I don’t want to share

Mushrooms, cheese, seafood and anything which comes even vaguely hors d’oeuvre-shaped (not necessarily in that order) are my favourite foodstuffs ever, so when asked to bring the pre-meal nibblies for our family Christmas do I gladly accepted and (rather masochistically) began to devise recipes comprised of all my favourites for savoury stuffs to give me a break from all of the sweets baking I’ve been doing…because, you know, I don’t have nearly enough things going on to occupy my time.

Thanks to the miracles which are Tenderflake and Presidents Choice frozen pastries and a little help from the fella, I was able to get these crabesque quiches & multi-mushroom turnovers pretty quickly.

The quiches – what you need:

24 frozen tart shells (frozen ones usually come in twelves)

1 large minced red onion (you can use a regular cooking onion but I really enjoy the sweetness a red onion imparts to complement the crab)

1.5 cups of imitation crab meat or 2 cans of the real stuff

1 cup grated provolone cheese

7 eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground pepper

a pinch of nutmeg

a bunch of cilantro

Before doing anything else, get the pastries out of the freezer and set them out on baking sheets so they’ll come to room temperature as you work. Preheat the oven to 425. To each shell add a teaspoon of onion then divide the crab then the cheese up evenly between them. Top each one with 2-3 cilantro leaves. In a large bowl whisk the remaining ingredients together and divide the mixture evenly between the 24 quiches. Toss the lot of them into the cooker.

If you’re planning to freeze these (as I was) then they only need to cook for about 10 minutes or until the egg has set. To reheat simply pull them out of the freezer about an hour before they need to be served and toss them back into the oven preheated to 425 for about 7 minutes. If you intend to eat them right away they’ll need about 17-20 minutes of cook time off the hop.

Turnovers – what you need:

2 pkgs puff pastry

1 large minced red onion (or possibly the rest of the one from the quiches)

2 cups chopped mushrooms (I get these handy packages of mixed mushrooms which include portabello, shiitake and oyster at the grocer’s)

1 cup grated stinky cheese (I used emmenthaler I had leftover from a fondue at the weekend but other good choices would be old cheddar, edam, guyere & romano)

Preheat oven to 425. Puff pastry generally comes in packages of 2 pastries each – we’ll want to roll each of those out into 10″ x 10″ish squares then cut each square into 9 smaller squares. To each smaller square add 1 tsp onion then divide the cheese and mushrooms up among the 36 squares, fold them into triangles and press down the egdes. Toss’em on a baking sheet or stone and then into the oven for about 10 minutes or until they start to brown (if freezing) or 15-20 minutes if cooking through and eating immediately. Again, these will require about 1 hour of standing time out of the freezer and another 7 minutes in the oven at 425 to reheat.

Favourite cookies

I know them as zitronenkuchen, though it seems there are many things which go by that name and I’m not really sure why there’s an emphasis on the lemons in the nomenclature when the star of this little attraction is surely the abundance of hazelnuts. But I digress.

It’s certainly a fiddlier recipe than one who doesn’t bake should engage with, however the results are well worth the fiddling and I really only make them once a year so I daresay my I can afford to have my non-baking mind blown at that cost. This is another bastardized version of a classic recipe; I’ve added cardamom (because I have a small crush on the lemon/hazelnut/cardamom flavour combination), more lemon and a little twist in preparation which make them exactly the cookie I look forward to all year long.

What you need:

3.5 cups ground hazelnuts.

3 cups confectioner’s sugar

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 sticks of butter

3 eggs

8 cardamom pods

1 tsp. ground mace

1 tsp. ground ginger

Juice and grated rind of 2 lemons

Method:

Grind your cardamom pods. I use a mortar and pestle for this and discard the actual poddy bits, adding only the powedery interiors to the recipe. This can also be done (albeit, a wee bit less elegantly as with a mortar and pestle, but it works) by placing the pods between bits of wax paper or in a paper bag and running a rolling pin over them. One way or the other, please, please, please use cardamom pods. Using previously ground cardamom will result in cruel and unusual punishment up to and including having to listen to Englebert Humperdink tunes on repeat for the rest of your life. True story.

Combine the flour and sugar and spices, cutting in the butter once combined. You don’t have to be too meticulous about cutting the butter in as one might be with a pastry, but it needs to be in there. After doing a half-assed job of cutting the butter in add 2.5 cup of the ground nuts. Toss the rest of the nuts into (or back into, if you’re grinding your own) the food processor and grind some more. Grind until you’ve basically got a nut butter. That little step is going to take these cookies from something of sugar cookie consistency to the sublime decadence of shortbread and all of its melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Add the nut butter, eggs and lemon rind and juice. Blend with an electric hand blender until everything is happily amalgamated. With a spatula move the lot of it into a ball in the center of the bowl and chill until hard. That’s going to take a couple of hours so you might as well pour yourself a drink and setup with some good eye candy (I recommend Slant’s 100 Greatest Videos), then a book, then some sleep. Ok. Leaving them overnight is best.

This is how we chill in Canadia:

The rolling and the cutting are where things get fiddly. Because the cookie dough is very much like that of shortbread it will melt quickly with much handling and stick to anything it comes into contact with. As such the surface upon which they’ll be rolled and cut should be well-floured. Please bear in mind that this is not bread dough we’re working with and adding some flour is not going to compromise the integrity of the end result. So be generous; flour the table/counter, the rolling pins, the cookie cutters and yourself. It’s sticky. Sticky, sticky sticky and melty. Because it’s melty you’ll want to work in small batches, returning what you’re not rolling and cutting to the fridge.

The dough should be rolled out into 1/4 inch slabs, then cut with whichever cookie cutter shapes your little hearst desire. We used various stars and moons and butterflies and maple leaves. Having a chopstick on hand to remove bits of dough from the more detailed parts of cookie cutters is very handy.

After dough is cut it should be moved directly to a greased cookie sheet. This recipe makes a whole lot of cookies. Like, in the 72 piece range depending on how big the shapes one chooses are. As such, they’ve pretty much got to be baked in batches so an oven preheated to 350 degrees is required. Cookies will need to be baked at that temp for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Over and under an orange-cranberry pound cake

This is my second favourite thing to bake for the holidays. Where traditional pound cakes use a pound each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs, this one is a slightly (just slightly) lighter and easier on the stirring arm version. My recipe makes 8 mini loaves for sharing but is easily reduced by two thirds for a single, normal-sized loaf.

What you need:

1.5 cups butter

3 cups granulated sugar

6 eggs

4.5 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1.4 cups of milk

3 tsp. vanilla

1.5 cups dried cranberries

grated peels and squeezed juice of 4 oranges

Start by creaming the butter, sugar & eggs together until fluffy with a hand mixer. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and add to the creamed mixture slowly, alternating between it and the milk. Once all of that is combined add the vanilla (for this batch I ran out of vanilla so I substituted 3 teaspoons of Angostura bitters and I think I’ll keep using them as a replacement because the results are sooooo good) and mix again. Now it’s time to get out ye olde wooden spoon and stir in the cranberries and orange peels.

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease whatever it is you’re choosing to bake them in – I used two 10×12″ casserole dishes then I divide the cakes into 8 after they’re cooked. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes or until a test with a toothpick comes out clean.

Use the orange juice with 3/4 of a cup of granulated sugar to make the glaze by mixing them together then pouring over the cakes as they come out of the oven. Allow to cool then refrigerate immediately or the cakes will be eaten.

Potutus

…or jacket potatoes or stuffed potatoes or twice baked potatoes…regardless of what one might call them they’re really, really good. Today we made the meatatarian variety (though I’ve a few great vegetarian versions up my sleeve we can talk about another time) with twice smoked bacon.

We pick this stuff up at the local farmer’s market and it’s lovely and decadent (despite its appearance) and probably something the devil threw at Dante through his little adventure. But it’s good. Really good. And well worth having to slice it one’s self.

Onto the potatoes!

What you need:

4 large cream flesh potatoes (I prefer russet potatoes, but tonight I used a generic round white because it’s what we had on hand)

1/2 lb. twice smoked bacon

1.5 cups grated marble cheese

5 scallions (green/spring onions) thinly sliced

2 tsp. dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

The washing and the baking of the potatoes should be the first step. Scrub, scrub. Bake, bake. Rub each one in a little olive oil and salt then toss ’em in some tin foil, then into the oven for an hour at 375.

Once they’re done take them out of the foil and let them cool enough to be handled. You don’t want to let them cool too much or they won’t want to get intimate with the rest of the ingredients, but don’t burn your fingers, please.

Slice each potato in half lengthwise and scoop out their guts into a bowl. Don’t worry too much about getting everything or leaving too much or too little in the shell. All of the rest of the things added to the guts will more than compensate for technique whilst allowing the final product to look worth eating so just go ahead a scoop while those potatoes are still warm.

Set the remaining skins on a baking sheet. To the bowl of guts add everything else. Stir. Stir some more. If you think you’re done stir again for good measure. Toss the guts back into the potato skins and toss those in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes or until they’ve got that lovely golden brown hue as in the picture above.

Sweet Hoisin Chicken

Those are the remnants of last night’s reasonably-healthy-food-masquerading-as-junk-food supper. They’re dead simple to put together and everybody loves them to death. The recipe can be applied to just about any chicken cut but I like the way the dark drumstick meat takes in the flavours while still giving us the finger food experience.

What you need:

10-12 chicken drumsticks

3/4 cup of hoisin sauce

1/4 cup dark soya sauce

1/4 cup cooking sherry

3 crushed cloves of garlic

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lay drumsticks in a single layer in a deep casserole dish (or two.) Mix all of the other, non-chicken ingredients in a bowl and pour or spoon the mixture evenly over the drumsticks in the casserole dish(es).

Once the oven is heated, put the chicken in, on the middle rack, for about 30 minutes. Once those 30 minutes are up the oven should be turned up to 425 for about 15 minutes. This turns our otherwise liquidy ingredients into a glaze but the chicken should be removed if there are any signs of burning at this temp…and, because oven temperatures will vary, this is the time to keep an eye on it.

That’s it. That’s all.

Enjoy!

Pasta 101

If you’re as much of a pasta fiend as I am (and I know you are) then you’ve probably discovered the merits of fresh pasta over the dried stuff we can buy in cello bags at any grocer’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with the dried stuff; it’s easy, convenient and generally pretty tasty stuff…but it just doesn’t compare to the fresh stuff. Making pasta isn’t difficult but I won’t lie; it is time-consuming. I wish I was as quick with the stuff as Zia Louisa who thought nothing of whipping up a batch for unexpected guests…but I’m not, so it becomes a bit of a project…but oh-so-worthwhile.

What you need for four good-sized servings:

1 cup all purpose flour

2/3 cup fine durum semolina (we’ve talked about this stuff before)

2 eggs

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp salt

2-3 tbsp. warm water

Take all of the dry ingredients and blend them in a large bowl.

Once blended the dry stuff needs to have a well made in the centre. I failed at getting a good pic of that but it’s basically like making a bowl within the bowl. Into that inner bowl the wet ingredients are put. Like so:

At this point the inner bowl is folder over onto the wet ingredients.

I’m a big fan of the wooden spoon for that part. It can be done with the hands, but hands aren’t quite as good at getting underneath everything and pulling the stuff from the bottom up to the top. Once the wet ingredients are completely covered in the dry it’s time to stir…and stir and stir and stir until the contents of the bowl look like this:

Now it’s time to get the hands in there. And it’s important to use hands now because they will be the gauge for how moist the dough is. If it’s not sticking together then we’ll want to add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it does. If it’s too sticky then we’ll want to add more flour, one tablespoon at a time. The result should be a wee bit sticky, leaving a thin film on the hand but firm too. When worked into a ball it should look a little like this:

Once it’s there, remove the ball from the bowl and work it into a rough log, then cut the log into 1 inch thick rounds.

Now the pasta is ready for rolling. I have a handy dandy pasta roller and cutter. It’s a dream.

And it’s pretty dirty so I shall sacrifice one of those 1 inch rounds of dough to help get it clean. In pressing the dough and pulling it along the rollers and the cutters all of the grub gets pulled out without compromising the integrity of the machine. Washing it is pretty much out of the question as it may rust those moving bits which do all the dirty work. I always save the end pieces of my dough logs for this job; one for the beginning of the process and one to give it a go over at the end.

Once satisfied with the cleanliness of one’s machine, the pressing of the real stuff may begin. Before beginning that, it’s important to flour the surface the pasta will be spending time on in between pressings. Most pasta machines start with the thickest pressing at number 1 (as does mine) but whatever the number, we want the first pressing to be at the thickest the rollers will allow then get thinner incrementally with each pressing.

Here’s the dough after the first press:

The end product should determine how thin the dough gets pressed but it’s important to get it thinner incrementally or the dough will tear. I usually cheat and go from 1 to 3 then up to 6 then 7 for things like ravioli or 9 (which is the thinnest setting on my machine) for things like spaghettini.

It’s best to move onto the cutting stage just before you’re ready to cook the pasta as this stuff doesn’t really store well (unless you’ve got a proper drying rack…which still doesn’t work for things like ravioli.) I swear by the biggest pot in the house for cooking pasta…doesn’t matter how much I’m cooking. The more space the noodles have to roll around in the boiling water the less chance they have of sticking together or requiring oil (we’ve talked about that before too) after they’re cooked. So I fill that big pot to within 2 inches of the top add a little salt and no pasta whatsoever until it’s at a rolling boil. But we’ll talk a bit more about that tomorrow.

Fast & Dirty Vegie Lasagne

It really is fast -I’ve been known to put this together in under 10 minutes upon realising kids needed to be at scouts, soccer, whatever within the hour…but hopefully it’s dirty only in the figurative sense.

What you need:

1 box oven-ready lasagne noodles

2 cans of diced tomatoes

3/4 cup of pesto (or about 4 cubes)

1 tub of cottage cheese

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1 egg

An assortment of fresh vegetables from your fridge. In batch I used 1 large red pepper, 1 large yellow pepper, 1 medium zucchinis, half a pound of asparagus, 4 portablello mushrooms all sliced.

First step is to drain the tomatoes in a colander.

Transfer that to a bowl and add the pesto.

I know, it looks gross…it’s not going to look pretty any time soon, but it will taste fantastic. IN another bowl mix the egg and the cottage cheese together. The egg will help to bind the egg and keep your lasagne from being too runny.

Then it’s time to start layering in the pan. I start with a good, thick layer of the tomato/pesto mixture.

Yup. Still gross.

On top of that I add one of the vegetables, starting with the peppers this time.

Over that we put a single layer of the oven-ready noodles.

It doesn’t even need to be even. That’s a 10×14″ pan. Over that we add some of the cottage cheese mixture, another vegie (asparagus this time…in case you can’t tell), then more noodles.

And so on…

And so forth, alternating sauce, vegies, noodles until we’re out of all of the above.

Oven-ready noodles don’t hold up too well to being the directly-under-the-mozza layer so I always finish off with a vegetable (or fungus, as it were). On top of that I sprinkly my mounds of mozzarella and then toss the lot into the oven for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

And end up with a nice, non-runny, not-as-gross-looking vegetable lasagne.

Mama loves her manhattans

I’ve started this post a few times and each one seemed to become more long-winded than the one prior. Lesson learned is that it’s difficult to write about something so close to one’s heart, something a girl could feel so passionate about. So I’ll keep this v. 18.5 of my manhattan recipe short and sweet.

Without further ado, let me introduce to my three good friends; Martini Rosse, Danfield’s Private Reserve Rye Whiskey and Angostura’s (brilliant) Bitters.

They are the special ingredients in this favourite cocktail o’ mine. Next, meet Mr. Jigger:

I love my jigger almost as much as I love my manhattans. His two parts complete the whole. They’re essential to the overall balance.

Okay…here’s the recipe:

2 ice cubes

1.5 ounces Danfield’s

1 ounce Martini Rosso

6 shakes from the little bottle o’ bitters

Served in my favourite manhattan glass; a repurposed bottle of Maria’s mole sauce. Dunno what it is but there’s something about getting a noseful of manhattany vapours before reaching in to taste it which makes this glass perfect.

broiled pesto shrimp

Time for the every-other-wednesday-with-the-eldest-sprog-shrimp-eating institution. This one is easy. Easier than pie…but I don’t cook pie…easier than…well, it’s just really easy and will have all of your heartthrobs pounding down your door if you feed it to them.

What you need:

1 kilo uncooked, deveined shrimp

1/2 stick of butter

1/2 cup of pesto (we used cilantro pesto tonight and our measurements weren’t very specific)

1/3 cup of cooking sherry

First step is to thaw (if necessary) and peel the shrimp. Being in Ontario it’s difficult to purchase fresh, unfrozen shrimp unless you’re willing to sign over your first born for them (which, sometimes, I am) so I always, always buy frozen, uncooked shrimp with the shells still on as the shells help to seal in the oceany flavour and keep them from freezer burn and other nasty things. They thaw quickly when given a cold water bath over an hour with about three water changes in between.

Those are our crustacean friends in their bath. Sometimes (like tonight) I cheat and add a little warm water to the bath and change the water more frequently to reduce the bath time by about 30 minutes. You can tell by the bubblies in the water that warm water was added. I’m not sure what causes that but it only ever happens with warm water. I suggest using the cold water only bath, but this will do in a pinch. The trick is to use water a little warmer than body temperature, but not too warm or you’ll prematurely start the cooking process and be on your way toward fish-flavoured bubble gum. Ew. Enough about that.

Step two is the saucy bit. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Toss your shrimps in a single layer into a large casserole dish. Sliver your half stick of butter over them as evenly as possible. They may not all be covered and that’s okay. We’re going for tasty, not coronary. The butter will go as far as it needs to. Over that drizzle your third of a cup of cooking sherry then dap bits of pesto over all of that so far. It should look a bit like this:

Which actually looks kind of gross…but will be tasty. Honest.

As soon you’re done that step, or the oven is preheated (whichever comes last) turn the cooker dial to broil. This will cook your shrimp more evenly, and they’re going to cook quickly, so that’s important. After two minutes of broiler heat-up time, toss your little ocean fruits into the oven. You’ll need to keep an eye on them because as soon as they start (and just start – this should happen about 4 minutes after putting them in the oven) to turn pink we’ll need to give them a stir so the pestoey-sherry-buttery goodnesses all mix together.

This is too pink:

Yes, I got distracted by the telephone and wasn’t paying enough attention. But all was not lost! After the first stirring phase I simply lifted the oven rack two notches so that our saucy little shrimps received more direct heat for a shorter period of time, thus reducing the sauce more quickly and giving that slightly browned finish I like so much.

So, if you didn’t screw up (like me) then about 4 minutes after that stir they should be ready to come out of the oven. They should look like they do in the last pic at that point. If you do screw up (like me) then you’ll need to give them about 2 minutes more under the broiler.

Then it’s time to serve and there are many options when it comes to serving these. My favourites are over rice with steamed vegies or in bowls with baguette croutons and a crispy salad.

Fall vegie stew

Today we’re making a lovely, spicey, crap-weather-beating stew out of the beauties above.

What you need:

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

4 cloves garlic, smashed (not crushed)

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 of each, peeled and cubed: large yam, medium pepper or butternut squash (or the squash of your choice, really,) medium turnip

3 large parsnips, peeled and cut into circles

6 medium sized red potatoes, cubed – I don’t peel these

2 teaspoons each: whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds (I prefer to use the whole, unground versions of these spices as I find their flavours stay stronger over longer periods of time than their ground versions)

2 teaspoons each: ground turmeric, cinnamon (yes! cinnamon! it will be wonderful, never fear!), nutmeg, cayenne pepper (because these things are hard to find whole and harder to grind if you do)

2 mushroom bouillon cubes

1 herbes fines bouillon cube (okay, I’m only using this because I want to try it – you can substitute that for a tablespoon each of thyme, oregano, sage and fresh parsley)

3 tbsp olive oil

How to do it:

Cube/slice/smash/chop all of the vegetabley ingredients listed above. If you’re anything like me your table will look a little like the following picture when you’re done:

Then toss the whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds into a mortar & pestle or a spice grinder (aka: coffee grinder – some people in rich countries keep several of these for various reasons, however my Queendom is not so auspicious – okay, okay. We did trade the second coffee grinder for a set of stella artois glasses.)

With that we’ll grind them into a coarse (as opposed to fine) powder. To that we’ll add the rest of the spices (but not the herbs!) Then we toss that into a large pot over medium-high heat:

And we’re going to leave them there, stirring occasionally, until out little spicey friends become over-poweringly fragrant and start to pop. Again, you’ll have to take my word on this, but they will pop. At which point we’ll add 3 tablespoons of olive oil and stir until everything’s coated. To that we’ll add the thinly sliced red onion and smashed cloves of garlic and stir a bunch more until the onions are translucent. At this point we add our potatoes and only our potatoes so help us Ford. Oh, and a little salt. Like, a teaspoonful. And we stir again.

What’s going on at this point is our salt and butter and potatoes are all mixing together and convincing the potatoes to release some of their starches which will serve to thicken the sauce later. It’s important to not allow the potatoes to brown too much for this very reason, but if they brown a bit that’s ok too.

Then we add all of the other splendid autumnal vegies….and yes; we stir again. We want to get them all coated with those spices we worked so hard to put together.

We’ll let them sit there like that, still over medium-high heat, still stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Then we’ll add just enough water to cover our vegies.

At this point we’re going to turn the heat down to medium-low, put a lid on it and leave it to its own devices. I’m going to go get the kids from the bus stop (but not before waiting until there’s a little movement in the pot then turning it down to the lowest heat possible on the burner because I’m paranoid of fires.)

Your finished stew should be thick, but still have tender but identifiable chunks of vegetables in it.

Because vegetable stews are a wee bit more delicate than meat-based stews, I tend to not make dumplings with them and opt for buttermilk tea biscuits instead.