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Nix the chix breast, briefly

Marcia January 8, 2010 Banter 0
The weeklong "no-chicken-breast" challenge will soon begin!

The weeklong "no-chicken-breast" challenge will soon begin!

A recent run-in with a pile of sawdust-dry chicken breast (thank you, Blue Shirt Café) has seriously maddened my chixbreastphiliac taste buds and they are rebelling — as are my teeth that had to chew, and my throat muscles that labored to swallow the tasteless mass — leaving me no choice but to ban the substance, at least for a week, so . . .

Chicken breast is dead to me (!) at least through Saturday, January 16. Most other parts of the chicken are welcome. Gary’s on board with this, too, and looks forward to a dinner of fine chicken thighs. And I’m planning meals around eggs and pork tenderloin.

It’s probably a very good thing, since chicken breast has dominated my diet for decades. It’s time to break loose and enjoy other meats and proteins for a little while. Wheeeee! I’m such a daredevil !!!!!!!!!

Rallying for Roll-ups! Part 4: Pinwheel Cookies

Marcia April 3, 2009 Baking, Banter, Recipes 0
Tableau: My imperfect but pleasantly spicy Cardamom Almond and Black Pepper Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies

Tableau: My imperfect but pleasantly spicy Cardamom Almond and Black Pepper Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies

Of all the planned rolled offerings on my HUGE menu (see Part 1 of this series), I became most obsessed with pinwheel cookies. I’ve never made them before, nor did I imagine I’d enjoy them more than my usual cookie favorites (I’m a chewy bar and drop cookie gal), but the need to serve something visually interesting sent me wildly searching the Internet for options.

I rejected Alton Brown’s Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies because I don’t like mint getting too cozy with my chocolate and some of the reviewers thought the cookies came out dry. Date Pinwheel Cookies from about.com intrigued me, but I wanted something with chocolate to balance the spice and fruitness I thought I’d have in my kreplach. The cookies in the photo of Gale Gands Pinwheel Cookie Dough on epicurious.com looked like winners, but reviewers didn’t think the difficult recipe warranted results worthy of their labor.

My pinwheel-cookie search also turned up tempting recipes for coconut pinwheels, peanut butter and chocolate pinwheels, fig pinwheels, and the I’ll-revisit-this-in-the-fall pumpkin pie pinwheels. But the search came to an abrupt halt when I stumbled upon Danielle E. Sucher’s food-blog entry describing her Cardamom Almond and Black Pepper Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies.

Search for pinwheel cookie recipe: Done.

The test-batch cookies tasted better than they looked. I had difficulty rolling the dough into equal rectangles (moving the fragile rectangles was tricky, too), then did not roll the rectangles together with an even hand, so, though pretty in a way, the finished cookies were far from geometrically correct swirls. I also thought the cookies were a little too hard (as I said, I like my cookies chewy) and I’d err on the side of a little too much almond extract and cardamom next time.

So, for the next batch: little more almond extract, little more cardamom, chill the dough a bit before rolling, careful picking up and moving rolled-out rectangles and be sure to place on a flat surface while I roll the second rectangle. (I had placed my first rectantle on a stovetop burner, which tore the dough a bit.) Also cut the cookies thicker, don’t bake them as long, or both.

The second batch had a slightly better taste and a much better texture, and the sweet-spicy balance was very pleasant. A winner! I’ll make these again — may my swirls look less . .  er . . . psychedelic each time.

With roll-ups out of my life for the time being, I’ll bookmark this entertaining post on rugelach pinwheels.

Rallying for Roll-ups! Part 3: Rugelach

Marcia March 31, 2009 Banter, Recipes, Restaurants 0

A year or two ago my friend Kate presented me a shoe-box-sized plastic container of rugelach. She said it was so easy to make; she found the recipe in a magazine — no-fuss rugelach via refrigerated pie crust dough!

In a word: EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I thought her rugelach was rich, flaky, and fruity — it took much effort to NOT devour the entire containerful in one day. Gary agreed it was mighty tasty.

So, onto my roll-up-only menu it went. I found what I believed to be the right recipe on realsimple.com. Now you read that recipe and tell me what to do with the walnuts and raisins, because the recipe certainly doesn’t. Interestingly, the same recipe at realsimple television does say what to do with the nuts and raisins, but for some reason says the yield is 12 rugelach, though the original recipe says 22. Does anybody proofread or test these recipes?

This is Real Simple's photo; my pastries went straight to the trash bin. . .

This is Real Simple's photo; my pastries went straight to the trash bin. . .

Anyway . . . the sprinkling, unfolding, rolling, spreading, sprinkling, rolling, and slicing steps went well. Except that for one log I forgot to add “half” each the walnuts and raisins, and, oh yes, I had also decided that one-sixth of a cup of jam did not cover a the dough very well AT ALL, so I put on about twice as much each time. What harm could that do?

After the rugelach baked for barely five minutes, the jam oozed out of the swirls, congregated on the cookie sheet, and bubbled into a dark, gooey glue. I had to wait for the rugelach to cool before attempting to scrape/cut/trim the black, crispy lacquer from each piece while maintaining its structural integrity. It didn’t go well.

Well, I thought, at least there would be YUM. But actually there was no YUM. Not YUCK, just YAWN. This rugelach tasted sorta like jam baked in refrigerated pie dough. I’d have to ask Kate for the recipe she used. In the meantime, time was scarce, so we headed to Whole Foods to seek sweet rolled-up anythings, preferably freshly baked. Failing that, it would be off to the convenience mart for HoHos.

At Whole Foods, in the spirit of stubborn menu stick-to we passed over a couple of nice-looking jelly or swiss rolls in favor of prepackaged rugelach. Though this rugelach tasted better than the trash-bin inhabitants–we could detect some butter and cream cheese in these somewhere–they were still disappointing. Not the WOW we were looking for.

Turns out, the recipe I had tried WAS the recipe Kate swore by. She’d made it so many times, in fact, to so many rave reviews she had at the ready her list of preparation tips:

  1. Line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
  2. Spray the foil with a nonstick cooking spray (Pam)
  3. Sprinkle the cinn/sugar mix all over the foil
  4. Use Pillsbury pie rounds.
  5. Use a thin layer of jam/preserves
  6. Use a lot of raisins/walnuts
  7. Cut the log at a slight angle

This should help. There is always a lot of goop that comes out. It’s so yummy though. Good luck!

I’ll be taking votes: Should I try the Real Simple recipe again, or next time attempt a full-scale decadent cream-cheese laden version?

Rallying for Roll-ups! Part 1: Sushi

Marcia March 24, 2009 Banter, Book Reviews, Recipes 0
Assorted homemade maki

Assorted homemade maki

Rarely do I entertain, but when I do I use the Happily Upcoming Guest Event (HUGE) as an excuse to make appetizers, entrees, or sweets that I wouldn’t otherwise make due to time, ingredient, or calorie restrictions. When I do decide to that that annual or semiannual HUGE plunge, suddenly thousands of recipes become intriguing possibilities and the what-to-serve dilemma becomes dauntingly enormous.

Past gatherings have inspired tortilla chips with strawberry salsa and a sausage and red bell pepper quiche from epicurious.com, and a deceptively delicious low-fat dark chocolate pudding from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. A few gatherings back, my then-boyfriend (and current hubby) Gary offered to make sushi. His assorted maki and nigiri plate was a hit. Since it’s been a long time since we’ve made our own sushi, I decided to build the next HUGE menu around it. In a crazed attempt to narrow menu options while still allowing for fun and creativity, I embraced an all roll-up event. Though Gary was slightly bummed that my decree ruled out his beloved nigiri, he dashed out to the Kotobukiya Market in Porter Square and eagerly bought up sushi rice, sushi vinegar, tobiko (flying fish roe), nori (seaweed wrappers), and sushi-grade salmon and tuna. Plus some avocado and cucumbers at the local Shaws. Knowing that one guest will not get near raw fish, I picked up some neufchatel cheese and lox as well.

The maki assortment was salmon maki, tuna maki, New York roll (salmon, avocado, apple), Philadelphia roll (cream cheese, lox, cucumber) and veggie roll (avocado and cucumber). I gotta confess, the avocado we had was absolutely divine; were they all avocado-only rolls I would not have complained.

A most divine avocado

A most divine avocado

Lessons learned:

  • Allow yourself plenty of time to prepare and roll your maki, especially if you haven’t made maki in over two years. If you don’t have the time to carefully press a thin layer of rice onto the nori, or you forget not to cover the entire nori sheet with rice, you might end up with giant rice balls with a relatively small smidgen of fish or filling within. The only problem with these rolls was they were too big and overstuffed with rice.
  • If you will be storing uneaten maki in the fridge, you have to prepare the rice so it won’t dry out, losing much of its taste and creamy texture. Gary remembered after the fact that the rice should have been prepared somewhat differently, but he couldn’t remember exactly how.
  • Don’t try to make inside-out rolls in a pinch if you’ve forgotten how to make them.
  • Cream cheese is a real pain in the ass to work with when you’re trying to make sushi.

Stay tuned for Rallying for Roll-ups! Part 2: Summer Rolls (Sort of)

Ramsay’s F-Word, Form, and Function

Marcia February 13, 2009 Banter 0

Ramsay’s F-Word
BBC America
Wednesday afternoons at 3.

Gordon Ramsay's F-Word

Gordon Ramsay's F-Word

Gordon Ramsay might be as well-known for his excessive on-air expletives as he is for his posh gourmet restaurants, TV shows, and cookbooks. I’m relatively new to the Ramsay world; my first impression of him, after a few moments of watching Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, was “what a potty mouth!” So I’ll immediately clear up any confusion by saying that in the Ramsay TV series in question, the F-word is food.

If I were to break this food-magazine-like show into main departments, they’d be:

  • Stressed-out Sous Chefs
  • At-Home How-To
  • The Unonscious Consumer
  • Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Better.

I’ve seen three episodes of the series so far, I believe from series three. I’m finding some parts valuable for a budding small-kitchen chef seeking new ways to cook healthy, other parts a painful waste of time.

Stressed-out Sous Chefs
Each episode opened with what seemed like a sous chefs competition already in progress. I’m not sure of the rules of the game, but, true to the reality show format, one or more people on today ain’t making it back next week; there are indeed saddened sous chefs that are bidden bye-bye.

In the competitions, the success of a dish (and thus the competing sous chefs) is measured by whether or not diners willing to pay for the joy or misfortune of devouring it. Sometimes there are teams of four working together, other times, two soloists competing against each other. While Ramsay’s either supervising a duo of gangly men or a band of sprightly merry maids, within the space of five minutes he’d be serving up helpful gestures, harsh criticisms, and demonstrations of his precise plating procedures.  Useful kitchen wisdom occasionally emerges from these segments: “Season from high so it spreads across it” says Ransay as he sprinkled season atop a dish of scallops, his arm held high and out.

At-Home How-To
In the At-Home How-To segment, Ramsay holds a quick class on preparing one of the dishes featured in the episode’s competition. He makes preparing Beef Wellington look so easy! Though he stops short of presenting a useful ingredient list (if you’re lucky you might find the recipe on the Web site of the British station that carries his show. He’s often cooking with backyard animals such as lambs (Shepherd’s pie) and turkeys (Christmas dinner) he’s raised himself.

While Ramsay demonstrates a dish’s preparation, you hear single-word or short-phrase voice overs—sometimes I’d swear they’re purposefully breathy—accenting key bits of the procedure: Beef fillet. Lean beef. Season. Hot pan. Olive oil. Seal. Mustard. Mushrooms. Season. . . Certainly not self-explanatory, but thankfully each “bullet” comes with further explanation and sumptuous visuals.

The Unconscious Consumer
The original F-Word Web site claims this section “turns up the temperature on some of the hottest issues in the food industry today.” My take: <yawn>.  Topics ranged from those the everyday cook loses sleep over, such as Is force-feeding duck for foie gras karma-friendly? to issues only a moron needs clarified, including the earth-shattering expose that products labeled “low fat” could actually have tons of sugar. Duh.

Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Better
In this segment, we’re back in the restaurant kitchen, where Ramsay has invited a popular British personality or two to a recipe challenge. So far only the lovely ladies from the show How Clean Is Your House?, Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie, are familiar to me. Before their face-to-face  peach-trifle bake-off, Woodburn had Ramsay come face-to-face with his restaurant’s loo’s potties. That scenario was not as appetizing as Ramsay’s caramelized peach trifle looked. Oooo, I want some!

Ramsay’s F-Word’s structure is loose and the pace frenetic. He jumps from one segment to another with little warning. The show reeks sophistication with its trendy celebrity guests and artsy-modern interiors but at the same time seems folksy, especially the at-home segments.

The show is useful for picking up some new cooking and preparation techniques, especially of dishes I’d never think of preparing in my own little kitchen. (You can find some of Ramsay’s basic but helpful video shorts on the Channel 4 Web site.) But I’d have to learn to adjust my brain to British/European/Metric measurements and cooking terms before really tackling any recipe for real. Speaking of which, I think I will try Ramsay’s sautéed chicken breast with ratatouille couscous and apple and lemon olive oil recipe and get back to you.

After the episode with Woodburn and MacKenzie came to a close, I was bopping around our kitchen humming the F-word’s theme tune when my husband noted, “Hey, those cleaning ladies didn’t tell him how dirty his mouth was!”