed to realize that the essence of the milkshake lies in milk, not ice cream. If its essence was founded in ice cream, it would be called an ice cream shake. We were not about to mix ice cream and avocados, but milk and avocados. And ice and sugar. A bit unorthodox, huh?

Not to worry, though, because Ben is actually an avocado milkshake sommelier, if you will. He has honed the avocado milkshake recipe to the essence of avocado milkshake perfection, ice cube by ice cube, glop of milk by glop of milk. Not only is Ben a stellar avocado milkshake maker, he is also a very gracious person and is kindly sharing his coveted recipe with us. In the words of Ben, it’s:

“simple:
1 avocado
2-3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
5 ice cubes
blend til creamy
savor”

Smooth, retro-green and utterly refreshing, an avocado milkshake may be an unlikely milkshake, but it certainly is likable.

P.S. Apt pairings for the avocado milkshake include salted hard pretzels and dark chocolate (or chocolate covered pretzels, I suppose).

Grilled Trout

Fish can be very difficult to grill: it can stick to the grill and often flakes or falls apart when you try to flip it. When Sam and I were looking at the seafood case in Whole Foods a couple weeks ago, Sam was eying the trout, but we weren’t sure if it would be tricky to grill. The fishmonger, though, cleared any doubts we had about grilling trout. He assured us that trout was in fact a really easy fish to grill, especially whole, butterflied trout.

Here’s what we did:

1. Heat the grill and clean the grill racks really well. Fish sticks to the grill because it touches food residue from previous cookings. If you clean the racks, the fish will not stick.

2. Drizzle the flesh side of the butterflied trout with olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Place trout on grill, flesh side down. Grill for 8-10 minutes until fish is done. Don’t open the grill or peek under the trout more than necessary or you will disturb its cooking.

4. Serve with a lemon wedge. Grilled asparagus and green salad make wonderful accompaniments.