Ricotta cheese topped with honey and berries. Just right.
Archive for the ‘dessert’ Category
And to finish…
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010Tacos!
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Hello blog, its been a while.
After a long journey across the country with my man crow, my cat, and in a strangers car, I’ve arrived in New England. More importantly, I will soon be reunited with the JP crows!
I immediately started missing Oakland, and Oakland taco trucks, the second we left California. The thought of entering a taco-free world, and worse yet, a hard shell taco world (and what I thought would be a ceviche free world, until the crows retreated!), was eating away at my soul with each passing day. I knew that I had to share the glory of a good taco with my parents, who were so graciously allowing me to stay at their house while I got my proverbial “shit together.”
The results? Joyous, wonderful, & delicious.
for proper assembly smear black bean goo on the bottom of the shell. add meat. add cream, pile on cilantro, cabbage, and salsa. drizzle with hot sauce, squeeze 1/4 lime. enjoy!
Now, of course, my taco was not “authentic” either. I used no lard or deep frying, and chose to fill my taco with more than meat + onions + cilantro. Nonetheless, it filled a void in my tummy. My favorite animal meat is pig. I love me some pig, especially when it is cooked by several men in a taco truck. I, of course, could not replicate this on a New England grill, so I had to think fast! I went with some extremely thin sliced-bone in- somewhat fatty-pork. Marinaded in Lime zest, oil, hot peppers, cilantro, salt and pepper, then grilled to a tender but done perfection, I sliced it as thin as possible to form the base of our tacos.
Soft Shell Taco Essentials (the players)
small taco shells- I prefer a yellow corn tortilla, but white corn or flour will do, I suppose
cilantro
red onion
hot sauce
red cabbage
sour cream
salsa
karen’s magic bean goo creation (recipe below)
limes- juice and zest
meat product of your choosing!
So, one could just use these ingredients as is, and have a delicious taco. I made a few small, simple, and fast additions to really make it delicious.
Sour cream: Zest a lime and add 1/2 the juice to a 1/2 of sour cream
Salsa: A pico de gallo style salsa would work, this time I cheated and bought some. If you feel like being 100% home made you: take 3 large tomatoes & dice them finely. Zest 2 limes, add all juice. Dice 1/2 a red onion. chop a full bunch of cilantro. dice very finely at least 1 jalapeno, more if you like heat. Finely grate 2 garlic cloves. Mix everything together with a heafty dose of S & P.
Karen’s Bean Goo: The first time I made tacos at home was with our Oakland friend Karen. She made a black bean “hummus” earlier in the day that went SO WELL with our dinner tacos. Drain & rinse a can of black beans. In a blender combine, black beans, a tomato, a green pepper, cilantro, S & P, and some onion. Blend until smooth.
Cilantro & onions: In a bowl, mix a bunch of cilantro with 1/2 a diced onion. Juice a lime over it and add a good amount of salt. It should taste salty.
Recipe for delicious cornmeal poundcake to come!
Also- a thought. Let’s combine our ceviche with a tostada shell, these taco toppings, cucumber and have a ball!
Cone Cakes
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Paul’s oldest sister, her husband and son were in town this Christmas, whom he hasn’t seen since 2003. Unfortunately I only got to enjoy their company for a few days before and after the holidays as I myself was on the west coast, but when we got the chance to host them for a day I jumped at the opportunity! We spent the day sledding at the park in the frigid cold, walking our pup and making pizzas! In the evening the men went to a Habs game and the ladies to the pub. I made these cupcake cones for Tristan (Em’s 20 month old son) and everyone else of course, but we were all so full of pizza and baked brie that I had more left overs then I wanted.
To make these kid friendly cupcakes, all you have to do is whip up a batch of your favorite cupcake or cake batter, pour the batter into the cones about 1/2 inch from the top. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 and frost. I used a chocolate batter with cream cheese frosting and they were delicious.
Apple Fest 2009
Monday, December 14th, 2009It has been freakishly cold here for the last week or so, and last night I contemplated turning on the heater. Then I remembered how scary the heater in this apartment is, then I remembered that all I needed to do to warm up the apartment was to do a little baking. I looked over to my hanging kitchen basket for inspiration and saw a major backup of apples and oranges. California apples can be hit or miss. Everyone that lives here thinks they are the best, but they have obviously never gone apple picking in New England. California apples are smaller, and generally more bitter, but in abundance. And perfect for baking. California Valencia Oranges are the best, most juicy, sweetest, supple oranges I’ve ever consumed. On the Menu Tonight? Muffins, and Applesauce.
The muffins were less than a slam dunk. Too much salt, and not enough sugar. I didnt realize I didn’t have any eggs until the sugar and butter had already been creamed, whoops! In went a little tahini, molasis, and yogurt. All in all the batter looked okay, but it became clear in the oven that the lack of eggs would be my downfall.
The applesauce was great. Here is a fool-proof recipe for fast, homemade applesauce!
Ingredients:
-4 apples of your choosing. When selecting apples, think of the exact opposite qualities you would for making pie- you want apples that will break down and have a good amount of sugar in them.
-juice from 2 sweet oranges
-water to just cover the apples
-2 T sugar
-1T cinnamon
Method:
Peel and dice the apples. Place in a saucepans and add remaining ingredients. Cover & Boil until the apples break down, and water begins to evaporate. Check the pan every few minutes and begin breaking up the apple chunks. Simmer until most of the water is evaporated, and the sauce has reached a consistency of your liking.
the best holiday
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009Ahhh yes, it is that time of year, my favorite time of year. If only I was in New England to enjoy 
it! Thanksgiving was a whopping 70 degrees and the Bay Area didn’t seem to find anything wrong with that. However, the Bay did take full advantage of this foody of foodies holidays, and the air was full of recipes flying back and forth between excited cooks. I suppose Thanksgiving (aside from the subsequent systematic slaughter of the native population, of course) is about the celebration of fall harvest. Where better to celebrate this harvest than the land of perpetual bounty. Although the apples here are tiny and lame, the squash, greens, and tubers can kick any eastern veggie out of the park with ease.
On actual Thanksgiving I went to my friends Eric, Karen, and Anders house for a festival of people who couldn’t or didn’t go home for the day. All in all I think there were about 17 people, each who brought something delicious to the food table. For these festivities I made butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin, Roasted Garlic & Herb Mashed Potato, Pumpkin Tart, and a crazy cheese terrine. There were certainly a few highlights including but not limited to, a garlic soup meant to be a soup but turned into a delicious gravy, and cranberry cheddar cheese with whole wheat and sunflower bread.
For the first time in a long time, I decided to follow a few recipes to the t to see how I could do. With the exception of a few budget-friendly changes in cheese selection, I first went with this recipe for a cheese terrine. Although I did not find it particularly yummy, others did. The concept of adding more butter to cheese is a little strange, and kind of gross. It was fun, however, learning a new skill, and I will probably apply a similar technique in the future to make cheese delicacies. Above is a picture of my terrine, as you can see from that link, the Bon Apetite cooks have had more success…
The last two w
eeks my farm box has been overflowing with food. So much so that I have a back-up of things like pumpkin, squash, and potatoes. I had two butternut squash staring me down! It only seemed logical to try this recipe for a butternut squash & goat cheese gratin. Again, I think theirs came out looking a bit more appetizing, however, this was one of the more delicious food items I have ever had, ever, ever.
Now for the recipes!
I was in charge of the traditional-ish sides this year: mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Wednesday night I roasted my pumpkin, and roasted my garlic. Come Thursday morning, I realized I don’t own a pie dish. My brain went a-twittering for solutions to my predicament. Ah-ha! Tart pan. All in all it worked out quite well, but I made the crust a bit to thick for a tart pan, but I think I have mastered my pie recipe of the future!
pumpkin tart
for the crust:
make a pastry crust of your choosing, but add some cinnamon and a pinch of sugar.
for the filling
2 cups pumpkin puree
cinamon
nutmeg
pomegranate molasses
2 eggs
1/2 c sugar
salt
1-2 T flour, to stiffen
for the whipped cream:
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 t vanilla extract
1 T cinnamon
Method: Prepare crust and set in refrigerator. Blend the pie filling ingredients together in a food processor, adding the eggs last, and 1 at a time. Roll out dough and press into tart pan. Pour filling over crust and bake at 400 for 30 minutes. Allow to cool slowly and set. Whip cream, serve on top. Enjoy! It might also be nice to put some candied walnuts on top of the crust, before you pour in the filling, and on top, with come drid cranberries, cherries, or other dried, sweetened fruit. Cheese, also never hurt anybody.
roasted garlic & herb mashed potatoes
1 large bag of Potatoes
3 heads of roasted garlic
1 T chopped sage, thyme, & rosemary
salt
heavy cream
butter
Method: Roast Garlic. Boil large chunks of Potato. Combine ingredients to your liking.
Chicken Soup for the Sick Season
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009The season of perpetual illness is upon us, kicking off this season for Billy is a hefty dose of laryngitis. Who gets that?
To commemorate his birthday, the germs of all-hallows-eve have stripped him of his newly renewed (thanks to bilateral endoscopic surgery of the sinuses) voice. How will I nurse this birthday boy back to health, you ask? With a nice portion of clean and fresh chicken soup. This recipe makes sooo much soup, so if you don’t want to eat chicken soup for the whole week, I suggest cutting back a bit
Using the store bought, pre-roasted chicken opened up some major possibilities, the main one being that I could use the meat for soup, and make a nice stock out of the bones/left over bits. To make the stock, I simply boiled the bones with carrots, celery, a rosemary branch, and some lemon (I suggest omitting the lemon if you don’t like the cooked lemon flavor, its quite strong) for 1 hour. It smelled better than the soup I was making.
Emylou’s Chicken Soup
1 Roasted Chicken *, picked to the bone of all meaty goodness
5 carrots, chopped in big chunks
1 whole celery bunch, chopped in large chunks
2 Leeks, coarsely chopped
1/5 onion, diced
1.5 cups uncooked rice
1 bunch chard, chopped to 1 inch piece
1 bunch cilantro, loosely chopped
6 garlic cloves
water
S&P
Soy Sauce
Ginger root
Rooster Sauce
Method: Begin by cooking the onions until translucent. Add the carrots and celery, followed by the leeks. Drop in 6 crushed cloves of garlic. Cook until very wilted. Cover with water, add rice. Cover with a lot of water, probably 10-15 cups of water. You will need enough liquid to cook the rice, and also leave room for the chard and cilantro, to be added after the rice is cooked. This is a personal preference thing. After the rice is cooked,drop in the chard/cilantro, and cook until wilted.Don’t forget to S & P throughout each phase, to taste.
To serve: ladle in the soup to your bowl of choice. Drizzle in 1-2 T of Soy sauce, and some rooster hot sauce, to taste. Complete by grading some fresh ginger over the bowl. Enjoy!
*pre-roasted or roast it yourself. the other day the store-roasted chicken was significantly cheaper than the whole uncooked chicken in the meat section, so I went with that. One could also just wait to make this after thanksgiving…oh the possibilities!
Also, I finally got a new camera! Check out this persimmon-chocolate cheesecake I made!
Cheesecake is so easy to make, if you can put up with the amount of animal goo you will consume. 4 8 oz cream cheese packages, 3/4 c sour cream, 1 cup persimmon puree, lemon zest, 1/2 c-1 c sugar, vanilla extract. Pour over crust of your liking in a spring -form pan, and bake 1 hour Breakfast anyone?
Apple Crisp
Monday, October 12th, 2009Finally! Apple season is among us and now we can dive right in to those yummy baked apple foods. The first on my list? Apple crisp.
My roommate bought a ton of apples for general McBride consumption a few days ago. My excitement for fresh, fall baked goods could not be contained. A classic apple pie just wouldn’t cut it for me this time. I needed a litte more crunch! I ran to the store, picked up some oats from the bulk bin (less than a $1.00 for 2 crisps worth!), and scampered back to my preheated oven.
Apple Crisp
2 ½ cups old-fashioned oats
1 ½ cups (packed) brown sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
4 pounds large apples, peeled, cored and sliced
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Sous chef Derek did the apple prepping!
Mix oats, 1 cup of brown sugar, and flour in medium bowl. Add butter, rub in with fingertips until the topping kind of clumps together. (If you ever want to prep early, the topping can be made the day before. Just cover and refrigerate!)
buttery goodness!
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix apples, lemon juice, cinnamon and the rest of the brown sugar in a large bowl. Transfer the fruit to a baking dish or pie dish (I opted for the pie dish but if I had any more apples I would have upgraded!) Sprinkle the topping over the fruit and bake until the apples are just a little soft and the top is nice and brown and crispy (about 40 minutes).
Delicious!
I had the crisp on a cooling rack for 20 minutes or so, then served it with vanilla ice cream. Mmmm!
muffins in mtl!
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009bonjour from montreal! la belle province!!
when it comes to cooking, i am definitely a baker, so naturally, all my overripe (and underripe for that matter) bananas go into banana bread! whenever i spy a browning banana i throw it into the freezer for later use. i find, however, that when i re-visit these frozen fruits, they’ve often times turned completely brown and to a frozen mush in the freezer…don’t be afraid! thaw those puppies out and squeeeeeeeeeeze them into you mixing bowl, they’re already mashed!! i have found, however, that bananas of the frozen type never seem to pack as much flavor and i generally add extra.
for this recipe, i only had 2 bananas and none in the freezer, what’s a girl to do!? i modified my goto banana bread recipe, reducing ingredients and adding roasted almonds and coconut to produce 10 muffins! breads and muffins are great modifiers in that you can add and subtract fruits and nuts to your liking.
coconut almond banana muffins:
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbs softened butter
2 ripe bananas
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup nuts
1/4 cup coconut
preheat oven to 350F
sift dry ingredients.
mix wet ingredients.
add dry to wet, then add coconut and almonds.
scoop into muffin cups and top w/a little bit of coconut
bake in preheated oven 20 min and voila!
Experiments with Agave Nectar and Sweet Breads
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
It’s summertime, and that means in the Bay Area, produce boxes are HEAVY on the fruits. I get so much fruit, I can’t eat it all, and I’m about 3 weeks backed up on plums, nectarines, and peaches. These two breads, are my attempt to use up some of the fruits I have that are about to turn.
Recently, I was exploring a new neighborhood of Oakland and came across a silly hippy natural foods store called The Food Mill, that reminded me of the ass-backwards “health foods” stores that exist in the Northeast, and have existed there since before the dawn of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. You know the type, fresh peanut butter, more aisles of suppliments than food, and the origional pay-by-the pound grains, psices, and teas. I like the first and the latter, but the suppliment ailes both scare and piss me off. And for some reason the people that work/own these stores tend to have a bit of the creepy jesus stare in them, but I digress.
I LOVE PAY BY THE POUND
I especially love pay by the pound olive oil and honey. This time around I bought some pay-by-the-pound Agave Nectar. I have never had it before, but in my attempt to move away from refined sugars as sweetners, I figured I should give it a try. At room temperature it is way less viscous than honey, and therefore, baking was quite easy with it. It scooped right into my measuing cup with ease.
The following two breads are in the oven, so I don’t know if the proportions are correct or not. I’ll be sure to update when I taste…I’m hoping for a t least a 1 out of 2 here..
Orange Banana Bread
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup agave nectar
2 eggs, beaten
2 mashed overripe bananas
1 h applesauce
zest 1 orange
Mix everything in the usual baking manner- wets with wets, dry with dry. Bake in a buttered and floured pan- shape and size of your choosing (I did 4 X 9) at 350 until the skewar comes out clean.
Plum Cardamom Bread
1 c. fresh plum cubed
1/2 c applesauce
1 yogurt cup
1/2 cup agave nectar
2/3 cup white sugar
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
11/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tsp. fresh salt
1 tsp. cardamom
1/2 t cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Mix everything in the usual baking manner- wets with wets, dry with dry. Bake in a buttered and floured pan- shape and size of your choosing (I did 4 X 9) at 350 until the skewer comes out clean. If you feel like it make a sweet decoration of plums on the top of the bread- I recommend this as the top crust wasn’t as hearty as I had hoped for.
Crows Before Bros
Thursday, June 25th, 2009One of our favorite Bros, Matt Studner, celebrated a birthday yesterday! Naturally, I took this opportunity to bake delectable treats and to show off my goodies to you fellow crows. Enjoy!
Chocolate Cupcakes
Cake Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup boiling water
1 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 lg. eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 lg. eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Frosting Ingredients:
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2/3 cup butter
1 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
CAKE!
>Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the boiling water and cocoa. Se aside and allow to cool to room temperature.
>In a separate bowl, beat the sugar and butter. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth and creamy. Add the vanilla and mix.
>Sift all the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and blend. Add the cocoa mixture and mix!
>Fill each cup with batter (about 2/3 full) and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes clean when inserted into the center of the cake. Allow to cool before frosting.
FROSTING!
>In a double boiler, melt the chocolate. Set aside and allow to cool to room temperature.
>In a separate bowl blend sugar and butter until smooth. Add vanilla. Mix in chocolate and blend until smooth and glossy.
