Spork or Foon?

Sugar Cookies Have Hijacked My Life

I know this is not TWD's All-In-One Holiday Bundt Cake.  I know that I haven't blogged in two weeks.  

Life is nuts right now.  I got a HUGE catering gig with the store Theory: 5 stores, 4 days, 2200 cookies. I also am planning my 10-year high school reunion.  Which is tomorrow.  And I am also helping Jack's sister at her newly opened doggy daycare because her partner is getting married and going to Thailand for 3 weeks for her honeymood (JEALOUS)! 

This may be the only time in my life where I wish there were two different voices in my head. I would have liked one of those voices to say:

Are you crazy?!?? Don't plan your high school reunion! You'll have nightmares that no one will show up or that they'll forget to give you the liquor and you have to wander around a house trying to steal liquor from a liquor cabinet and a scary lady yells at you and no one drinks and leaves early once you find a way to steal the liquor! (True story, I had this dream).

I wish the other voice would have said:

YES! Theory! Huge job!  Amazing store! But be warned: 550 cookies a day is a lot of cookies for any one person to make and decorate! You will be up baking from 7 am to 3 am baking straight through! You'll sleep for only 3 hours and then wake up and bake some more! Then you'll spend 7 hours in a car delivering them to the five locations! Who drives from the city to Long Island to Westchester and thinks there will be no traffic, silly rabbit? Trix are for kids! 

 

So I haven't had a lot of time to cook and blog personally. Know I know what people in the food industry mean when they say they come home and don't want to think about food. 

So please bear with me while I try to get through the month of December. November was hard. December is going to be harder because I have many catering orders. So it'll be me, lots of butter, lots of cookie dough, and not enough time spent working out for all of the butter and cookie dough. I already feel my former muscle jiggling. Not cool. 

And I miss getting around to all of my blogging buddies blogs! I will get there! And I will catch up on the TWD's I missed! They are on my Thanksgiving dessert menus. 

More dessert. Sigh. 

Check out TWD and Britin of the Nitty Britty for the holiday bundt cake. And if you want to make the most amazing sugar cookies ever, click here for Dorie Greenspan's Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies! 

Oh, and these are supposed to be Gingerbread women, but I think they look like big German women who will hold your head in their bosoms while you suffocate. 

Spiced Chicken and Chickpea Stew

In my pre-cooking days, I was not a big fan of flavor.  I ate dry cereal (Lucky Charms, no matter the age, thankyouverymuch), turkey and cheese (one slice each) sandwiches on whole wheat with relish (still do, no shame in that), and any kind of pasta with minimal sauce.  And cookies, of course (of course).

At that same time, I was very into astrology and horoscopes.  Scorpios are fiercely loyal (check), intense (check), intensely private (yup), dramatic (double check), and wise beyond their years (umm???....).  

According to Tarot.com "Scorpio is the only sign that has three animal totems. First, there is the well-known Scorpion with its active tail. Second, as the Scorpio learns to master its passion and hold its instincts at bay, it changes into the Eagle. The Eagle has more perspective, for it flies high above the surface of circumstances, swooping down with its power only to kill prey for food. In its third form, the Scorpion becomes the always-peaceful dove. The real meaning of Scorpio is thus shown. Scorpio is about metamorphosis. Scorpios transform the painful poisons of possessive passion into a higher consciousness based on universal love."

I've got three animal totems?! Holla! Whatever those are they must be special. Because that makes a shape shifter much like Sam Merlotte from True Blood - from a Scorpion who will kill you to an eagle that flies high to a dove!? I'm a hot commodity.

Scorpios are in the 8th House (Transformation aka Shapeshifting Holla) and are ruled by the planet Pluto. When it comes to food, Scorpios are known to enjoy foods as fiery as their personalities:  foods like Indian, Thai, West Indian, etc.

Well, that just isn't true! I would think to myself.  Is everything I stand for a lie? Am I not the Scorpio I thought I once was?  AND Pluto is not a planet??? 

Who am I?

Little did I know that I just needed to come to my senses. Maybe it's because I cook, maybe because my palatte is more refined, or maybe I just realized that one can't go through life eating dry sandwiches with relish and Lucky Charms marshmallows, as much as I tried. 

But it happened. I love food that is packed with flavor. So when I received my daily (weekly? I can't keep track) email from Saveur Magazine for quick weeknight dinners, I immediately headed off to the supermarket to make this dish. And quick it was.  It takes about 30 minutes to throw together, and luckily, I had all of the spices on hand to make the frangrant, complex Iraqi spice mix that is suggested for the dish (you can use curry powder if you don't have all of the ingredients for the spice mix).

No tricky or complicated methods here. Just simple cooking to create a delicious stew of fall-off-the-bone chicken, tender potatoes, firm chickpeas, and a deliciously flavorful broth.

You don't even need to be a Scorpio to enjoy the dish.  But if you want to fly around the streets with a killer tail, you'll have to have been born between October 23 and November 23. Sorry. 

Spiced Chicken and Chickpea Stew adapted from Saveur

1⁄4 cup canola oil
6 cloves garlic
3 small onions, quartered
4 medium waxy-style potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp. Spice Mixture or curry powder
1 tbsp. ground turmeric
1 tbsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
4 skinless chicken legs (about 1 lb.)
4 skinless chicken thighs (about 1 lb.)
1  19-oz. can chickpeas, drained
4 pieces khubuz al-tannour (Iraqi flat bread),
   naan, or pita
1 lemon, quartered

1. Heat oil in a 6-qt. pot over medium-high heat. Add garlic, onions, potatoes, bay leaves, spice mixture, turmeric, and salt. Cook, stirring and scraping bottom of pot occasionally, until onions and potatoes are golden, about 10 minutes. Add chicken and 3 1⁄2 cups water; stir to combine. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium, and simmer, uncovered, until chicken is tender and cooked through, 20–25 minutes.

2. Add chickpeas; cook for 5 minutes more. Taste the stew and season with more salt, to taste. Line 4 bowls with torn pieces of the flat bread. Ladle stew over bread. Squeeze a wedge of lemon over each bowl and sprinkle with sumac.

SERVES 4

TWD: Sugar Topped Molasses Spice Cookies with Spiced Cream Filling

You know those commercials with two people sitting around a table, racing to see which one eats the Oreo filling the fastest? That was me.  And I was racing against myself. To eat all of the Oreo filling I could in one sitting.  It was sad.

Once, when I was studying abroad in London, I ate a whole sleeve of Oreos one night.  Needless to say, I was very sick after that. 

Oddly enough, I never liked Double Stuffed Oreos.  There was just too much filling-to-cookie ratio.  Nabisco let me down on that one, but, I am sure, made other filling-lovers very happy. 

Alas, my Oreo eating days are gone and have been replaced by raspberries, blueberries, and grapes.  And I even feel bad about eating grapes because I know they are high in sugar.  And the only races I run now are again, against myself... but this time to beat my time per mile when I am running.  

I hate being healthy. 

But these cookies brought me back to my youth a little bit.  Pamela of Cookies with Boys chose these Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies and I immediately thought back to my sandwich cookie days.  I made a cream filling and added cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon for a little cookie magic.  I wanted to add orange zest, but I didn't have any on hand, and I was too lazy to walk out of my door and one block down to the supermarket. 

Hey, I'm tired. I just moved. 

Even without the orange, this filling is delicious and fits oh-so-well with the delicious, chewy, molasses spiced cookies.  The range of textures is outstanding:  the crunch of the sugar, the crisp edges of the cookies, the soft-pillowy feeling of the interior of the cookies, and the creamy filling make one dynamic cookie.  

I think Nabisco has some competition.

Click here for the recipe and check out the rest of TWD!

Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

I didn't get to talk much about the desserts I posted in the Halloween Desserts post.  The pumpkin spice cupcakes were fantastic, the lollipops were fun to make (although slightly stressful), the cookies soft, sugary and delicious.  But one dessert really stood out: this chocolate pumpkin pie.

Chocolate and pumpkin are a beautiful marriage, albeit on that can raise eyebrows if people are not familiar with the combination.  

I saw this cake in Martha Stewart's Halloween Issue and doggy-eared it to make. And I actually made it and didn't lost it in a pile of other doggy-eared recipes!  

First thing is first.  I am IN LOVE with this chocolate tart recipe.  Sweet,tender, with hints of spice, it is topped off beautifully with a layer of melted bittersweet chocolate that adds the perfect, unexpected layer of chocolate delight.  The tart is a perfect vessel for the creamy, spicy pumpkin pie, the recipe of which is my favorite recipe to date. I did not use the Martha Stewart Recipe, as I did not have sour cream on hand, so I found a recipe on Joy of Cooking, and yes, it was a joy to cook this. 

Bad joke? OK. Sorry. 

Let me tell you a little secret: I had never even tasted a pumpkin pie until last year, because throughout my childhood pumpkin pie seemed unnatural to me. Pumpkins were for carving on Halloween, not for eating! You all must be mad, I thought! Actually, the whole concept of pie seemed unnatural to me. Why have pie when you can have cake, I thought?  And why have cake when you can have Carvel Ice Cream Cake?  It has crunchies in the middle!

But I digress. I do now love pie (although I still prefer Carvel Ice Cream cake. Seriously. I have no shame). And I do love this pie. It was perfect for Halloween, decorated with a festive chocolate spiderweb (my first successful spiderweb decoration!).  But sans spiderweb, this will make a fabulous Thanksgiving dessert. Unless you have some weird Scary Thanksgiving theme going on.  If so, web away. 

Click here for the pie recipe.  Click here for the tart recipe. 

Moving Day!

Sorry, once again I'm a bad TWDer. I am moving for the second time in three months.  Although Jack and I knew that our current (former) apartment was only a temporary one (we knew we'd be moving again in 3-6 months while we looked for a permanent apartment once we knew what our lives shaped up to be when we got back to NY, ie. where we'd be working and how much we could afford), we didn't know that it would be on the 3 month end of that spectrum rather than the 6 month end. But we found our dream apartment. Gorgeous location on the Upper West Side, stunning prewar building (we love prewar) built in 1901, high ceilings, a big kitchen (Yes! In Manhattan! With an Island!) and a working fireplace. A working fireplace, people! In Manhattan!  Le sigh.

Another thing about moving in Manhattan, and any New Yorker can relate, is that if you find a place on Friday, you're moving the following Tuesday. Turnover is fast, people, even in these tough times.  If you call a broker in Manhattan, your conversation can go a little bit like this:

Broker: When are you moving?

Prospective Tenant: Well, our lease is up in 6 weeks. 

Broker:  Call me in 4 weeks.

That's New York living.  And I did find my apartment on Friday, only to move on Tuesday.

So again, all of my things are packed. My Halloween extravaganza was the last thing I baked before I packed up all of my equipment. Which means that again I cannot complete my assignment. But I vow to make both this week's and last week's desserts this weekend. Until then, look at this cute skull cake I made! It is a Devil's Food Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. I didn't get to taste it because I didn't have the heart to cut into it and I left the party before anyone else had the heart to cut into it either. But I heard that it was gobbled up pretty quickly, so I'm pretty happy.

On another note, isn't this the happiest skull you ever did see?  Not very intimidating. 

Click herehttp://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/moist-devils-food-cake-with-mrs-milmans-chocolate-frosting?comments_page=1 for the Devil's Food Cake Recipe. 

Click herehttp://www.recipezaar.com/Vanilla-Buttercream-Frosting-From-Sprinkles-Cupcakes-222188 for the Vanilla Buttercream Recipe (courtesy of Sprinkles Cupcakes. Although I have never eaten a Sprinkles Cupcake, I use their recipes for frosting as if their frosting is the frosting of the gods who only refer to the King Sprinkles version of the Frosting Bible. Sprinkles 31:24. And so it is said.)

And I really don't know why my hyperlinks have been acting up lately.

Click here to check out the responsible TWDers in their versions of the All in One Holiday Bundt Cake! The holidays are here! Merry Christmas Everyone! 

Lots'o Halloween Desserts

 

 

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

FASTEST POST EVER.

I made all of this stuff last night after going out with a few friends.  So you can imagine how that went.

Note to all bakers: Don't try baking lots of food for a party after a night out with friends. You won't get anything done.

I woke up at 5 am to finish start baking.  It took 6 hours. Plus, we're moving out of our apartment. Today was a bit crazy. It is only noon. Now I have to drive to Long Island. Holla.

 

Spice Cookies with Dulce De Leche Filling

 

Grandma's All Occasion Sugar Cookies

Do-It-Yourself White Chocolate Lollipops! Thanks Wilton!

Martha Stewart's Chocolate Pumpkin Pie!  Chocolate Crust Recipe care of Martha Stewart (scroll down). Pumpkin Pie recipe care of Joy of Baking.

I also have the coolest skull cake that I will photograph later.  Gotta run!

Top Chef with Teanna - Season Six, Episode 9, Part 2 - Pressed Chicken with Calamari Noodles

I have to keep this one short and sweet - Jack and I are moving (AGAIN) this week to our permanent apartment! 

Here is the winning restaurant wars dish from restaurant Revolt(ing). Michael Voltaggio made a Pressed Chicken with Calamari Noodles.

Let's talk about the brilliance that is Michael Voltaggio. Michael is so brilliant, that in this past Wednesday's episode, his dish prompted Natalie Portman to ask "Who is his dealer and is he accepting new clients?" Toby Young is kicking himself for not thinking of something so witty. 

But that is an episode that I will discuss with next week's dish. And there is a lot to discuss... like the uncomfortable innuendos that were being thrown around the table about a prick. It was... odd.

Here's what I changed:  You know with any Voltaggio dish, you're going to be doing some crazy stuff.  Like putting frozen calamari steaks through a meat press.  I couldn't find calamari steaks, so I just got the largest pieces of calamari that I could find and cut them into noodles with a pairing knife.  No freezing required. Secondly, I do not have an immersion circulator, so I just poached the chicken in 2 cups of chicken stock, extra garlic and thyme, and added a lemon slice to really bring out the flavor.  I then followed the rest of the instructions for the chicken by pressing a large frying pan on top of them and then crisping the skin when they were ready to serve.

The broth was delicious and reminded me a lot of the Cardamom Tomato broth that Kevin and Jennifer made in a previous episode.  Michael's broth wasn't as sweet, as there was no sugar, but the sweet, licorice flavor of fennel and the citrusy lemongrass added the perfect flavor profile to this dish. 

Although the recipe is challenging, it is definitely adaptable to the home kitchen if you put your mind to it.  Click herehttp://www.bravotv.com/foodies/recipes/pressed-chicken-with-calamari-noodles-tomato-confit-and-fennel-salad for the recipe. 

Oh, and here is a real picture of the other dish that Kevin and Jennifer made a few weeks back.  I had to replace the crappy iPhone photo.

Whole Wheat Apple Chai-Spiced Muffins

Tuesdays with Dorie will be "Teanna Does Wednesdays with Dorie" this week!  I was a bit delayed in making the dessert (read: I still haven't made it yet), but will make it tomorrow to post!  I apologize for any inconvenience! 

I saw these muffins on a blogger friend's page. Tracey, of Tracey's Culinary Adventures, had an apple theme on her blog this past week, and when I saw these muffins, I jumped out of my chair and made them.  

I'm not kidding. At 12:30 in the morning on Monday morning, I started baking these whole wheat muffins. There is nothing better than seeing a recipe that you love and knowing you have all of the ingredients to make it.  And then on top of having all of the ingredients, having the will to make it at that very moment. That's a compelling recipe.

Honestly, food bloggers, or anyone who loves to cook for that matter, how many times do you see a recipe and bookmark/dog ear/email it to yourself/rip out the page, swearing that you'll make it at a later date and time.  And how often do you actually make that dish?

Exactly. 

This is a recipe that is simple and straightforward and packs a great punch.  Tracey saw this recipe on the King Arthur Flour blog (a site I never read, but checked out when I saw this recipe and now realize what I've been missing)

I made some changes to the recipe, but not many.  I didn't have white whole wheat flour on hand, so I used regular whole wheat flour, and I added my favorite spice - McCormick Gourmet's Chai Spice.  I usually don't often use premade spice blends (like pumpkin pie spice or apple pie spice) because for some reason, actually measuring the out ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, etc, etc etc makes me feel like a more accomplished cook/baker, but I make an exception with this spice. 

These complex fragrant spices of the chai spice work so well with the robust cinnamon (in my opinion, you can never have too much cinnamon) and the crisp gala apples become soft and sweet once baked and are finished with the slight tang of buttermilk to create a wonderful breakfast muffin.  

I've listed my ingredient changes, but head over to Tracey's blog to see the entire recipe! 

1 cup (4 ounces) whole wheat flour

1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon chai spice

1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 cup buttermilk

2 large apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped

Top Chef with Teanna - Season Six, Episode 9, Part 1 - Pear Pithivier

Finally the time has come for the beloved Top Chef restaurant wars.  This is the point in the season where the top 8 chefs form two teams and build a restaurant empire for an evening to impress the judges. Or, in this case, the Top 5 or (arguably) 6 chefs pair up with two chefs that make you wonder why they weren't eliminated weeks ago leaving room for much more talented chefs to create dishes in the kitchen. 

Luckily, one of said chefs did prepare the most popular dish of the evening: this pear pithivier.  Yes, the controversial, inferiority-complex suffering Robin prepared this fantastical (yes, fantastical) dessert.  Now, I don't mean to be mean about Robin. But we all know that Robin doesn't belong there anymore. Robin knows she doesn't belong there which is why I say she suffers from an inferiority complex: because her knowledge of the fact that she shouldn't be there constantly has her being over defensive and snappy. Although I'd snap Michael Voltaggio's finger off if he ever stuck it in my face the way he did hers after she cursed at him. But his arrogance is another story that can be seen in the hilarious montage of an interview where Michael talks about his level-headedness and leadership skills in the kitchen interspersed with clips of Michael being an annoying, obnoxious, cocky pain-in-the-ass. But he is a damn talented annoying, cocky, pain-in-the-ass, and for that, I cannot be mad at him. 

I did make the dish that Michael made that won him the challenge - Pressed Chicken with Calamari Noodles - which was amazing and I will post Wednesday, but I have to say, this dish was the star of the dinner.  

I had actually made homemade puff pastry for the first time from scratch and have yet to blog about it. I will shortly, but I'll just say that making puff pastry from scratch reminds me why I should never eat puff pastry: because it will turn my body into a butter factory. As in, I'll be a giant stick of Land O'Lakes walking the streets of Manhattan.  But this dessert made me forget all of that.  A delicious, intensely almond frangiapane is given a little kick by adding crystallized ginger and is layered with thinly sliced, butter- poached pears and enrobed in a light and flaky puff pastry crust. It is served with "intense vanilla ice cream" (I just thought it was funny that Eli described the ice cream as "intense") and a crisp almond brittle. Robin served this dish with an Elderflower syrup, but since I don't have any access to elderflower syrup, I made some homemade caramel and infused it with some rose water. The rich caramel worked perfectly with the light, rose-flavored water and was a perfect finish to the dish. 

Maybe Robin does deserve to be there after all.

No. No. I don't think so.  But this gives her a gold star in my book. 

Click here for the recipe.

Top Chef with Teanna - Season 6, Episode 8 - Pork Leg Pate

HOLLA!

I'm back! With a shiny new camera!  I am the proud new owner of a Nikon D3000, which is basically the replacement camera for the now defunct Nikon D40, but sounds so much cooler because there are more 0's in the name. 

But I am in love.  I don't know much about cameras, but I do know that it is faster, takes better photos in less light, and IS NOT BROKEN, which was the problem with my last camera. 

On another note, I swear I'll be a better blogger. I haven't been consistent, I haven't been keeping in touch with my favorite bloggers, I haven't been on Twitter, and I miss the community! When things calm down a bit, I'll be back with a vengeance! For now, I still love everyone so much! 

But on to bigger and better things.  Mainly, Kevin Gillespie and Pork. This week's challenge had the cheftestants cooking pork for the famed Charlie Palmer.  And of course, the winner of the challenge was Kevin, who is not only extremely talented, but in love with the other white meat - so much so that he has a pork tattoo adorning his arm, which he happily showed the judges.  Luckily, it wasn't adorning another part of his body (because, frankly, if you're going to have a tattoo of a pig, you may as well go all out and get it tattooed on your backside).

This has to be one of the easiest Top Chef recipes I have tried to date.  The ingredients only cost me about $15 for 1/3 of the recipe for the pork, star anise, mushrooms, cherries, and heavy cream. I only ended up getting ground pork instead of pork and fat back (um?) and had to get canned cherries instead of fresh.  Additionally, I subbed almond flour for hazelnut flour, because that is what I had on hand. I learned that quatre epices is a spice mix used mainly in France and the Middle East, but is just a fancy way of saying "2 tablespoons ground black pepper, or a combination of 1/2 tablespoon white and 2-1/2 tablespoons black pepper, 2 tablespoons ground cloves, 2 tablespoons ground nutmeg, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon." 

The recipe took a total of 20 minutes to throw together, even though there are three different segments.  Each part of this recipe was delicious on its own, ESPECIALLY the mushroom mixture, which was absolutely glorious. Almond flour was cooked in a mixture of butter and canola oil (I didn't have 1 pound of pork fat on hand, unfortunately) and used to saute a mixture of mushrooms.  The mushrooms are then tossed in a homemade mayonnaise and sprinkled with parsley. The mixture of earthy, nutty mushrooms, textural almond flour, creamy mayonnaise and lemony parsley is pure perfection.  

The pork terrine was firm, tender, and wonderfully spiced with the quatre epices. And finally, cherries, although canned, took very well to the pickling process and were the key to bringing this dish together. 

When Jack tasted the dish, he loved it so much, he didn't even have time to do his happy dance. Huge score in my book.  Although I do miss that dance.

Click here for the recipe.