Christmas 2012 Baking - December 2012

Okay, let's do this. Time to get the Christmas baking from 2012 off of my "to blog" list. These first two you should recognize from last year. Peppermint bark and Cardamom Crescents. They are delicious and fairly easy to make. Perfect for the busy Christmas season (and it was BUSY this year!).

Next up is this lovely Orange Cardamom Bundt Cake.  We received the most beautiful box of citrus from Greg and JJ this year.  When it arrived at our doorstep, I nearly cried I was so excited.  Our box had a lovely organic assortment, including stem and leaf clementines, satsuma mandarins, rio star grapefruit, and fukumoto navel oranges.  I can't think of a more luxurious gift to get in the middle of a cold and snowy Minnesota December than a box of warm and sunny California citrus.  Along with the fruit, a newsletter with the recipe for this cake was included.  I replaced the canola oil with coconut oil, but otherwise kept everything the same.  We brought this with us to Madison (unglazed) to share with Greg and JJ on our December visit.  It was amazing.

This delectable Scandinavian recipe is from the December 2012 Bon Appetit magazine and I had the perfect opportunity to make it for Anna and Tom's New Year's Eve visit.  Fyrstekake is a Norwegian Cardamom-Almond tart and I can tell you that it is crazy good.  After a brief and chilly cross country ski outing to Theodore Wirth Park, the four of us returned to our house for cassoulet, and fyrstekake by the fire, complete with a New Glarus beer tasting flight.  A perfect way to ring in the New Year, if you ask me.

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And finally, these are the Butterfinger truffles that I never got around to making last year.  I am happy that I made these up this year.  Truffles are great because they offer a decadent and elegant chocolate option on your cookie plate, but they are no-bake, and thus require very little effort.  In other words, they are a good bang for your buck.

Whew, I feel better now that this is blogged.  Thank you for indulging me in this tardiness.  Even though this is way past due, I like to have it chronicled here so I can check back and see what I did "last year" for the holidays.  

Homemade Irish Cream - March 17, 2013

For St. Patrick's Day this year, in addition to our home-cured corned beef, I made some Irish cream.  My mom has made this recipe for years, although oddly, usually at Christmas, instead of St. Patrick's Day.  My Irish heritage that I proudly claim every March 17th (and every other day of the year), comes from mom.  She even has a suitably Irish name, Colleen.  Because of this, in my family we refer to this as Colleen's Irish Cream.




This is a full two weeks late, I realize, but you've come to expect that from me by now.  In fact, I'm jumping ahead here, as I still have my Christmas baking to post.  Oh well, this doesn't have to be a one day per year indulgence, although after you see the ingredients, you may want to limit it to that.  Nick's parents and Aunt Judy were visiting us over the St. Patrick's Day weekend this year, so we all enjoyed a glass of this after our dinner.

Here's the recipe straight from Colleen, with a few Jess tweaks:

Irish Cream

4 eggs*
1 15oz  can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/3 C Irish whiskey
1 1/2 C half and half
1/4 C brewed espresso
3 Tbsp chocolate syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp coconut extract
1/4 tsp almond extract

Place all ingredients in blender (warning, this didn't all fit in my blender, so I omitted the whiskey and mixed it in later) and blend to combine.  Place in a bottle and keep chilled.  Shake before serving.

*yes, raw eggs, so use at your own risk.  These help to emulsify all the ingredients and make it thicker and richer, like ice cream.  If you are squeamish about this ingredient, you can omit it and still have a delicious, if slightly thinner, Irish cream. 

Cowboy Christmas Breakfast

Yeah, that's right.  While other Dinner Clubbers are posting seasonally appropriate dinners, I'm still working on Christmas brunches.  My cooking, and thus blogging, has been frustratingly uninspired of late, the worst kind of writers' block (cookers' block?).  Nevertheless, Jaime's recent posting has guilted me into at least trying to get back into the swing of things.

This recipe is from Gourmet, and we made it back in December, on our holiday visit to Madison.  It need not, however, be reserved for Christmas.  Case-in-point, we also made in on our February visit to Milwaukee to see Dinner Clubbers Matt and Nikki.  It serves a crowd and can be put together the night before, which is a valuable morning time saver.  Possibly a good choice for Easter brunch?  Bam!  See how I brought this old brunch post up to date? 

St. Patrick's Day Corned Beef - March 17, 2013

Inspired by Jess's home corned beef last year, I decided to try my hand at it this year. I earmarked and hoarded the brisket from our Polyface grassfed beef larder all winter, then mixed up a brine per Michael Ruhlman's directions, and stashed the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator for about a week. It was particularly nice that St. Patrick's Day fell on a weekend this year so I had plenty of time to do a slow stovetop braise.

I have never been much of a fan of cabbage, but I learned this year that it was just because I'd been cooking it the wrong way all my life! Boiled cabbage = putrid. Roasted cabbage = delicious! So delicious in fact, that I had to stop myself from eating it all (and suffering the consequences later... even roasted it still has some "magical, musical" properties). I also roasted a few carrots, since at that point I still wasn't sure I'd like the roasted cabbage and wanted to make sure I had something to eat.

Not pictured are the red potatoes I boiled for Richie, the horseradish sour cream I made from homemade yogurt and Penzey's horseradish powder, and the grain free Irish soda bread that rounded out the meal.

All together it was a delicious meal. I had vague intentions of making some kind of hash with the leftovers, but they didn't make it that long. Next year, maybe I'll order an extra brisket and make two!

GG's Tea Party - Nov 23, 2012

Chicken Mandarin Orange Spread Sandwiches

This is slightly out of order, but since I'm still playing catch up from two months ago, I'm not too worried about it.  These pictures are from a birthday party for Nick's Grandma, known affectionately as GG, held the day after Thanksgiving.  GG turned 90 this year and we celebrated in style.

Cucumber-Salmon-Watercress Sandwiches

Specifically, we had an afternoon tea party where hats, of any kind, were required.  Nick and I were in charge of organizing the finger sandwiches for the party.  Nan wanted four different kinds, one of them being a pimento cheese sandwich, because it's not a Southern tea party without the pimento cheese sandwiches.

Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

Nick and I picked out three other recipes from this list.  A grocery list was compiled between Nick and me in Minnesota, and Chip and Nan in South Carolina.  Some math was required, but Nick and Chip are good guys to have on your team when that happens.  We got the numbers figured out without incident.  Nick's parents did the shopping, plus pimento cheese making, and Nick and I did the prep work (making the chicken and salmon salads, plus the compound butter for the ham sandwiches) Thursday evening, once the Thanksgiving feast had been cleared from the kitchen.

Party Ham Sandwiches

Then, bright and early Friday morning, a whole crew of family and friends gathered around the kitchen island. Uncles worked next to nephews, sisters worked next to brothers, fathers-in-law worked next to cousins, nieces worked next to girlfriends, and everybody pitched in to make hundreds of tiny tea sandwiches in record time.  We had so much help, in fact, that I had nothing to do besides answer the random question and stand back and admire the flurry of activity, as inside jokes and friendly barbs flew back and forth across the counter.  The rookies were included into the fold as though they had always been there, and the whole, wild and crazy assortment of family members became a happy, and quite efficient, team.   It was my favorite moment of the whole weekend.

Stuffing with Roasted Winter Squash - Nov 28, 2012

The other downside to never hosting Thanksgiving is that we never have those wonderful leftovers stocking our refrigerator.  The Thanksgiving stuffing is my favorite.  Nick's dad makes great stuffing, but my favorite is the stuffing I grew up with.  I should probably get that recipe from my Mom at some point. 

This was my attempt at recreating my childhood food memory.  I think I may have used a Mark Bittman recipe, but I'm sure that I made enough tweaks to it that he wouldn't recognize it as his.  I know I added a lot more chicken broth than the recipe called for, but my end result was still too dry. 

Yes, I must make it a priority to get Mom's recipe. 

Along with our slightly dry stuffing, I roasted a little winter squash, which Nick and I split between the two of us.  I made it in the pressure cooker, my new favorite way to cook squash (10 minutes!).  Even sub-par stuffing is delicious.

Winter Greens Gratin - Nov 27, 2012

Since Nick and I usually travel for Thanksgiving, I tend to spend the following week cooking things that I would have made for dinner, had I been cooking it.  This recipe caught my eye in the December 2012 issue of Bon Appetit (which I thought was a great issue).  I made it with a motley assortment of greens from our CSA farm and it turned out deliciously.  It was a great use for all those hearty winter greens that show up in our box, that I'm not always sure what to do with.  Thanks to this recipe, I won't have that problem anymore.  This is a rich and satisfying meatless main dish, no turkey needed!

Pumpkin Pie Hors d'Oeurvers - November 16, 2012

Nick and I never host Thanksgiving.  We usually spend that holiday with Nick's parents, who, quite frankly, can cook the pants off of Thanksgiving dinner.  The one downside is that we rarely get to prepare any of those fun Thanksgiving foods.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've never cooked a turkey in my life.  Luckily, this year my sister and brother in law hosted a little pre-Thanksgiving happy hour at their new home, aptly coined "Dranksgiving."  Natalie said I could bring some appetizers to share.



I decided to make single serving pumpkin pies (and bacon-wrapped Brussels sprouts, but I didn't snap a photo of those).  After searching around a bit to find the proper method, I ended up making these in muffin tins.  I used my traditional pie crust recipe, listed below, and the pumpkin pie filling recipe from my "Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book."  Aside from being very tedious, these were just like making a normal sized pumpkin pie.  I did have to keep a close eye on them while baking, because I wasn't sure how long they would take.  As you can see, the middles totally caved in, which may have been due to mis-calculating said baking time.  It was nothing, however, that a little home-made whipped cream couldn't hide.

This was a fun afternoon project, but the real fun came at Dranksgiving, our kick-off to the holiday season.  I hope Nat and Jamie make it an annual event!

Double Crust Pie Pastry

2 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 Cup unsalted butter (cold)
1/3 Cup lard (cold)
6-7 Tbsp cold water

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the salt and flour.  Add butter and lard and pulse until you have pea-sized pieces.  Add one Tbsp of cold water at a time, pulsing after each addition, until the dough is just moistened (it should still be very crumbly).  Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and form into two equally sized balls.  Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 20-30 minutes.  Roll out as needed for your pie recipe.

For more mini-pie inspiration see here, and here

Folly Beach - June 30-July 7, 2012

Hello Dinner Clubbers!  I hope you all had a good 4th.  Nick and I just got back from Folly Beach, SC where we spent a week with Nick's family.  We had a lovely and relaxing holiday filled with days at the beach, drinking lots of beer (and margaritas), and enjoying some local, Southern food.



For the first time, I tried boiled peanuts.  This locally loved snack is sold at many a roadside stand in South Carolina, and we got ours from one called Fat Boys.  JJ and Greg picked the Cajun flavored variety and we brought them home and dug in.  These guys get a bad rap up north, but I really enjoyed them.  I think the problem is that we Yankees associate peanuts only with "nuts" and not with the legumes they actually are.  Understandably, a soggy nut does not sound appetizing, but If you approach these like you do edamame, it's a much more pleasant experience.  I thought these guys tasted a lot like cooked red kidney beans, and their delightful starchiness tasted delicious with the mildly spicy Cajun seasoning.  And with a beer.

 

Sadly, our rental beach house did not come supplied with the glass mason jars I'd dreamt of for our Southern drinking experience.  It's just as well I suppose, since glass is not allowed on the beach (but beer is.  Folly Beach is the only beach in the Low Country that allows alcohol consumption...for now).  Instead, we used these little, plastic stemmed glasses with our names written on blue painters tape.  Nick and Greg made sure that we had loads of great craft brews to drink all week, filling growlers up at places like the Charleston Beer Exchange, the James Island Piggly Wiggly, and the Folly Beach Brew Pub.   




Since they are experiencing a local crab shortage (this is a shell JJ found on the beach), we limited our local seafood consumption to shrimp.  It was caught fresh daily and the best I've ever had.  I plan on posting about some of the things we used it for later in the week.

New Year's Eve Dinner - Dec 31, 2011

While Jaime welcomed 2012 with prime rib, we said good-bye to 2011 with a New Year's Eve dinner of fish. Steelhead trout to be exact. This year's dinner was a group effort, with Nick cooking the fish, along with the parsnip mash topped with caramelized onions, both of which were delicious. I made the wild rice side, which included dried cranberries, toasted hazelnuts, and a mustard vinaigrette. And Kate, who was our lone remaining house guest post-Christmas holiday, made dessert.



This is Devil's Food Cake with Black Pepper Boiled Icing, which is a recipe from Bon Appetit's September 2011 issue. Kate whipped this up from scratch, in an unfamiliar kitchen, with sub-par tools (I am not much of a baker, my friends, and as such, do not have all the equipment needed for this precision craft...like a third cake pan and a high-quality candy thermometer). Of course, the cake was amazing (as is Kate), and I was excited that my little kitchen torch got some use.

All-in-all, it was a wonderful send off to 2011!

New Year's Day Dinner - January 1, 2012

It has become a Hartman tradition to have a prime rib roast for some holiday each year. The first time was for Thanksgiving, but then we started going up to New York to spend the holiday with family. A couple years we did it on Christmas Eve Eve, before leaving for Florida the next morning... but that meant that the delicious leftovers languished in the fridge for a week and that was a serious shame! So this year it finally occurred to me that it would be appropriate to usher in the new year with a lavish prime rib dinner. Nothing like setting the right tone for the year to come!

This year I went all out, following the full set of directions in the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe (recipe here reprinted on Robert Mondavi Wines website) for making a prime rib roast with au jus and Yorkshire puddings. I failed to take my own picture, but here is the one from that site. Mine looked pretty much exactly like that... right down to the brussel sprouts that I roasted while the puddings were baking.

The only variation I had to make was that I couldn't find oxtails at either of the grocery stores I visited on New Year's Day morning (nothing like a last minute!) and ended up substituting neck bones, based on a suggestion I found via a quick Google on my smartphone.

For dessert I took the bag of frozen peaches from our tree I'd forgotten about and a bag of frozen raspberries I also found languishing in the freezer and turned to one of the cookbooks I asked for this Christmas after seeing it referenced in so many of my favorite cooking blogs, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion Cookbook. A quick perusal of the index and I located a recipe for a Peach-Raspberry Cobbler. Substitute arrowroot starch for the corn starch it called for, and it was perfect!

I also used one of my new toys to make some absolutely delicious corn-free homemade vanilla ice cream. I did remember to snap a very quick picture before it melted into a puddle.

Christmas Baking - Dec 23, 2011

Cardamom Crescents

Merry Christmas Dinner Clubbers! It seems we all have cookies on our minds around here!  I, too, have been doing a spot of baking in preparation for the Christmas holiday. I usually make traditional German Christmas cookies, but this year I decided to try something different. I've already made two batches of the delicious cardamom crescents. The first had me follow the recipe almost exactly, but for a small mistake I made by pulsing the pecans with granulated sugar in the food processor, rather than the powdered sugar called for in the recipe. They actually turned out so well that I repeated that 'mistake' in my second batch. The second batch also saw me adjust the cinnamon to cardamom ratio, since in the first batch the cinnamon seemed to overpower the more delicate cardamom flavor. I love cardamom, so in order for it to shine as the premier flavor, I replaced the cinnamon with more cardamom and simply added a dash of Penzey's Vietnamese Extra Fancy Cinnamon so as not to omit it completely. Both batches are delicious, but I'm a bit more partial to the second.


Rosemary-Lemon Shortbread

Next, I made some rosemary-lemon shortbread. Rosemary and lemon are two of my favorite winter flavors. They remind me of time spent in Northern California visiting Nick's brother and sister-in-law when they lived there. One Christmas, Greg and JJ were living in a house with a giant Meyer Lemon tree in the backyard and they sent a big bag of the happy, yellow fruit home to Minnesota with us. It was my first introduction to this delicious citrus fruit and I've been hooked ever since. They taste like sunshine on a snowy winter day. This recipe is one I've adapted from a Rosemary-Lemon Sandwich Cookie recipe in the February 2008 issue of Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. It's a basic shortbread recipe flavored with lemon zest and chopped fresh rosemary leaves. To really bring out the lemon flavor, I've replaced the vanilla with fresh squeezed lemon juice. It works fine to use regular lemons for this, but Meyer lemons give it an extra special flavor. These little guys are so good on their own that I've never felt the need to make the mascarpone cheese filling.

I am also going to make a batch of the Butterfinger truffles from December 2011's Bon Appetit, since Nick is a huge fan of that particular candy bar. Chocolate seems like just the right thing to complete this year's cookie offerings, don't you think?

A very Happy Christmas to you and yours! I hope your holidays are delicious.

Holiday Cookies - December 23, 2011

Happy Festivus, Dinner Clubbers! Let the airing of grievances commence!

In addition to Festivus, today is "prepare-for-holiday-travels" day in the Hartman house, which included assembling cookie tins to bring our family and friends. I've been baking cookies and treats all December and stashing them in the freezer. I've rather enjoyed playing around in the kitchen and am grateful for the excuse to try out new sweet treats!

Almost every recipe this year was a new one, with the exception of the sugar cookie cutouts and the toffee bars I made on the last minute since I realized there was no chocolate represented among the selection. The sugar cookies and frosting are my sister's recipe and I make them every year without any modification. I'm pretty sure she got the recipe from someone else, but in her binder of recipes it doesn't indicate the source so I'm now going to give her credit. I love how the directions are so streamlined and assume this all pretty much common sense!

Lisa's Traditional Sugar Cookies

Ingredients
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions
Mix thoroughly, cover and chill for 1 hour. Roll dough 1/8 inch thick, cut into shapes. Bake for 6-8 minutes at 400 degrees.

Lisa's Vanilla Butter Frosting

Ingredients
1/3 cup unsalted butter (soft)
3 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk

Directions
Blend butter and sugar. Stir in vanilla and milk. Beat until frosting is smooth. Color as desired.

The other cookie recipes came primarily from two sources: the cookie spread in our Washington Post food section a few weeks ago and the cool cookie Advent calendar on Saveur's website. All were good, some outstanding!

Swiss Raspberry-Filled Sandwich Cookies

Coconut Cookies (modified to use coconut oil instead of butter)

Cherry Pistachio Oatmeal Cookies

Spiced Cranberry-Orange Zingers

White Chocolate, Cherry and Almond Cookies

Cardamom Scented Spritz Cookies (recipe from cookie press manual)

Toffee Bars (recipe from old Betty Crocker Cookbook)

A note for making cookies corn-free: Traditional baking powder and powdered sugar contain corn starch to keep everything from clumping, but corn-free varieties do exist. The organic powdered sugar from Whole Foods uses tapioca starch instead (you can also get some at Trader Joe's, but it is a seasonal item for them). The only baking powder without corn starch on the market is Hain's Featherweight. You can also get that at Whole Foods and other health food stores.

Other ingredients that can be problematic for someone who needs to avoid corn include the vanilla, butter, flour, and even the milk. Vanilla extract contains alcohol, which may or may not be made from corn. There is no way of knowing because they aren't required to list that on the label. To be safe, I make my own vanilla extract by seeping whole vanilla beans in potato vodka. Butter is tricky because some contain "natural flavors" which may or may not be derived from corn and sometimes lactic acid which is commonly derived from corn. I actually haven't had any problem with regular butters, but to be safe I use Trader Joe's (regular, not organic) unsalted butter which is the only one I've found that just has one ingredient: Grade A cream.

For the flour I use King Arthur All-Purpose Unbleached White Flour. I'm told bleached flour can be contaminated, but I never buy that anyway. Some people also have problems with the enrichments that they add to flour and to milk, but I seem to be fine with them. If you do want un-enriched flour and milk, look for organic flour and find a source for raw milk directly from a farm (unfortunately, not an option in Virginia as raw milk is illegal here). 

Hope everyone has a very happy holiday, whatever you celebrate, and a happy, healthy, and delicious 2012!

Thumbs-Up Turkey - Nov 24, 2011

Hello Dinner Clubbers! My sincere apologies for my long absence from the blog. Between travel, visitors, sickness, holidays, and one broken refrigerator things have been a bit hectic for Nick and I of late. I will attempt to bring you all up to date on our culinary adventures, starting with Thanksgiving. Nick and I travelled to his parents, where every year Nick's Dad makes his famous "Thumbs-Up Turkey." This year Nick and I had front row seats for a tutorial.



The story of this family tradition begins with the November 1986 Gourmet Magazine article on 'how to de-bone a turkey.' Chip thought that sounded like a fun project and has used this method nearly every year since. The idea is to cut out and remove the rib cage from the body of the bird, leaving the bones in the appendages, and then stitch up the incision made along the spine. This allows you to stuff the bird with dressing, to plump it back up to it's original robust shape, and to carve it directly into cross sections, for a slice of stuffing surrounded by an edge of meat. It also allows you to use the rib cage to make some of the best gravy known to man, which is the real reason that Chip goes through all the work. Every year, with the successful completion of this undertaking, Chip gives us the thumbs-up and we all feast like kings.



Here is Chip putting the final touches on the bird. The meal was delicious, as always, although due to a nasty little virus I contracted the week before, I actually ended up sleeping through the meal this year. Lucky for me, the leftovers are nearly as good!