ALFRESCO

The Butter-iest Lemon Bars—Ever

2012-02-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

Baking Spree!

Day One

Hibernation can be good.

It gives you time to step away from all the frazzle-dazzle and come back refreshed.

After working on a few great projects—like playing around with my new iphone—I have time to blog again.

I’ve missed all of you and I hope you’ve missed Alfresco!

And what better way to get our baking spree kicked off than with these easy, yummy, cookies that have a lot of good things going for them. Sweet, tart, buttery, and tender, these bars can be cut as large or as small as you wish.

Buttery Lemon Bars have a little magic, too. They seem to be able to banish any winter blahs or blahs in general. With a cup of tea or a shot of limoncello, you’re back in business.

Buttery Lemon Bars

With a shortbread cookie crust and a sweet/ tart lemon filling, these bars are addictive.

Makes 3 dozen

For the crust:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more for dusting

For the filling:

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Line a 9 by 13-inch pan with parchment paper and set aside.

2. For the crust, pulse the flour, salt, butter, and confectioner's sugar in a food processor, just until the dough holds together. Press the dough onto the bottom and halfway up the sides the prepared pan. Bake the crust for 15 minutes until just set and slightly browned. Remove from the oven and set aside.

3. For the filling, combine the filling ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and beat for 3 minutes with an electric mixer. You want the mixture to be a lighter yellow, thicker than when you started, and with a froth of bubbles. Pour the filling over the hot crust.

4. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes more, or until firm in the middle and lightly browned on top. Cool completely, then dust with additional confectioner's sugar and cut into bars.

Unforgettable. And Still Unquenchable.

2011-12-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

On Monday evening, my culinary book group met again. These remarkable women make my heart glad.

We’ve seen each other through heartbreak and triumph, dishes that didn’t turn out, books we did and didn’t like, and new dishes we’ll definitely keep on making.

Each month the hostess chooses a culinary-themed book, usually a cookbook. But we’ve read memoirs, biographies, novels, and even a food issue of a magazine. We all bring a dish from the book or inspired by the book.

First, we sipped wine and told the stories of our family Thanksgiving celebrations. One intrepid friend fixed dinner—solo—for 37 people, 8 of which were children under the age of 12. Another “rested” by only having to make the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

I recounted the tale of our Thanksgiving, when my sister and I deboned a 20-pound turkey using surgical scalpels—they work great, by the way. We watched two YouTube videos first and then started on the big bird. We ended with a stuffed turkey roll wrapped in prosciutto (turkey porchetta) that kept growing and growing and growing as our Dad tied it up at intervals. When it reached 3 feet—how could this be??—we looked at the recipe again. And saw that it only called for a 10-pound turkey.

The monster turkey roll wouldn’t fit in the oven, so we ended up cutting it. We grilled half and deep-fried half (after the other two turkeys came out of the outdoor fryer).

Unforgettable!

Now, back to book club. For this month, we read Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard.

She had me at the first sentence: “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date.” As an American who moved to Paris to be with her love, Bard recounts the little incremental steps by which she moves from being “that American” to being able to read in French and understand the not-so-secret disciplinary code that French women use to stay so thin (don’t eat much and drink a lot of water).

A code my book club decided not to follow—at least for that night.

All of the recipes we tried were delicious. Right before I left the house, I snapped a quick photo of the dish I made, with a little holiday twist.

French Christmas Tree Salad

Adapted—with artistic license—from Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard.

This refreshing European vegetable salad uses few ingredients and is best made an hour or so before you serve it. You can use a combination of fennel and fresh celery, if you like. Use a mandoline slicer or a very sharp chef’s knife to trim the root end of each fennel bulb, then trim off the shoots. Save the feathery fronds to create a Christmas-tree effect on your serving platter. A very little bit of this salad makes a delicious contrast to heavier holiday foods.

To remove the seeds from a pomegranate, try Nigella Lawson’s method, which works great. Cut the pomegranate in half, fill a bowl with water, then whack the skin side of the pomegranate half with a wooden spoon so the seeds fall out and get trapped in the water (instead of going all over your kitchen). Once the first seeds come out, you can pry the rest with your fingers.

Serves 6

2 fennel bulbs, ends and shoots trimmed, and sliced paper thin

The juice of ½ lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Kosher or sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

½ cup fresh pomegranate seeds

1. Combine the sliced fennel and lemon juice in a bowl. Toss to blend, then drizzle with olive oil and toss again. Salt and pepper to taste and toss a third time.

2. Arrange the fennel fronds on a white platter in a Christmas tree shape. Mound the fennel at the base and scatter all with pomegranate seeds. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Unquenchable.

I think my book club pick for 2012 is going to be Natalie Maclean’s Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines.

I love the way she writes about wine in a knowledgeable, but adventurous and light-hearted style. “Behind every bottle is a person and a story,” she says.

After all, many wineries are family-run, and families, as I well know, can somehow create monster turkey rolls at Thanksgiving.

And she holds back on the winespeak. Not so much “aromatizing the esters” as “making great wines at reasonable prices.”

Even her Unquenchable book trailer is fun to watch.

www.nataliemaclean.com/book

This book, with a bottle or two of her affordable wine picks, would be a great holiday gift.

P.S. Like Natalie, my sister also has a goat story. . . . but that’s for another blog.

Cheers!

The 12 Days of Cookbooks

2011-12-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

and Italian Fig Cookies

How do you celebrate 12 Days of Cookbooks?

Deliciously!
Let's start with Day One:

“On the first day of cookbooks, my true love gave to me—a charming prairie story—

Heartland: The Cookbook.”

For the past 12 days, we’ve also been celebrating
Two chefs in love--Colby and Megan Garrelts of the acclaimed Bluestem,

three French gems, four pasta chefs, five chocolate bonbons, six gamers gaming, seven foodies shopping, eight bakers baking (including my Artisan Bread Machine

and

200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads),

ten comfort classics, eleven cupcakes twirling, and twelve grillers grilling.

You can check out all the days for yourself, and put a few books (as well as Foodie Fight, Food Fight Rematch, and Wine Wars trivia games) on your gift list.

http://www.portfolio-home.com/12days.html

Now, it’s time for holiday baking.

Nothing gets me more in the spirit than when my house is redolent of sugar and spice, orange and cranberry, fig and toasted pecan—all blended with the clean scent of fresh greenery.

When I think of cookies, I think of the Missouri Baking Company on “The Hill” in St. Louis, Missouri. This Italian bakery is in a little village-like district that reminds me of the movie “Moonstruck.” Mom-and-pop delis, old-style Italian restaurants, shotgun-style houses with tiny front gardens. The bakery is no-frills, family-owned, all scrumptious.

The Missouri Baking Company doesn't even have a web site. They do business the old-fashioned way, in person or by phone. (314) 773-4122.

The last time I visited, I bought two boxes of Italian cookies. When I put them down on a painted, peeling stoop, the photo looked just right--lots of great texture and taste.

This second box features Italian Fig Cookies—a tender dough that encloses a spiced fig filling, and is then drizzled with icing and dotted with colored sprinkles. Just looking at them makes you smile.

You can also find Italian Fig Cookies, sometimes cut into different shapes and sometimes only during the holiday season, at other Midwestern bakeries, too:

Palermo Bakery in Chicago http://www.palermobakerychicago.com/

Rito’s Bakery in Parma, Ohio http://www.ritosbakery.com/

Bommarito Bakery in metro Detroit, Michigan. http://bommaritobakery.com/

If you make Italian Fig Cookies yourself, however, you don’t have to travel and you can have them any time!

You can make them in stages—the filling a week or two in advance, the cookie pastry a few days ahead. Then roll, fill, bake, drizzle, and sprinkle.

Italian Fig Cookies

Adapted from Heartland: The Cookbook.

The recipe for cuccidatti, or Italian fig cookies, was one Sicilian immigrants clutched tightly to their collective bosoms on the proverbial boat. No matter that fig trees struggle in the Midwestern climate—even as far south as Missouri, fig trees must be bundled up like toddlers in snowsuits to survive the seesaw extremes of winter weather—families of Sicilian origin want their fig cookies. One bite and you’ll see why. Make the filling a week or so in advance, if you wish, and keep it covered in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake. If you end up with extra filling, use it to stuff and bake apples.

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Filling:

1 cup dried figs, about 4 ounces

1/3 cup dried dates, pitted

1/3 cup dark raisins

1 tangerine or Satsuma, peeled, seeded, and sectioned (most membrane removed)

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons freshly grated orange zest

¼ teaspoon fine kosher or sea salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1 tablespoon grappa, bourbon, or cognac, optional

Pastry:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon fine kosher or sea salt

½ cup granulated sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces

2 large eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Glaze:

¼ cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1. To make the filling, pour boiling water over the dried fruit and let steep for 15 minutes, or until softened. Pour off the water. Grind the figs, dates, raisins, tangerine sections, nutmeg, cinnamon, orange zest, salt, pepper, corn syrup, and optional grappa together in a food processor or in a food grinder until you have a moist paste. Cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks before baking.

2. To make the pastry, sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles small peas. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, milk, and vanilla together. Add this mixture to the flour mixture and pulse to form a mass. You will see small flecks of butter in the dough.

3. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

4. Divide the dough into fourths. On a floured surface, roll each portion of dough into a 14- by 5-inch rectangle. Spoon or pipe a fourth of the filling down the center of the pastry strip. Turn so that the cylinder is horizontal to you. Bring the edges of the dough up and pinch them together with your fingers. Remove any excess flour with a pastry brush. Roll the strip gently to form a cylinder, then gently squeeze and stretch the cylinder to a length of 18 inches. Cut the cylinder into 1 1/2-inch pieces. Place on a baking sheet, seam side down, about 1 inch apart. Repeat the process with the remaining pastry and filling.

5. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until lightly browned.

6. For the glaze, whisk the milk, vanilla, and confectioners’ sugar together in a bowl. Brush the cookies with the glaze and sprinkle with colored sprinkles while still warm. Cookies will keep for up to 1 month in an airtight container.

Top 5 Thanksgiving Ice Creams

2011-11-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

The final ideas for a fabulous Thanksgiving.

It’s Thanksgiving, Reinvented. . . . .

Top Ten Thanksgiving Dishes, Part Three

9. Top 5 Thanksgiving Ice Creams. Ice cream is a great canvas for seasonal flavors of sweet potato, pumpkin, nuts, and spice. Some are from widely distributed makers, others are from artisan makers. A Thanksgiving ice cream is a great addition to the menu, and it can be back-up if someone forgets to bring dessert or the dog eats the pie.

Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus, Ohio

http://www.jenisicecreams.com

Pumpkin Spice Gelato

Black Dog in Chicago, Illinois.

http://www.blackdogchicago.com

Spiced Pumpkin Pecan

Blue Bell Ice Cream (widely distributed) http://www.bluebell.com/the_little_creamery/press_releases/press_spiced_pumpkin_pecan.html

Pumpkin Ice Cream

Graeter’s in Cincinnati, Ohio

http://www.graeters.com/pumpkin.aspx

Pumpkin Roll Ice Cream

Pumpkin flavored ice cream with a cream cheese frosting swirl and cake pieces—the best of both worlds!

Moomers Homemade Ice Cream in Traverse City, Michigan.

http://www.moomers.com

10. Being Grateful. As you sit around the Thanksgiving table, make sure you count your blessings. What are you thankful for this year?

I’m grateful for you, the many readers of this blog, among many blessings in my life.

So, thank you! And please pass the ice cream. . . .

Top Ten Thanksgiving Dishes, Part Two

2011-11-17T15:45:00.000-08:00

It’s Thanksgiving, Reinvented. . . . .

More ideas for a fabulous Thanksgiving, for which you and your family will truly be thankful.

6. A Pumpkin Dessert. I have to admit. I love pumpkin desserts—pumpkin cake roll, pumpkin brownies, pumpkin cake—but not pumpkin pie so much. Of all the pumpkin cakes, this one is my favorite. It’s got an upside-down caramel topping and is so moist and fresh-tasting, you might never go back to pie.

Fresh Pumpkin Cake

Somewhere between a flan and a cheesecake in texture, this moist and delicious burnt orange-colored cake has a thin coating of caramel when it is turned out of the pan. Use small sugar or pie pumpkins that come on the market in October, or in a pinch, canned pumpkin. Fresh pumpkin adds the best flavor, though. This is gorgeous garnished with red, yellow, orange, or variegated edible flowers and leaves.

Makes a one-layer (8-inch) cake

1 1/2 pounds fresh pumpkin, peeled, seeded, and cut into pieces (or a 15-ounce can pumpkin, not pie filling)

1 quart water

2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1. Place the pumpkin, water, and salt into a large saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the pumpkin is tender, about 30 minutes.

2. Place a wire rack on a kitchen counter. Pour 1 cup of the sugar in the bottom of an 8-inch metal cake pan. Place the pan directly on a burner over medium heat. When the sugar has melted and turned a light gold, about 10 minutes, put an oven mitt on one hand and swirl the pan to coat the bottom and sides with the caramel. Transfer the pan to a wire rack.

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drain the pumpkin and place in a large bowl. With an electric mixer, beat the pumpkin and butter together until smooth. Beat in the flour and milk a little at a time, alternating between the two. Beat in the salt, vanilla, and remaining 1 cup sugar until you have a smooth batter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sieve the batter into the caramelized pan and place the pan in a large, shallow baking pan filled with 1 inch of hot water.

3. Bake for 2 hours, or until the cake has pulled away from the sides of the pan and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the pan from the water bath and cool on a wire rack.

4. When the cake has cooled, carefully loosen the sides, if necessary, and invert onto a cakestand or serving plate. Garnish with fresh flowers and serve.

7. A Signature Cocktail. I recently did a wedding food story and talked with Ryan Maybee, a craft cocktail guru at Manifesto in Kansas City. When I asked about cocktails for a crowd, I envisioned an army of bartenders. But Maybee insists that one of the first American cocktails is great to serve a crowd. It’s also currently enjoying a revival, and can give you something to do with Aunt Hilda’s punch bowl stored under your bed.

What is the mystery drink? Punch! Not after-church or room-mother, 7-Up punch, but punch that really packs a wallop. It’s what George and Martha served at the White House, the cup of good cheer that Thomas Jefferson gave to visitors at Monticello—and a good time was had by all.

According to Maybee, a great punch needs 5 elements: a strong spirit (booze), something acidic (citrus fruit or tart apple), something sweet, something watery, and something spicy. This 18^th century punch recipe has all of that, and it’s easy. Just give the kids (and Aunt Hilda) the cider without the booze.

Try an artisan hard cider such as Apple True www.aeppeltreow.com from Wisconsin, Tandem Ciders in Leelanau peninsula in upper Michigan, or Sutliff Cider www.sutliffcider.com near Iowa City in Iowa.

Thanksgiving Cider Punch

Makes 12 servings

2 cups applejack, hard cider, scrumpy, or Calvados

1 quart fresh apple cider

Cinnamon sticks and lemon twists for garnish

1. In a large bowl, stir together the applejack and cider. Fill each cocktail glass or punch cup with ice and pour in the punch. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and a twist of fresh lemon.

8. A Side Dish on the Grill. Couldn’t be easier, or make more sense. Send some of the guys outside and free your oven up at the same time.

Grilled Squash and Apple Rings with Buttery Cinnamon Baste

Cut Golden Delicious apples into 1-inch thick slices, then remove the core from each slice with a paring knife. Cut acorn squash into 1-inch slices and remove the seeds and fibrous material in the center of each slice with a paring knife. Microwave the squash slices for about 3 to 4 minutes on HIGH or until they’re par-cooked. In a bowl, whisk 4 tablespoons melted butter with ¼ cup packed dark brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Brush the rings with this mixture and grill over medium-high heat until the squash is cooked through and both squash and apple rings have good grill marks.

These can be done ahead of time and kept warm on the grill, wrapped in aluminum foil.

Top Ten Thanksgiving Dishes, Reinvented--Part One

2011-11-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

Fresh air, fine living, fabulous ideas.

That’s the Alfresco way--especially for Thanksgiving!

On Wednesday night this week, I participated in a Les Dames d’Escoffier holiday fundraiser for a backpack snack program for kids in need, administered by our local food bank Harvesters. We all brought out our best Thanksgiving recipes to prepare and share with attendees.

Some families require that Thanksgiving stay the same, usually with an 1870s menu that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family would have enjoyed: roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, hot rolls, and pumpkin pie.

Every family has its favorites, including mine, but tastes can change. New friends and family members can grace your table (and bring a new set of must-haves).

And it doesn’t hurt to try something new--or use your outdoor kitchen more for this feast.

So, here are tasty ways to reinvent Thanksgiving classics.

1. Turkey. Last year for Thanksgiving, my sister and I brined a 20-pound heirloom turkey Wednesday night, covered with ice, then started roasting it early Thanksgiving morning. It turned out moist and delicious.

The guys in our family deep-fried a grocery store turkey that was on sale the day after Thanksgiving, and it was even more moist and delicious! The moral of the story is—expand your turkey horizons.

If you have traditionalists at your house, then do turkey the expected way. But it doesn’t hurt to try turkey a new way—it could become the favorite. As an alternate turkey that tastes great for a smaller crowd, I love Brie and Basil–Stuffed Turkey Breast , smoked outdoors. And it frees up the oven!

Brie and Basil–Stuffed Turkey Breast

Suggested wood: Fruitwood, grapevines, pecan, oak, or maple

Serves 4

2 boneless, skinless turkey breast halves (about 3 pounds total)

1 tablespoon olive oil

8 ounces Brie

8 to 10 fresh basil leaves

4 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto

1. Prepare an indirect fire in your grill. In a charcoal grill, bank the charcoal in the middle so you can put a turkey breast on either side of the coals but not over them. In a gas grill, turn on the middle burner, so you can put a turkey breast on either side of the flame but not over it.

2. Add wood. In a charcoal grill, add 3 sticks or chunks of wood to the coals once they have ashed over. In a gas grill, put 1 cup of dry wood chips in a metal smoker box or an aluminum foil packet with holes punched in it so the smoke can escape; put the smoker box or packet close to a burner.

3. Rinse the turkey and pat dry. Lightly coat both breasts with the olive oil. Make a pocket slit in the thicker side of each turkey breast. Place 3 to 4 thin slices of Brie inside each slit. Tuck 4 or 5 fresh basil leaves evenly on top of the cheese. Wrap each breast with half of the prosciutto. Place the turkey on either side of the fire. When you see the first wisp of smoke from the wood, cover the grill, and smoke until an instant-read meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast registers 160 to 165°F, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The turkey will have a hint of pink from the smoke. Let rest for about 10 minutes before cutting into 3/8-inch-thick slices. Serve warm.

2. Sweet Potatoes. Some sweet potato dishes are so sweet, they practically make your teeth hurt. Why not try a roasted sweet potato dish, especially if you can find sweet potato fingerlings at a farmer’s market? You simply toss the sweet potatoes with olive oil, add chopped red onion and fresh rosemary, season to taste, and roast in a 400°F oven, stirring a couple of times, until they’re tender and caramelized in about 45 minutes.

3. Cranberries. My food stylist friend Vicki Johnson makes a cranberry sauce that has so much flavor, you could eat it with a spoon. If you’re looking to change up your recipe, this is a great one to try. It’s fabulous with turkey, over a mild cheese as an appetizer, or as an extra side dish. The only trick is caramelizing the sugar with the vinegar first--for a while, it just boils and stays white. Then, all of a sudden, it starts to go brown, so keep an eye on it. Freeze bags of cranberries to use for use in January and February, when this vibrant flavor and color will perk you right up.

Winter Cranberry Relish

Makes 4 cups

1 cup dark or golden raisins, covered with boiling water in a bowl

2 cups granulated sugar

1 tablespoon white vinegar

2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons freshly grated orange zest

1 cup orange juice

6 cups (two 12-ounce bags) cranberries

1 1/2 cups peeled and diced Granny Smith apples

1 cup slivered, toasted almonds

1. Let the raisins plump in the water for 15 minutes, then drain.

2. While the raisins are plumping, combine the sugar and vinegar in a large saucepan over medium heat until the sugar starts to bubble. Cook until the mixture turns a medium brown, about 5 minutes, but watch it all the way.

3. Stir in the ginger, orange zest and juice and bring to a boil. Add the cranberries and cook for 5 minutes or until the cranberries burst their skins. Stir in the raisins, apples, and almonds. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

4. Brussels Sprouts. If you’ve been boiling your sprouts to death, there’s another way—roasting! Halve fresh sprouts, toss them with a little olive oil and some finely chopped pancetta or bacon, then roast them in a 400°F oven, stirring occasionally. You can roast these the day before until they’re still slightly crisp, then warm them in the oven—or do this all outside on the grill in a disposable aluminum pan, with the grill lid down.

5. Pumpkin. Okay, most of us do pumpkin pie. But you can also make fabulous Pumpkin Pullaparts with a no-knead dough. You can bake them the day before or the morning of, them warm them before serving. The recipe is in this blog’s 2009 archive.

Kale, Kale the Flavor's All Here!

2011-11-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

In Vegetarian or Meatless Monday Dishes

Cold weather kale is getting a taste makeover.

If you remember kale as a boiled-to-death vegetable

in a one-pot meal, then here’s a surprising twist.

Kale can be crunchy and absolutely delicious.

Lacinato Kale

Crunchy Kale

Adapted from Heartland: The Cookbook. This tastes great served like potato chips or as a side dish.

Kale Ready for the Oven

1 bunch kale, such as curly, Lacinato, Russian, or Dino

2 tablespoons canola oil

½ cup freshly grated Asiago, Parmesan, or Gruyere

1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F.

2. Trim the tough ends from the kale and cut the leaves into 1-inch pieces. Arrange on a baking sheet, drizzle with oil, and toss to blend.

3. Bake for 10 minutes, then open the oven door and stir the kale with a wooden spoon. Bake for another 10 minutes, then open the door again and sprinkle the kale with the grated cheese. Bake for a final 30 minutes or until the kale is crunchy.

Crunchy Kale

This fall, I’ve done several cooking classes around the country, serving up simmering soups and a fabulous flatbread that features crunchy kale as a topping.

The flatbread is easy to do--especially if you have a bowl of dough on hand in the fridge--and can turn a Meatless Monday into a “Can’t Wait” occasion.

Easy Artisan Dough Makes bread, rolls, pizza, or flatbread

Adapted from 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads.

2 tbsp instant or bread machine yeast

1 ½ tbsp fine kosher salt

6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

3 cups lukewarm water, about 100°F

1. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flours. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Pour in the water and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

2. Rise. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature 72°F for 2 hours or until the dough has risen near the top of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use Right Away or Refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 9 days before baking.

Flatbread with Crispy Kale, Black Olives, and Goat Cheese

Makes 1 flatbread to serve 16 as an appetizer

½ recipe prepared Easy Artisan Dough

Unbleached, all-purpose flour for dusting

4 tbsp olive oil, divided use

8 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

½ cup chopped, pitted Kalamata olives

1 pound fresh kale, leaves torn from the stems

2 cups hot water for broiler pan

1. Form. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. To form the flatbread, remove half of the dough with a serrated knife and a dough scraper. The remaining dough in the bowl will deflate somewhat. Transfer the dough portion to a floured surface. Flour the dough and your hands. Transfer the dough to the prepared pan. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, pat the dough into to fit the pan. Lightly flour any sticky places on the dough. The dough should feel soft and smooth all over, like a baby’s skin, but not at all sticky.

2. Rest. Cover with a tea towel and let rest at room temperature for 40 minutes.

3. Prepare Oven for Artisan Baking. About 30 minutes before baking, place a broiler pan on the lower shelf and a baking stone on the middle shelf of the oven. Preheat to 450°F (230 °C).

4. Top Flatbread. When ready to bake, the dough will not have risen much, but will finish rising dramatically in the oven. Pour 2 tbsp of the olive oil into a bowl and with the kale until the kale leaves are shiny. Arrange the kale on the dough and top with crumbled goat cheese and black olives. Drizzle with remaining olive oil.

5. Slide Flatbread onto Baking Stone and Add Water to Broiler Pan. Using an oven mitt, carefully pull the middle rack of the oven out several inches. Place the pan of flatbread on the hot stone. Pull the lower rack out, pour the hot water into the broiler pan, and push the lower rack back in place. Close the oven door immediately so the steam will envelop the oven.

6. Bake. Bake for 27 to 30 minutes or until the crust is lightly browned. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Northern Lights and Cheese Pockets

2011-10-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

It has been a week of cosmic synchronicities and random pork chops.

Let me explain.

The week started off with a fabulous display of the Northern Lights, usually not visible this far south. Photo by Randy Halversen and River Halversen.

Louise Erdrich wrote about the aurora borealis in her novel Love Medicine, which I used in Heartland:

“Everything seems to be one piece. The air, our faces, all cool, moist and dark, and the ghostly sky. . . .All of a piece. . . .As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thoughts and memories traveled across it. . . . As if the sky were one gigantic memory for us all.”

And then one particular memory did come back, in the form of a story by Polly Campbell in the Cincinnati Enquirer about “cheese pockets,” a wonderful coffeecake much beloved in our family. You can see the square coffeecake made with a sweet yeast dough folded over a sweet cheese filling, then sprinkled with sugar. You can also see what a cheese pocket looks like when you cut it into pieces—and who can eat just one piece?

Here's the link (but I also have a pdf available below, as these links aren't always permanent):

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20111026/LIFE01/110260314/Cheese-pockets-are-deep-here

Cheese pockets made me homesick for Ohio, the prettiness there of the old Federal-style brick buildings, the trees changing colors, the quality of light you get in late fall. I came across a blog by a fellow Wittenberg alum, and she understands it, too. The calm, small town beauty that you can still find in the Midwest.

http://sweetmeadowsampler.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

And the surprises, too.

I was out walking Mimi the dog in my Kansas neighborhood when she suddenly became very interested in someone’s front yard. A little too interested.

When I looked to see what she had in her mouth, it turned out to be a perfectly grilled, boneless pork chop, still warm. Dog heaven!

And for you, too, a little serendipity—the recipe for Cheese Pockets.

The no-knead dough simply mixes up in a bowl--with a Danish dough whisk, if you like-- and rises on your kitchen counter in 2 hours. Easy.

You can bake with the dough that day, or cover and store it in the fridge for up to 3 days before baking. Both recipes are adapted from 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads.

Cheese Pocket Coffee Cake

Known in German as schmierkuchen, this easy coffee cake is the essence of home baking. Sweet and yeasty, with a mellow filling, a piece of this served with fresh berries is a good reason to wake up in the morning.

Makes 2 coffee cakes, to serve 12 to 16

Equipment

Rolling pin

Two 8-inch (20 cm) square baking pans

1/2 recipe prepared Easy Artisan Sweet Dough (below)

Unbleached bread flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar 125 mL

1 tbsp all-purpose flour 15 mL

1/2 tsp fine kosher or sea salt 2 mL

2 eggs, beaten 2

1-1/2 cups small-curd cottage cheese (about 12 oz/375 g) 375 mL

1/4 cup heavy or whipping (35%) cream 50 mL

1 tsp vanilla extract 5 mL

Topping:

Granulated or sanding sugar for dusting

1. Form. Divide the dough in half. Transfer one half to a floured surface and dust very lightly with flour. Flour your hands and the rolling pin. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, roll out into a 12-inch square. Drape the dough over the rolling pin and transfer to one of the baking pans, fitting the dough into the bottom and up the sides. Repeat with the remaining dough.

2. Rest. Cover with a tea towel and let rest at room temperature for 40 minutes.

3. Preheat. About 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 350°F (230°C).

4. Prepare filling. Five minutes before baking, in a food processor, combine sugar, flour, salt, egg, cottage cheese, cream and vanilla; process until smooth. Pour half the filling into each pan. Drape the sides of the dough over the filling. For the topping, sprinkle with sugar.

5. Bake. Bake for 20 to 23 minutes or until filling has browned and crust is a medium reddish-brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool

Master Recipe #7

Easy Artisan Sweet Dough

Substituting milk for the water and adding sugar, melted butter and eggs to Easy Artisan Dough transforms it into a sweet dough. With these additions, the dough is heavier, and thus needs more yeast — and stronger unbleached bread flour — to make it rise and achieve the appropriate crumb. Sweet dough recipes do best when baked on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (sweet fillings can ooze out of the dough and blacken on your baking stone), and at a lower temperature: 400°F (200°C). With this master dough, you can produce wonderful coffee cakes, festive breads and sweet rolls with a moist, feathery crumb. The dough will last for only 3 days in the refrigerator before it turns bitter.

Equipment

Instant-read thermometer

8-cup (2 L) bowl

4-cup (1 L) glass measuring cup

Wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk

6-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour 1.625 L

2 tbsp instant or bread machine yeast 25 mL

1-1/2 tbsp fine kosher salt 22 mL

2-1/2 cups lukewarm milk (about 100°F/38°C) 625 mL

1 cup granulated sugar 250 mL

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted 125 mL

2 large eggs

1. Measure. Spoon the flour into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into a large mixing bowl.

2. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. In the glass measuring cup, combine milk, sugar and butter. Using a fork, beat in eggs
Pour into the flour mixture and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

3. Rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature (72°F/22°C) in a draft-free place for 2 hours or until the dough has risen to about 2 inches (5 cm) under the rim of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use right away or refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days before baking.

Tips

* Microwaving cold milk for about 2 minutes on High will result in lukewarm milk of approximately 100°F (38°C).

* Before storing the dough in the refrigerator, use a permanent marker to write the date on the plastic wrap, so you’ll know when you made your dough — and when to use it up 3 days later.

If you'd like me to send you a pdf of the Cheese Pocket story, then please e-mail me at

jfertig299@aol.com

Bacon + Bread

2011-10-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Fougasse aux Grattons—That’s French for Yum!

What a week! I started out at Lake Austin Spa just outside of Austin, Texas, where I taught culinary classes with Karen Adler. Just looking at the photos of the spa makes you relax.

Ahhhhhh… Or is that Ommmmmm?

http://www.lakeaustin.com/

Secondly, Jon Brick of OutsideLines Travel sent me their cool video of Tory Miller, the talented chef at L’Etoile and Graze in Madison, Wisconsin. Miller pulls his iconic red wagon from stall to stall at the Madison Farmer’s Market, then chooses the best of what’s in season for his menus. What an inspired idea to do a smushed (that’s a culinary term) round of goat cheese warmed in the oven, then a salad on top! You can read more about him and the Madison Farmer's Market--the largest in the United States-- in Heartland.

http://www.outsidelinestravel.com/City/MADISON--WISCONSIN/Post/LETOILE%20AND%20GRAZE--75

Thirdly, I had a meeting in Kansas City to talk about photos for my upcoming book I Love Cinnamon Rolls! with Andrews McMeel (fall 2012) and a sampling of cinnamon rolls. That's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

The fabulous Ben Pieper http://www.benpieperphoto.com/ is doing the cinnamon roll photos. He also did the lick-the-page food photos for Heartland.

Number Four Event of the Week. My son is having a big birthday, which means I’m starting to tell people I got married in my Girl Scout uniform. . . .

We’ve also had our first frost. And that heralds Bread Baking Season, if you haven’t been baking before now.

I was just at Costco and saw all the bread machines for sale. That’s right in line with bread books like The Artisan Bread Machine flying out the door.

If you don’t have that electric baking assistant, the automatic bread machine, you can still get a little help. No-knead dough just stirs together in a bowl, then sits on your kitchen counter to rise all by itself. It does just what you told it to do. Rise!

When you marry this easy-to-get-along-with dough with great bacon, well, what’s not to love?

In Fougasse aux Grattons, or French Flatbread with Bacon Bits, you can have a wonderful flatbread to go with soups and stews or an appetizer bread that’s just as delicious with beer and wine.

Fougasse is a dough you roll out like long pizza, then cut slits through it with a pizza wheel or knife. The slits make a decorative pattern as the flatbread bakes. Then, you brush it with bacon fat for even more flavor.

The grattons are little pieces of bacon cooked crisp with dry white wine. You scatter them over the dough, then roll them into it before you cut the slits in the dough. Easy. Use an artisan Midwestern bacon, of course.

Although you don’t have to use a baking stone to make this recipe, it does make your oven function better. A baking stone's surface gets hot all over to the correct temperature, so anything you place on it bakes evenly. Even though your oven might say 400°F, there are still hotter and cooler spots. The baking stone evens the baking field, so to speak.

The finished flatbread is crisp on the outside, bacon-y on the inside, and 100% delicious.

So, here it is (and in 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads).

Fougasse aux Grattons

Makes flatbread to serve 24

Dough:

1 tbsp instant or bread machine yeast

3/4 tbsp fine kosher salt

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 1/2 cups lukewarm water, about 100°F

Filling:

1 cup dry white wine

16 slices smoked bacon or 16 oz pancetta, finely diced

2 cups hot water for broiler pan

1. Measure. Spoon the flours into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into a large mixing bowl.

2. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flours. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Pour in the water and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

3. Rise. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature 72°F for 2 hours or until the dough has risen near the top of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use Right Away or Refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 9 days before baking.

5. Make Filling. Combine the wine and bacon in a skillet over medium heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer until the fat has rendered and the bacon has browned, about 35 to 40 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve the melted fat in the skillet. Divide the bacon into two portions.

6. Form. To form the flatbread, remove the dough and cut in half. Transfer one dough portion to a floured surface and dust very lightly with flour. Flour the rolling pin. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, roll the dough into a 12-inch/3 cm by 6-inch (15 cm) oval. Lightly flour any sticky places on the dough. The dough should feel soft and smooth all over, like a baby’s skin, but not at all sticky.

7. Fill. Arrange ¼ of on portion of the grattons on the upper half of the dough. Fold the other half over the filling. Turn the dough a quarter turn. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, roll the dough again into a 12-inch/30 cm by 6-inch (15 cm) oval. Again, arrange ¼ of the grattons on the upper half of the dough. Fold the other half over the filling. Turn the dough a quarter turn and roll into an oval. Repeat the process until all of the grattons have been incorporated into the dough. Repeat the process with the remaining dough and filling.

8. Cut. With the dough in a 12-inch/3 cm by 6-inch (15 cm) oval, use a pizza wheel or a sharp knife to cut two rows of 4 diagonal slashes, about 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 cm), that almost meet in the middle of the dough like this: / \. Transfer the dough to the prepared baking sheet and pull the top and sides of the dough to stretch it to a larger oval with opened slits . Brush the surface of the dough with the melted bacon fat.

9. Rest. Cover with a tea towel and let rest at room temperature for 40 minutes.

10. Prepare Oven for Artisan Baking. About 30 minutes before baking, place a broiler pan on the lower shelf and a baking stone on the middle shelf of the oven. Preheat to 450°F (230 °C).

11. Slide Baking Pan onto Baking Stone and Add Water to Broiler Pan. Using an oven mitt, carefully pull the middle rack of the oven out several inches. Place the pan of fougasse on the hot stone. Pull the lower rack out, pour the hot water into the broiler pan, and push the lower rack back in place. Close the oven door immediately so the steam will envelop the oven.

12. Bake. Bake for 22 to 25 minutes or until the crust is medium-brown. Transfer to a rack to cool.

Oktoberfest!

2011-10-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

Liederkranz Cheese and Sour Caraway Rye Flatbread

I grew up in a German/Irish town near Cincinnati, Ohio, where church sauerkraut suppers raised lots of money and fried sauerkraut balls were all the rage as appetizers.

(If you want the sauerkraut ball recipe, which is delicious, then leave your e-mail in a comment below and I’ll send it to you. They look like hush puppies but are much more flavorful.)

Hey, if you have even the tiniest speck of German ancestry, you have to love sour.

In German Village,

http://germanvillage.com/

just south of Columbus, Ohio, you can eat your fair share of grilled bratwurst topped with kraut, washed down with a brew.

For those of us who come from German ancestry, "sour" in bread means a dark, tangy, sour rye that stands up to a frothy mug of beer and even the stinkiest cheese.

Reigning over the kingdom of Stinky Cheese is Liederkranz, which means “wreath of songs” in German. An Americanized version of the equally aromatic Limburger cheese, Liederkranz was made for generations in Van Wert, Ohio, just north of Dayton. The plant closed down in 1985, but now Liederkranz is being crafted again in Wisconsin.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/89242162.html

My grandfather loved Liederkranz sort of sliced and squished on rye bread with chopped raw onion on top. “Wreath of songs” should have translated into “wreath of fumes” after eating, or sitting near someone eating, Liederkranz on rye.

For your Oktoberfest celebrations, why not make a sour rye flatbread that you just pat into a pan, then top it with sausage and chopped fresh Savoy cabbage or sauerkraut?

Liederkranz optional. . . .

That’s the good life!

Sausage and Cheese Flatbread (in the upper left corner of the photo)

Adapted from Heartland: The Cookbook by Judith Fertig.

Serves 12

1/2 recipe prepared No Knead Sour Caraway Rye Dough (below)

¼ cup Dijon or wholegrain mustard

1 pound smoked sausage links, cooked and cut into ½-inch slices

2 cups shredded Savoy cabbage or drained and rinsed sauerkraut

2 cups grated Gruyere or cave-aged Swiss cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Place 2 cups of hot water in a broiler pan on the lower rack. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. With wet hands, pat the dough into a 10 x 16-inch oval on the prepared baking sheet. Spread the mustard over the dough. Arrange the sliced sausage, then the cabbage on the dough. Sprinkle with Gruyere.

3. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes or until, risen, browned, and firm to the touch. Let cool on the baking sheet. To serve, cut into slices.

No Knead Sour Caraway Rye Dough

Like many Heartlanders, rye works hard. This grain is disease-resistant and the hardiest of the cereal crops in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Farmers plan winter rye, like winter wheat, by drilling seeds into the ground around September, then harvest in early summer. Rye is also a versatile crop, grown not only for the potential flour but also for holistic weed control, pasture for cattle during the winter months, and vodka. Quite a combo. Because rye is low in gluten, which is needed to develop the structure of bread, you use a combination of wheat and rye flours in bread dough. The rye bread flavor comes from caraway, the dark color from the cocoa powder, and gentle sourness from yogurt. Beloved of Heartland families with northern European roots, this rye dough can be turned into flatbreads, loaves, and rolls. If you precisely follow all the steps, you’ll have good success.

Makes breads, flatbreads, or rolls to serve 24 to 32

2 tablespoons instant or bread machine yeast

1 ½ tablespoons fine kosher salt

4 1/2 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting

2 cups rye flour

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons caraway seeds

1/2 cup sorghum or molasses

½ cup plain yogurt

2 1/4 cups lukewarm water, about 100°F

1. Spoon the flour into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into a 16-cup mixing bowl.

2. Add the yeast, salt, cocoa powder, and caraway seeds to the flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Mix the sorghum, yogurt, and water together in a 4-cup measuring cup. Pour the molasses mixture into the flour mixture, stir to combine, then beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

3. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature 72°F for 2 hours or until the dough has risen about 2 inches under the rim of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days before baking. If you like, write the date on the plastic wrap, so you know the “bake-by” date of your dough.

Indian Summer Grilling

2011-10-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

Basic to Brilliant!

"When in doubt, roast a chicken," a famous cookbook author once said.

As a BBQ Queen who spends part of her working life in a visor/tiara, I'd amend that to

"When in doubt, grill a chicken." But there's an art to that.

When you grill a bone-in chicken, whether whole or in pieces, you'll want to add flavor that will infuse the bird as it cooks. You'll want to turn the chicken a lot, so it doesn't burn. And you save the barbecue sauce for slathering on during the last minutes of grilling.

And if you want a Southern-style grilled chicken that truly is finger-lickin' good--complete with a sassy barbecue sauce featuring Vidalia onion--then my friend Virginia Willis is your gal. Her new book Basic to Brilliant, Y'all: 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company just came out, and it's a beauty. I love a book that makes you want to lick the pages, and even better when the recipes are sooooo good.

Willis takes a good basic recipe, like barbecued chicken, then gives it special touches that take it to, well, brilliance. A signature barbecue sauce can do that, but the juiciness of the chicken, thanks to a sweet, brine-like marinade, made the basic recipe pretty darn tasty. My, my, my! You know it's a great recipe when people keep sneaking back for another little piece, another lick of sauce. Can you say "no leftovers?" Sigh. . . .

Want to see how Basic to Brilliant, Y'all came together? Visit Virginia’s blog and download her recipe sampler at the bottom of the page. http://wp.me/paIKj-Wa

If you follow this link, you can get an autographed book plate from Chef Willis, too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dHJFSF9tN1hHZlhCVVYtMmVILTdoSEE6MQ

Now, celebrate Indian Summer and fire up that grill!http://wp.me/paIKj-Wa

Mama’s BBQ Chicken

from Basic to Brilliant, Y'all: 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company by Virginia Willis (Ten Speed Press, 2011)

Serves 4 to 6

You know how it is when you are itching for summer to start. You are ready for it. It buzzes in your brain like a hungry mosquito zeroing in for a feast on a naked expanse of skin. Warm weather, sunshine, and swimming. Porches, fishing, and lying on the grass by the river. I love summer food.

Okra. Lady peas and butter beans. Tomatoes. Summer squash. Corn. Garrison Keillor is rumored to have said, “Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.” Well, fresh sweet corn is really good. Simple. Uncomplicated. Satisfying. Regardless of your opinion of sex and corn, I am sure you can agree summer does mean grilling.

I love to grill throughout the year, but in the summer, it’s just practical to keep the heat out of the kitchen. Burgers and brats are brilliant, steaks and seafood are stupendous, but perhaps my absolute fave? The cheap and cheerful pedestrian chicken.

Chicken can be absolutely sublime on the grill: smoky and charred, yet tender and juicy. It can also be drier than chalk and just about as tasty, too. The trick is if you pierce the meat with the tip of a knife and the juices run clear, it’s done. If the juices run pink? It’s underdone. If there are no juices? Ahem.

4 quarts tepid water

3/4 cup coarse kosher salt

1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 cups ice cubes

1 (4-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces, or 6 bone-in skin-on breasts or thighs

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mama’s Barbecue Sauce, warmed

Combine the water, salt, and brown sugar in a large plastic container and stir to dissolve. Add ice to chill, then add the chicken; cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 4 to 6 hours.

Prepare a charcoal fire using about 6 pounds of charcoal and burn until the coals are completely covered with a thin coating of light gray ash, 20 to 30 minutes. Spread the coals evenly over the grill bottom, position the grill rack above the coals, and heat until medium-hot (when you can hold your hand 5 inches above the grill surface for no longer than 3 or 4 seconds). Or, for a gas grill, turn on all burners to high, close the lid, and heat until very hot, 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the chicken from the marinade and rinse under cool running water. Pat dry with paper towels, season with pepper, and set aside. Using a wad of paper towels or an old cloth and a pair of tongs, apply some canola oil to the grill grate. Place the chicken on the grill, leaving plenty of space between each piece. Grill until seared, 1 to 2 minutes per side for legs and thighs, and 3 or so minutes for breasts. Move the chicken to where the heat is medium low or lower the heat in a gas grill to medium. Continue to grill, turning occasionally, until the juices run clear when pierced, 12 to 18 minutes. During the last 5 to 7 minutes of cooking, brush the chicken with the barbecue sauce. (Any sooner and the sauce will burn.) Remove the chicken pieces from the grill as soon as they are done and transfer to a warmed platter. Give them a final brush of sauce for flavor and serve immediately with additional sauce on the side.

Mama’s Barbecue Sauce

Make a batch, then separate out a cup or so for brushing on the chicken. Don’t dip your brush in the big pot, then dab it on half-cooked chicken and then serve that

same sauce on the side. Eew. That’s just bad food safety and asking for a tummy ache.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 onion, preferably Vidalia, very finely chopped

21/2 cups ketchup

2 cups apple cider or distilled white vinegar

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar

Juice of 2 lemons

2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

Coarse salt

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat; add the onion and simmer until soft and melted, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the ketchup, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, brown sugar, lemon juice, and pepper. Bring to a boil, decrease the heat to low, and simmer until the flavors have smoothed and mellowed, at least 10 and up to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust for seasoning with salt and pepper. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. It will last for months.

Waving the Wheat

2011-10-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

Freshly ground wheat is a revelation

If you're a college football fan, you've seen it. Fans of Midwestern teams standing in the stadium, arms raised high and waving back and forth. That's "waving the wheat."

You can also wave the wheat in the kitchen.

We all know that whole grains are better for us. They contain all the nutrients of the grain including the oil in the inner part or germ plus the fiber from the outer layer or bran.

What we don’t often hear is how delicious freshly ground grain can be. It has a fresher (of course!), nuttier flavor than flour that has been sitting in a bag for a while.

What you also don’t often hear is that harvested wheat berries or kernels need about 3 months of maturing in a grain silo before the wheat is ready to be milled into flour. This time period allows the berries to lose moisture so the resulting flour will be dry, like it’s supposed to be, instead of gummy. So, it's right about now that wheat harvested in the summer is ready for milling.

Heartland farmers knew all this, of course, so they’d store the grain and then use a hand-cranked grinder to grind the wheat berries into flour. You see the harvested wheat on the stalk, the threshed wheat kernels in the bowl, the flour mill and the coarsely ground flour in the pan.

Milling Wheat the Old-Fashioned Way

We’re lucky in the Midwest that we can often find grocery stores (Hy-Vee, for example) that have electric grain mills for wheat just as you could find a coffee bean grinder in the coffee aisle. You just put the whole wheat berries or kernels in the top of the mill, choose your grind (fine, medium, coarse) and press a button. You’ll get home-ground flour that’s delicious. Just remember to put the bag at the bottom of the chute or you’ll look like the Ghost of Wheat Harvests Past, covered in flour.

At home, I have an electric grain mill that does the trick in seconds. I can also grind dried soy beans or millet, steel-cut oats, or any other grain or dried bean into fresh flour.

I urge you to try freshly ground wheat or packaged whole wheat flour in a delicious new bread with the added flavor of your favorite granola.

Now that the weather is turning crisp again, it’s time to get out that bread machine and take it for a spin.

You can set the delay timer and wake up to the sweet and spicy aroma of Great Plains Granola Bread, still warm from the “oven.”

Now, if only someone could put the coffee on. . . .

Great Plains Granola Bread

In the 1970s, Peavey Flour Mills in Minneapolis, Minnesota, milled a granola flour that made a wonderful, nutty-tasting bread. Today, you can make a terrific granola bread yourself by grinding granola in the food processor. If you can’t find milder-tasting white whole wheat flour in your area, then just use regular whole wheat flour. This whole-grain loaf has wonderful texture. Recipe from The Artisan Bread Machine by Judith Fertig (Robert Rose, 2011).

Makes 1 (1-1/2 pound) loaf

Delay Timer

Equipment

Food processor or blender

3/4 cup prepared granola

3 tablespoons large-flake (old-fashioned) rolled oats

3 tablespoons dried sour cherries or cranberries

1/2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

5 teaspoons liquid honey

1-1/4 cups boiling water

2-1/2 cups whole wheat flour , freshly ground or packaged

1-1/2 teaspoons instant or bread machine yeast

3/4 cup raisins (optional)

1/3 cup sliced almonds, finely chopped nuts or unsweetened flaked coconut (optional)

1. In food processor, pulse granola until it resembles coarse crumbs.

2. Add granola, oats, dried cherries, salt, oil and honey to the bread pan. Pour in boiling water, stir and let cool for 15 to 25 minutes or until mixture has cooled to lukewarm (between 86°F and 95°F/30°C and 35°C).

3. Spoon flour on top of liquid. Add yeast. Place raisins and almonds (if using) in the dispenser (or add at the “add ingredient” or “mix in” signal).

4. Select the Whole Wheat cycle and the Light Crust setting and press Start.

Tips

* You can vary the flavor of this bread by using different varieties of prepared granola.

* Use the Light Crust setting for a medium brown crust; some prepared granolas have a higher sugar content than others and can cause the bread to brown at darker crust settings.

Lard 101

2011-09-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Home-Rendered Deliciousness

For several generations in the Midwest, lard was the go-to fat in the kitchen for flaky pie crusts and fried chicken.

Then, when margarine and vegetable oil started appearing on grocery store shelves in the 50s and 60s, lard was considered bad.

Now, lard is good again. At least the home-rendered kind made from “leaf” fat, so called because it has a long leaf shape.

Pork Leaf Fat

Made and kept without preservatives, fresh lard doesn’t have the slightly musky flavor that packaged lard does. It has about 45% mono-unsaturated fat and no trans-fats. And it still makes the best piecrust and the best fried chicken or potatoes you’ve ever tasted. I also like to use it when I make duck confit in the fall.

To render or melt lard at home, you need to find “leaf” pork fat. Usually, a full service butcher shop carries it or can get it for you. In the Kansas City area, I found leaf fat at Bichelmeyer Meats

http://bichelmeyermeatskc.com/

They also have leaf lard that they’ve rendered, if you don’t want to make it yourself.

The rendering process is easy, but takes a bit of time. After you trim and cut the fat into small pieces,

you’ll want to render it slowly so it can be used for both making pastry and frying (if the lard gets too brown, it could make your lard pie crust taste like pork roast). I used the slow cooker, which does the rendering work without too much attention from the cook.

Herb and Cathy Eckhouse of La Quercia

www.laquerciaus.com

in Norwalk, Iowa, render their lard in a 250°F oven. Either way works well.

You’ll end up with a pale golden lard that turns creamy white. Here, you see a jar of home-rendered lard that is cooling--pale gold where it is still warm, white where it has cooled.

If you like, freeze some of the lard in pre-measured portions, in ice cube trays or freezer bags, to use for pie crust. Use the cracklings in soups, salads, or cornbread—they taste like toasted sesame seeds.

Home Rendered Lard (from Heartland: The Cookbook)

Makes about 3 cups

2 pounds leaf lard in one piece, membrane trimmed away and the fat cut into 1-inch pieces

1. Place the chopped fat in a 2-quart slow cooker and turn it to the Low setting. Cover and render for 8 to 12 hours or until most of the fat has melted.

2. Line a funnel with a coffee filter or cheesecloth and place the funnel in the top of a clean, wide-mouth quart jar. Ladle the hot fat into the lined funnel until only the small pieces of unrendered fat or cracklings are left in the bottom of the cooker. Set the jar of lard aside to cool at room temperature.

3. Turn the cooker to High and let the cracklings turn medium brown, stirring occasionally. Transfer the cracklings to a plate and let cool.

4. Cover the jar of lard and store in the refrigerator. Keeps indefinitely. Place the cracklings in a storage container in the refrigerator and use within 1 month.

Native Persimmons

2011-09-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

Now, Forager

One of my favorite novels--one that has all the best ingredients--is Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles, the story of a young Missouri woman who is wrongfully imprisoned during the Civil War and the improbable love she finds with her Yankee captor. Adair Colley has such a real voice--and she loves native persimmons--as you can tell from her "confession" to Major William Neumann:

In the fall persimmins were plentiful as well as apples and I liked to put them in a bowl together because of their colors. We roasted the apples and had them with cream. The colors were also beautiful, the cream being a pale yellow and the apple carmine. You put maple sugar all over this, as much as you can get away with.

People like the fictional Colley family used to forage in the fall for native persimmons, black walnuts, and hickory nuts. Today, the locavore movement has made foraging chic again. You can’t get much more local than a plant native to the area. So, inventive chefs are putting foraged foods on their menus, from bland, sweet mulberries and tannic wild plums in desserts to elderflower foams and local honey infused with wild rose hips for entrees.

Foraging has also gotten high tech. Jonathan Justus, owner and chef at Justus Drugstore in Smithville, Missouri, uses a GPS navigation system, so he can identify and go back to the area where he finds his goodies—wild rose hips, black walnuts, or elderberries. http://www.drugstorerestaurant.com/

Foraging is also about nostalgia—a hankering for the seasonal dishes your grandma used to make with foods gathered from the wild. Retirees in Wisconsin and Indiana have their own cottage industries gathering labor-intensive hickory nuts (nutmeats picked out of the shell) and persimmons (skinned, seeded, then pulped), preparing them for sale each autumn.

We’re coming into the season for native persimmons, when they’re so ripe they fall off the trees. They have to be perfectly ripe and soft before you can eat them without puckering up. They’re sweet and bland, much like cultivated persimmons and somewhat like winter squash or pumpkin.

If you know of a grove of persimmon trees, you can go out and gather your own. Sometimes, farmer’s markets (like Brookside Farmer’s Market in Kansas City, MO) known for organic produce will have some that a farmer has gathered.

Or, you have to know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. . .

When you get them home, simply use a food mill to remove the small seeds and the skins so you have persimmon pulp, which you can freeze for up to 1 year.

In recipes, you can substitute pureed squash or canned pumpkin.

Here’s Persimmon Bread Pudding with Warm Cider Caramel
that can be served at breakfast, lunch, or dinner with all the favorite flavors of fall—including persimmon--from Heartland: The Cookbook. It's easy to make, and it has a wonderful cider caramel sauce that just melts together in a saucepan.
http://www.amazon.com/Heartland-Cookbook-Judith-Fertig/dp/1449400574/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316119327&sr=8-1

Persimmon Bread Pudding with Warm Cider Caramel

Is this a brunch dish—or a dessert? Just for autumn or any time of year? You be the judge. In my opinion, this luscious bread pudding baked in a springform pan is delicious at any meal all year long. It looks great on a cake pedestal and can be made ahead, so it’s perfect for entertaining. If you can get your hands on native persimmon pulp, go for it. If not, use canned pumpkin or pureed squash or sweet potato. I love the cake spice mixture from Penzey’s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but you can also use pumpkin pie spice. The Warm Cider Caramel is an easy version that makes up in minutes.

Serves 12 to 16

4 large eggs

4 large egg yolks

¾ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup heavy cream

2 cups whole milk

2 cups native persimmon pulp or 1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

1 teaspoon cake spice or pumpkin pie spice

¼ teaspoon fine kosher or sea salt

20 (1/2-inch thick) slices soft but firm bread like challah

¼ cup pecans, chopped, optional

¼ cup dark brown sugar, packed

Warm Cider Caramel:

2/3 cup light or dark brown sugar, packed

3 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cups apple cider

6 tablespoons heavy cream

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ teaspoon coarse kosher or sea salt or to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter the inside of a 10-inch springform pan and wrap the outside with aluminum foil. Set the springform pan in a roasting pan.

2. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, and granulated sugar together until smooth. Whisk in the vanilla extract, cream, milk, persimmon, cake spice, and salt. Dip the bread slices, one by one, in the egg mixture and arrange in an overlapping pattern that rises in the center in the prepared pan. You will use about half of the egg mixture for the slices. Carefully pour the remaining custard over the slices and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

3. Make a water bath by pouring about 3 cups hot tap water in the roasting pan so that the water comes about halfway up the sides of the springform pan. Bake for 45 minutes.

4. Combine the chopped pecans and brown sugar. Remove the bread pudding from the oven and sprinkle this mixture on topping. Return the bread pudding to the oven and bake for 15 additional minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then carefully peel back the aluminum foil, lift the pan out of the water bath and remove the sides.

5. For the Warm Cider Caramel, whisk the brown sugar and cornstarch together in a large saucepan. Press out any lumps with your fingers. Stir in the cider and cook over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until large bubbles form around the perimeter of the pan and the sauce thickens, about 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cream, butter, and salt. Serve drizzled over the cake.

Have a Pletzel!

2011-09-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

Eastern European Flatbread Is Pure Comfort Food

The weather has just turned cool and crisp. The last tomatoes are ripening in the garden, and the sky is blue, blue, blue.

Soon, for me, it will be soup and bread weather. One of my favorite flatbreads is one I first tried when I was developing recipes for 200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads: No Knead, One Bowl.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0778802116/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0EXV2QCSD37Z9K5JEP2M&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

When I made a big bowl of the no-knead bagel dough, I had enough to try a flatbread called "pletzel" that I had read about. Pletzel is a sort of Jewish deep-dish pizza topped with beaten egg and sautéed red onions, then sprinkled with poppy seeds.

As it was baking, the pletzel filled the kitchen with that sautéed onion aroma that always signals “homemade” to me. Then, when I tasted it, the combination of pillowy dough, crunchy poppy seeds, and caramelized onion was true comfort food. With a bowl of homemade soup, this would be a lunch or casual dinner to banish thoughts of the stock market, your retirement account, or the state of the world in general.

The no-knead dough takes care of some of the worries. Imagine just stirring together a bowl of yeast dough like you would a batch of brownies. (You can, when you use instant or bread machine yeast.) . No proofing. All the ingredients simply stir together. The extra moisture in the dough takes the place of kneading. No kneading. Then, letting it rise on your kitchen counter. After rising, the dough can be patted into a baking pan. No rolling. Then baking and topping or topping and baking it. No worrying. Like the loaves and the fishes, flatbreads like this one can fit the occasion, the season, the budget, and the crowd.

Bagel and Bialy Dough

Bagels and bialys came to North American from Eastern Europe with Polish and German émigrés. The hallmark of a good bagel is a shiny texture—from boiling them first—and a chewy crumb—from unbleached bread flour. The secret bagel and bialy ingredient is barley malt or malt syrup, a thick and dark brown sweetener made from sprouted barley. You can find this in the syrup section at better grocery stores, health food shops, or online.

Makes bagels, bialys to serve 12 to 16

Equipment:

Measuring cups and spoons

Instant read thermometer

8-cup (2 L) bowl

Wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk

6 1/2 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting

2 1/2 tbsp instant or bread machine yeast

1 ½ tbsp kosher salt

½ cup barley malt or malt syrup

2 large eggs, beaten

¼ cup vegetable oil

1. Measure. Spoon the flour into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into a large mixing bowl.

2. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Mix the barley malt, eggs, and vegetable oil together in a 4 cup (1 L) glass measuring cup. Pour in enough hot water to reach the 4-cup (1 L) mark and carefully whisk to blend. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients, stir to create a lumpy dough, then beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

3. Rise. Cover the bowl plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature 72°F (22 °C) for 2 hours or until the dough has risen near the top of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use Right Away or Refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days before baking.

Pletzel

A pletzel is a flatbread made with bialy or bagel dough, sort of a Jewish deep-dish pizza topped with sauteed onion and poppy seeds. True comfort food, pletzel is delicious with slow-simmered soups and stews, salads, or beer.

Makes 1 large pletzel to serve 16

Equipment:

Serrated knife

Dough scraper

Rolling pin

1 large baking sheet lined with parchment paper

Baking stone

Broiler pan

Topping:

2 medium red onions, chopped

¼ cup vegetable oil

1/2 recipe prepared Bagel and Bialy Dough

Unbleached bread flour for dusting

1 large egg, beaten

Poppy seeds for sprinkling

2 cups hot water for broiler pan

1. Make Topping. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat and sauté the onions, stirring often, until transparent, about 8 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2. Form. To form a pletzel, remove half of the dough—about the size of a volleyball—with a serrated knife and a dough scraper. The remaining dough in the bowl will deflate somewhat. Transfer the dough portion to a floured surface and dust very lightly with flour. Flour your hands. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, roll the dough into a 10 by 12-inch (25 by 30 cm) rectangle. Lightly flour any sticky places on the dough. The dough should feel soft and smooth all over, like a baby’s skin, but not at all sticky. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet.

2. Rest. Brush the beaten egg all over the dough. Spread the topping over the dough, leaving a 1-inch perimeter, then sprinkle with poppy seeds. Cover with a tea towel and let rest at room temperature for 1 hour.

3. Prepare Oven for Artisan Baking. About 30 minutes before baking, place a broiler pan on the lower shelf and a baking stone on the middle shelf of the oven. Preheat to 450°F.

4. Slide Flatbread onto Baking Stone and Add Water to Pan. Using an oven mitt, carefully pull the middle rack of the oven out several inches. Place the pan of flatbread on the hot stone. Pull the lower rack out, pour the hot water into the broiler pan, and push the lower rack back in place. Close the oven door immediately so the steam will envelop the oven.

5. Bake. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes or until the crust is puffed and golden brown. Transfer to a rack to cool. Cut into slices to serve.

Praise and Plenty Cupcakes

2011-08-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the Garden—and a Contemporary Quilt Design

“We all have hometown appetites. Every other person is a bundle of longing for the simplicities of good taste once enjoyed on the farm or in the hometown left behind,” wrote Clementine Paddleford—food writer, tastemaker, and cookbook author—whose hometown was Stockdale, Kansas. That’s especially true for desserts.

Sometimes dessert inspiration comes from surprising sources. When I was looking through the Home for the Holidays pattern book by Missouri quilt designers Linda Brannock and Jan Patek, I found the germ of an idea—even though I’m not a quilter (and no one would want anything I had ever sewn, to be perfectly honest here).

Brannock and Patek’s “Praise and Plenty” quilt in muted yellow, green, and orange on a creamy white background, surrounded by a border in homespun plaid suggested a twist on traditional carrot cake to me. Hmmmmmmmm……..

Maybe grated carrots, zucchini, and yellow squash?? Maybe an intriguing blend of spices, too—citrus-tasting coriander, warm cinnamon, and snappy ginger. Hmmmmmmm……

One bowl of batter later, here it is (and in Heartland: The Cookbook). Cupcakes using garden “plenty” in a way that will garner “praise” for a family get-together, an end-of-summer party, your bid for Room Parent of the Year, or a delicious scratch to that I've-Got-to-Have-Carrot-Cake itch.

Use small, trimmed zucchini and yellow squash and grate them whole. If you like, spoon the batter into retro-colored cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty http://www.bakeitpretty.com/. Traditional cream cheese frosting and a candied “garden confetti” are the crowning glories.

Praise and Plenty Cupcakes

Makes 3 dozen cupcakes

6 large eggs, at room temperature

3 cups sugar

2 cups canola oil

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups grated zucchini

1 1/2 cups grated yellow summer squash

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting:

2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

5 cups confectioners’ sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Garnish:

½ cup grated zucchini

½ cup grated yellow squash

½ cup grated carrots

¼ cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pans with 36 liners, and a small baking sheet with parchment paper, and set aside.

2. Beat the eggs with the sugar in a large bowl until light and frothy. Beat in the oil. Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together and add to the egg mixture, a cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the grated vegetables and spices until well blended. With a rubber spatula, fold in the raisins and nuts until well blended. Fill the cupcake liners ¾ full.

3. Bake, in batches, on the center oven shelf for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center or a cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely.

4. For the frosting, beat together the cream cheese and butter in the large bowl of an electric mixer. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth. Frost the cupcakes after they have cooled and while the frosting is soft and spreadable.

5. For the garnish, combine the grated vegetables, sugar, and water in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables are translucent and you have a candied confetti. When cool enough to handle, sprinkle the confetti on the top of each frosted cupcake.

Berry Delicious

2011-08-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

Picking the Best Summer Berry Desserts

Berry picking is a rite of summer that combines adventure and reward. It’s also something our family has done here and in Europe.

When we lived in London, I packed up the kids for a long weekend in Cornwall where I was researching a story on Daphne du Maurier, who set several of her novels there (among them Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, and my personal favorite The House on the Strand.) The kids and I left our hotel one sunny morning, parked the car on a country lane, and hiked a path by the beach—picking and eating blackberries along the way.

Fowey in Cornwall

If you want to go along, at least in spirit, read a London Sunday Times literary “walk” story about Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall--preferably while eating berries, to get the full effect.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/walks/article6570425.ece

At the Frilandsmuseet or Open Air Museum in Copenhagen during another summer, we got a literal taste of Danish life in the 18^th and 19^th centuries—blackcurrants growing near a smallholder’s cottage. These tiny berries have a rich, deep berry flavor. In England, blackcurrant syrup was given to children as a good source of Vitamin C during World War II, when rationing limited other fruits. Today, blackcurrant is still a favorite flavor; my children still love blackcurrant drinks and candies known as pastilles. But unless you grow your own, blackcurrants are hard to come by in North America.

A Cottage at the Frilandsmuseet in Denmark

If you can’t pick berries in Denmark this summer, at least you can take a virtual video tour here. http://www.natmus.dk/sw20384.asp

Of course, the best way to enjoy summer berries is to pick them locally and do the least to them as possible. After you’ve eaten your fill while you pick, here are summer dessert recipes to make the most of your bounty.

Summer Pudding

As a salute to our European berry-picking ways, this quintessential English dessert or “pudding” needs to be better known and appreciated here. You simply line a medium mixing bowl with crustless pieces of bread (Pepperidge Farm works well for this). You heat the berries until their juices begin to run, then pour in the filling. You top it with more bread and weight it down with a can. The next day, you turn it out, cut yourself a big slice, and enjoy it with a dollop of whipped cream or some frozen yogurt.

Serves 8

8 thin slices good-quality stale bread, crusts removed

6 cups fresh or frozen mixed berries, such as blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.

¼ cup granulated sugar or to taste

Lemon juice to taste

1. The night before you wish to serve this dessert, cut the bread slices so they fit in the bottom, sides, and top of a small to medium mixing bowl. Line the bottom and sides of the bowl.

2. Combine the berries and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Cook until the juices just begin to run. Taste, and if necessary, add more sugar. Stir in lemon juice to taste. Pour and spoon the berries into the bread-lined bowl. Cover the top with the remaining bread slices. Sit a small place on top of the bread “lid” and weight the plate with a heavy can. Refrigerate. The pudding is done when the reddish-purple juices have permeated the bread.

3. To serve, loosen the sides with a knife or metal spatula, then carefully invert the pudding onto a serving plate.

Summer Pudding

Wildflower Honey Creams with Warm Spiced Berries

Bees make wildflower honey in mid-summer, after they’ve “grazed” on all the wild flowers in bloom. You can also use clover honey, which has a similar medium sweetness. This dessert literally whips up in minutes—sort of a parfait or a crème fraiche dessert with a berry topping.

Serves 8

1 cup heavy or whipping cream

1 cup sour cream

½ cup wildflower honey, divided

3 cups blackberries

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Juice of ½ lemon

1. In a mixing bowl, whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Add the sour cream and ¼ cup of the honey and beat again until well blended. Set aside.

2. Place the berries, remaining ¼ cup of honey, and cinnamon in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring the berries to a simmer. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

3. Spoon the honey cream into parfait glasses and top with the warm spiced berries.

Wildflower Honey Cream with Warm Spiced Berries

Greasy Short-cuts??

2011-08-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Summer Garden Goodies with a Twist

I spent part of my summer at my sister’s home in the North Carolina mountains. Every few days, we rolled down the mountain to check out what was great at local farmer’s markets.

At a market near Asheville, we saw a basket of green beans with a handmade sign that announced “Greasy Shortcuts.” Huh?

These beans turned out to be an heirloom Appalachian variety (actually, Greasy Cut-Shorts) with a “greasy” or shiny appearance because the bean doesn’t have the down that other green beans do. Greasy Cut-Shorts fell out of favor when stringless varieties of green beans meant less work for the cook. But we bought them anyway, sat on the porch in the time-honored tradition, and used our paring knives to remove the string from both sides of each bean.

We simmered them with a little chicken stock, a ham hock, an onion, and salt and pepper. In less than an hour, they were tender and so gently “green bean” in flavor that we all fell in love with them. When you fight for seconds of green beans, that’s something.

When I looked for information about them, I found this great site that opens up another world of bean gardening: Cornfield (beans that grow up a corn stalk), Cut Shorts (beans so packed in their pods that they look squared off), and Greasy (beans that lack that fuzz or down). Scroll down through the first part of the story to get to the bean varieties.

http://www.heirlooms.org/beans.html

Stuffed Mangoes. For some reason, people in southwestern Ohio (where I grew up) called green bell peppers “mangoes.” When they served “stuffed mangoes,” it was with a tangy, slaw-like filling in a somewhat wilted green pepper, refreshing on a summer day. You could buy stuffed mangoes at the butcher shop, along with your “city chicken” (cubes of boneless pork and veal on a skewer, to be breaded and shallow-fried.)

When I found the stuffed mango recipe at Lillian’s Cupboard, I thought, “No wonder they were sold at the butcher shop!” They take 2 days to make so the peppers “cure” in the brine.

http://lillianscupboard.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/german-stuffed-mango-green-pepper/

Today, we can grow or find many colors of bell peppers and I like to use a variety of colors for this dish. I prefer to stuff the peppers with cubed, artisan bread, some fresh or canned tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and grated, aged Cheddar. The peppers can go in the oven or on the indirect side of the grill, just until they look browned on top and the bread has soaked up all the juices. Enjoy!

Rainbow Stuffed Peppers

Makes 6

6 bell peppers (yellow, red, orange, and purple) cored and seeded

2 cups stale, cubed artisan bread (baguettes, Italian, ciabatta, etc.)

2 cups finely chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned, with their juice

½ cup chopped, pitted Kalamata olives

1 cup grated, aged Cheddar

Olive oil for drizzling

1. Preheat the oven to 400 or prepare an indirect fire in your grill (the fire on one side, no fire on the other).

2. Trim the bottoms of the peppers (without making a hole in the pepper) so they will sit evenly. Place the peppers in an oven-safe baking dish or a disposable aluminum pan for the grill. In a bowl, combine the bread, tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and Cheddar. Drizzle the mixture with a little olive oil and stir to blend until the bread is well moistened. Spoon the stuffing into each pepper. (If you have any left, enjoy it with fresh greens for a salad.)

3. Oven-bake or grill-bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the peppers are browned on top.

Rainbow Stuffed Peppers

Ten Top Finds at Fancy Food, Part Two

2011-08-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

Voodoo That You Do So Well

I've rounded up the rest of the latest crop of fresh food ideas from the recent Fancy Food Show in Washington, D. C.

6. Double. Dutch. Voodoo.

I'm a big believer in having a plan, but letting the unexpected happen, too.

I met the Koeze Peanut Butter folks http://koezecompany.com/, a family-owned business since 1910, based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area. I'm a nut for their peanut butter, so they got a shout-out in Heartland: The Cookbook. Their creative director, Martin Jandree, also blogs, posting a seed-to-table chronicle of Double Dutch Farm in Grand Rapids. His latest blog post was about black raspberries. Imagine that! (See the blog archive for my posting.)

Martin's wife Bunny created the Perfect Summer Salad from what they grow or raise on the farm: baby spinach, hickory-smoked bacon, fresh eggs from their Buff Orpingtons or Aracauna hens, hickory-smoked bacon from their pigs, and clover honey from their bees. Perfect.

A Perfect Summer Salad by Martin Jandree

www.mjandree.com

7. Botanical Baking

I also tasted shortbread cookies--simply made with flour, 85% butterfat butter, and aromatic herbs--from Botanical Baking in Napa, California.

They started out with Lavender shortbread, but then added other flavors such as Fennel Pollen, Lemon Thyme, Lavender, and Cinnamon Basil.

Fennel pollen, a favorite of Italian chefs, comes from the herb (not bulb) fennel, the tall plant with button yellow flowers and leafy fronds below:

http://www.botanicalbakery.com/

8. Bacon Jam and Pumpkin Ketchup

Bacon marmalade, so good slathered on toast or biscuits, is time-consuming to make, so readymade Bacon Jam lets busy bacon-lovers indulge. Skillet Bacon Jam in Seattle, Washington, makes a dynamite smoky/salty/sweet bacon condiment, then follows it up with Pumpkin Ketchup--a little spicy and tangy. My tastebuds got a very pleasurable workout.

http://www.skilletbaconjam.com/

9. Not Plain Vanilla Anymore

At an International Association of Culinary Professionals http://www.iacp.com/ conference in San Antonio, I sampled three versions of creme anglaise made with three different vanillas, and I've never forgotten it. At the Nielsen-Massey booth, I was reminded that basic vanilla is far from basic. We're spoiled for choice with smooth and voluptuous Madagascar Bourbon, aromatic and floral Tahitian, and creamy/spicy Mexican vanillas. Nielsen-Massey's vanilla bean paste--oh so good in baking--won a Gold Award. They also offer rosewater and orange flower water.

10. Fruit Juice-Based, No-Sugar-Added Sodas

I remember a childhood creme soda that was so red and so sweet that I wonder how (or why) I ever drank that. One visible trend at Fancy Food was no-sugar-added sodas that get their flavor from fruit juice and are much more refreshing.

My favorite of all that I tasted with Fizzy Lizzy, a New Jersey-based company. Their Raspberry-Lemon soda gets its sweetness from white grape juice, and its beautiful sunset color from elderberries. I also liked their Fuji Apple and Tangerine Passion Fruit.

http://www.fizzylizzy.com/

Top Ten Finds at Fancy Foods, Part One

2011-07-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

Fresh air, fine living, fabulous ideas. That’s the Alfresco way.

So, I headed to the recent Fancy Food Show http://www.specialtyfood.com/ in Washington, D.C. This event showcases everything edible that upscale supermarkets, gourmet and gift shops, and culinary emporia might want to sell—and their customers might want to buy.

With my one-day pass, I knew I had to navigate through literally thousands of booths to find out what’s new with Heartland food artisans, as well as what’s new around the rest of the country.

Now for the drum roll. . . . .

Top Ten Fancy Food Finds 2011, Part One

Candy Box Cake and photo by Carey Iennecaro

1. Chocolate.
In Kansas City, I’m a devoted Christopher Elbow Chocolate fan http://www.elbowchocolates.com/. But I also love Vosges Haut-Chocolat from Chicago. I got to taste several new Vosges chocolate creations, including the amazing Black Salt Caramel Bar, bathed in 70% dark chocolate, which won a Gold Award at the show. Combining caramel, dark chocolate, and blood orange in the Blood Orange Caramel Bar?? I’m all over that too.

vosgeschocolate.com

2. Bacon.

In the Nueske’s booth, I talked with Tanya Nueske and Marlys Connor about their Wild Cherrywood Smoked Bacon. Okay, I talked and sampled. Okay, I sampled. Wild Cherrywood is my new favorite bacon. I once had a wild or chokecherry tree growing along my backyard fence, but this bacon is smoked with wood from an old, untreated cherry orchard in Wisconsin that has been left to go wild again. The bacon is made with no extra nitrates or nitrites. Dry-cured texture, smoky flavor, slight sweetness—no wonder it won a Gold Award at Fancy Food.

nueskes.com

3. Dessert CSA—or SOS?

What a concept! Natasha’s Mulberry & Mott bakery in the tony Leawood area of Kansas City recently started a Dessert CSA that has turned into a huge hit. Inspired by San Francisco pastry chef William Werner’s “Tell Tale Society” dessert subscription service, pastry chef Natasha Goellner decided to create her own, playfully based on the community agriculture model. For $35 each month, subscribers receive new flavors of her signature macarons, homemade marshmallows, and other goodies. The bakery itself looks like Marie Antoinette just left a moment ago—all baby blue, sugar rose pink, meringue white, and those fabulous clear Louis Ghost chairs. Soon, you can order from them online.

http://www.natashasmulberryandmott.com/

But, back to Fancy Food. If you don’t live near such a bakery, you can still do Dessert CSA—or Dessert SOS—with goodies I tasted there.

The Daphne Baking Company makes small to-die-for tarts that come frozen; you simply thaw and serve. I sampled the Passion Fruit and Pumpkin. They also do Lemon, Chocolate, Chocolate Raspberry, and Macadamia Nut.

http://www.daphnebaking.com/

Sometimes, however, the situation calls for macarons in several flavors and colors. Through Fabrique Delices in Hayward, California, you can enjoy frozen macarons that taste darn good after thawing, in the following flavors: Chocolate, salted caramel, lemon, mango, strawberry, raspberry, pistachio, cappuccino, and vanilla. They come in sort of a clear egg carton, a dozen at a time. Ask your local retailer to get them in. The macarons are not yet up on the company's web site.

http://www.fabriquedelices.com/

4. Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit.

When I was in D.C., I had a meal of simple little plates or “piatti piccolo” courses at Osteria Bibiana http://www.bibianadc.com/. My favorite was simply burrata, a fresh mozzarella-and-cream cheese, with grilled zucchini, zucchini puree, and fresh mint. Heaven.
Fresh makes all the difference, and many Italian restaurants make their own mozzarella tableside, so I was intrigued by the Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit by Roaring Brook Dairy. You supply a gallon of full fat milk, and the kit provides the rest. Make the cheese, then grill a little zucchini, chop some mint, and you’re almost there.

http://www.roaringbrookdairy.com/

5. Grenadine

When I was growing up, grownups drank whiskey sours—and later margaritas, Harvey Wallbangers, or daiquiris--not wine. Little kids got Shirley Temples or Roy Rogers versions, which are drinks made from grenadine syrup swirled into Seven-Up. Of course, pomegranates were virtually unknown in Ohio (except for one memorable year, when I found a pomegranate in the toe of my St. Nicholas stocking and ate it seed by seed). But the grenadine I remember was little more than colored sugar syrup. My, my how grenadine has changed, at least if you order yours from Sonoma Syrup Co. It actually tastes like pomegranate, as it's made with 45% pomegranate juice. Not just for cocktails, kiddie or otherwise, I could see this drizzled over fresh orange slices, then garnished with fresh pomegranate seeds. Their bottled Olive Juice for martinis is also good.

http://www.sonomasyrup.com/

A Tale of Fresh Peaches and Peach Leaves

2011-07-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

“My peaches aren’t doing well this year,” my friend tells me.

“Did you spray them?” I ask.

“No,” she says, with a tinge of regret.

“Well, that’s great! Can I come over and pick some?”

She rolls her eyes. It's the silver lining to the cloud, as I see it.

Heartland cooks who lived far from a grocery store (and way before you could order online) used fresh peach leaves as flavoring for custards, sauces, and syrups, and this use-what-you-have-in-your-own-backyard mentality deserves a comeback.

The sugar-crisp almond flavor these fresh peach leaves impart is more delicate and well, natural, than bottled flavorings.

Get your unsprayed peach leaves from a neighbor's tree or order them ahead from an organic U-pick orchard or a farmer's market vendor.

Try to get the best and ripest Midwestern regional varieties of peaches you can find, like Red Haven, Glow Haven, Briscoe, or Summer Pearl—or whatever variety is best in your area.

Tip: If, try as you might, you can’t find fresh peach leaves, you can still make the pouring custard. Simply bring the cream to a boil in Step 1. Then proceed to Step 2. Whisk in the almond extract at the end of Step 2.

Fresh Peaches with Peach Leaf Pouring Custard

Serves 4

1 cup half and half

12 fresh peach leaves, rinsed and patted dry (or ½ teaspoon almond extract)

3/4 cup sugar

5 large egg yolks

Lemon juice to taste

4 ripe peaches, peeled and sliced

1. In a saucepan, bring the half and half and peach leaves to a boil. Remove immediately from the heat, cover, and set aside to infuse for 30 minutes.

2. In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until well blended. Strain the cream onto the egg yolk mixture (discarding the peach leaves) and whisk to blend. Pour the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan and whisk constantly, over medium heat, until the custard coats the back of a spoon, about 5 minutes. Do not boil or the custard will separate. Taste the custard and add lemon juice (and almond extract) if necessary. Remove from the heat and cool.

3. To serve, arrange fresh peaches in bowls or glass dishes and spoon the pale yellow custard over them.

Black Raspberry Season

2011-07-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

Best-Kept Secrets

We’re coming to the end of U-Pick time for black raspberries throughout the Heartland.

In case you've never had the good fortune to taste one, the flavor is as you might expect--part tart blackberry, part sweet red raspberry. You can sometimes find these berries at farmer’s markets, but black raspberries seem to be one of those “best-kept secrets” that people often ascribe to many things Midwestern.

Black raspberries grow on low, shrubby bushes and ripen from dark pink to dark purple anywhere from early June to mid-July.

From homemade to high style, black raspberries feature in eveyrthing from farmhouse pies to seasonal restaurant desserts. Pachamama's in Lawrence, Kansas, scatters black raspberries over hazelnut meringues. NAHA in Chicago makes a black raspberry and lemon balm sorbet. Patrick Fahy, pastry chef at Avec and Blackbird in Chicago has gone all out with a "brown butter cake sauteed in brown butter, served with black raspberries, borage, goat cheese, caramel goat's milk ice cream, and a tableside pour of red raspberry consomme. Superb," he comments. I guess so!

If you can’t grow or pick them yourself, here are a few delicious mail order ways to enjoy this seasonal treat. As you'll see, Ohio is especially famous for black raspberry artisan foods.

Graeter’s Ice Cream. I grew up in Cincinnati, where a “chili fix” (a 5-way or a cheese coney to quell hunger) and a visit to Graeter’s for a signature ice cream or an oh-so-good coffee cake were weekly habits. Taking my kids to Graeter’s in Mariemont on summer evenings for ice cream. . . I’m indulging a bit of nostalgia here. . . .

Graeter’s afficionados vote Black Raspberry Chip as their favorite flavor. Is it yours?

http://www.graeters.com/raspberry.aspx

Sweet Corn and Black Raspberry Ice Cream
from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams.

Dynamo pastry chef/entrepreneur Jeni Britton Bauer sources full-flavored milk from grass-fed cows and local farm-fresh goodies for her signature Ohio Sweet Corn and Black Raspberry Ice Cream. I love the look of the ice cream sandwiches made with her fabulous ice cream sandwiched between large macaron-like cookies. She also has a cool movie on her home page that just makes you smile—or crave ice cream.

Visit one of her Columbus, Ohio, ice cream shops, or check out all the summer flavors at http://jenisicecreams.com/categories/Flavors/Seasonal-Flavors/

Mrs. Miller. She's not the Mrs. Miller who was known for her warbling "Tiny Tim-like" voice. This Mrs. Miller grew up in an Ohio Amish family of 14 kids. By 1973, Esther Miller was making and selling homemade noodles from her home kitchen. It soon turned into a bustling business. Her magic culinary touch later turned to preserves. Her Black Raspberry Jam consistently receives rave reviews from customers for its fresh-picked flavor--without being too sweet. The Millers’ large family still makes the food and runs the business from Fredericksburg, Ohio, “where traditions of hard work, love of family, good ethics, and enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures are prospering,” the Millers say.

http://www.mrsmillersnoodles.com/product/Homemade_Black_Raspberry_Jam

You Say Tomato

2011-07-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

Meet the Father of the Tomato,
Learn How to Grill-Smoke Tomatoes,
and Make Smoked Tomato and Basil Butter

I spend part of my culinary life in a “working tiara”—as a BBQ Queen with friend, bbq-er, and cookbook co-author Karen Adler. Lucky for me, that black visor duded up with all those rhinestones also doubles as a garden hat.

Last year, I visited Kurlbaum Tomatoes in Kansas City, Kansas, for inspiration. Sky Kurlbaum and family grow heirloom tomatoes that, he swears, taste just like the ones grown 35 years ago on the family farm in Sandoval, Illinois. Today, their heirloom varieties are a roll call of famous people and places: Abraham Lincoln, Amana Orange, Black Krim (from the Crimean Sea), Russian Purple, and Pantano Romanesco.

Black Krim Heirloom Tomato

The Father of the Tomato? Kurlbaum also makes a case for an Ohioan—Alexander Livingston—as the Father of the Tomato. In Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Livingston started working with tomatoes in 1856--ones that had “heavy ribbing, hard cores and often had hollow seed cavities,” writes Kurlbaum. No wonder tomatoes hadn’t really caught on yet.

“Livingston's goal was to produce a strain of tomato that was smooth skinned, uniform in size, fleshy and that excelled in flavor –all the things that are loved and often taken for granted about tomatoes today,” continues Kurlbaum. Read more about it at the end of the “Tomato Varieties” section at http://www.kurlbaumtomatoes.com/

For me, all that planting, weeding, and tending my garden is beginning to pay off. I just harvested my first tomato of season.

The first tomato deserves to be enjoyed al fresco—fresh from the garden, warm from the sun, maybe with a little sprinkle of sea salt.

But as the harvest revs up, as Heartland harvests do, it soon becomes time to do something more than eat tomatoes fresh.

When I have more fresh tomatoes than I want to eat, I like to smoke them on the grill. I do a little yard work at the same time and throw a few pin oak sticks on the fire, but you can use any hard wood (like apple, cherry, hickory, maple, oak, or pecan).

How to Smoke a Tomato. Prepare an indirect fire in your grill, meaning a fire on one side and no fire on another.

Stem the tomatoes or cut them in half (depending on how big they are), brush them with a little olive oil, and put them in a disposable aluminum pan, stemmed or cut side up. If you like, put fresh basil leaves in each tomato.

When the fire is hot, throw a few pieces of wood on hot coals on a charcoal grill. For a gas grill, make an aluminum foil packet to enclose ½ cup fine wood chips and poke a few holes in the packet; place the packet close to a burner. When you see the first wisp of smoke, place the pan of tomatoes on the indirect or no-heat side and close the lid of the grill. In about 20 minutes, the tomatoes will have a burnished appearance and a smoky aroma.

Freeze some, then use some more to make Smoked Tomato and Basil Butter.

Russian Purple Heirloom Tomato

Smoked Tomato and Basil Butter Recipe. Simply take 2 sticks of salted butter, softened, and place in a bowl. Add about 3 smoked tomatoes, skinned and seeded, and finely chopped basil to taste and blend it all together with a fork. Use it on grilled bread or steak, baked potatoes, planked scallops or shrimp, or tossed with hot pasta or grilled vegetables.

Watch the BBQ Queens make Smoked Tomato and Basil Butter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfFu8SrdZX0