Mmm, cookies!

Today was rainy and cold, the sort of weather I thought I'd left behind back in the East Coast. But it's also the sort of weather that's perfect for baking cookies. Here's a recipe from the 2001 Food and Wine's Best of the Best cookbook - a cookbook I highly recommend, by the way. Food and Wine compiles what they deem to the 100 best recipes of each year, and this particular recipe for snipdoodles is from Christopher Kimball's The Dessert Bible.

Snipdoodles
makes 20 to 24 cookies

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened but still firm
1 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon cinnamon

1. Beat the butter and 1 1/2 cup of the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer or with a wooden spoon until creamy and smooth, about 3 minutes. (Having neither an electric mixer nor a wooden spoon - I know, we're really rolling ghetto style here in Taiwan - I just used a rubber spatula, and I was prepared to be mixing all the live long day, but it wasn't too bad.) Add eggs and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated. Add the milk and stir to incorporate.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the next five ingredients (flour through nutmeg) and then stir into the butter-sugar mixture. Chill dough for 2 hours. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

3. Shape dough into large, walnut-size balls, about 1 1/4 inches in diameter. Mix together the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Dip tops of dough balls in sugar-cinnamon mixture. Place balls 3 inches apart on lined baking sheet. Bake for about 12 minutes, rotating the baking sheet after 6 minutes. (I actually didn't do this because my oven is so small I didn't think it would make a difference, and it didn't seem to.)

4. Cookies will appear undercooked when removed from the oven; the centers will still be very moist and light. Remove cookies to a rack; as they cool, they will firm up. Repeat with a new sheet of parchment paper until all the dough is baked.

And enjoy!

Ruth Reichl's Mushroom Soup

Speaking of mushrooms, here's a recipe for mushroom soup from Ruth Reichl's fantastic memoir Comfort Me with Apples. In the book, Reichl talks about how she made this soup every day during a particularly hard time in her life, because it's the most soothing soup she knew how to make. "It is the most perfect prescription for those in need of solace," Reichl writes. While I'm not experiencing any particular hardship now - well, I am sad that the writer's strike is still going on and there are no more new episodes of Heroes and 30 Rock for me to watch - this recipe is still great, especially for cold weather.

Mushroom Soup
Serves 4

1/2 lb mushrooms
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
4 tablespoons flour
1 cup beef broth
2 cups half-and-half
salt, pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 bay leaf

Thinly slice mushrooms.


Melt butter in a heavy pan. When foam subsides, add the onion and sauté until golden. Add the mushrooms and sauté until brown.

Stir in the flour, and then slowly add the broth, stirring constantly.

Heat the half-and-half in a saucepan or in the microwave. Add it to the mushrooms, along with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and bay leaf. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes; do not boil.

Remove the bay leaf and serve.

The only problem I've encountered making this recipe has been in Taiwan, where beef broth is hard to come by. I've substituted using this beef stew paste I found in the Mitsugoshi supermarket (which came out fine) and vegetable bouillon (which wasn't so good). I guess you can also try using mushroom broth as a substitute? In any case, I still highly recommend it!

Respect the Coq!

So I've really been enjoying Chubby Hubby's Singapore-based food blog, and he had a great post about how a lot of foodies tend to thumb their noses at that most generic (at least at a lot of restaurants in the States) of meats: chicken.

Was it Anthony Bourdain who said that chefs see chicken as the menu item for people who don't know what else to order? Anyway, Chubby Hubby gives a rather impassioned defense of chicken and ends it with a lovely recipe for his wife's version of Coq au Vin.

Coq au Vin is one of those daunting, oh-so-French sounding dishes that I've never even ordered, much less tried to make myself--and I really didn't even have any idea what it was supposed to taste like. But I was feeling ambitious and the recipe seemed simple (and made my mouth water just reading it), so I figured what the hey.

It'd be silly for me to copy and paste the whole recipe, so I'll just give the abbreviated version here. Oh, and I roughly halved the original recipe, since I figured 4 drumsticks is kinda sorta equal to 2 thighs (we couldn't find thighs), and I didn't want to end up with too much sauce for two people.

So first you need to chop up an onion and a clove of garlic, and dice a carrot and a few slices of bacon (pancetta would be better, but we live in Taiwan):

Okay, so maybe Mario Batali would mock me
for my uneven dicing, but I did my best.

Then, over medium heat, heat up a little bit of butter and olive oil in a heavy pot, put the bacon in and, after that gets some color, add the carrots, onions and garlic. Let the vegetables soften for five minutes or so, then, using some kind of slotted spoon, move everything in the pot to a bowl. In the oil that's left in the pot, brown the chicken on all sides. (Coq au Vin is normally made with rooster, but where was I going to get a rooster?)


Now turn the heat up, dump your veggies and bacon back in, and pour about half a bottle of Gewurztraminer (a sweet white wine) into the pot. Once it's boiling, turn the heat down and let everything gently simmer for about 25 minutes, flipping the chicken every so often.


When the chicken seems like it's done, fish it out and put it aside for now. Now add about a third of a pint of heavy cream (the recipe calls for double cream, but you can't easily get that in Taiwan or even the States).

Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper and sugar (optional) to taste. You'll need a good amount of salt and pepper, and depending on how sweet your wine is, you might want to leave the sugar out altogether. Add some chopped parsley (or dried parsley if you can't get a hold of fresh) and about a quarter pound of regular white mushrooms (cut into quarters). Now just let this sauce reduce and thicken.

Once the sauce is to your liking, just put the chicken back in and let it heat back up. What you end up with is this luxuriously creamy, subtly sweet sauce--and all the veggies and the bacon add different layers of flavor. And the chicken gets nice and tender, and absorbs some of the sweetness from the wine as well. Here's what it looked like on the plate:


Yeah, I know--it doesn't look super-appetizing. But it did taste good, I swear, especially with a nice loaf of French bread to soak up all the extra sauce and a glass of the Gewurztraminer we had left over. I don't know if anyone has suggestions for how to plate this more attractively.

And if I were to make this again, I'd try to cook the bacon a little bit longer than I did at the beginning--rendering more of the fat would have also meant there'd be more oil to brown the chicken in. I kind of flubbed that step. And I do think thighs would be preferable to drumsticks (more meat, less bone).

But anyhow, thanks to Chubby Hubby, it's good to know that you too can eat gourmet French cuisine, without having to go to too much trouble, even on a weeknight.

Another Thanksgiving Idea

T minus two days until Thanksgiving! Originally, I was going to post a bunch of links to recipes that we've used for side dishes, but then I decided that it's not like our recipes are all that special, and it's not like it's all that hard for you to google "mashed potatoes," (actually, try googling "smashed potatoes" if you want something a little different).

Instead, if I were to recommend ONE recipe that's always been a success, it would be this:

Provencal Tomato Potato Gratin

This is probably my favorite side dish ever. It's basically just roasted tomato and potato, but don't let the simplicity fool you. It's still very delicious and bursting with flavor. The downside is that it does take a little longer to make, but what's Thanksgiving without some slaving over the hot stove.

The other good thing about this recipe is that you can find all the ingredients here in Taiwan. Luke and I have been running around frantically these past few days trying to gather ingredients for our (psuedo)Thanksgiving dinner, an activity which is starting to make me want to claw my eyes out every time I think having to take yet another trip to the grocery store. Anyone know where we can find buttermilk (we've already tried Jason's, CitySuper, etc.)? Or unsalted peanuts for under 300NT? Or are we just kidding ourselves, trying to cook a Thanksgiving dinner here in Taipei?

Well, wish us luck, and look for pictures to come!

Another Roasted Chicken Recipe

Quick post: here's another roasted chicken recipe by Jamie Oliver to consider making in lieu of turkey for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of this - surprising considering that we've made this a ton of times - but I swear, this recipe is a guaranteed hit. Everyone we've ever served this to loves it.

A few notes:

*You can find prosciutto at either Jason's (in the basement of 101) or CitySuper (in the basement of the new Sogo on Fuxing).

*If you can't find celeriac, or don't like it, you can substitute it with a couple of large carrots.

*Jamie's recipe says that the 2lb chicken will yield six servings, but I find this a little odd. At most, I think the 2lb chicken may yield three servings - unless you and your five other guests are on diets and want only teeny tiny portions. I would suggest getting a medium sized chicken if you want to feed more to your guests - you don't even need to adjust the proportions of the butter mixture, as it comes out to probably a little more than necessary for the 2lb chicken. This doesn't mean you need to make less of it for the 2lber though: as my husband always says, you can never have too much butter.

*If you have a small oven (does anyone in Taipei actually have a regular oven? Can I be your friend?) that cooks from the top, then you'll probably need to cover the top of the chicken in aluminum foil for the last 10 minutes or so of cooking time. Just keep an eye on it, and if you feel like it's getting too brown on top, cover it up.

Enjoy!

A Very Taipei Thanksgiving

Last year for Thanksgiving Luke and I sat in Dan Ryan's, sadly eating our plate of overcooked turkey and too salty mashed potatoes. And it was just ONE plate. Contrary to popular belief, Thanksgiving is not the celebration of the day our forefathers came together with the Native Americans in giving thanks for their bounty. No, Thanksgiving is a holiday in celebration of gluttony. It is a day where Americans can actually feel good about stuffing themselves until they've swelled to twice their normal size. So, as you can imagine, it was blasphemy to us last year that we would only be served one measly plate (not to mention the ridiculous amount of money we paid for it), but what could we do?

The answer is, this year we are having our own Thanksgiving celebration with some friends. Granted, it won't be quite the same as the way we celebrate in the States, being that our oven is really just a glorified toaster oven, but surely (hopefully?) it'll be better than the way we celebrated last year. At the very least, we'll get seconds!

This week I've decided to dedicate some posts to those of you - here and abroad - who want to try your hand at cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or at least contributing to it. We're actually not making turkey for ours (again, one of the pitfalls of having an EZ Bake oven instead of a real one), and have decided instead to roast some chicken. Here's a simple recipe that I found in one of my favorite cookbooks, How to Cook Without a Book:

The No-Hassle Roast Chicken Dinner

Serves 4 (if you're using a 3 or 3 1/2 lb chicken; our chicken was about 2 1/2 lbs, which was enough for 2 people)

Basically, the secret of this recipe is that you cut out the entire back of the chicken (called butterflying). By using this method, the chicken cooks a lot quicker, and it's also easier to season.

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon fine-grated lemon zest
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons minced rosemary leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 lemon

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

2. Rinse the chicken, cut out its back, flatten it with your palm or fist, and pat it dry. Then transfer it to a foil-lined roasting tray - make sure it's large enough to hold the chicken (and vegetables, if you're also roasting them along with the chicken) and shallow enough so that the chicken will brown well.

3. Mix above ingredients together in small bowl.

4. With the chicken on the roasting pan, pull back the skin from each leg, thigh and breast, and rub the herb paste under the loosened skin. If you want, you can add some of the mixture on top of the skin as well.

5. Pull the skin back in place and drizzle with a little olive oil, or rub with softened butter. Make sure the chicken skin is completely dry if you're rubbing it with the butter.

6. Roast chicken for 30 minutes. (If you're using a smaller chicken, then you need to adjust your cooking time. I don't know exactly how long we roasted ours for, but just make sure you keep an eye on it.)

7. Squeeze lemon over chicken and return to oven and continue to roast until juices run clear, about 5 - 10 minutes longer.

If you want to roast vegetables along with the chicken, tomatoes and potatoes go well with it. Arrange potatoes (halved, tossed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper) in a single layer in the pan and roast alongside the chicken. After 20 minutes, add tomatoes (halved lengthwise, tossed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper) cut side up. Continue to roast until the chicken is done, squeezing lemon juice on at the appropriate time, for 20 minutes longer.

And ta-da!


This method also makes it super easy to carve - just take some kitchen shears or a chef's knife, and cut down the middle. Then cut the skin holding each leg to the breast, and you're good to go.

abstract poet: Who You Calling a Puttanesca?

My mama always told me I needed to be more organized. I never paid her much heed (as anyone who’s ever roomed with me or seen my desk at work can attest). But once I started trying to cook semi-complicated dishes with more than ten different ingredients that needed to be prepped and at least half a dozen steps, I discovered that (gasp!) at least in this one area of life, maybe moms had a point.

Sure, Jamie Oliver can have three different pots and pans sizzling on high heat while he calmly dices up an onion into perfect cubes with one hand tied behind his back, but do I look like an exceedingly handsome blonde celebrity chef with a charming British accent? Don’t answer that.

My kitchen is still often a disaster zone, especially when cooking for guests, but I’ve found that doing as much of your prep ahead of time as possible really makes your life that much easier--and can make cooking seemingly fancy-schmancy dishes a piece of cake, even in a tiny Taiwanese kitchen. My wife (the Queen of Prep, whom I bow down to) would back me up on this, I’m sure.

So, maybe it’s a bit of extra work, but it’s well worth your while to have little bowls of chopped this and that all set up before you even turn the stove on, just like they do on TV:


Pictured, clockwise from the top left: minced basil (supposedly 1/2 cup, though I was a bit short), grape tomatoes (about 15 of them, halved lengthwise), minced parsley (2 Tbs), a can of tuna in olive oil, minced flat anchovy fillets (4 of them), minced garlic (3 cloves), chopped black olives (1/2 cup), a handful of capers in their juices, and dried oregano (a teaspoon).

That, and a half a package of thin spaghetti, is all you need to make Spaghettini Puttanesca*, one of the easiest (despite the somewhat daunting amount of mincing you need to do) and most satisfying pasta dishes you can whip up.

Once you’ve done the prep, the dish literally takes less than 10 minutes to put together, turning the above ingredients into this:



All you’ve got to do is:

On one burner, put a big pot of salted water on the other burner and start bringing it to a boil. On another, heat up 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil in a large heavy skillet (medium heat should do). Add the garlic, basil, oregano, capers, and half the parsley to the pan. If you want some kick, you can add a crumbled dried chili or a pinch of red pepper flakes too. Stir everything around and let it all cook for a minute or two, until the garlic softens.

Add the tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes until they get soft.

Finally, add the tuna (breaking it up into small chunks), anchovies, and olives. After about a minute, once everything’s heated through, remove the pan from the heat and season it to taste with salt and pepper (you probably won’t need too much of either).

By now your water should be boiling. Cook the spaghettini according to the package instructions (probably 8 or 9 minutes). Once it’s done, drain it, then put it back in the pot. Add the sauce. Toss. Sprinkle on the rest of your minced parsley.

And that’s it. Dinner is served, and all--for once--without even breaking a sweat.

* Roughly adapted from a recipe in Perla Meyers’ “How to Peel a Peach: And 1001 Other Things Every Good Cook Needs to Know”

How to Make Fried Tofu with Pork and Black Bean Sauce

Click picture for better view:
Recipe found here:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/236021

abstract poet: Sunday Dinner (or How to Make a Pretty Good Steak)

Here's another post from the beloved husband:

Now that the weather in Taipei has cooled down some, Emily and I have finally gotten back into our cooking groove. This past Sunday, for instance, I decided I was going to grill us up some steaks…or one steak for us to share, seeing as we’re ballin’ on budget.

You might call me a “steak purist” of sorts--I don’t have much patience for the multiplicity of sauces and toppings and other adornments that other people like with their steaks. And that corn-starchy abomination known as black pepper sauce preferred by local Taiwanese-style steak joints just makes me want to vomit. I like my cow to taste like cow. Rub that baby down with a generous handful of salt and freshly ground pepper, then sear it to a perfect medium rare. That’s all. At most maybe do a little beurre rouge (red wine reduction with butter swirled in) on top at the very end.

But I’ll admit that this minimalist approach works best when you’re working with the highest quality of beef, and unless you live in Argentina or in some quaint Italian village, that can be hard to come by. Especially in Taiwan, where American beef (which isn’t even that great) costs an arm and a leg.

So when I came across a recipe for a marinade for grilled ribeye steak in my 2001 Best of the Best cookbook*, I figured maybe this would be a good way to spruce up mediocre meat. But, just to be safe, I still ended up splurging on an NT$500 ribeye from City Super for my trial run. The recipe, which originally comes from Alfred Portale’s 12 Seasons Cookbook, follows:

The first thing you want to do is season your steaks on both sides with coarsely cracked black peppercorns (mine were just coarsely ground from my pepper grinder), pressing them into the meat.

For the marinade, the recipe calls 6 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of chopped oregano, 1 tablespoon of chopped rosemary, and 3 cloves worth of minced garlic.

That’s for four 12 oz steaks, and I only had one 14 oz one, so I just guesstimated, putting in a little less than a third of everything. The recipe says you can substitute half the amount of dried oregano, which I did. I also used dried rosemary, about a quarter of the amount, which I crumbled as best as I could, but I really think fresh rosemary would have been better.

Anyhow, stir this mixture up and pour it over your steaks, coating both sides. Cover them up with saran wrap and let marinate 30 minutes at room temperature (or up to 2 hours in the fridge; just make sure you bring them up to room temperature before you grill). Here’s what my steak looked like as it marinated:


Right before you start grilling, season your steaks generously on both sides with sea salt or kosher salt. This recipe calls for charcoal grilling, but a grill pan or even a regular 12-inch skillet (which is what I used) would work nearly as well. Get the grill/pan nice and hot, and cook the steaks over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes on each side for medium rare, basting them with whatever’s left of the marinade for the first few minutes. Don’t fiddle with the steak too much when it’s cooking, and only turn it over once. It should get nice and charred on the outside. 10 minutes later, voila:


Of course any steak recipe that gives you a cooking time can only estimate, since your meat’s thickness and the heat of your stove/grill will vary. Here’s a neat trick for how to tell when a steak is done: Press the tip of your pinky and the tip of your thumb together (on the same hand). Touch the fleshy muscle in the palm of your hand, just underneath your thumb. It should be pretty taut--that's how a well-done steak should feel when you poke it with your finger.

Now try this using your ring finger (medium-well to medium), middle finger (medium to medium-rare) and index finger (rare).


You should feel that muscle getting squishier and squishier. After you’ve used this method a few times, you’ll get the hang of it, and you won’t have to keep flashing people the “okay” sign or the shocker.

Truth be told, this time around I made the rookie mistake of leaving the steak on the pan while I attended to something else, and by the time I got back and poked it, I knew I’d cooked it for a minute or two too long. So it was more medium than it was medium-rare. Not a fatal mistake, but not perfection either.

Now let your steak rest on a plate for five minutes (otherwise you’ll lose all the juices with the first cut) before cutting it into thick slices. We served it with a side of Asian-style long bean salad…


…and some smashed potatoes and an Italian red wine in the glass. Overall, I was pretty happy with the marinade. It took hardly any time to prepare, and it gave the steak a nice herby fragrance and a hint of sweetness without overwhelming the flavors of the meat itself. It was great with the ribeye, but I bet it’d work with other cuts, too, as long as they’ve got some thickness and some fat to them.

So here’s our Sunday dinner, on the plate. Not too shabby.


Loyal readers, if you’ve got any secret steak recipes of your own, feel free to share!

* The best recipes from the best cookbooks that year, as judged by Food & Wine. It’s a pretty kick-ass collection of recipes.

One Last Hurrah

I'm heading back to good ole Taipei tomorrow. In honor of my last night here in the States, I decided to do all the things that I won't be able to do in Taipei for the next several months. So I went to Target and H&M, my two favorite stores here in the States. I visited my best friend's mom, one of my favorite people in the world. And, I made these Inside-Out Carrot Cake Cookies to commemorate the last time I will be cooking with a normal sized oven and without fear of cockroaches scurrying out to eat every last crumb (not that this even happens, but I'm paranoid).

I'll be back to my regular posting schedule sometime next week (depending on my jet lag), so look out for some new reviews!

Almond Cake with Berries (Happy Birthday to My Dad)

It's my dad's birthday and so we baked him this almond cake with berries. We wanted to go all out with this crazy cake, but my dad is mildly diabetic and we didn't want to send him into insulin shock on his birthday. So we settled on this cake.


Back when we had a normal sized oven, we used to make this quite often. Sadly, the cake pan doesn't fit into our Easy-Bake Oven in Taipei, so we hadn't made this cake in quite awhile, which makes it seem to taste even better this time around.

The recipe is courtesy of Gourmet, and it's really easy to make - it takes about an hour or so, and in the end you get this delicious cake. It's light, it's summery, and it's pretty to look at. And every one liked it and I think my dad had a nice birthday.

101 Recipes in 10 minutes or less

This is going to be my salvation this summer. 101 recipes to make in ten minutes or less! I will the master of the 10 minute recipe by the end of this summer (which is in October here in Taiwan).

Penne Carbonara Recipe

The other night I made penne carbonara and thought I’d share the recipe with the three, maybe four of you who read this blog. This is one of the few dishes I can stand making in the summer here – our kitchen is super small and heats up really quickly, especially since there’s no AC in there. Plus, I have an unnatural fear of hot splashing oil, so whenever I’m frying something, I have to wear long sleeves. So as you can imagine, it gets unbearable pretty quickly.

Anyway, with this recipe I don’t have to worry about the suffocating heat because it’s a super fast recipe. And super easy. This recipe is actually adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe. As an aside, for those of you out there who are beginning cooks, I’d really recommend Jamie Oliver, because all his recipes are delicious and fairly simple to make. He hardly ever bothers with standard measurements, instead using measurements such as “a wineglass full” or “ a handful,” which I found to be infinitely helpful for those times when I was first learning how to cook and would run around the kitchen like a chicken with its head cut off.

So onto the recipe. You’ll need:

4 slices bacon, chopped
I clove garlic, smashed with the back of your knife
2 eggs (try to get the freshest that you can – this is what makes or breaks the recipe), beaten
Parmesan cheese (fresh, not the Kraft kind), about 1/3 cup
About ½ box of penne pasta
Olive oil, 1 tablespoon

Serves 2

So what you do is first put the water on for the pasta, (make sure you add salt to it), let it come to a boil, and cook your penne until al dente, which is usually around 10 or 11 minutes. While you’re waiting for your pasta to cook, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to your frying pan and fry up the bacon until the fat is rendered. When it gets close to being done, add the smashed garlic to the bacon and oil and leave it in for about a minute so that it can flavor the oil. When the bacon’s done, remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Leave the oil in the pan, you still need it later.

Now beat your eggs together with the cheese. When your pasta is ready, drain the pasta, BUT save about a half cup of the pasta water. Add your pasta to the oil, put back the bacon, and toss.

This next part is important. The key to a good carbonara is all about the sauce. You don’t want to egg to cook, otherwise you end up with scrambled eggs. Add the egg and cheese mixture to the pasta and toss thoroughly. Add some of the cooking water (not too much), if you feel like you need to make the sauce a bit smoother. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like, you can also add some extra cheese on top.

And that’s it! Here’s what it should look like:



This recipe takes no more than 15 minutes to make, and paired with a nice salad, it’s fast and easy, not to mention pretty darn tasty.