Potluck Potpourri

It’s that time of year again…when the dreaded office potluck rears its ugly head. You can’t get out of participating and the thought of eating store-bought potato salad and packaged cookies leaves you nauseous. My one suggestion: bring a stellar dish. You can shine above the rest, and, best of all, you will have something worth eating.

Of course, it isn’t all that simple. There is the logistics of bringing something to feed 10-12 from home, as well as cooking or reheating an item once you get there. This can be problematic if there is nothing but a small microwave. For savory dishes, you can use a crockpot, which serves as both the cooking vessel and heating/serving unit. But traditional crockpot dishes such as stews require bowls, which are not typically available at the office. (I had to use coffee cups for the carrot-ginger soup I brought to help everyone ward off winter ills.)

If you are pressed for time, you could rely on a themed cheese platter. A French platter with a selection of cheeses, baguette, sliced pear, grapes, and Nicoise olives or maybe a Middle Eastern plate with hummus and pita (cut into triangles), feta, kalamata olives, dried or fresh figs, and almonds. Plated on a decorative tray, the variety could sustain you throughout the two-hour ordeal.

Alternately, desserts usually function well at the office party. You can do the traditional cookies, or maybe some mini-cream puffs, and a cheesecake serves a large crowd. But I have a simple dessert, that people rave about, that serves 12 easily. It is plain in its initial appearance but can be dolled up in a variety of ways. It is a bittersweet mousse torte—but molded in a long bread pan, for ease of carrying, unmolding, and serving.

The basics:

2 cups heavy cream
3 egg yolks
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
½ cup butter
½ cup corn syrup
1 t vanilla
½ cup powdered sugar

Mix ½ cup cream with the yolks and set aside. Melt chocolate, butter, and corn syrup in 3 quart saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring regularly. Once melted, add the yolk mixture slowly. Stir constantly for 4 minutes. Take off heat and let cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally (you can hasten the process by placing the pot in the fridge). Once cool, whip the remaining 1 ½ cups of cream with the vanilla and powdered sugar just until soft peaks form. Fold the cream into the chocolate mixture completely, making sure no white streaks remain.

Line a long, narrow loaf pan with plastic wrap, draping excess over the sides. Pour the mixture into the pan, smoothing the top. Cover top with excess plastic and refrigerate overnight, or freeze for 3 hours. Unmold onto plate, remove wrap and serve with topping of your choice. Serve thin slices, as this is very, very, very rich.

Decoration:
This is best served with a slightly whipped cream and raspberries or raspberry sauce
For a festive touch – whipped cream and crushed candy canes
Layer raspberries or mandarin orange segments in the bottom of the pan prior to pouring the mixture in
Sprinkle with chopped crystallized ginger or chocolate curls

Prep: this does require several easy steps, melting the chocolate, waiting for it to cool, whipping and incorporating the cream, so time-wise it takes about 45 minutes, but there is a lot of down time in there, where you could be sipping a glass of wine, addressing holiday cards, or…if need be…doing the dishes.

Tips: Guittard bittersweet chocolate chips work fine as a cheap alternative. For those of you with a KitchenAid mixer—use the whip attachment and once cream is at soft peak stage, slowly pour the chocolate mixture in and blend on low.

Recommended Music: Jack Johnson

Tea Time Preparations

With all of my familial obligations, my book tour, and my workload, I have been very remiss when it comes to seeing my friends. One recently got married, one recently got engaged, one is contemplating a move to Seattle, and one is finally settled into a home with her BBE (best boyfriend ever). So several months ago I asked them to mark their calendar to come for a tea party on December 2nd. Lo and behold, they all did, and they are all coming. I am so very excited—a real, grown-up tea party with my friends.

I got the easy stuff out of the way first. Here is the table setting:




Planning the party has been a bit of a challenge. I have at least two vegetarians, one Weight Watchers, one Atkins, and one who is currently on a gluten-, egg-, dairy-, sugar, soy-free diet. I am doing my best to keep the tea traditional, while accommodating the restrictions. On the menu:

Sharffenberger Champagne
British Tea (kindly sent by my London relatives)
Strawberries and clotted cream
Melon
Tea sandwiches
—Salmon, cream cheese, and dill
—Cucumber, cream cheese, and mint
—Basil-walnut cream cheese
Rice cake canapés
Mini phyllo quiches
Scones
Served with lemon curd, pumpkin butter, and strawberry jam
Shortbread
Eggnog bread
Mini mocha brownies
Mini cinnamon macaroons
Mini fruit tarts
Gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cookies

Okay, so there are only 6 of us, and I think I may have gone a bit overboard, but nothing goes to waste here. After they all leave, hungry husband, son, and son’s friends will happily scarf down whatever remains, including the crumbs on the plates. So no worries there.

I am making almost everything myself. I did buy the rice cakes, mini quiches, fruit tarts and gluten-free goodies. I would never attempt rice cakes, as I cannot find a singular use for these tasteless items, save as packing material, and attempting a whole batch of gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, egg-free anything would really be going overboard, and amount to a challenge I am not up to, given all else that has to be done (sorry T!).

I made my nanny’s shortbread, featured in an earlier post with my niece and nephew: Eating Suburbia: Tea Party. I received a wonderful silicon mini-cake pan that has decorative edges, so I was able to make individual shortbreads.

Daughter had to make eggnog bread for a meeting at work this week, so she kindly made extra. She is unable to attend our little soiree, as her college roommate has her engagement party the same day. Sure nice of her to contribute nonetheless.

I am getting ready to make the mini cinnamon macaroons, a recipe I pulled out of Bon Appetit some time ago. The recipe is middle-of-the-road when it comes to complexity, due to the use of a pastry bag and the unusual baking process.


1 ¼ cup sliced almonds
3 T plus 1 t packed golden brown sugar
½ t cinnamon
1 ¼ cup plus 2 T powdered sugar
½ cup powdered sugar, sifted
3 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Stack 2 rimmed backing sheets. Line top sheet with parchment paper.
Combine first 4 ingredients in a food process. Using on/off turns, process until almonds are finely ground (do not allow mixture to turn to paste). Transfer to medium bowl.
Using electric mixer, in large bowl, beat eggs whites until foamy. Gradually add sifted powdered sugar and beat until peaks form and mixture is shiny. Gently fold egg whites into almond mixture.
Transfer batter to pastry bag fitted with ½-inch round tip (#12). Pipe batter onto prepared baking sheets in 1-inch rounds, spacing 1 inch apart. Using a wet fingertip, gently flatten tops.
Bake cookies 1 minute. Turn baking sheet around and reduce heat to 350 degrees. Bake 4 more minutes. Turn baking sheet. Bake 6 more minutes until cookies are golden brown. Transfer parchment paper with cookies to rack to cool.
Repeat with remaining batter, using new parchment and making sure that cookie sheets have cooled.


Ingredients: easy to get, cheap to buy
Preparation: Ten minutes
Taste: These cute little cookies are great. They are extremely sweet, as macaroons typically are, so having them be mini in size works out great.
Makes about 6 dozen


As an added surprise, my daughter has brought over her hatboxes. We were able to retrieve quite a few antique hats when cleaning out my granny’s house, plus she has purchased one or two herself. Because what’s a tea party without hats?

Thankfulness

Today is traditional…well, mostly traditional. I wanted to do a Cajun Thanksgiving, but Son the Butcher put his foot down. He really is a very traditional boy, and he did bring me the most gorgeous Diestel turkey home from work. So we are compromising, without him knowing it. We will include some Cajun spices in the turkey rub and we will make 2 kinds of mashed potatoes—regular and a recipe Daughter found called Cajun Mash (recipe tomorrow if all goes well). Also stuffing, green beans, salad with spiced pecans, blue cheese, and dried cranberries, rolls, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pound cake.

But enough about food. Today is Thanksgiving and I will either be cooking food or eating food, allllll day long. So I just want to take the time to be thankful.

I am thankful that we will have enough food to eat tonight and that my mother and stepfather will be joining us for this Thanksgiving meal. They have a bit of a trip to make, but so generously offered to drive down when they found out my father and his wife would not be here to celebrate the holiday with us. And while I am very sad that I will probably never spend another holiday with my father, due to his illness and move to Missouri, I am very thankful for the extra time we have had together. We were told he only had days to live in July of this year, but he is hanging on, with a tenacious will to live. I am thankful for a wonderful family and friends who have supported me through that difficult time, kept me centered on the right path and make my life so rich and full. Without them I would be lost, huddled in a corner in some insane asylum, babbling to myself in some foreign-sounding tongue.

I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to do my book, The World Is a Kitchen, and to be able to continue this blog, with the help and encouragement of family, friends, and people like you. Both have brought me new friends and adventures and keep me focused on food and writing, of which I love.

I am thankful for every day. I know, now more than ever, the importance of every day. Some times I am too busy to remember that and sometimes I take it for granted, but I am working toward being better about these things. About savoring the events of every day, of trying to enjoy every day, and of trying to be more thankful every day.

And what are you thankful for?

Mary Holmstrom’s Pumpkin Pie

The pie is in the oven as we speak (or blog). So pictures to follow….

Several years ago a good friend and co-worker graciously shared her grandmother’s incredible pumpkin pie recipe. And it has proven to be a crowd pleaser every year since. I always make two or three, so that we can have leftovers. And I apologize for not posting this earlier in the week, but this pie is great for any time, holiday or no.

First, I must confess that I do not make crust. I have tried multiple times over the years. I have used recipes with vinegar, ice water, lard, Crisco, butter, margarine. I have used marble rolling pins, store-bought wooden rolling pins, handmade rolling pins, even my nana’s 60-year-old rolling pin that she so generously gave me (thinking maybe there was magic in it). Alas, no luck. So I resign myself to Nancy’s frozen crust, and concentrate on the quality of the ingredients that go into the pie itself.

I do, almost without fail, use fresh pumpkin. I normally have to buy these in October and store them outside to keep them from rotting. Then I bake them or peel, cube and steam them. But I realize this isn’t for everybody, so go right ahead and use canned plain pumpkin (not spiced pumpkin). You will still be very pleased with the result.

One small warning before you start: This is made in a blender, and given the size of most blenders, you cannot double the recipe. But it only takes about 3-4 minutes to make once you assemble the ingredients, so making several is still a quick process.


3 eggs
1 ¼ cup brown sugar
½ t salt
1 t cinnamon
¼ t ginger
¼ t cloves
¼ t allspice
¼ t nutmeg
1 T molasses
1 ½ cup milk
1 ½ cup pumpkin

In a blender beat eggs, sugar, spices and molasses for 1 minute. Add milk and pumpkin and belnd for one additional minute, making sure all ingredients are mixed in (the molasses has a tendancy to stick to the sides of the blender). Pour into prepared deep dish pie shell. Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Pie is done when center is puffed up and knife comes out clean.

Mmmmmmmm…….

Recent Failures

I really am not ignoring you.

Recently I have been cooking quite a lot and trying out new recipes. But most of the results have been mediocre at best. If I won’t cook the recipe again, I’m not going to pass it on through this blog.

Here are some recent failures:

Jamaican red beans and rice – made with coconut milk, slow cooked for hours. A recipe I had pulled from a well-known food magazine. The dish was bland and tasteless. Son the Butcher even brought home some of Schaub’s homemade Spicy Jamaican sausages to help bump up the flavor quotient. While the sausages were good, I am afraid that nothing could help the lackluster dish. If anyone has a good and flavorful Jamaican red beans and rice dish, please send it over so that I can try again.

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries with Bacon Vinaigrette – I should start by saying that none of my children wanted me to cook this dish. They are not huge fans of sweet potatoes. But I love them, so I went ahead anyway. Everyone ended up eating them, and commented on how much better they were than they thought they would be, but that was about the extent of it. Not bad, not great. Strike 2.

Sea Bass: I made 3 recipes out of my new Chronicle cookbook in one week. This was the only one that wasn’t up to par. I had seen the sign at Whole Food: Sea Bass is Back! and I was sooooo excited. I had been wanting to fix this recipe, served with a lemon gremolata, for some time. Cooked with fennel, but served plainly with the broth and gremolata, the dish was bland, and not what I wanted after waiting so long for sea bass to become available again. Strike 3.

Earl Grey madeleines: I am having a tea party in a few weeks for some old and dear friends, and am testing recipes to serve. I liked this twist on a classic, which I found in a 2005 Bon Appetit, but I really felt the texture of the madeleines was wrong and that the flavor just didn’t come through. While we didn’t toss them out, I also didn’t feel that they were worthy of presentation where the 5 of us only seem to be able to get together once every 5 years or so. And those who I did serve the cookies to were equally unimpressed, so its not just my old picky self snubbing my nose at them. Strike 4.

Pretty sad, huh? But you should know that not everything we try is going to turn out great. Nothing was horrible or inedible. And my family is always gracious enough to eat what I fix anyway, but I have certain standards when it comes to passing on recipes to all of you. So, I will persevere.

Soon to come: Mary Holmstrom’s Pumpkin Pie

Chaidoodles

At the risk of being accused of bastardizing a classic, Brilliant Daughter and I reinvented the old-time favorite snickerdoodle to incorporate flavorful chai spices. (Brilliant because she came up with the idea in the first place.)

Snickerdoodles were one of the kids’ favorite cookies growing up. I didn’t make them as often as say, Tollhouse Chocolate Chip, as they required hand rolling in a sugar/cinnamon mixture, which was a bit more time consuming and meant my eyes were less attentive to active children (though they did like to help me roll the cookies in the sugar—hands caked in cinnamon by the end). But these cookies were always well received, not only by my own kids, but by the neighborhood kids as well. Snickerdoodles are a rich buttery-eggy tasting cookie with a slightly crisp sugar/cinnamon outer shell. The ingredients are basic, the dough easy and quick to make, with the only requirement that you hand roll the dough into balls and coat in sugar and cinnamon.

We were debating the origin of the snickerdoodle, or at least the hilarity of the name, and to further educate ourselves we found the following information at the James Beard Foundation: Foundation Snickerdoodles are: A cookie with character. There’s no question that these simple, old-fashioned, cinnamon-dusted sugar cookies are delicious, but culinary historians have a difficult time reaching consensus on the origin of their funny name. Sherry Yard in her Secrets of Baking contends that snickerdoodles are named after a character from an early 20th century children’s story. Apparently, Snickerdoodle (nephew of Yankee Doodle and cousin to Polly Wolly Doodle) was a tiny guy who drove a peanut car and heroically solved big problems—much like a snickerdoodle with a glass of milk can do on a rough day. Others argue that snickerdoodle is merely a nonsense word like doodly-squat, a word that gave rise to the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Still other historians believe that snickerdoodle is, in fact, a very old name that comes from a New England tradition of giving little cakes and cookies fantastical names, such as Jolly Boys, Tangle Breeches, and Kinkawoodles. Snickerdoodles resemble many cookies that have come from England and Germany, but New Englanders usually get credit for their creation in the 18th or 19th century when a slew of similar spice cookies was popular. The recipe for these homey cookies reveals their age: it typically calls for cream of tartar and baking soda—not baking power as a more modern recipe might.

My snickerdoodle recipe is old and loved and I have never wavered from it. But we have been experimenting lately with flavorings for bread pudding, and the last one in the test kitchen was a chai bread pudding because we are a chai-loving household. Introduced to us by our Nepali friend Raj, it is a winter staple, warm and frothy, its scent permeating the whole house as it simmers. So there was a natural progression of thought, at least in our mind, with the bread pudding, chai, and snickerdoodles. Combining two of our favorite things to make something new seems to be our mission these days. So, we took the basic recipe, adjusted the rolling mixture, and saved ourselves some time by scooping the dough with a small ice cream scoop.

So, without further ado, we offer you the Chaidoodle:

1 c butter, softened
1 ½ c sugar
2 eggs
2 /34 cup flour
2 t cream of tartar
1 t soda
¼ t salt

Cream together the first 3 ingredients. Sift dry ingredients together and add to creamed mixture, incorporating well. Shake together the following in a lidded plastic container:

3-4 T sugar
1 t ground cardamom
2 t cinnamon
¼ t clove
¼ t ginger
¼ t allspice

Roll dough into walnut-size balls, or scoop with small ice-cream scooper, and drop several at a time into the lidded container. Shake to coat, and place on ungreased cookie sheet or silpat. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, or until cookies puff up and flatten out and are slightly brown.