What's for dinner: fried chicken, potatoes, broccoli

I bought a chicken yesterday and disassembled it. Boned out the breasts and the thighs and put them in an salty/spicy buttermilk marinade. Put everything else (trimmings, legs, wings) into a pot and added a couple of cans of chicken broth and a couple of cans of water, some onion and celery, and some savory. Simmered the pot for a while, and fished out the legs and wings for eating later. Strained the broth and put it in the fridge along with the marinating meat.

Today I shall make a seasoned flour and add a couple of tablespoons of buttermilk to make it kind of lumpy (this is a recipe from Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country). Then I will coat the boned chicken pieces with the lumpy coating and shallow fry them. Theoretically the chicken will come out very crispy due to those lumps. I will peel some Yukon gold potatoes and make mashed potatoes, and use the rich chicken stock I made yesterday to make gravy. Some steamed broccoli, and we'll have a nice dinner. I'll send along some pictures if it is pretty.

Hope you all have the Thanksgiving you are wishing for. As for me, I am one of the 7% of Americans who are traveling instead of going to a family dinner, and running off to the coast to spend some quality time with my overworked husband.

Update: As you can see, dinner did come out pretty and tasted even better.

What's for dinner: fried sole and sweet potato chips

I'll admit this up front: I do have fear of frying. Deep frying just seems so involved and messy. But every time I do it, I say to myself that I will remember that it's not so bad. Maybe today it was easier because I didn't decide on frying for dinner until about 4:00 today. Was running through the grocery store and saw some beautiful sole, at a great price. So I postponed our crispy shallow-fried chicken dinner until tomorrow and grabbed the fish. On the way home I realized that I have lots of fry coating, from our trip to New England last summer. Might as well try a shallow fry of fish, I thought. Then when Dave got home from work, he asked if we were frying fish then could I maybe make sweet potato chips, too? Heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I discarded the idea of pulling out the big iron skillet and went for a wide pot instead, thinking I might as well use the same pot for both things.

I used the mandoline to get nice evenly thin slices of sweet potatoes, and we got the pot of oil (2" deep) heating up (starting target, 375 degrees). My plan was to put Dave in charge of the chips, which was silly because since neither of us have ever done them before you know I'm going to be hanging out and "supervising." First batch was a little dark, but after that we got it just right. As you can see from the picture, we were able to make a half sheet pan do double duty as a landing pad for the chips and the fish. Breading the fish was easy – I used a one-step approach, not the three-step flour/egg/breading. The fish picked up the corn flour and spices of the Zatarain's Louisiana Fish Fry quite nicely. Two minutes in the hot oil and it was GBD – very tender and juicy with a softly crisp coating, crunchy around the edges.

For us, a nice spin on fish and chips!

What's for dinner: Beef with mushroom and bacon gravy

Had about 4 oz of tenderloin scraps and 8 oz of thin-sliced eye of round in the freezer. Cut that into ¼” dice and seared it in a little bacon fat and ½ t dried thyme. Removed that from the pan and put the juices into a small bowl. Added 2 T of chopped dried porcini to those juices and topped it off with some hot water, letting it steep. To the skillet I added ½ a medium onion, chopped, 3 slices of cooked bacon, chopped, and 8 oz of chopped mushrooms. Cooked until the mushrooms were limp and the onions were translucent, seasoning with salt and pepper. I make shiitake mushroom powder and so I added about 2 T of that, too. Poured in the rehydrated porcini and juices and cooked for about a minute. Added 1 T tomato paste and stirred in, then added 2 T flour and cooked and stirred until the flour was incorporated, about four minutes. Stir in cooked meat and one can of chicken stock, bring to simmer. Stir until thickened and simmer for a few minutes until the raw flour taste is cooked out. Just before serving, stir in ½ C of sour cream. Serve over long-grain white rice.

I’m serving it with peeled sliced asparagus stems. I guess you can almost call it beef Stroganoff, the flavors are very similar.

New thing to try: Gelato

While we were out the other night, we stopped in at a gelateria in the neighborhood. Now, while gelato is "just" Italian ice cream, it has very intense flavors. After our treat, Dave decided that we should try making some for ourselves. I found a half-dozen Italian cookbooks in my collection that had recipes and background info. The keys to gelato seem to be a very intensely flavored syrup, and much less fat from the dairy component.

For example, the lemon gelato that I made tonight. I made a very fragrant syrup by poaching the peels of three lemons with their juice and sugar. Strained out it was flavorful as well as aromatic. The recipe made almost 2 cups of syrup which were to be combined with 1/2 cup of heavy cream and frozen in the ice cream machine. All that worked just fine and the gelato is pale yellow, smells of fresh lemons, and has a really creamy texture.

Oh, and the gelato experiment went on while I was canning five and a half pints of apple butter and six pints of "plum good" applesauce. And made up the fancy cioppino with the base from Friday with clams, mussels, large shrimp, halibut cheeks, big fat scallops, and a Dungeness crab. Served that with fresh bread. I think Dave has cleaned the kitchen at least seven times this weekend -- I think we need a few days off from major kitchen projects!

Don't want to waste the apples!

Over the past weeks we have gotten quite a few apples in our farm basket. In fact there were twelve pounds of apples and two pounds of pluots awaiting consumption. Dave and I decided we need to make apple butter, and with that many apples we’re also making applesauce. Have I made either before? Of course not! But that’s never stopped me…

Today we peeled, cored, and sliced the apples and sliced the pluots. All went into a pot with some water and got cooked down. I ran them through a food mill and got six quarts of puree. Perfect – I need 12 cups of puree for the butter and 12 cups for the sauce. With the pluots it is a beautiful shade of pink. Last thing to do tonight was add the appropriate sugar, spices, and lemon juice to each batch. Tomorrow I will cook down the apple butter, using the induction burner as I think that will give a very even heat on the pan and reduce the likelihood of it scorching as it gets thick. I will also cook the sauce a little bit and then jar them all up and process in a water bath.

Some days it cracks me up that a city girl like me spends time canning and preserving. Guess whether you grow up in the city or the country, if you grow up poor you learn to not waste the apples!

What's for dinner: calamari steak in cioppino broth over linguine

Dinner tonight was born of the need to use up ingredients. I had fresh tomatoes, lots of fresh basil, a bit of fennel, a bit of leek, some celery. I also had the lobster/crab stock I made at the beginning of the week. And a bit of tomato paste. All those flavors screamed Cioppino! So I followed their siren song. The only seafood on hand is frozen calamari steaks, which Dave really likes.

So I chopped up an onion, the fennel, some celery, some leek, and crushed red pepper and sweated them in olive oil. Added a few cloves of chopped garlic and stirred for a few minutes, then the tomato paste and let it caramelize on the bottom of the pot for more flavor. Then the six cups of shellfish stock, and about four cups of seeded chopped tomatoes and a cup of chopped fresh basil. Corrected the seasonings, and simmered for a while.

Meanwhile I cut two calamari steaks into large pieces and rubbed them with salt and lemon juice. The reason I used large pieces is that there’s quite a bit of cioppino base so I want to use it for a full-on stew on Sunday. This way I can poach the calamari in it and be sure I can get all of it out of the broth. Otherwise I’ll have some rubbery overcooked calamari on Sunday.

Then we made some linguine and boiled that up while the calamari poached in the broth. Linguine into big pasta plates with calamari on top and some broth ladled around it. A Washington Barbera to drink. Not bad for a pantry meal.

Cooking projects for today

I’m working on crab cakes today, and Dave wants chocolate ice cream and we have all the ingredients so that is next. He’s doing all the vacuuming today, and he already did the laundry, so he deserves a treat. The crab cakes will be a first course for duck prepared “sous vide.” I'll use the induction burner for that. Sauce will be a duck stock reduction, probably with some of my cherry-plum syrup added. Some nice carrots from the farm on the side they will like that sauce, too.

Last night we made fettuccine and had crab fettuccine. That involved 2 T minced shallot, ½ clove minced garlic, 1 T tarragon sautéed in butter, then add about 1 C cream and simmer to reduce a little bit. Add 1.5 C crab and ½ C grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Add cooked pasta to pan with sauce and toss. Serve with a little more parm on top, and a Chardonnay/Pinot-based sparkling wine. Then those red wine-poached pears for dessert.

Yes, dinners next week will be light to offset the richness of this weekend!

Weekend dinners: duck and bean soup, seared duck breasts

It’s been raining hard for two days straight and while we might get a break later this afternoon it will start again tonight. Time to pull down the soup pot and clean out the supplies of stock in the freezer.

Today Dave is picking up a duck for me at an Asian supermarket. I’ve put small white beans on to cook with savory, thyme, and garlic and pulled out a quart of double-strength duck stock. This will be the start of a duck and bean soup that takes its source flavors from French cassoulet. I love cassoulet but don’t keep all the bits on hand that go in for a really authentic one. I'll add some onions cooked with homemade pancetta to the pot when the beans are tender. The cooked beans will rest until Sunday. In the meantime, tonight I will cut up the fresh duck. I will put a curing rub (salt, sugar, pink salt, lavender) on the legs and season the breasts, and refrigerate both.

Tomorrow afternoon I will poach the duck legs in duck fat for about four hours, making duck confit. The duck breasts we will have for dinner on Saturday night, with blue cheese polenta, carrots, and a green salad. I’ve been poaching some pears in a red wine syrup with vanilla and star anise, and I suspect we’ll have those for dessert if we don’t gobble them all down tonight.

On Sunday morning I will add some tomato paste and the duck confit to the beans I cooked today. I also have a chicken breast and thighs that I poached in duck fat that I will pull out of the freezer and add to the pot. I will slow cook this in the oven for several hours, and then add a breadcrumb crust to the top of it and cook it some more. After the crust gets really crisp, I will stir it into the rest of the beans. This is a pretty classic part of a cassoulet recipe. By dinner time on Sunday, it should be ready to eat. Some crusty bread and a green salad with some cheese, and we’re good to go.

What's for dinner: Prime NY steak w/brandy cream

Major score at Costco this week: fresh Brussels sprouts and USDA Prime NY steaks.

I realize that the little cabbages aren’t on most people’s list of favs, but I’ve converted more than a few people when I braise them with bacon and maple syrup, a trick I learned in a cooking class. Just slice them in half so they can soak up all that nice flavor, and if you finish cooking them without a lid you won’t end up with that nasty sulfur aroma.

These steaks had the most beautiful marbling, and were almost 1 ½” thick. I rubbed them with kosher salt and mushroom powder and let them sit out until they were room temp. Then I rub them with a little olive oil and into a really hot skillet for three minutes on a side. Don’t touch them until the three minutes are up if you want the most beautiful caramelized surface. Then into a 400-degree oven for four minutes. Put them on a plate to rest and made the pan sauce: add a couple of tablespoons of minced onion to the skillet (back on the heat) and stir until the onion is translucent, scraping up the fond in the skillet. Then pull the skillet off the heat and add a couple of tablespoons of brandy; tilt the pan as you put if back on the burner and the brandy will flame. I used more like ¼ cup of brandy (4Tbs), and got flames mostly up to the kitchen ceiling (and we have high ceilings!). But no damage, even kept my eyebrows and I didn’t drop the skillet when it happened. I guess I’m getting used to flambéing. Once the flames went out I added some salt and about a tablespoon of flour, since I wanted the sauce to cling a bit to the meat. Stirred until the flour was cooked and then added heavy cream until I got the consistency I wanted. Did I mention that this meal was designed to harden your arteries even as you prepared it? Anyway, once the sauce was done and I corrected the seasonings, I put the steaks back in the pan for just a bit to coat them in sauce, and plated it up.

You could almost cut the steaks with a glance. Incredibly buttery and tender, and a perfect medium rare all the way through.

We had a nice salad of baby greens with blue cheese crumbles and candied pecans in a raspberry vinaigrette to round out the meal. No leftovers tonight!

The Joy of Oysters

Like your first kiss, I believe you always remember your first raw oyster. Where you were, who you were with, how your stomach did a little flip-flop as you contemplated it, how easy it was to have another after that first one.

After spending a few hours with other oyster lovers at an oyster harvest/beach BBQ last weekend, I'm even more convinced that I'm right. I overheard several people reminiscing about their first oyster, and it did sound like they were talking about their first kiss. So you heard it here first: first kiss=first raw oyster.

We actually didn't eat raw oysters that day, but there were plenty of barbecued ones.

It was an absolutely gorgeous, picture-puzzle kind of day.

Gathering oysters? Not so glamorous. This black "primordial ooze" sucked me in up to my knees. Not pretty, and it smelled less than pristine.

What's for dinner: Beef tenderloin roasted in salt crust

Have to make room in the freezer for all that sausage, so I pulled out a small (1lb) beef tenderloin roast I cut the last time we bought a whole tenderloin. I had leftover egg whites from making frozen custard and pastry cream, and we’d bought a big bag of table salt to use to try out salt crust roasting. So tonight seemed like a good time to try it.

I had seasoned the beef with green and pink peppercorns before I froze it. So I just mixed the egg whites with 2 pounds of salt, then made a1/2” deep base layer on a foil-covered sheet pan. Beef goes on top of that, insert a probe thermometer so I know for sure when it’s done (looking for 125 degrees). Spooning the salt over the top and sides was like working with wet sand, and went very smoothly. Put into the oven on 450 degree convection roast. Also put in a foil pouch of new potatoes with just salt, butter, and parsley and thawed out some gold and pink beets I’d roasted and put away last week. Dinner will be late (Dave worked today, and worked late) but good.

The Great Grind: Italian Sausage

This sausage project started because of Dave’s monthly card game with his buddies. He hosted it a few weeks ago and I made them Italian sausages with peppers and onions for dinner, and had mixed the peppers and onions into a homemade tomato sauce. Dave wanted more, he loved it. And we’ve been getting piles of bell peppers in our CSA basket, I can’t eat them, and we needed a way to not waste them. This week I made more than a gallon of homemade marinara with roasted peppers and onions, which has gone into freezer containers. It just seemed like it would be fun to make our own sausage for it, especially since I have a lot of fresh sage right now.

We then picked up a whole boneless pork butt, this one was a little smaller than I usually get, only ten pounds. Certainly enough for plenty of sausage, though! I started making sausages after I took a class at Culinary Communion a couple of years ago. Then I bought “Charcuterie” by Ruhlman and Polcyn, a great reference book for so many things preserved. I made their Italian sausage recipe the first time, probably two years ago. Since then I have tuned the seasonings and method, doing my usual literature surveys in my collection and online. And before anyone emails me about this, yes, I know that “true” Italian sausage doesn’t have paprika, parsley, and anise seed, at least to the purists. However, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with improving flavor. I use a heavy-duty KitchenAid mixer for this, with grinder and sausage stuffer attachments. You can use a hand grinder, too. If you use ground pork from your butcher, be sure to beat the seasoned pork to develop the myocin as described in the first paragraph of the recipe – your results will be so much better, even if you are only making a breakfast sausage with salt, sage, and pepper.

Shelly’s Italian-style Sausage

• Three pounds of pork butt, cut into ½” dice (do not trim fat off!)
• ½ t anise seed
• 1 ½ t black peppercorns
• 4 t fennel seed
• 4 t salt
• 1 T minced fresh sage (or 1 t dried)
• 2 t hot paprika
• 2 t sweet paprika
• 2 T puréed fresh garlic
• 1 ½ T chopped parsley
• 2 oz dry red wine
• About 5 feet of hog or artificial casings, if you want sausage links, cut into 3- to 4-foot lengths

Grind anise and peppercorns together, then add the fennel seed and crush it but don’t grind it to a powder. I use a mortar and pestle for this but can be done in a spice grinder or coffee grinder, of course. Add all ingredients to the pork and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate overnight. Next day, run the pork through a grinder with the medium plate. Grind it into a bowl set in another bowl filled with ice. It is important to keep the fat cold, if it melts your sausage will have a curdled texture and the fat will all drain away when you cook it, leaving it dry and with a lot less flavor. Fry about an ounce and taste to check for seasonings. Adjust as needed. Then either in one big bowl with your hands or a wooden spoon, or in batches in a heavy-duty mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the meat until you see it get sticky and it looks like threads are developing in it. This process develops a protein in the meat called myocin, and it’s what makes sausage more than just some seasoned ground meat. The myocin gives the sausage a smoother texture and helps it hold together instead of being crumbly. Do not skip this step if you want really good sausage! Put the sausage back into the refrigerator for an hour or so until it is cold again.

In the meantime, if you are making links prepare the casings according to the instructions on the package. If there are no instructions, soak natural casings in cold water for about an hour until they are soft, then run water through the casings. Set up your sausage grinder with a stuffing tube, great the outside of the tube, and feed a couple of the lengths of casing onto it. Pull the casing until you have about 2 inches hanging off of the end of the stuffing tube. Do not tie this off. Cut yourself twice as many 4” pieces of kitchen twine as you have pieces of casing. Put a big sheet pan under the stuffing tube and rub about a tablespoon of water across this. The water makes the sausage slide easily on the pan while it rests as it comes off the stuffer. Start feeding the pork into your stuffer, and stop as soon as the meat begins to appear in the casing. With your fingers, smooth the casing over the meat and push out any air from the end of the casing. Then tie off the end of the casing next to the meat. Continue to feed pork into the stuffer, making sure the casing is evenly filled but not stretched as tight as it will go – you’ll need a little bit of give to twist the links. The sausage will be about 1 ¼” in diameter as it comes off the stuffing tube. When you can see that you have about two inches of casing left on the tube, stop feeding and gently ease the end of the sausage off the tube. While the sausage sits on the sheet pan, smooth out any uneven spots, and then squeeze all the air out of the open end of the casing and then tie it off with one of your pieces of kitchen twine. Continue with the rest of the pork and the casings.

To twist the sausage into links, begin from the left end of the sausage. Move your left hand in six inches (or as long as you want your links) in from one end, and place your right hand the same distance farther in on the sausage. Squeeze with your thumb and forefinger on both hands to divide the sausage, then grasp the link that is between your hands and twist it toward you two times. Move your left hand six inches in from the rightmost twist, and your right hand six inches to the right of your left hand. Once again squeeze your thumbs and forefingers together to divide the sausage, but this time twist the link away from you two time. Repeat this process, twisting toward you the next time and away from you the time after that.

Of course, you can just form the sausage into logs, wrap them in plastic and chill, then freeze them and slice off what you need in patties, or make patties and freeze them on a sheet pan then put into freezer bags.

Store the sausage in the refrigerator overnight before cooking. The sausage will keep about three days refrigerated or a month or two frozen. When you cook them, cook to an internal temperature of about 160-165 degrees. I put them in a skillet with six ounces of water, and cover to steam them gently for about 15 minutes, then uncover and brown them or put them on a grill.

(recipe copyright 2008, Vivian R. Johnsen)

Rum balls, in advance of the holiday season

These things last forever. Seriously, I've kept them on a shelf in a sealed container for two years and they were still great. And they don't taste like raisins, good thing since I'm not wild about raisins. The original version of this came from my ex-mother-in-law, Doris. I've tweaked it since then, but still want to give her credit as I think this recipe has been passed down for several generations.

• 2 C raisins
• 2 C walnuts or pecans
• 1 lb vanilla wafers
• 2 C powdered sugar
• 2 T cocoa
• 3/4 C rum or bourbon, or other flavorful liquor
• 1/3 C light corn syrup
• More powdered sugar, for coating

Grind together raisins, nuts and cookies. Mix in remaining ingredients. Roll into 1" balls and roll in additional powdered sugar. Makes dozens.

Notes: I put half the raisins, half the nuts, and half the cookies into my food processor and grind them together then repeat with the rest. Pour everything into a big big bowl, it will make it a lot easier to get your hands or a big wooden spoon in to mix everything together. Sometimes (okay, most times) I use more liquor than called for. I also double the cocoa sometimes, which would make a lot of sense if you are using a flavored liquor like Sabra where you want to bring out the chocolate flavor. Also if you are using Sabra, you could use a couple of tablespoons of finely grated orange rind.

Today's cooking projects: corned beef hash and pepper and onion marinara

Once again, I am consumed by a request from my better half. Wants Italian sausages and a marinara with peppers and onions. Today I am taking care of the sauce. Giant can of diced tomatoes in juice. Two cans of organic tomato paste. Two giant yellow onions, ½” sliced Lyonnaise-style (pole to pole). One quart of frozen roasted assorted peppers, ½” slices. Five cups of diced fresh bell peppers. (Why five cups? Because that’s what I need to use up!) Assorted dried Italian herbs, fresh rosemary and fresh sage. Three tablespoons of chopped garlic. Chop lots more garlic because I’m making ten pounds of sausage tomorrow, but that’s another story. I have a silicone trivet that I use to roll the garlic cloves in, takes the skin right off. Then I use a coarse Microplane to process the garlic, five minutes or so and I have a big pile of chopped garlic. Lots of fresh ground black pepper. Crushed red pepper. Saute onions in olive oil, add peppers and garlic, stir to coat, toss in everything else. Simmer all afternoon. It’s tasting good – even to me, and I have a serious dislike of, as well as an allergy to, bell peppers.

Dinner tonight will be corned beef hash. The other day I pulled the last chunk of homemade corned beef out of the freezer. I was contemplating the cooking method when I realized that the FoodSaver vacuum bag it was in would be a wonderful cooking container for a long slow trip through the oven. So I threw it in the oven at 200 degrees overnight. No muss, no fuss. Then I refrigerated it in its juices. Today I will dice up the corned beef and some red potatoes, steam the potatoes to parcook them, and then fry up the whole mess with some onions. A little horseradish on the side, some boiled turnip greens or maybe arugula, and a real comfort-food dinner for us. Guess we’ll have beer or iced tea to drink, can’t imagine the wine I’d pair with this one. I’ll keep back some of the corned beef and slice enough for a couple of Reuben sandwiches, and freeze it for another day. I will have to set aside some time to cure some more corned beef sometime. It’s been really good.

Now, I just have to figure out where to keep more than a gallon of marinara…

Coconut cream pie outcome

Well, the crust with the coconut was certainly a challenge, and the filling is a little time-intensive, but the result is quite nice, as you can see. The toasted coconut flakes and white chocolate shavings make a very nice finish.

So, here’s the overall recipe with my tweaks and lessons learned. The garnish is straight from the triple coconut cream pie that Tom Douglas’ restaurants serve around the Seattle downtown area.

Crust: 9” baked deep dish pie crust, optionally add 2 T of sweetened flake coconut to the pastry dough 1 oz white chocolate, melted with 1 t heavy cream (also optional)

Spoon melted white chocolate into cooled pie crust, brushing it up the sides of the crust. Set aside to harden.

Coconut custard: ¼ C sugar 3 T cornstarch ¼ t salt 2 C whole milk 2 T butter 2 egg yolks 1 t vanilla ¾ C sweetened flaked coconut

Whisk sugar and cornstarch together in a medium saucepan or in the top of a double boiler. Whisk in milk, add butter, and heat over medium heat, stirring or whisking constantly, until mixture thickens. Whisk egg yolks until blended. Ladle about a cup of the thickened mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then add the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan, mixing thoroughly. Cook stirring constantly, until thickened again. Set aside to cool, stir in vanilla and coconut, then refrigerate.

Fill crust with custard. Top pie with lightly sweetened whipped cream and garnish with toasted unsweetened coconut flakes and white chocolate curls.

Recipe copyright 2008, Vivian R. Johnsen

More dessert fun: Frozen custard

Yes, I am very good to my husband. He mentions he'd like ice cream, I make some. In between tasks with the coconut cream pie, I decided to try making some frozen custard. Now, I can only imagine what the "real thing" tastes like, as that seems to be an East Coast product that I've not encountered. But hey, I can make a custard. In fact, I can make one up:

3 cups whole milk 3/4 cup of sugar, divided 1/2 vanilla bean, split 1/4 t salt Four egg yolks 1 T cornstarch

Mix the milk with 1/2 cup sugar, the salt, and the vanilla bean in a medium saucepan. Slowly bring to just below a simmer, stirring occasionally. Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar and the cornstarch. When the milk is hot, whisk about a cup of it gradually into the egg yolks (this is called tempering and will keep your egg yolks from scrambling). Pour the egg mixture back into the pan with the rest of the milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Do not boil it. I recommend you use a silicone spatula to stir will so you can thoroughly scrape the bottom of the pan. If you do get the custard too hot, it may curdle. But since you are going to freeze it, this really isn't a dreadful problem.

Strain the thickened custard into a container and cool, then refrigerate it at least eight hours or overnight. If you skip this step your final product won't be as creamy. Freeze the custard according to the instructions with your ice cream maker. When the ice cream maker is done, pack the soft custard into a container and put it into the freezer to finish hardening. When you're ready to serve it, put it into the fridge for about 15 minutes so it can soften just a bit.

If frozen custard doesn't taste like this, it should.

(Recipe copyright 2008, V. R. Johnsen)

What's for dessert: Coconut cream pie

A couple of weeks ago I was channel surfing on a Saturday and ran across Tom Douglas, a well-known local chef, making his signature triple-coconut cream pie. I’ve had this wonder more than once at his restaurants, and I think I could eat a whole pie at one sitting. Since then, Dave and I have been gathering the ingredients for a coconut cream pie. I don’t have Tom’s recipe, but the filling is a pastry cream with sweetened flaked coconut added. That’s not hard to do, and I used a recipe out of one of my favorite cookbooks, a first edition of the New York Times Cookbook, edited by Craig Claiborne. A lot of times when I do a literature search through my cookbook collection, I try to be sure to pull in a “vintage” cookbook for comparison. It helps me get perspective sometimes, especially when I run across something like the squirrel stew in the White House Cookbook from the late 1800’s. Once again I am using the vodka pastry recipe from Cook’s Illustrated with the addition of flaked coconut. The pie gets topped with whipped cream, toasted coconut flakes, and white chocolate shavings. I’m thinking about brushing a layer of melted white chocolate on the crust before putting in the filling – I think it will help the crust stay a little crisper and add a nice rich flavor.

You know, I’ve always said I'm not a baker, but I sure seem to be writing a lot about baking these days. At least I’ve gotten to the point where I have more successes than failures, and that feels pretty good. In the end, the way to get comfortable with any kind of cooking is to not worry when something doesn’t turn out – as long as you learn something in the process you can carry forward to the next project. That’s been hard for me to accept sometimes because of course I want everything perfect the first time. But accepting failure is key to becoming fearless in the kitchen.

What's for dinner: filet au poivre, brisket chili with winter squash

We bought a whole tenderloin at Costco this week. If you consider the price of steak, it’s actually kind of economical to buy a whole roast and cut it up yourself. With this abundance, I’ve cut a roast off of it and am letting it marinate in a rub of herbes de provence, minced shallot, ground peppercorns, kosher salt, and olive oil. Once it’s had some time to think about its fate, I will tie it up into a compact roast and put it into a 425 degree oven for 25-35 minutes, then immediately into the freezer. This results in a great texture and amazing juiciness. We’ll slice that and serve with dandelion greens sautéed in bacon, garlic, and shallots and smashed potatoes. Probably start with some sliced heirloom tomatoes as some of them are beginning to look like it’s time to be eaten. I have great piles of fresh basil growing in my AeroGardens so we have no shortage of tomato seasoning.

We’re also making dinner for tomorrow. The cover recipe from the new Bon Appétit is “Texas Brisket Chili with Winter Squash.” Dave looked at the recipe and got a hankering for it, so we also bought some brisket at Costco. Already had all the other ingredients, in fact I’ve been looking for ways to use all the winter squash that’s been in our CSA basket. Calls for a red chile sauce from dried chiles, cumin, garlic, oregano, chili powder, tomatoes, and fresh green chiles. Now it’s in the oven for three hours until the cubed brisket is tender, then add the squash and cook for another hour. I’ll chill it out on the deck for a little while, then refrigerate for dinner tomorrow.

Another chore today was cleaning out the vegetable bins in the fridge. Now I have a pot of vegetable stock cooking on the stove, with carrots, celery, onion, fennel, celery, and other bits and pieces tossed in. No, I don’t know what I’ll make from the stock, but whatever it is, it will start with a tasty base. With the fennel in it, a minestrone might be a good idea.

If you like Cook's Illustrated or America's Test Kitchen...

...then you might get a kick out of this. Tonight we went and met Chris Kimball, the host of America’s Test Kitchen show on PBS and the founder and editor of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines. Dave and I have been fans and subscribers to Cook’s Illustrated for many years. It was fun to hear him talk about some of the experiences he’s had, including his encounters with Julia Child. He has his “patter” and his funny stories down pat, but it didn’t feel like he was rehashing something he’d been saying dozens of times. Perhaps the funniest stories were of tricks his staff has played on him when they are taping ATK. Like the time he was supposed to be taste-testing butter on bread, and they smeared hot chile paste under the butter. Then when he reached for a glass of water and drank about a third of it, he realized he was drinking gin. I even got him to autograph one of my cookbooks. (I have a nice collection of autographed cookbooks. Even two autographed by Julia Child.)

Anyway, if he ever comes to your neighborhood and you have a chance to go hear him, I recommend it.

Inventing a new cookie!

Yes, it’s true, there is nothing really new under the sun. But there are many variations, and I think Dave and I have collaborated on something with real potential.

As you’ve read before, we’ve been doing a lot of things with a crostada dough that we really like. It has cornmeal in it for a nice texture and a bit of citrus zest. Dave came up with the idea of using it as a ravioli dough to make sweet ravioli. I was intrigued. We had (again) lots of apples from the CSA basket, varieties well-suited to cooking. He made up a batch of the dough and put it in the fridge, and we debated the filling. I thought the best way to deal with the apples was to cut them into small dice, that way they would fill the ravioli a little better, fewer air pockets. We pre-cooked the apples after letting them sit in sugar a little while so we had some apple juice in which to simmer them. Then we added some herbs – for reasons I’ll explain below I will not tell you what we used.

The dough got rolled out to the dimensions of our ravioli plaque. If you’re not familiar with this tool, it’s a sheet of metal on little feet, divided into 12 ravioli shapes. The center of each shape is cut out, so you can lay a piece of dough across it and use a plastic plate with 12 round bumps just the size of the cutouts to press down and get a “top” layer with indentations for holding a filling. We filled each indentation with about a tablespoon of our apple filling, the laid another piece of dough across the top after brushing it with an egg wash. Then you just roll a rolling pin across the top to press the two layers together and separate the ravioli.

We brushed each piece with egg wash and sprinkled them with raw sugar, and baked them. All we can say is – YUM.

Why am I not publishing the recipe? Because for the first time we have something that maybe I’ll enter in a recipe contest. So stay tuned for info about that, when/if it happens.

If you want to see pictures, you can go to my blog where they are published. I thought that might be a more polite way to use photos, particularly for those of you with dial-up connections.