On Cooking

Michael Ruhlman, one of my favorite bloggers and cookbook authors, wrote a great post recently on the message being sent to Americans today that cooking is hard, or that we are just "too stupid to cook." Read the post here, and get cooking! I promise it's not hard!

Mmm... Pancakes!

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was a fabulous cast iron grill pan from Wright. It has grill marks on one side and a flat surface on the other - perfect for pancakes!

I briefly mentioned my experiment with apple cinnamon pancakes a few weeks ago. Though they were certainly delicious, they were not nearly as wonderful as the version we made this weekend, on the new griddle. With much more surface area and no awkward sides to prevent smooth flipping, this new kitchen toy proved extremely valuable.


Truth be told, this winter was the first time I'd made pancakes without Bisquick. I'd never knock it, since I grew up eating delicious pancakes made with it, but I'd cut out a recipe for pancake batter from the New York Times Magazine a year or so ago, so I thought I'd give it a go. It was much easier to make than I expected (almost as easy as Bisquick!) and turned out to be delicious - especially as an apple cinnamon variation.

Simple Pancake Batter - makes enough to serve four
Adapted from Marion Cunningham, NY Times Magazine 10/9/08

7 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon plus 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1. Melt butter and milk together in a small saucepan, then set aside to cool.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
3. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs. Slowly beat in a small amount of the butter/milk mixture, then gradually add the rest.
4. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients, just until combined. It should be a little bit lumpy and bubbly.
5. Do the usual pancake thing - butter the griddle, pour out the pancakes, flip when they bubble, etc.

For an apple cinnamon variety, replace one egg with 1/2 cup of applesauce (or one of those small containers), and add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg to the dry ingredients. Top with walnuts for further excitement!

Christmas Cake

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had fun and restful holidays. I'm excited to get back to cooking and blogging - I got a lot of great kitchen gifts that I'm eager to try out and tell you about. Before I get to the presents I received, however, I want to tell you about the gift I gave my parents.

For the first time, my boyfriend and I decided to spend Christmas together, with both of our families. This meant complicated flights (my family is in New York, his in Florida), multiple Christmas meals, and some sacrifices on both ends. We planned to spend Christmas Eve with my family and spent Christmas Day with his (key word planned).

Anyway, this all meant that I'd be missing Christmas Day at my house, which my mom hosts every year and includes a cocktail party with friends and a big dinner with family. So for a gift, I decided to bake a special dessert for everyone to have on Christmas Day. It would take a load off Mom's cooking schedule as well as remind them that I'd be thinking of them during dinner. Yes, cheesy, but also a lot of fun to put together and plan for!

I picked out a pretty red cake stand at Williams-Sonoma, so that there'd be a lasting gift involved. Then I set about to finding a cake to make - it was time to put my baking "skills" to the test! I changed my mind about 47 times, but kept coming back to Smitten Kitchen's Almond Raspberry layer cake. It was a big, three layer cake that would be impressive and special, plus my family loves raspberries. It definitely wasn't that Christmas-y of a dessert (probably fell more into the category of birthday cake), but I decided to ignore that fact and push on.

For the frosting, I wanted to do vanilla, as I'm not really a chocolate frosting person (not that I would be eating the cake, but this is the way I think). I settled on Magnolia Bakery's Vanilla Buttercream recipe, which was easy and delicious - plus it stored well at room temperature for a few days (Recipe below).

So. Once I'd picked out everything, the hard part came. How in the world to make this. It took me a while to figure everything out, but in brief: I made the three cake layers five days in advance at my apartment using an extra cake pan borrowed from Lea. I wrapped them super tight and put them in the freezer. I made the frosting three days in advance at my apartment, put it into two air tight containers and kept them at room temperature. Everything was transported to my parents' house on the 23rd and appropriately hidden. On the 24th, I took advantage of the one hour my parents were out of the house to assemble and frost the cake, including the raspberry layers and the writing, which I did with melted chocolate chips. Upon their return, I surprised them with it, then promptly covered it in saran wrap to keep it fresh until the next day.

And? It was a success, if I do say so myself. And I can say so myself, because with a canceled flight, I actually got to eat it!!

Even my brother liked it!

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
Adapted from Magnolia Bakery

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
6 to 8 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon almond extract (substituted for 2 teaspoons vanilla)

Using an electric mixer, blend the butter with 4 cups of the powdered sugar, the milk, and the extract. Once combined, gradually blend in powdered sugar (1/2 cup or so at a time) until you reach a desired consistency. Store in airtight container at room temperature.

This Weekend We Made (and ate)...

Crispy Latkes with homemade applesauce...

Delicious (and decorative!) Christmas Cookies at Kate's...

Apple Cinnamon pancakes with walnuts...

And homemade pasta with bolognese sauce.

Needless to say, I had a salad for lunch.

Note: latke picture not our latkes, we were too hungry to photograph, as usual.

Tyler Florence's Chicken

When I first became interested in cooking, I painstakingly relied on recipes - following them exactly and panicking if I did something wrong. I gradually stepped off that train and began to experiment, using various recipes as foundations for my own cooking. I wasn't whipping up anything particularly special on my own, but generally I could make a meal out of whatever I had in the refrigerator and it would taste all right. It felt like an accomplishment.

I like this confidence of being able to do things without recipes, but recently I've started to miss them. Often I'll look up a recipe that sounds delicious, but start substituting ingredients so quickly and ferociously that the dish turns out nothing like what I'd originally found compelling about the recipe. Also, there's the flavor issue. I've gotten the hang of a handful of different flavor combinations, which is great, but pretty quickly all of my food kind of tastes the same. I mean, it tastes good, but I'm not exactly challenging myself.

Alas, I'm trying to turn back to recipes, try out some techniques that I haven't tried before, break out some spices I haven't used before, and keep learning. I think this ebb and flow of recipe use and non recipe use is important. Doing things on your own gives you confidence and helps you nourish the things you've learned so that they become second nature. But challenging yourself with recipes brings in new ideas, flavors, and techniques that you otherwise might not step out of the box to try.

I didn't particularly challenge myself by deciding to make Tyler Florence's [quite simple] Roasted Chicken with Mushrooms, Rosemary, and Shallots, but following his recipe reminded me why it is important to follow recipes. I looked through his cookbook and was drawn to this page, both because the picture looked delicious and because I already had mushrooms. Now, I could have closed the book, picked up some shallots, and done it my way, just using his basic flavor principle. But I kept the book open and followed along, and I'm glad I did, because there are about three steps I would have added in there had I been doing this on my own. I also would have used a lot more olive oil, which definitely would not have been necessary. So thank you, Tyler, for reminding me to follow along and trust you, rather than falling back on dishes I've made before.

Roasted Chicken with Mushrooms, Rosemary, and Shallots
Adapted from Tyler Florence

1/2 chicken, in parts (I cut it up myself, you could also just use two bone-in breasts)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and Pepper
3 shallots
Handful of mushrooms (I used button)
5 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 lemon
1/4 cup white wine

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Heat up a pan on medium-high and add oil once hot. Salt and pepper both sides of your chicken pieces, then add them to the pan, skin side down. Do not touch them, just let them brown for about 5 minutes. They will sizzle loudly, if all is going well.
3. Slice mushrooms. Prep shallots by cutting in half vertically (you can then cut into quarters if using large ones).
4. Once chicken has browned, place it into a roasting dish (or, if you are using an oven proof pan, just flip it over in the pan and use that). Add your vegetables and the rosemary. I tore up one spring and spread it around, then just placed the others on top. Add a little pepper on top of the whole pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the chicken has cooked through and the vegetables are soft and roasted.
6. Remove everything from the pan, and make a quick sauce by heating it on the stovetop and adding the juice of one lemon and the white wine. Stir with a wooden spoon to get all of the caramelized bits off as you bring it to a boil and then to a simmer. Let it reduce until thick, or until you are so hungry you can't take it anymore. Let me tell you, this dish will make your apartment smell amazing!

By the way, the picture is from before the dish went into the oven. I was too hungry to snap photographs after.