This Journal Belongs To...

What a lovely evening. It is the first day of autumn and the air is crisp! Leaves are turning, air is cooling, and nights of tea and cozy blankets are starting up (tonight is one of those nights). I took the dog to the dog park today and it was perfect light-jacket weather. I love fall. Have I mentioned that?

I was doing some fall cleaning in the kitchen (putting away too many cookbooks that had been left out on the counters and table) when I stopped to look at our cookbook collection. Between the two of us, Kyle and I have a fun assortment ranging from stir fry books, four-star restaurant cook books, classics like the Moosewood Cookbook and the Joy, and then I saw a semi-worn cloth-spined book. I opened up to the front page and it is dated 1/6/11. It is my baker's journal that I used at work. Over time, I didn't need it as much to document what I was experimenting with or what new recipes we were going to try in the bakery, so entries got more spaced and eventually quit. I knew it was here all along, but something was calling me to page through it tonight. 

So much is in it! Hard evidence of my improvements in the kitchen! Entries about experiments and recipes for cinnamon rolls, pages with jotted recipes about scone and muffin fillings, soup recipes and ideas, catering orders I filled, notes from probably a hundred bread experiments...A slip of paper fell out of the front as I was flipping through. It was a meal I made at home and had jotted it down so I could remember and make it again (which I want to after reading it! Grilled lemon, parsley and garlic salmon topped with a poached quail egg, served with a rice salad of lemon, shallot, capers, toasted almonds and garlic and an arugula salad with a dijon dressing and hard-boiled quail eggs. Bam.) 

I love reading through old stuff. I had my mom make copies of my grandma's pickle recipes just so I can have her handwriting in my recipe box. Someday my grandchildren will come across this old green book with a tattered brown spine on a bookshelf somewhere and will open it to read about my progress in my earliest years of cooking and baking. They will have recipes and ideas that I developed, read about my struggles and triumphs in many (many) experiments, and then have recipes that I cooked for them as their grandmother. Food is all about legacy. Feeding and nourishing. Most importantly, sharing. 

                                     

One Step Closer To The Best Girlfriend Ever

I am a bad girlfriend. Well, okay. So I cook (so does he), I clean (so does he), I walk the dog when he is too tired, but do I make something that I know he loves?  Sometimes...

Kyle loves quiche. Rich, creamy, silky, tons of savory flavor, all packed into a flaky crust. I don't know why, but it isn't something I make at home. I make it at work. Sometimes I even bring a piece home for him to have for dinner when he gets home after midnight. But as good as that is, I know he wants it made in our own kitchen, making our whole home smell of its awesomeness, by my own two baker-hands, but I don't. Maybe I am just guilt-tripping myself, but still.

I don't make quiche at home.

Until now.

I found a recipe on Bon Appetit (naturally) for a roasted vegetable and goat cheese tart. "That sounds delicious" I thought. So one day, with Kyle at work and myself having the entire day off, I was deciding what I was going to cook. I looked at my pantry stock. Tons of garden-fresh vegetables, eggs, dairy, butter, and flour. And then I knew it was meant to be. The gods and goddesses above were giving me a way to redeem myself in my quiche-making, boyfriend-delighting ways. It was going to happen.

I based my recipe off of the posted BA recipe, but adapted the filling to what I had on hand. And it was delicious.

Roasted Vegetable and Goat Cheese Tart

Pastry

2c All-Purpose Flour, plus some

3/4 tsp Kosher Salt

1/2 tsp Sugar

10 Tb Unsalted Butter, chilled, cut into 1/2" cubes

Filling

4 Sweet Nardello Peppers (1 large red bell can be subbed) cut into strips

1 Medium Eggplant, peeled, in 1/2" cubes

2 Medium Heirloom Tomatoes, coarsely chopped (I love Brandy Wine tomatoes!)

3 Garlic cloves, peeled and halved

1 white onion, thinly sliced

1TB balsamic vinegar

1c Spinach

2oz Fresh Goat Cheese, crumbled

3 Large Eggs

3/4 c Half-and-Half (milk or cream can be used too)

Pastry

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pulse 2c flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor. Add butter, pulsing until a coarse meal with pieces no larger than pea-size forms. Drizzle 3TB ice water over mixture. Pulse until moist clumps form, adding more water by the tsp if dry. Gather dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic and flatten into a disk. Chilluntil firm, at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface into a 13" round. Transfer to a pie dish or a tart pan. Press dough to line the bottom and up the sides of the dish. Trim the dough leaning a slight overhang. Crimp edges and freeze for 10 minutes.

Line the dough with parchment or aluminum foil and fill with dried beans or pie weights. Bake for 25 min. Remove weights and liner. Return to oven and bake until light golden brown, 25-30 minutes longer. Cool.

Filling

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Toss peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic with 1-2 TB olive oil, a large pinch of salt, and 10 cranks of freshly ground pepper. Place in a 9x9 baking dish and roast until soft and caramelized, approx 45-60 minutes. Avoid burnt and charred edges by stirring every 15 minutes or so. In a skillet, heat 1 tsp olive oil. Saute onions until golden and soft (it is a dry pan without much oil, so take care to keep stirring and cook the onions with heat, not just oil). Once onions are golden and soft (5-7 minutes), add the balsamic vinegar. Cook for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Putting It All Together

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In the cooled crust, evenly spread the spinach. Over that evenly scatter the cooled roasted vegetables and then the goat cheese. In a medium bowl, combine eggs, half-and-half, a pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper. Whisk for 2 minutes (you know a baker by their muscles. 2 minutes may not seem like a long time, especially with such a small amount of whisked product, but you just might feel a little burn here!). Pour the egg mixture into the crust. Bake until the filling is set and the pastry is golden brown, approx. 50-60 minutes. Let sit for at least 10 minutes once it comes out of the oven before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature.

For dinner I served the tart with Eggplant Parmigiana Soup (I wrote the recipe for work, so I feel like that recipe should be kept in my brain...I will tell you it is a delicious soup with lots of chunky tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, fresh basil, garnished with freshly grated parmesan cheese...it was my brain child of a soup in the beginning of my recipe writing days, and one that I am proud of, for sure). Along the side of the tart and soup was a spinach salad with toasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, crumbled goat cheese, and a honey-balsamic vinaigrette. Quite tasty combination, if I do say so myself.

The best thing about this tart is that you can play with the filling! Switch out the roasted vegetables for 1 1/2c broccoli and 1/2c cheddar! Roast up some zucchini with garlic and throw in some tomatoes and smoked provolone! Or do lots of mushrooms, caramelized onions and a nice gouda or gruyere! Anything you wish or dream! Ahh, the beauty of food and making what you want...I would keep it to around 2c of filling, but like I said, ahh, the beauty of making what you want...

As much as I cook at home, I don't do a whole lot of pastry, so this was a good exercise to keep my skills sharp and to reassure myself that "Yes I Can". And I think it is written somewhere that you have to eat pastry at home at least every so often...So I guess I am just being an abiding life citizen by making and eating it. And by finally making my boyfriend quiche at home. 

Butter, flour, roasted garden veggies, goat cheese.

That is love, right there. 

Fall = Cobbler Season!

I love fall. I love the cool breeze with the warm sun. I love the colors. I love the smells. I love the transition of it all. I love going to the apple orchard for my birthday and picking too many apples just because I have to have some of all of the types I like. I love bonfires and sweatshirts/sweaters. I love the food.  Late-summer produce is in full swing, early fall things are making their first appearances at the Farmer's Market, and I am a happy camper.

Blueberries are still in season! Kyle's parents went picking and brought us a big Tupperware full of the little balls of blue/purple tart zingers. I have been eating them on vanilla bean frozen yogurt with a dash (or twelve) of cinnamon for dessert and I am far from sick of it. I also just bought a spaghetti squash at the Farmer's Market to play with (I have never eaten that type of squash before, so its playtime for Annie!!). I also got the season's first pears at the market! So. Excited. Who doesn't like pears?! Warm crisp fruit flavors combined with cinnamon and ginger? Yes, please.

Pears actually remind me of Thanksgiving in Kindergarten. We had a school-wide Thanksgiving Feast where each classroom had a different food to offer. My class had Cranberry Sauce. Nobody in my class (or any other kid we knew) even liked the stuff, so making it and taking turns stirring it in the Crock-Pot before we had to carry it and share it with everyone in the gym was NOT a proud cooking moment for us (years later I would wish that I had that recipe...). Anyhow, pears! We were told that since we were feasting in the morning, to not eat a large breakfast. I love breakfast. So I ate. All I remember eating was a pear that I cut up into small pieces so it didn't look like a whole pear so my stomach would still have room for turkey and stuffing. Needless to say, I was more full than my plan had meant for me to be and I was not able to partake in as much of the feast as I would have liked. I had room for everything but the cranberry sauce. Pity.

Back to the present.

So I had these pears from the market and 'hand-picked with love' blueberries. I had a kitchen day to make some olive walnut sourdough bread and wanted to make something for dessert (which I don't make often enough). Being one of the first fall-feeling days, I decided to make a cobbler. When I fed this to Kyle after he got home from work, the reaction I got was convincingly positive; "This is f[lipp]ing awesome and you can make this any f[lipp]ing time you want". I think I will.

                                                                                                              Blueberry Pear Cobbler

3c fresh (or frozen) blueberries

3c peeled and thinly sliced pear

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2c brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp freshly grated fresh ginger

1c flour

1/2c sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 c chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4" cubes

1 egg

2 TB cream

1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste (extract is fine too)

Combine fruit, lemon juice, brown sugar, cinnamon and ginger in a medium bowl, stirring until everything is evenly distributed. Put mixture into a greased pie plate. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar and salt-whisk to combine. Cut in butter with a pastry cutter (a fork will work too) until it looks like coarse corn meal and no butter pieces exceeding the size of a pea. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Pour egg, cream and vanilla in well and stir until just combined. Spoon the dough on top of the fruit mixture. Put pie plate on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.

Serve warm with whipped cream (I hand-whisked mine- 1/4c heavy cream, 1 TB powdered sugar, 1/8 tsp vanilla bean paste and WHISK LIKE MAD until it holds a peak)

Try this with other fruits too!! Pears or apples would work marvelously!

 I am GOING to make this cobbler again subbing in apples for the pears and blueberries once I go apple picking for my birthday...

In Minnesota We Sure Do Like Our Hotdish. Even When We Eat South of the Border.

How the heck did it get to be September? School is starting soon, temperatures are consistently under 90, apples are coming into season (or are already here given this year and it's early produce seasons), fall food is on the mind, and it still feels like summer just started (three months ago, I guess...). Change and transition are in the air. It is always a smell that makes me a little antsy with anticipation, sometimes nervous because of the change in routine, but this season I am soaking it all in. Learning from it. Learning to love it and the idea of the unknown that it brings (internal dialogue happening here). Bring on the change to the new and coming season.

New seasons mean new foods, new flavors. I have been meaning to try a tamale pie after I read a recipe on the Bon Appetit website, so this past week I went for it. I based my recipe on the B.A. recipe, but made it my own in my own fresh and delicious ways.  I had the afternoon to myself in the kitchen, and thank goodness for a stocked pantry! I cranked up my tunes, got my bare feet ready to dance in the kitchen, and got to making my Polenta Tamale Pie.

Polenta Tamale Pie

1 lb ground free-range turkey

1/2 red or yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 red/yellow/orange bell pepper, chopped

1 1/2 TB chili powder

1 TB cumin seed, toasted and ground

1 1/2 c cubed fresh tomato (1 can unsalted diced tomato can be used)

2 ears sweet corn, kernels cut from the cob (or 1c frozen)

1 1/2 c cooked black beans (1 can low sodium black beans, drained and rinsed can be used)

1c vegetable broth

1/2 c fresh cilantro, chopped and divided

2 1-lb rolls prepared polenta, sliced into 1/3 inch slices (15 slices per roll)

1-1 1/2c grated pepper jack cheese

In a large frying pan, saute the turkey over medium-high heat until no pink remains. Transfer the meat to a bowl, keeping juices in the pan. Return pan to heat. Add onions, garlic and pepper. Saute until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add meat, spices, tomato, beans, corn and broth to the pan and simmer until broth reduces, about 7-10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in half of the chopped cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spray your favorite 3 qt baking dish (about 9 x 15 x 3) with non-stick cooking spray. Layer half of the polenta slices on the bottom of the pan (3 slices by 5 slices laid perfectly in my pan). Layer the bean and meat mixture over polenta. Evenly sprinkle on half of the cheese, followed by the rest of the polenta slices, then the rest of the cheese. At this point you can cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake freshly assembled pie, uncovered, until heated through and sauce bubbles, about 35 minutes. If pie was refrigerated, bake covered with foil for 20 minutes, then uncover and bake until heated through, about 35 more minutes. Sprinkle the rest of the cilantro on top before serving!

I happened to have 2 rolls of polenta on hand, but if you don't, try making your own polenta to layer on the top and bottom of the pie! Yum!

This was a sure hit at my house. It made for excellent left-overs and the fact that I had the option of making it a day ahead of time made it an option for middle-of-the-work-week dinners. I felt good about serving this because it was made with a free-range meat that was lean and low in saturated fats and cholesterol, no added oils to cook in the entire recipe, and it wasn't overly cheesy like some hotdishes can get. It wasn't a greasy Mexican meal that would leave me over-full and wishing I had eaten less. It was full of flavor and was quite satisfying-enough to satisfy the burger-loving man of the house (he didn't know it was turkey until I told him, so contrary to popular belief, ground turkey is full of great flavor if you get a quality meat).

Whew. Done with my nutrition analysis! I was just really excited to have a healthful meal that had BAM to it. The accompanying margarita had some BAM to it too. De-lish. 

So let's raise our forks full of hotdish and our margarita glass to the coming end of summer; to that awesome in-between time before fall is in full swing passing quickly to early winter; to transition.

Cheers!

Annie