Cherie

I had to go restock the liquor cabinet (imagine that!) and picked up Cherry Brandy and Coffee Brandy. It seemed as if I saw tons of recipes calling for these and I was tired of skipping all of them. Plus, I like cherry and coffee flavors.

Naturally, I got home, sat down with Mr. Boston's Official Bartender's Guide and had a heckuva a time finding any of those cocktails.

Eventually, after due diligence, I dug up some interesting prospects.

The first we tried was Cherie which was quite delicious. And it had a maraschino cherry. Which was perfect because we were watching Some Like It Hot.

Don't see the connection? Pick up the movie and watch for Tony Curtis on the train.

Cherie
1 oz. Lime Juice
1/2 oz. Triple Sec
1 oz. Light Rum
1/2 oz. Cherry-flavored Brandy

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Add a maraschino cherry.

Chocolate Marshmallows

I have read marshmallow recipes for many years but never tried any, although I always was rather curious about what they'd be like. I am not very fond of marshmallows, as a matter of fact, and my curiosity was never great enough to move me to experiment.

Rose had a friend from Chicago visit last weekend, however, and tried out this recipe from the current Cooking Light. Other than mentioning that sampling cocktails before working with boiling sugar syrup seemed an unnecessary risk (one they took seriously enough to postpone cocktails, by the way), I didn't participate at all.

As we have come to expect from Cooking Light, Rose said the recipe worked exactly as written and was very easy. Everyone loved the soft texture and slight chocolate flavor. I did sample one and as marshmallows go it was good enough.

Next time Rose may try more cocoa powder for a deeper chocolate flavor. It also seems to me that a mint version would be good, perhaps with a touch of green or pink food coloring.

Chocolate Marshmallows

For a more pronounced chocolate flavor, increase the cocoa powder in marshmallows.


1 cup water, divided
3 (1/4-ounce) packages unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup light-colored corn syrup
Dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup sifted unsweetened cocoa
Cooking spray
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Preparation

1. Pour 1/2 cup water into a small microwave-safe bowl, and sprinkle with gelatin.

2. Combine remaining 1/2 cup water, sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a medium heavy saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Cook, without stirring, until a candy thermometer registers 250°. Pour sugar mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer; let stand until a candy thermometer registers 210°.

3. Microwave gelatin mixture at HIGH for 20 seconds or until gelatin melts, stirring after 10 seconds. With mixer on low speed, beat sugar mixture using a whip attachment; gradually pour gelatin mixture in a thin stream into sugar mixture. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Increase speed to high; whip mixture at high speed until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Reduce mixer to medium speed, and gradually add 1/4 cup cocoa; beat until combined. Using a spatula coated with cooking spray, scrape mixture into an 11 x 7-inch baking pan coated with cooking spray; smooth top. Let stand 2 hours.

4. Sift together powdered sugar, cornstarch, and 2 teaspoons cocoa into a jelly-roll pan. Using an offset spatula coated with cooking spray, remove marshmallow from pan; place in sugar mixture. Using scissors well coated with powdered sugar mixture, cut marshmallows into 78 (1-inch) squares. Dust with powdered sugar mixture; shake to remove excess sugar mixture.

5. Arrange marshmallows on a cooling rack placed on a rimmed baking sheet. Place bittersweet chocolate in a small microwave-safe bowl; microwave at HIGH for 1 minute or until melted, stirring every 20 seconds until smooth. Drizzle melted chocolate over marshmallows; let stand until chocolate is set.

Spicy Cajun Shrimp

Tom got me Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans for Christmas last year.  Although I enjoyed reading through it, I hadn't picked it up to make anything from it. Not sure why. That sort of thing happens when you've got stacks of cookbooks everywhere.

I finally cracked it open for actual use when I picked up some shrimp a couple of weeks ago and wanted to make something besides the same old thing. (Although I see that the shrimp scampi I usually favor isn't here ... I must share that soon!)

Who cooks shrimp better than someone from Louisiana? Probably no one.

This was a huge hit. I'm a wimp so I used less than the minimum amounts of cayenne and red pepper. In retrospect the minimums probably would have been fine. There is a wide latitude for spicy food, of course, so take your best guess!

Spicy Cajun Shrimp

Makes 2-3 servings
(It served 4 of us with leftovers)

2 dozen large shrimp, or 1 pound medium shrimp, fresh or frozen, thawed if frozen, peeled, and deveined
1/4 teaspoon - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1 teaspoon dried basil, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed (optional)
1/3 cup butter
1-1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 cup beer, at room temperature (this didn't seem to do much except dilute the recipe some ... I'm going to skip it next time)
Hot cooked rice for serving (optional)

Rinse the cleaned shrimp under cold running water. Drain well, then set aside. In a small bowl combine the cayenne, black pepper, salt, red pepper flakes, and herbs.

Combine the butter, garlic, Worcestershire, and the pepper-herb mixture in a large skillet over high heat. When the butter is melted, add the tomatoes, and then the shrimp. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring well. Add the beer, cover, and cook for 1 minute longer. Remove from the heat. Serve over rice, if desired. (Which we did!)

Time to Revive Home Ec

A year later, my father’s job took our family to Wales, where I attended, for a few months, a large school in a mid-size industrial city. There, students brought ingredients from home and learned to follow recipes, some simple and some not-so-simple, eventually making vegetable soups and meat and potato pies from scratch. It was the first time I had ever really cooked anything. I remember that it was fun, and with an instructor standing by, it wasn’t hard. Those were deeply empowering lessons, ones that stuck with me when I first started cooking for myself in earnest after college.

I knew a lot about cooking when I took Home Ec back in the 9th grade. But I didn't know anything about sewing, budgeting, planning a project, or the many other things that I learned in that class. I look at my children's friends and almost all of them don't know a thing about cooking. Or a lot of those other things.

This New York Times article focuses more than I'd like on obesity as a reason to revive Home Ec, although it is not without reason. I'm just sayin' there are a lot of other reasons to bring it back.

Cooks, Gluttons, and Gourmets

Cooks, Gluttons and Gourmets by Betty Wason

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a charming history of cooking. I was interested to see from the introduction that the author went to considerable trouble back in 1962 to unearth much of the information in the book ... including finding a Chinese translator to read a 14th century Chinese cooking text. She writes in a personable way that makes you feel as if you have found a new friend.

FINAL
This is a fairly comprehensive overview of the history of cooking from cavemen to Asia to Europe to New Orleans to 1962 ... and much more. A lifetime of reading food writing and history (especially the Time Life Foods of the World series) meant that little of the information was actually new to me. However, Wason tended to focus upon personalities to carry her histories forward and that is whence issued much of the book's charm. Many of the little anecdotes on the way were new and I very much enjoyed reading the history overall because of them.

The Go-To Snacks of Literary Greats

Wendy MacNaughton loves to snack on garlic croutons when working and began wondering about what the literary greats snacked on.

Walt Whitman began the day with oysters and meat, while Gustave Flaubert started off with what passed for a light breakfast in his day: eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The novelist Vendela Vida told me she swears by pistachios, and Mark Kurlansky, the author of “Salt” and “Cod,” likes to write under the influence of espresso, “as black as possible.”

Luckily for us, she did a charming sketch of some of the great writers' favorite snacks. Check it out at the New York Times.

Via Scott Danielson on Google+

CSA Story: Potatoes, Basil, and Creativity

There's a certain sense of accomplishment I feel when I am getting dinner ready, realizing that somehow I should be working in disparate ingredients from the CSA cooler. It's like being on one of those cooking shows, handed a box of odd ingredients and told to make dinner with it.

Certainly it pushes me out of my comfort zone and into inspiration. And sometimes ... every so often ... it pushes me into a place where my family is delighted with the inspiration.

Yesterday, for example, I was making Baked Salmon with Horseradish Sauce. I had picked up some fresh green beans at the store last weekend but was wondering what starch to have with the meal. Then I remembered the red potatoes from the CSA, some of them were fairly small. I could have potatoes and green beans.

Super simple in first boiling a pot of water, then putting in the potatoes, and toward the last 10 minutes or so dropping in the tailed green beans. (If the potatoes are different sizes, I just pull the smaller ones when they are done and pop them back in to warm up right before I drain the whole thing.

When I opened the fridge to get the beans out, I smelled the fresh basil that the farmer also brought last weekend. Basil. When was I ever going to use that? Pasta was my usual use for basil and that wasn't in my sights until way after that basil went bad.

And then I remembered. An Italian region makes green beans, potatoes, and pesto. Or at least it seemed as if I had read something about that. But I had no time to look up recipes and, truth be told, no inclination.

I pulled the basil, washed and dried it, threw it in the food processor along with a pinch of salt, a clove of garlic, and a small handful of walnuts. I whirred it until everything looked as small as it was going to get (pretty grainy, not smooth) and then I glugged in some olive oil until it was less solid but not really runny. Then I threw in a couple handfuls of grated Parmesan and whirred again. Done.

Yes, all of this was off the cuff so those are the best descriptions you're gonna get. Blame Nigel Slater and my ongoing reading of Tender.

When the potatoes and beans were tender (should've snapped those beans in half, but there's always next time), I tossed them with the impromptu pesto.

And nervously put it in a dish in front of Tom.

Who tentatively tried it, said, "This is really good!" and reached for more.

It was really good.

The chances would have been slim of me actually looking that up in the cookbook and deliberately getting the ingredients to put that dish together.

But thanks to the mystery box each week from the CSA, we got a delicious, semi-authentic Italian dish and I had a sense of creativity that is all too rare.

Aperol, St. Germaine, and Mrs. 404

Some time ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article featuring cocktails made with Aperol and St. Germaine.

What was interesting about this article is that both Tom and I read it. Our usual practice is to bring up articles, discover that the other person never read it and then to fill each other in. Was it because it was about cocktails? Was it because the Aperol just could not possibly be that vivid orange color? Was it because we both think of "Your Mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries*" when we see the word elderflowers (prime ingredient in St. Germaine)?

We will probably never know.

What we do know is that at the end of our discussion we had gotten interested enough to go out and buy a bottle of each. Frustratingly, though I remembered having seen Aperol as a mystery ingredient of practically every other recipe in our Mr. Boston: Official Bartender's Guide, now I could find none of them.

The Aperol is vividly orange both in color and flavor, but with an underlying bitter anchor of rhubarb. St. Germaine liqueur tastes, as the liquor store stockboy surprisingly and eloquently told Tom, "Fresh." Fresh as a spring day, one might say, with the full realization that such a description is not at all evocative on the mind's palate.

At any rate, eventually we made an Aperol Spritz and an Aperol Sour, both of which I will supply recipes for in the future.

Rose discovered the Mr. 404 because she chooses cocktails for their names. It is a Vodka cocktail containing both Aperol and St. Germaine. Tasty enough, but I do not favor Vodka, feeling that I enjoy flavor from my alcohol as well as a buzz.

Therefore, I took the creative license of substituting Gin for the Vodka and, in the age-old cocktail tradition, renaming the drink somewhat after myself.

Thus was the Mrs. 404 born. And there was great rejoicing.* We all preferred it to the original and it has become a mainstay among our weekend cocktail choices.

Try it and see what you think.

Mrs. 404

1-1/2 ounces Gin
3/4 ounce lemon juice
3/4 ounce St. Germaine
1/2 ounce Aperol
1/2 ounce simple syrup**

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

**Simple Syrup
Equal parts water and granulated sugar, heated over a flame, and then cooled and stored in refrigerator until needed. Keeps indefinitely refrigerated in a scrupulously clean container.

*Monty Python and the Holy Grail

How to Kill E. coli on Vegetables

Monica Reinagle, The Nutrition Diva, has the answer and it is not the one that I thought I knew. Everyone ought to get this information and be sure you listen to it all.

I wondered whether these very toxic strains of E. coli might be especially hard to kill. It turns out that they’re not really that invincible—they’ve just developed some very clever survival tactics. “If these E. coli bacteria were just floating around in a bucket of water, a little bleach or even some vinegar would kill them right away,” Dr. Brackett explains. “But once the bacteria have attached themselves to the surface of a vegetable, they become much harder to kill.”

You may read or listen to her information at the link, which I heard on her podcast.

What I'm Reading: Tender by Nigel Slater (UPDATED)

Tender: Volume I: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch by Nigel Slater

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Nigel Slater transformed his back yard into a garden. Not a fantastic, provide everything he eats garden ... but the sort of garden that someone who doesn't mind some failure does. And, of course, someone who likes to cook and eat. So we reap the benefit of his observations about gardening overall and then specifically about all sorts of vegetables. With recipes.

I like Slater's informal style and also his honesty about personal quirks. For example, he is determined to be organic and yet frustrated by slugs. One of the most charming stories is about how he loves to see the little family of urban foxes that lives next door but is simultaneously driven crazy by the fact that he knows they will eat some of his most treasured plants when his back is turned ... and the fact that the cubs love to lie right next to the keep-foxes-away speakers he bought.

This is one of those books that I will read through in order while flipping around to find recipes for produce received in my CSA cooler (what Slater calls his "organic box"). For example, I just have to go pick up some bell peppers and then am going to roast them with the tomatoes I got ... and some anchovies ... or mozarella ... or black olives. Mmmmm ...

UPDATE
I also meant to praise the book itself. It is printed on good quality paper, with cloth binding, has a bound-in ribbon marker, and contains some of the most beautiful photography I have ever seen in a cookbook. If you have Kitchen Diaries, the photography and layout style is very similar, which makes it an aesthetic pleasure to pick up and read as well as to cook from.

Texas Enchilada Casserole

This year Rose didn't want to go out for her birthday dinner. She had just gotten home from Chicago and she wanted homestyle cooking ... Tex-Mex style. She wanted Texas Enchiladas.

For the uninitiated, that means cheese enchiladas in a red sauce with some chopped onion on top.

Once again, as so many times before, I have been making a simple, yet flavorful, version of this from one of Matt Martinez's cookbooks.

To make it even easier, I stack the enchiladas instead of rolling them. I've been told that this is how they do it in New Mexico, but we'll keep it simple and just call this a casserole.

Enchilada Sauce

Step 1:
1/4    cup lard, shortening or vegetable oil
1/4    cup flour

In a large skillet, heat lard to medium hot. Stir in flour and continue stirring until it turns a very light brown (3-4 minutes.)

Step 2:
1/2    teaspoon pepper
    1    teaspoon salt
    2    cloves minced garlic
    2    teaspoons ground cumin
    2    tablespoons chili powder
1/2    teaspoon oregano

Add all and continue to cook for 1 minute. Constantly stirring and blending ingredients.

Step 3:
    3    cups water or chicken broth

Add and stir until sauce thickens slightly, 1-2 minutes. Turn heat low and let simmer for 15-20 minutes. Add water if necessary to keep sauce very thin.

Texas Enchiladas

Step 1:
        Vegetable oil
    8    corn tortillas

Lightly brush tortillas on both sides with oil and heat briefly on a griddle until soft and flexible, stacking on a plate as you work.

Step 2:
    2    cups (8 ounces) grated mild cheddar
1/2    cup finely chopped white onions
    1    batch Enchilada Sauce, warm

Mix cheese and onions and set aside. Dip tortillas into sauce, fill with  cheese, roll tightly and arrange in an oven-proof dish. Spread remaining sauce on top and sprinkle with cheese. Bake 10-15 minutes at 350° until cheese is completely melted. Serve immediately.

Casserole: instead of filling tortillas with cheese and rolling them, just dip them in the sauce, lay down a layer across the bottom of a baking dish, and sprinkle with some of the cheese/onion mixture. Continue making the layers (3 or 4 depending on the size of the dish), topping with a sprinkling of cheese. Bake as above and cut in squares to serve.