All Fried Out

I’m craving cabbage today. Roasted…raw…I don’t really care. All I want is something that isn’t fried.

Boy, have we had our fair share of fried foods lately. It needs to stop. I’m too young to have a heart attack.

But, before it stops, we had ourselves some pretty delicious grit cakes last night, thanks to Zach, that I feel I should share.

As you can see, they were pan-fried in olive oil, which gave them a great crispy crust.

But before that, the grits were combined with…(wait for it)…cream cheese. And butter. For the love of god, how could they not be good? Garlic, chicken stock, butter, cream cheese, panko. Fried in olive oil. I mean, seriously. I’m actually regretting eating the one I had for lunch just a little while ago after reading this recipe in detail. There are many reasons that I am no longer the weight that I was when I was in my early 20’s. This recipe is one of them.

The recipe came from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home. They are meant to be served with Keller’s Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce. We skipped this step last night because we had juice from the short ribs Zach also made. But I think the tomato sauce would be a great addition on a night w/o short ribs.

Grit cakes with a fresh tomato sauce would make a great dinner if you rounded it out with a simple mixed greens salad. I can also see mini grit cakes with a small dollop of tomato sauce as an app for a cocktail party. I will be coming up with many grit cake apertures, I'm sure.

Give them a try. In the meantime, I will be trying to cleanse my system of all of the wonderful delectable (and very unhealthy) things I’ve eaten as of late before my mom gets into town on Wednesday and the food free-for-all starts all over again.

All in (some form of) moderation, right?

Grit Cakes, adapted from Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller

1 garlic clove

Kosher salt and fresh black pepper

3 ½ cups chicken stock

2 cups quick 5-minute grits

1 stick butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temp

1/3 cup cream cheese, at room temp

½ cup flour

3 large eggs, beaten

1 ½ cups panko crumbs

2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Olive oil

Finely chop the garlic, and turn it into a paste by combining about ¼ tsp salt and scraping it with the side of a knife.

Place garlic paste in medium saucepan, along with chicken stock, and a little bit of salt to taste, and bring to boil.

Reduce heat to low and slowly add the grits, whisking continuously, until liquid is absorbed and grits are cooked, about 5 minutes.

Off the heat, stir in the butter, and then the cream cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Line a 9X13 inch pan with parchment paper, and pour in grits, smoothing it flat (it will be about ½ inch thick). Place another sheet of parchment paper on top and press down to flatten. Place in fridge, and let set at least 2 hours, preferable 4 hours.

After grits have set, cut into 12 pieces.

Place flour in shallow bowl or on plate. Place eggs in shallow bowl and season with some salt and pepper. Place panko and chopped parsley in third shallow bowl or on plate.

Dip each cake into the flour, shaking off excess. Then dip each cake into the eggs, letting excess drip off. Last, dip each cake into the panko and parsley mixture.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

In large non-stick frying pan, heat about ¼ inch of oil over medium heat. Add grit cakes, being careful not to crowd. Let brown about 2 minutes each side, or until golden brown.

Do in batches, until all cakes have been fried. Keep fried cakes in oven on baking sheet lined with parchment.

Serves 12 as a side; 6 as a main dish.

I Have Something For You...

My mom and I have become obsessed with Maison Bouche chocolates. Have you had them?

I became smitten with their beautiful packaging, which comes in an array of stunning bright pastels.

My mom became smitten when she tasted their subtle but rich flavors. I sent her a bar of their lavender chocolate for Valentine’s Day (b/c I couldn’t resist the packaging). I finally had one myself last weekend—rose and mint. It was incredible. I’m not even a choc-aholic, and I thought it was amazing. It actually had crystallized mint leaves in it! I tried to savor it, but it still only lasted 24 hours.

My mom found these cute little mini bars online on the Maison Bouche website—you get 12 in a box for $15. Flavors: lavender, sea salt, geranium, rose, jasmine, bergamot orange.

Perfect hostess gift. Perfect birthday gift. Perfect indulgence just for yourself.

I’ll make you a deal. Become a follower of my blog, and you will have a chance at winning this extra box that I bought:

Become a follower by Sunday 3/6 at 5pm. That’s it.

You just might win.

(And yes, my very loyal friends, who have already become followers, you will be entered into the drawing as well!)

Repeat Offenders (in Cookbooks)

I have 85 cookbooks. I love cookbooks. I am obsessed with cookbooks. I keep a pile of them by my bed because I read them before I go to bed at night. It’s my little bit of solice at the end of the day. I flip through the pages (of which I’ve already read dozens of times), and I mentally compile a list of what I want to make next. The thing about cookbooks is that they never seem to get old to me. What I’m hungry for on any given day or what looks good to me on any given day changes, so they constantly spark new inspiration.

I have out-grown my current cookbook bookshelf. I have been trying to come up with a clever new storage idea, preferably one that showcases them. Hiding them away in a basement or closet is not an option. But, we have limited space in our 1920s bungalow. I’ll have to keep thinking on this…

Last weekend (because I got bored one afternoon), I decided to pull all of the cookbooks off the bookshelf that I have yet to make anything from. Frightening.

So, at this point, many would make a promise to themselves to not buy anymore cookbooks until they had made at least one thing from all of the cookbooks they already have. Not me. I like to think of myself as more of a realist than that. First of all, I would never stick to it. And more importantly, the sheer thought of it is depressing.

So, instead, I looked through them all and flagged some things that I would like to make in each one. And took mental note of why I would guess I haven’t made anything from them. Maybe—just maybe—it will influence future purchases.

There were for sure themes that emerged. The themes break down like this:

NEW: Too new to really even count. (And this bucket doesn’t really exist anymore because I just made my first recipe from Dorie’s book: Potato Leek Soup!)

Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan

INTIMIDATING: For some reason, these books intimidate me on the surface, but after further exploration into them, I am confident that I really can cook from them. I mean, come on. Well, except for Novelli’s book, which uses grams. You know how I feel about grams.

Everyday Novelli by Jean-Christophe Novelli

Urban Italian by Andrew Carmellini

A Table at the Tarn by Orlando Murrin

Lidia’s Italy by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Platter of Figs by David Tanis

NO PICTURES: Why bother to produce a cookbook without pictures? I don’t get this. I mean, if I have books like Baked and Barefoot Contessa Parties! with beautiful glossy pictures that give me promise of what my dish could look like, why would I spend a whole lot of time on books without pictures? Sounds very 2 year old of me, I’m sure, but I’m right about this. It really doesn’t make much sense. I should try, I suppose, because currently I’m missing out on some surely delicious food from Alice Waters.

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser

INTIMIDATING / NO PICTURES: Under normal circumstances, the combination of both of these would guarantee that I’d never cook from this book, but it’s a classic, and I have to. And I will. I just haven’t in the 3 years I’ve had the book. But I will. I think. I have to.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

OLD: I bought / inherited these books used. I don’t like used things. I’m pretty sure the Gourmet one will make it to my donate pile by the end of the week. But my mom made the sugar cookies out of the Martha Stewart Entertaining book for Thanksgiving when I was a kid. Have to keep this one. (BTW, Martha’s styling has come a long way…)

Gourmet’s Best Desserts by Gourmet

Entertaining by Martha Stewart

IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE: I don’t speak fluent French, nor do I understand fluent French. But if you saw how beautifully styled the cupcakes are in this book, you’d buy it too.

Cupcakes by Janet Smith

SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME: I bought this one last summer when I went to visit my parents in Lancaster shortly after they moved. I’m not sure what got into me. I’ve always been fascinated by the Amish, but I don’t aspire to making things like Greens n’ Fruit Salad or Stuffed Pig Stomach.

Fresh from the Central Market Cookbook

NOT SURE: This one puzzles me. Recipes look delicious. Not too hard. Has pictures. Should try soon.

Molto Gusto by Mario Batali

THEY WERE ON SALE: And last, this by far is the category that seems to be the biggest repeat offender. I must stop buying cookbooks just because they are on sale. Would reco you do the same.

Takeaway by Les Huynh

Gingerbread by Jennifer Lindner McGlinn

Bride Groom Entertaining by Williams-Sonoma

San Francisco by Williams-Sonoma

Rome by Williams-Sonoma

Artisanal Cocktails by Scott Beattie

Homemade Jelly Donuts. Enough Said.

Last year, Williams-Sonoma was pushing the donut thing hard in their catalog, and I fell sucker. I became obsessed with the idea of making homemade donuts.

I love donuts. Glazed donuts. Cake donuts. Chocolate frosted donuts. Jelly donuts. Donut holes. Dunkin Donuts. Gas station donuts. They fall into the sweet white carb-y camp that I’m a huge fan of.

But we didn’t have a deep fryer, or an candy thermometer, or a donut cutter, so I didn’t get very far in my homemade donut quest.

But for a few months, every time the catalog would come and those donuts were featured, I salivated.

I tried to convince Zach to put a $400 deep fryer on our wedding registry, he thought I was nuts, I gave up, got married, and forgot about donuts for a little while. But the whole thing came back to me a few weeks ago when I was at Paper Source and came across this cute donut patterned paper.

Enough is enough, I said to myself!! I control my own destiny. If I want homemade donuts, I can make that happen!! And so I did.

I bought a cute little donut cutter. I bought a candy thermometer. And I bought a donut cookbook.

We had friends over for brunch today, and I decided this was going to be the day that donuts would make their debut in this household. But since it involved dough (which you know I have issues with from time to time), I got cold feet, and did a test run on Friday night with Vanilla Glazed Donuts from cookbook Donuts by Elinor Klivans. Pretty good. Good enough to make for company, I decided.

But boy oh boy, did it get better. I decided in addition to the standard glazed this morning, I’d try the Jelly-Filled Donuts in Klivans's book too.

And they were rock-star.

Okay, so there are some things that I think are actually not better homemade (pizza, for one). I was worried that jelly donuts would also fall into this camp. Not so. Homemade jelly donuts are better than the professional version. I don’t think most bakeries use Bon Maman raspberry jam to fill them.

These jelly donuts were carefully fried (albeit a slight tad undercooked in the very middle, but I can fix this next time, and these lovely friends that came over like things not completely baked all the way, so score). They were lovingly rolled in a big plate of sugar. They were carefully given slits, and then blindly pumped of raspberry jam. (It was hard to know exactly how much jam I was putting into these donuts, so some had quite a bit of jam). But no one complained.

Thank god I only made six of them, because if we still had some right now, I’d be having one with a fresh cup of coffee as we speak.

Jelly-Filled Donuts (Adapted slightly from Elinor Klavins’s Donuts cookbook)

Canola oil for deep frying

Yeast donut dough (below)

2/3 cup Bon Maman raspberry jam

½ cup sugar

Yeast Donut Dough:

¾ cup whole milk

3 tbsp unsalted butter

3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1/3  cup sugar

½ tsp salt

1 package quick-rise yeast

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat milk and butter over medium heat until butter is melted and temperature is 125 degrees. Stir.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together 2 ½ cups flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Pour in milk and butter; mix on medium speed until well incorporated. Add eggs and vanilla and beat about 2 minutes, until full incorporated. Add remaining ¾ cup flour and mix about 1 minute longer.

Dough will be sticky, but place in new bowl, cover with a clean dish towel, and let rise in warm place for about 1 ¼ hours or until well risen. Use dough right away.

Jelly-Filled donuts:

Flour a decent-sized working surface, and roll dough out until about ½ inch thick.

Use a drinking glass about 3 inches wide to cut out rounds of dough. Place cut-outs onto oiled baking sheet. Cover donuts with clean dish towel and let rise in warm place for about 45 minutes.

Fill a large and deep cast-iron pot (such as Le Creuset) with 2 inches of canola oil. Heat on high until oil reaches 360 degrees on a candy thermometer. Keep and eye on it and adjust heat as necessary to keep it at 360.

Carefully place 3 donuts at a time in the oil, and let fry for about 2 minutes or until the bottom side gets golden. Flip over (a fork works well to do this), and let cook another minute or so, until both sides are golden brown.

Remove from oil and place on paper towel lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining donuts.

While donuts are still warm, but cool enough to touch, roll in sugar to coat well.

Take a sharp knife, and cut a small slit into the donut. Using a pastry bag with a metal tip, pipe in about 2 teaspoons of jam into the middle.

Serve immediately.

Makes 15 donuts.

Only words I have for LBV: OMG

I have been in spring cleaning mode today. And as part of that, I cleaned out all of my purses. And in one of those purses, I came across the menu from the Valentine’s Day tasting menu at La Belle Vie. The menu that I discretely (and embarrassingly) slipped into my purse mid-meal because I knew I had to keep this menu in my personal files. It was the single best meal of my life, and I’m guessing it will remain on a top ten list forever.

Because of this, I’m ashamed that this dining experience has not made its way to my blog yet. But I know exactly why it hasn’t.

I've been afraid to try to write about it. I do not have the words needed to give this meal justice. I’m not armed with the perfect technical culinary words to even try explain what I experienced.

The best I can do is recite an over-used acronym: OMG.

Oh

My

God.

An amazing meal. Truly amazing. Not a casual amazing that is thrown around too often to mean anything. A real, honest to god, amazing.

That night, chef Tim McKee himself was walking around talking to some of the tables. This brought forth very conflicting feelings in me. Part giddiness at the thought of meeting the best chef in Minnesota. Even bigger part terror that he actually would stop by and I would have to come up with something completely brilliant to say to match his more than brilliant food. But, our table was not on his route that night. Phew. Saved from a potentially mortifying encounter.

It was a dining experience that you realize midway through will probably never be replicated. You want to grab hold of it and never let it go. You get giddy with how delicious everything is that you’re tasting. And you actually physically shake your head in disbelieve that someone can actually create food like that.

Food like Poached Lobster with Salsify Tortelli, Black Trumpet Mushrooms and Red Wine, which was by far the most amazing course of this amazing meal.

It was unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, and I have been wondering if Tim McKee would put it on the menu permanently if I promised to go there once a week and order it. I’ve also contemplated making it my lifelong goal to replicate it. I know I need to have it again. I’m just not sure yet how that will happen.

I’ll let you take a look at the rest of the menu yourself—you’ll start to get the faintest idea of what I mean.

(You won’t see any photos because it was Valentine’s Day...and my poor husband finds it embarrassing when I pull my camera out every time we go out to eat…so…I decided to leave the camera at home…it was Valentine’s Day, after all…)

Delicious Open-Faced Comfort by the Name of Croque-Montagnarde

What do you do with half of a leftover loaf of delicious millet flax bread from Lucia’s?

You steal a trick from Tartine that you saw in the January issue of Martha Stewart Living.

You slice it real thick. Slather it with béchamel sauce. Top it with smashed potatoes tossed in olive oil, ham, Gruyere, and fresh black pepper. You bake it. And then you thoroughly enjoy it.

Tartine is in San Fran and is known for its bread. I am going there next month and can barely stand waiting. Perfect that I got a little teaser in Martha Stewart Living this month. Baker at Tartine, Chad Robertson, provides a week’s worth of recipes using a loaf of bread when it’s at its freshest and when it’s a week old. In addition to the recipe they had for the Croque-Montagnarde that we had tonight, there are also recipes for Warm Winter Bread Salad (which we’ll be having tomorrow night, made of toasted chunks of bread, endive, radicchio, frisee, bacon, and an herb vinaigrette), Cinnamon Breadcrumb-Sprinkled Ice Cream, and Eggs in Red-Wine Sauce.

Robertson also provides the recipe for Tartine’s Country Bread, which I initially thought was quite generous. But, then I realized he put it in a code that few of us can decipher. Grams.

1,135 grams white bread flour…

100 grams water per feeding (78 degrees)…

Yea, right. I barely just figured out how to make challah using cups and teaspoons. I'll skip this gram stuff for now.

But that’s okay. I’m more than happy subbing in the delicious bread we do have access to in Mpls that I don't have to do all sorts of conversions for. From Lucia’s, from Rustica…

But I digress.

For this delicious open-faced comfort, thank you, Baker Chad.

Root Beer Bundt Cake: FAIL

Frickin-a.

I had a kitchen failure today. A deceiving kitchen failure. A kitchen failure that successfully hid itself from me for hours.

A few weeks ago, I had a chocolate root beer cake with root beer ice cream at Lucia’s Wine Bar that was so delicious. And it’s been on my mind for a few weeks now.

I’ve been doing some research online about chocolate root beer cakes, found a few recipes, and decided to place my bets on the Root Beer Bundt Cake recipe in Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. This required a cookbook purchase. But with my B&N discount card and a $10 gift card, I decided it didn’t really even count as a cookbook purchase.

Somehow along the way this morning as I was pulling out the ingredients, I became mesmerized by the root beer bottles themselves and propped them all over the house so I could take photos of them.

After this slight distraction passed, I did everything right. I took the time to spoon the flour into the measuring cup gingerly, take a knife, and level it off like you’re supposed to. I very carefully greased every nook and cranny of my Bundt pan. I was making this cake a day before I needed it (to take to a friends’ house for dinner tomorrow night) because the recipe said the flavors develop nicely if made a day in advance. I set myself up for success, I swear.

“Until a small sharp knife inserted into the cake comes out clean” said the recipe. Yep, followed this instruction.

Still…fail.

The saddest part about this whole experience was that I didn’t realize I ended up with a  cake that was truly not completely cooked until I was releasing it from the pan hours later after it had cooled. Turns out the part of the cake that is right next to the hole in the pan takes longer to cook than the rest of the cake. Who knew?

I didn’t even get to the root beer fudge frosting, which sounded quite tasty with its stick of unsalted butter, dark chocolate, salt, root beer, cocoa, and confectioners’ sugar…

I didn’t even get to put the finished, frosted cake into my Bundt cake traveler…