I had my doubts, but this was really fabulous - the meat was tender and falling off the bone, the skin was crispy. . . . Bonus - while the duck is cooking, boil 5 small potatoes until tender. Drain and peel the skin off, then smash lightly, and fry until golden brown on both sides in some of the duck fat that you skimmed off during one of the times when you turned the legs over. Not health food - but kind of mental health food.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Quick Duck Confit
I had my doubts, but this was really fabulous - the meat was tender and falling off the bone, the skin was crispy. . . . Bonus - while the duck is cooking, boil 5 small potatoes until tender. Drain and peel the skin off, then smash lightly, and fry until golden brown on both sides in some of the duck fat that you skimmed off during one of the times when you turned the legs over. Not health food - but kind of mental health food.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Figs
But I think the things I love the most about them are their color, and the fact that they are willing to grow on Mercer Island. There is one tree in the orchard, on a gentle west-facing slope, and most years we get some. This year was good – hot and dry in the summer leading to a harvest of over 50 – other years more like 5. When they’re young, they are tiny little lime green buds – until really late in the summer, it seems like there is no possible way they can get ripe. Even in September when they are the size of golf balls, hard and still lime green – no way will they get ripe before the first frost. Then all of a sudden they’re tinged purple part of the way up, then purple all the way. Still green inside, then all of a sudden pink. That’s the point where I grab them – maybe they’d get riper, but maybe the raccoon would get them, or the crows, and really they’re very very good right at this point. With this year’s 50, I started with eating some fresh, of course, but then went right to fig jam, to fill some turnovers. Cut 20 figs into eighths and put into a medium saucepan, add 6 T brown sugar, and the juice and rind of a small lemon. Cinnamon if you want, but I don’t. Cook over low to medium heat, stirring frequently, until much of the liquid is gone and the figs are reduced to a thick and jammy consistency. Take your favorite pastry – either a pie crust or a puff pastry, and fill with the jam, fold over and seal, sprinkle with sugar, and bake in accordance with whatever pastry you used. In this one I used puff pastry – they always bake better if you pop them in the freezer for 10 minutes before baking.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Chocolate Dipped Hazelnut Shortbread
3 T butter
Cream butter and sugar in stand mixer with paddle attachment. Add vanilla and salt, and stir in flour on low until incorporated. Add up to 1/4 cup more flour if the dough is really sticky. Form dough into a log, wrap in plastic wrap, chill one hour. Slice into discs, bake at 350 degrees F approximately 15-20 minutes until light brown. When cool, dip halfway into chocolate chips melted with butter. Place on clean parchment to cool, then put into muffin cups to store and serve. Better the next day.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Green Walnut Liqueur
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/07/liqueur_de_noix_green_walnut_liq.html
Friday, June 12, 2009
Ravioli - the perfect food
Having a 20-quart Hobart at the bakery for all the dough is a blessing and a curse - it makes the process so simple, but the capacity is so large that you have to make like a quintuple batch just to give the mixer something to work with. Which comes up to something like 10 eggs and 10 cups of flour for the pasta dough - yield is about 4-5 pounds of fresh dough. And pizza for a small army.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
A Tribute to Scout 1996-2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
March 2009 Daring Bakers! Lasagne
There - that should keep the search-bots happy, and establish that I did the deed and posted! I have not been able to keep up with the daring and gorgeous bakers, missing a # of challenges, but I still want to play! So, here is the lovely green pasta. . . .
You may notice that it is NOT in the shape of lasagne noodles, and you would be correct. Truth - this is ravioli from last fall. I have made this pasta a number of times before - I think my first spinach noodles were in the 90's, to be precise, and I LOVE them, but it was just not gonna happen this month. Instead, I used commercial no-boil sheet (Barilla = v. Italian), and made the Bechamel, which for me was the real challenge. I am usually willing to go with ricotta and mozzarella as a filling, but I love the Beschamel, and I am usually not patient enough to make it, thus the challenge. Oh, and not to nitpick or sound too cranky, but this whole exercise is not really baking - this is definitely a Daring Cooks challenge in my book. But whatever, it's delicious . . . .
So, here is the finished product - the Beschamel really adds a wonderful silky quality to the dish, and I love it - I used the recipe from the challenge, with the addition of about 8 oz. of Fontina cheese. And I made a tomato sauce with ground turkey, just because today is a Wednesday and there is no possible way to make the real ragu. So there. Still yum.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies
This is quite the seductive cookie - sweet, but not too. A little delicate in texture, but packed with chocolate flavor, with pools of molten chocolate throughout. Simple - no eggs, so it's instantly vegan, if you care about that sort of thing. Oh wait - it's full of butter - nevermind then. . . .
Divine with coffee - I had two for breakfast this morning! So, to those of you who think I eat cake for breakfast every morning, I don't -sometimes it's cookies! :)
Recipe from Orangette
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. (½ stick) unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
7 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup plain yogurt, preferably not low- or nonfat
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup chocolate chips, preferably Ghirardelli brand, either semisweet or bittersweet
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.Place the butter in a medium microwave-safe bowl, and microwave briefly, until just melted. Add the sugars, and sift in the cocoa. (You can skip the sifting if you want, but my cocoa almost always has lumps, and I don’t like cocoa lumps in my cookies.) Stir to blend well. The mixture will be somewhat thick and pasty, like wet sand. Add the yogurt and vanilla and stir to mix thoroughly. Add the dry flour mixture, and stir to just combine. Add the chocolate chips and stir to incorporate.Drop the dough by generous tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheet. (I use my tablespoon-size measuring spoon to scoop and shape the dough into little domes. Rinsing the spoon regularly helps to keep the dough from sticking, and leaving the spoon slightly wet after each rinsing helps too.) You should be able to fit about 8 or 9 cookies, nicely spaced, on a standard sheet pan. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies have crackled slightly and look set. Transfer the sheet pan to a wire rack, and cool the cookies on the pan for 10 minutes. Transfer them to the rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.