I print up a list of all the dishes I’ve made for the evening and have found it very helpful to refer to when people ask me, “What is this?”
Click to enlarge.
2009 Open House Menu
Crostini
I knew I wanted to serve crostini (basically toasted baguette slices) with the Torta, but after cooking solidly for a week, my brain went blank. So I opened the new Gourmet cookbook (with green titles and cover–lovely, lovely–a sad end to a fine enterprise) and looked up Ruth Reichl’s how-to’s. Saved.
Dave cut the La Brea bread baguette on an angle to get the nice shape on the slices. I set them out on a rack, brushed both sides with good-quality olive oil, then salt and peppered them (lightly). I toasted them lightly under the broiler, keeping an eye on them.
They were magnificent right out of the oven, and I ate them for my lunch. They were a little less magnificent that night, even a little soggy, after being kept (in a bowl, under plastic wrap) all day. I think it was the constant rain we had, because the next day Dave and I popped them into the toaster for just a minute, and they were back to magnificent–especially when slathered with the leftover Sun-dried Tomato and Pesto Torta.
To arrange in a bowl, first cover the bottom of the bowl with a single layer of crostini. Then, layer the slices in a circle around the edges, building up as you go, leaving the middle hollow. It looks very cool, although I have no photos to show you.
Sun-dried Tomato and Pesto Torta
I made this for the first time last December, and fought with it the whole time. Part of the problem was that I tried a shortcut, and used pesto from Trader Joe’s. Mistake. If you decide to make this, consider it like investing in a plane trip abroad: once you board, there’s no getting off until the plane’s landed. Stay with it and you’ll be rewarded with lots of compliments.
For the presentation, I garnished the top with pine nuts, set it out on my husband’s nutcracker Christmas plate up on a cake pedestal, and served it with crostini. The recipe is originally from Bon Appetit magazine, published in December 1999, and the only modification I made was to cut down on the garlic to two cloves (from the original recipe’s four cloves). I think it was a good call as it was much better this year.
You can make this up to three days ahead; be sure to start at least one day in advance.
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 2/3 cups cream cheese, room temperature (about 21 ounces)
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/3 cups drained oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes (confession: I forgot to drain the oil; it was fine). I used an 8 oz jar of julienned tomatoes from (where else?) Trader Joe’s.
1/3 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
Fresh basil sprigs
Toasted pine nuts
Crostini
Finely chop garlic in processor. Add basil, 1/4 cup pine nuts, oil and lemon juice. Process until well blended. Add 1/3 cup cream cheese and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Using on/off turns, process just until blended. Transfer pesto to medium bowl.
Coarsely chop tomatoes in processor. Add tomato paste and process until mixture is almost smooth. Add 1/3 cup cream cheese and blend well.
Using electric mixer, beat 2 cups cream cheese and butter in large bowl until fluffy. Season with salt and pepper.
Spray 6-cup soufflé dish with nonstick spray. Line with plastic wrap, extending plastic over sides. Spread 3/4 cup cream cheese-butter mixture evenly over bottom of prepared dish. Top with half of tomato mixture, then 1/2 cup cream cheese-butter mixture, then half of pesto mixture. Repeat layering with 1/2 cup cream cheese-butter mixture, remaining tomato mixture, 1/2 cup cream cheese-butter mixture and remaining pesto. Top with remaining cream cheese-butter mixture. Cover and chill overnight. (Can be made 3 days ahead. Keep refrigerated.)
Invert torta onto platter. Peel off plastic. Garnish with basil sprigs and toasted pine nuts. Serve with crostini.
Makes 20 servings.
Caramelized Onion & Apple Tart
This was perhaps my favorite new recipe of the night, found online somewhere. Purchase pre-made puff pastry (Pepperidge Farms is the one in our grocery store), top with crème fraîche, the onion/apple mixture and bake. I slid them over onto a rack to cool for a minute, then sliced it up into squares. I plan to make this one often; it’s easy and it went really quickly–both in the making of and into people’s mouths.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 and 1/2 medium onions, sliced
2 red apples (such as Braeburn or Gala), cut into very small dice
salt and pepper
2 sheets frozen puff pastry (from a 17.3-ounce package), thawed
1/2 cup crème fraîche (you can substitute sour cream, but check Trader Joe’s for the crème fraîche before you do)
Heat oven to 400º F. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Stir in the apples, some salt, a shake of pepper and cook until just tender, 2 minutes.
Place each sheet of pastry on a parchment-lined baking sheet and prick all over with a fork. Spread with the crème fraîche, leaving a one-quarter inch border. Top with the onion mixture and bake until the pastry is crisp and browned, approximately 30 minutes. Cut into pieces before serving.
Elizabeth’s Chili (via my mother)
My mother used to cook up great huge vats of chili on cold winter nights. In hindsight, as an adult, I’m sure it was a regular-sized pot, but to a child, it seemed bottomless. This was a good thing, because my mother’s chili was delicious and I loved plopping in oyster crackers, lifting up the spoonful to my mouth in a perfect combination of crunch, heat, and rich meaty-tomato taste. I hadn’t made it for a while, then our church had a chili cook-off. I brushed off her recipe, modified it, added a few things and cooked it up for the Halloween celebration.
I made it again this past week for my husband’s holiday department party, along with a series of toppings. It was very popular, surprising me. The weather that night was cold and rainy–was that it? Or is it because I’m noticing a huge trend towards all things Retro–and maybe this recipe qualifies.
I do think chili is best the next day. After you stir the beans in, cool it down, stirring often to release the heat and steam (I always pour half off into another dish to quicken the process). Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container until the next day; reheat either in crockpot or in microwave.
Ingredients:
2 Tbls. olive oil
1 pound stew meat, trimmed of most (not all) fat, and cut into half-inch (approx.) cubes
1/2 pound Jimmy Dean’s Sage sausage
1 yellow or red bell pepper, seeded and chopped into small dice
1 onion, peeled and chopped coarsely
1 large can Contadina Whole Italian Tomatoes (29 oz.)
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water (if needed)
1 Tablespoon chili powder
3 whole cloves
salt and pepper
3 small cans red kidney beans
Heat olive oil in large stewpot and brown the stew meat. Be careful not to crowd it; do in two batches if you need to. Remove to the side, then brown the sausage, with the onion and pepper. Add back the stew meat (and any juice). Chop the canned tomatoes (this is messy–keep scraping it all into the pan as you go, esp. the juices), and plop those in. Add the tomato sauce, the spices and stir well. Simmer for 2 hours, adding water if necessary. Skim the fat as it rises, if desired, or stir back in (don’t tell the Cholesterol Police!) for more flavor. Add in the drained cans of red kidney beans, add more salt and pepper if needed. Serve.
Toppings (listed in order of what was most popular):
Shredded cheese
Diced avocado, tossed with some lime juice to preserve the color
Sour Cream
Chopped green onion
Cilantro, chopped
Oyster crackers (hardly touched at all, but this was a West Coast crowd)
Note: Contadina tomatoes really do make a difference. For an experiment, I bought Hunt’s, the Contadina, and a store brand. Contadina won out by a mile in terms of color, ripeness and flavor.
Cheesy Sourdough Loaf
I stopped by our favorite little eatery, Jammin’ Bread, to pick up a loaf of their sourdough bread, as it’s flavorful, but not overwhelming, and has a good crust on it. This is another one of those recipes found online. It’s best eaten right after it’s brought out of the oven; if not, microwaving the chunks will restore the cheese to its melty consistency.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Ingredients
1 round loaf of sourdough bread, unsliced
½ yellow onion, cut into thin slivers
½ cup chopped parsley
½ pound of grated jack cheese ( one 8 ounce package)
Grate the cheese onto wax paper, then with your fingers, mix the chopped parsley, onion slivers and cheese together.
Cut bread into diagonal slices, about 1 inch apart, stopping before you cut through the bottom of the loaf.
Cut bread in the opposite direction in the same manner, creating diagonal shaped cubes, taking care not to cut through to the bottom.
Carefully stuff the space in between each cube with cheese mixture.
Wrap in heavy-duty foil and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Leave wrapped until ready to serve, but really, you should serve immediately.
Skewered Vegetables
I’m a party planner by accident, not by trade, and finding recipes mostly consists of opening every cookbook in my house and then looking online for whatever they may have. If the website’s too complicated, I skip it (no time, of course). This year for Dave’s department party, I realized we needed some vegetables but was just not up to blanching and arranging vegetables, so I went for these skewered vegetables instead.
Ingredients:
red or white-skinned baby potatoes
heirloom tomatoes (in a variety of colors)
fresh mozzerella cheese
olive oil and salt & pepper
Cook the baby potatoes in boiling salted water until just tender, about 10 minutes, then put into an ice-cube cold water bath. Pat dry, then quarter (or half them if they are really tiny).
Twisting the skewer, ease the potato on first, skin-side up, then an heirloom tomato (they’re slightly crunchy), a cube of fresh mozzerella (the old packaged kind in your grocery store is not really good for this use–get FRESH), then a sweet grape tomato. You can skewer more or less items, as you like. Place on a pan, and lightly drizzle then with olive oil, then salt and pepper. I arranged them on a platter, and nearly all were eaten.
Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake with Buttermilk Icing
One day last month when I was trolling through my Google Reader, link led to link led to a site where a librarian for the Los Angeles Library System had determined to make better use of her bundt pan, and so was posting a bundt cake a day. I found her early in the cycle and never returned, but did harvest this recipe, orginally published in November 2005 in Gourmet Magazine (may it Rest In Peace–and I was just about to subscribe to it, too!).
The other night we had three guests for dinner and I needed a quick dessert. I whipped this up (yes, it’s really easy, though the mixing of the pumpkin with the buttermilk is unconventional), drizzled the frosting over the top and it was a hit at dinner. I cut up the extra pieces, gave some away and Dave’s been taking a slice in his lunch all week.
yield: Makes 12 servings
For cake
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for greasing bundt pan
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin (from a 15-ounce can; not pie filling)
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
For icing
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
Special equipment: a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan (3 quart)
Preparation
Make cake:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease bundt pan generously, then dust with flour, knocking out excess.
Whisk together flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, and vanilla in another bowl.
Beat butter (1 1/2 sticks) and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes, then add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture and mixing until batter is just smooth.
Spoon batter into pan, smoothing top, then bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.
Make icing:
While cake is cooling, whisk together buttermilk and confectioners sugar until smooth. Drizzle icing over warm cake, then cool cake completely. Icing will harden slightly.
Cooks’ note: Cake can be made 3 days ahead and kept in an airtight container at room temperature.
Creamy Chocolate Fudge
One year I was in charge of the Universe. Just kidding. But I was in charge of a Christmas event at church which included a video broadcast and Those In Charge wanted a big turnout. So I hit on the idea of singing Christmas Carols before, then having a giant cookie feast afterward. I think desserts is always a category where church-goers excel.
The tables were covered with all different plates and kinds of cookies, and then this one tin of fudge. I slipped a piece into my mouth. Mmmm. It wasn’t the least bit sugary or dry. It was creamy with the right amount of crunch from walnuts. Manna, I thought. I watched as the hoards of children hit the first table, piling up cookies in their napkins in spite of my best-practiced Withering Glance, the swarm getting closer and closer to this Bit of Heavenly fudge. Just as the leading edge hit my section, I snatched up the tin. “No,” I said. “This is just for the adults.” I then walked around offering a piece at a time to the grown-ups, trying to locate the owner and maker of this perfection. I found her, and she sent me the recipe. So, Monique–if you’re reading this blog–many thanks!
Creamy Chocolate Fudge
1 jar (7 ounces) of marshmallow creme
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup undiluted evaporated milk
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 package (11 1/2 ounce) milk chocolate chips (~2 cups)
1 package (6 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips (~1 cup)
(Note: I have reversed the proportions of the chips on occasions for a slightly less-sweet fudge. It works fine.)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine marshmallow creme, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt; bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. BOIL FOR 45 SECONDS ONLY!! Otherwise it will be too grainy. Remove from heat and stir in chips until melted, stirring vigorously. Add vanilla and nuts and pour into buttered 9 x 13″ pan. Cool 2 hours or until firm.
Christmas Caramels
When I was nineteen several young women in my acquaintance were married and at each of their weddings was large basket of wrapped, homemade caramels. More than a few found their way into my purse for the drive home. A older woman in our church, Mrs. Woodruff, made them. She was our orthodontist’s mother, interestingly.
Right after Thanksgiving one year I called her up and asked her if she would teach me to make them. I drove up to her house, bringing the butter, whipping cream and other ingredients with me. The first thing she did was open up the cream and dump it all over the sugar. “Whoops,” she said. She shook her head. “That’s not right.” She put the pan in her pantry and said, “That’ll be for something else later on,” and we started again. I think of that now as I’m approaching her age. Just say “Whoops,” when a kitchen mistake is made, and move on.
The trickiest thing about these caramels is finding the correct pan. You need those cheapy pans from your local store–nothing fancy. They’re a little smaller than the typical baker’s half-sheet that I normally use. Known as a jelly-roll pan, it’s nice and shiny, and when it gets old, rusty and too full of cutting lines, toss it and start again.
Here’s the recipe, step by step. The version without pictures is at the bottom of this post.
Caramels
2 cups granulated sugar 1/2 pint whipping cream 1/2 cup evaporated milk (1 small –5 oz.–can) 1 small bottle clear Karo corn syrup (2 cups) 1 cube of real butter 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts 1 buttered jelly roll pan 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
First step: butter the pan. With real butter.
Combine the sugar and corn syrup. Cook until full boil and it turns a creamy color.
Add cream and evaporated milk (it will foam up; be careful, but keep stirring).
Bring to a boil, then add butter. Normally most people would know what adding butter looks like, but this picture is for my friend Judy, who loves lots of photos in her recipe steps.
Is it done yet? No. If you yank them too early, they’ll be mushy-too-soft caramels. Like your neighbor’s.
Now it’s done. Color is a good cue, but really it’s the caramel-into-the-glass-of-water test that really is the determinant.
Cook until caramel hardness (3/4 to 1 hour) keeping it at a low boil the whole time, and stirring occasionally. We test our caramel with the old-fashioned water-in-a-glass method. Drizzle a bit of the caramel into the water, feeling it into a ball, and seeing if it’s the texture of a caramel. (It doesn’t hurt to pop this sample into your mouth to see.) Don’t get the water ice cold, or you can’t figure it out. With practice, you’ll know exactly when its ready.
Remove from heat, then stir in nuts and vanilla and pour into the pan. I always pour a little bit out on one end to give to those who don’t like nuts (I place a spoon underneath the opposite edge of the pan to keep it tilted), then after adding the nuts to the main caramel batch, I pour the rest in (and remove the spoon from underneath). Let sit 24 hours, covered with a sheet of wax paper.
Cut pieces of wax paper, by ripping a three-inch strip off of the roll, then slicing into into half, then half again.
I do about 6 little strips at a time, making 24 little squares of wax paper.
Cut across the short end of the pan making a long strip about 3/8″ wide. No wider.
Cut this into about 7 equal pieces and wrap in squares of wax paper. (Mine are usually longer and skinnier than this photo shows.)
They keep for a season, if they last that long.
Merry Christmas!
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Caramels Yield: 2 1/2 pounds
Combine the sugar and corn syrup. Cook until full boil and it turns a creamy color. Add cream and evaporated milk (it will foam up; be careful, but keep stirring). Bring to a boil, then add butter. Cook until caramel hardness (3/4 to 1 hour) keeping it at a low boil the whole time, and stirring occasionally. We test our caramel with the old-fashioned water-in-a-glass method. Don’t get the water too cold, or you can’t figure it out. Drizzle a bit of the caramel into the water, feeling it into a ball, and seeing if it’s the texture of a caramel. (It doesn’t hurt to pop this sample into your mouth to see.) With practice, you’ll know exactly when its ready. Remove from stir in nuts and vanilla and pout into the pan. I always pour a little bit on one end to give to those who don’t like nuts, then after adding the nuts, I pour the rest in. Let sit 24 hours, covered with a sheet of wax paper.
Cut across the short end of the pan making a long strip about 3/8″ wide. No wider. Cut this into about 7 equal pieces and wrap in squares of wax paper. It keeps for a season, if it lasts that long.