So, there’s a proposal to make milk “Tennessee’s official state beverage.” It seems like a state’s beverage should be something unique to that state, like, say, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, but I suspect the milk nomination is a nod to Purity Dairies. Feel free to enjoy either Tennessee beverage with a few Orange Pistachio Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies.
I couldn’t resist when I saw the tower of these cookies in Lora Brody’s “Chocolate American Style.” That bright green pistachio crunch called my name. Pistachios and chocolate? Oh, yeah. I wasn’t sold on the orange zest and almond extract, but it turns out that they give the cookies a slightly floral aftertaste. A “what IS that?” kind of flavor that I like.
If you’re into homemade ice cream sandwiches, I’m thinking these babies would be dyn-o-mite! with a little coconut or chocolate ice cream. And I’m thinking I wish I’d thought of that before I ate the last two. Ah, well. Tomorrow is National Pistachio Day. The perfect day to bake another batch and pour another shot glass of Tennessee’s could-be state beverage.
You might ask, “Rebecca, how DO you hang on to a bounty such as Jeff?” And I would answer in three little words. Sometimes those three little words are Heath Toffee Bits. So, I was excited about this week’s Tuesday with Dorie pick: Caramel Crunch Bars.
The bars have three layers: a shortbread base topped with melted chocolate chips and a lethal smattering of toffee bits. Can’t miss, right? Well, like a newborn baby, these bars are far more appealing a few days out of the oven. They need the extra time for the flavors to meld and the shortbread to solidify so that you don’t have a crumbly mess. Although, the crumbly mess IS good on ice cream.
When I’m in the mood for a quick chili, this is my go-to recipe.
It’s your basic, spicy, beef-and-bean extravaganza with two big twists: a can of cream-style corn and a 46-ounce container of V8®. Those two ingredients give each other a superhero-style fist-bump and provide a shortcut that eliminates hours of simmering. You don’t need stock or even canned tomatoes. Just brown your beef and onion; add seasonings, beans and V8®; simmer and stir in the corn.
Thirty minutes later, you’ll have a bowl of chili that’s tasty, contains actual servings of multiple vegetables (well-hidden vegetables) and won’t sit in your gut and torture your digestive system for the next five hours. Namaste!
Roast Pork Loin is not the Bar Rafaeli of the food world. The colors photograph pretty funky, and it looks bad in a bikini. But this Barefoot Contessa recipe is still a winner. It won’t be ready in 30 minutes, but in exchange you get that amazing Sunday-supper smell for an hour and a half – and enough meat and veggies to cover lunch and/or dinner for several days.
The preparation is really simple. Just combine garlic, salt, pepper, thyme and Dijon mustard, and spread the mixture onto your pork loin. While it’s resting, preheat the oven and chop your vegetables: carrots, potatoes and onions. The recipe calls for fennel, but if you can’t find it, feel free to double-up on carrots, onions, potatoes or another favorite.
This is a great meal to make for friends, since the meat and vegetables cook at the same time, leaving you almost TWO HOURS to straighten the house, grab a shower and remember that your underwear is hanging off the ceiling fan. Or, make it and enjoy the leftovers yourself. Jeff recommends the roast pork loin sandwich. I’m partial to a little stir-fry.
I always avoided making ice cream, because I didn’t have a machine. Then I read David Lebovitz’s post on how to do it on your own, and I tried it. And lo, the scales fell from my eyes, and I was totally converted. Just prep your ice cream mixture, chill it over an ice bath, pour it into a baking dish or bowl, and pop it into the freezer. Then stir the mixture every 30 to 45 minutes until it looks suspiciously like ice cream.
For this Cocoa Nib Ice Cream, I followed the recipe from Bon Appétit up to the point where the ice cream maker comes in, and then I switched to the Lebovitz method. It worked! And it was delicious. Half the recipe’s cocoa nibs are steeped in the milk mixture and discarded. The other half are stirred in between the chilling and freezing steps. So, the ice cream has plenty of cocoa nib flavor and crunch.
But the Chocolate-Caramel Sauce is the real star of the show. First, you make a quick caramel, add cream and butter, and then stir in the chocolate. It’s the perfect chocolate-caramel blend, with neither flavor getting lost. You know how hot fudge sauce tends to sink to the bottom of a sundae? The caramel in this sauce makes it much more stubborn. It holds the sauce in place. It sits where you pour it. So, if you pour a little in your dish, add a scoop of ice cream, and pour a little more sauce on top, you’ll have the perfect sauce-to-scoop ratio. In these trying times, that’s so important.
If we were hanging out today, I’d try to bribe you with a Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcake to tell me how you really feel about all of these Best Food Blog lists.
I used to get paid to write lists. Writers love lists. No interviews to schedule and reschedule, not much outside research. You pick the Top 10 Beach Books for People Who Hate to Read or the 37 Most Annoying Lines in the History of “CSI: Miami,” do a little Googling, ask some friends for their opinions, and you’re done. That’s not to knock the food bloggers who’ve made these lists. But, when the same ones are mentioned again and again, that creates a very exclusive club and bloggers who feel pressured to copy [Insert successful blogger's name here] or drop out. Maybe it’s time for a new list, something like “The 25 Best Food Blogs You’ve Probably Never Heard Of,” to shake things up a little.
What about your blogroll? Is it your personal “Best Food Blog” list or a patchwork of blogs you visit, link-exchange buddies and bloggers everyone else lists? Do you leave off bloggers who are “too” famous? I hadn’t given mine too much thought, but it’s time for an overhaul. I read, admire and rip off way more blogs than are on my list.
P.S. Everyone’s making strawberry cupcakes right now, but these are the best I’ve tried. Moist, bright pink cakes topped with strawberry cream cheese frosting. Cream. Cheese. The cream cheese cuts the sweet and gives these cupcakes a more balanced flavor than the typical butter-and-powdered sugar icing. Pink and powerful. Like the Raging Pink Hulk.
It’s taken more than a year, but this week Tuesdays with Dorie is finally tackling the Devil’s Food White-Out Cake. The black-and-white beauty on the cover of “Baking: From My Home to Yours.” The cake of inspiration.
What, you didn’t recognize it?
A few weeks ago, Jeff’s dad, Dan, was joking about wanting a birthday cake topped with a jeep – one like his white Jeep Cherokee. He told his wife, Tina, who told Jeff, who told me that this idea needed to be on like “Donkey Kong.” So, I used this week’s Dorie recipe to make the cake, a crumbly devil’s food with a marshmallowy filling, and a batch of Rice Krispies Treats® for sculpting the jeep and rocks. Jeff sculpted, I added the fondant, and he painted the details. He had never worked with fondant. Remember how my first fondant experience looked? No? EXACTLY. It was born for the landfill. But if you peek through Jeff’s tinted windows, you can see Dan laughing at the wheel while Tina screams. The only unrealistic thing is that the rock hill should be much, much steeper.
If you’re looking for an easy cake that looks (and tastes) impressive, Dorie’s Devil’s Food White-Out Cake could be your pick. The cake is covered in its own filling and crumbs, so you don’t even need a spatula to decorate it. A keeper! For the recipe, visit Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater.
Do you know how many of my friends have announced they’re pregnant in the past week? FOUR. All due in August. Someone should probably notify the CDC. I’ve seen more sonogram pictures in the past seven days than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
So, it’s 37 degrees, but I’m thinking about all of the excitement coming this summer, hence this Lemon Chiffon Cake, an award-winner from Jen Castle of Hell’s Backbone Grill. It’s light and citrusy, like sunshine on a plate. I topped it with a lemon glaze, but if you live where the berries are ripe, this cake would be delicious with whipped cream and fresh berries. Or Cool Whip. I’m not here to judge you.
There’s so much to look forward to this summer, my mind is boggled. Showers and babies and, for the first time in a long time, I’ll be the skinny one. Jazz hands!
Before I started dating Jeff, I couldn’t stand cooking with someone else in the kitchen. But I’ve come around. For one thing, he has excellent taste in kitchen music, which means lots of dancing while you’re cooking. For another, some recipes are much easier with four hands. Like Ina Garten’s Real Meatballs and Spaghetti, one of this month’s Barefoot Bloggers recipes.
Jeff was all about this one. Meatballs with veal, pork AND beef? Yes. And it was the perfect recipe for taking his new meat grinder on its maiden voyage. He processed the sirloin roast and a half-pound of pork cut from a full pork loin in about 30 seconds. Then I mixed the meat with the ground veal and formed the meatballs. The recipe says you’ll have 14 to 16 meatballs. That’s 14 to 16 meatballs the size of billiard balls. Ina’s meatballs are no joke.
After Jeff browned the meatballs, we used the same pan to make the sauce and simmered the meatballs in the sauce for about 30 minutes. (Most of the liquid evaporates, so if you like to see the sauce on your plate, make a double batch.) The meatballs were good straight out of the pan, but they had much more flavor after soaking in the sauce overnight. With this many meatballs, it’s a good thing they get better with time.
Anyway, this Valentine’s Day, I hope you have someone to dance with in the kitchen. Here’s a song to get you started. Enjoy!
You know those candy hearts you used to get for Valentine’s Day when you were a kid? The little sugary-sweet pastel candies that taste like glue and have sayings like, “Be Mine,” “2 Cool” and “Foxy Lady”? You can create the same vibe (minus the nasty aftertaste) with these Conversation Heart Mini Cakes.
Decorate these little cakes with any message you want, and let someone know exactly how you feel about them. Why stop with a Significant Other? Give them to friends, family, kids, people who put up with your kids, bosses, teachers and kind-looking strangers. Or make them for a Valentine’s party. And go crazy coming up with messages. Get cheesy. Quote “Family Guy.” Use your favorite Old-School slang or New-School texting abbreviations. Add their names or give everyone a heart that says “World’s Best Dad.” Let your freak flag fly, my friend.
TIP: Before we get started, if you don’t want to use fondant to decorate these cakes, feel free to cover them in buttercream or ganache and decorate them with royal icing. You could even use candy, like M&M’s®, to form the letters. Feeling more relaxed? OK, let’s do this! Read More…
The cake of inspiration.
on its maiden voyage. He processed the sirloin roast and a half-pound of pork cut from a full pork loin in about 30 seconds. Then I mixed the meat with the ground veal and formed the meatballs. The recipe says you’ll have 14 to 16 meatballs. That’s 14 to 16 meatballs the size of billiard balls. Ina’s meatballs are no joke.