Let me paint a picture for you, one that you may well understand if you feel the same way about food that I do. So it's Tuesday, and you start to plan out the food you're going to make on Thursday. It's not like there's a special occasion or anything, it's just what you do. You get a fabulous pot roast recipe from a good friend. The new issue of Cook's Illustrated re-visits the no-knead bread phenomenon from a year ago that you always wanted to jump on but didn't have a dutch oven when it first came out and when you finally got one, everyone was already over it. One of your favorite co-workers is turning 31 and needs birthday treats. Your company is closing down for a week and a half and you want to bring in something tasty to remind them all that they're going to miss you.
The stars are in line for you to do some serious cooking. You go to the grocery store and you find the bread flour that they never seem to have in stock when you need it. You find the difficult-to-locate ingredients for your famous cornbread. You remember a brownie recipe from months ago and you already have everything you need for them. Then you get the feeling that something's about to go awry.
And, sure enough, it does. And when it does, despite the fact that you've made the best loaf of bread ever and that your friend's pot roast was a success, when your muffins get a little overcooked and your brownies are ruined by some act of God, you decide you're a failure. It destroys your other successes and makes you forget that you FINALLY perfected a loaf of bread after a year of awful bread experiences. So, you mope in your recliner and curl up with the amazing book that a special friend got you for Christmas and you get more fussy because you're reading about all the good food in the world that you will never be able to cook because you have lost the gift of cooking.
Perhaps this little story only makes sense if you're me, or if you were one of the two people that had to be in the house with me when I discovered that I had somehow ruined the brownies despite following the recipe to the letter. In the holiday spirit, though, I have decided to move on and not dwell on the failures. The successes deserve much, much better than that.
First of all, the pot roast. I have said before that I really, really like pot roasts. I've also mentioned that though I don't use it so often, I really like my crock pot. So when I mentioned on twitter that I was interested in good crock pot recipes, imagine my delight when I received this message from michelle:
I have a crock pot standard. Pot roast, veggies, rosemary, 1/4 c H20, and a bottle of beer. Simple. Tasty. It's the beer that adds.
She was right. The meat turned out perfect. Cook's Illustrated has an article this month about using inferior cuts of meat for roasts if you cook them properly, and this was a great example. I used a sort of crappy roast, seared it before putting it in the crock pot for some extra flavor, and left it for the whole day with just some beer, rosemary, potatoes and carrots. I won't even attempt to tell you about how the house smelled when I got home, because it was just too amazing.
And then, there's the bread. Do you remember the no-knead bread phenomenon from last year? A combination of Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery produced a recipe that involves no kneading, and can be done in your home in a dutch oven. The internet blew up. Every food blogger was posting about it. I didn't jump on the trend then, but I am surely on it now. Cook's Illustrated revisited it, and I used their variation. I'll post the recipe when I get home tonight (thanks, downtime at work!), but for now, I leave you with pictures.
You should be making this bread. Seriously. The new version requires just a little bit of kneading - a task my husband was kind enough to do since I was stuck at the job that pays for the five different types of flour I keep in my kitchen. (All purpose, semolina, pastry, bread, Italian 00 - if you were curious.) The secret is a very, very long rise. I made my dough on Wednesday night around 1 a.m. and put it in the oven around 6 the next evening. Delicious, hassle-free, and so easy!
I alluded to them earlier in the week, so as promised, here we go.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that our office was having a cupcake competition. I work in what you might describe as an obnoxiously creative office. I knew I had to go for taste, as even though I'm a designer, I'm just awful at decorating food. I cook it, and I can plate things well, but when it comes to icing, there's just no winning for me. So, my co-workers banded together and tried to help me come up with ridiculously strange cupcake ideas. Someone suggested "meat cupcake", someone else suggested "breakfast cupcake", and then it came to me. I would have to put bacon in a cupcake.
Credit definitely goes to the Vanilla Garlic blog, because I never would have perfected these if I hadn't started from their fabulous recipe. I kept the recipe relatively similar, except I used more of the pan drippings and used a full teaspoon of baking powder with regular all-purpose flour instead of the self-rising. I didn't use their recipe for the frosting - I made a basic buttercream icing and added some maple syrup to it.
A few warnings about using maple syrup in a batter. It's pretty easy to add too much and break a batter. I definitely cut down the amount of syrup in the batter itself - I ended up tripling that recipe so I could make enough to send to my office and John's. That would have required 12 tablespoons of maple syrup, and I only used 8.
The recipe isn't too difficult. Step one is to fry up some bacon. Fry up as much as you'd like - for a triple batch, I used a pound. You'll be chopping this up later and folding it in to the batter, so fry it to whatever crispy point you want to have in your cupcakes. As I knew people would be a little weirded out by the idea of bacon in their cupcakes, I made mine pretty crispy - the type of thing you'd get in store-bought bacon bits as opposed to a little soft like I want to eat in strips. Pour out the pan drippings and put them in the refrigerator to cool. (Don't pour it directly from your pan into a Glad storage container, because it'll melt the bottom and you'll lose some of the drippings while you scream and look for another container. Trust me.)
When the bacon drippings have cooled and solidified, you're going to beat them with the butter until it's light and fluffy. Add in the brown sugar and maple syrup and beat until they're well combined, then add the egg. Then you'll mix in your dry ingredients that you've pre-sifted together - flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Alternate between adding some of the dry ingredients, then milk, ending with the dry. I have made these twice, and I used more milk in the first batch. It made the end product a little more moist. Probably should have done that for the second batch. End by folding in the bacon.
You'll note that I'm not giving quantities here, and that's mostly so you can defer to the Vanilla Garlic recipe. It's a great starter. Pay attention to the quantity of that recipe, though. It claims it makes six cupcakes, but if you use extra baking powder instead of the self rising flour, I think their version will get you closer to ten. This was an experimental recipe to start with, so most definitely experiment with it on your own if you're interested!
As for the taste? Well, I liked them. I thought they were great. They're incredibly rich, though. My less-syrupy version wasn't terribly sweet, but they're a lot of flavor. Also, mine rose a TON. I didn't expect that on the first batch, so I had some incredibly awful looking cupcakes. If you put syrup in your frosting, be aware that it's going to be very, very sweet. I think the sweet syrupy frosting in moderation is a good choice.
I didn't take the grand prize, because as I expected, they were mostly judging on look. I did, however, take one of the special prizes - most unexplained. I couldn't be prouder.
On Friday, I went to John's company Christmas party. It was at the Cincinnati Club, and it was a great event. I got to spend time with Michelle and Kevin, we took a very cute holiday picture, and I still managed to get in bed by 12:30, so I didn't feel awful about going out when I was still getting over an ear infection. This meant that I didn't get to check my email on Friday night. When I woke up Saturday morning, my inbox was full to an extreme that hasn't happened since I went to Kansas City two months ago and went on the four-day no-internet binge.
The explanation is that I made the Vox front page again thanks to the [this is good] feature. I'd like to pretend that I'm really funny, but I only deserve credit for having a decent memory and the good sense to marry a husband who doesn't know how funny he is. I gained a whole lot of new neighbors out of the deal, and I've been enjoying going back through many of your entries. I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you!
So, there's the welcome, and here's the promise - I've solved the problem of what I'll be making for the cupcake competition on Friday. I made a small batch tonight to make sure they were award-winning, and I wasn't disappointed. Here's your hints: Bacon. Nutmeg. Maple.
The full story will be here later this week, I promise. It'll come with pictures. I wouldn't disappoint you. Before I can get all that together, I've got to bake the final batch, finish my story for the next issue of Taste, finish an animation for the job that pays my Fresh Market tab AND make some decisions about my portfolio. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can make all those things happen by Friday.
An actual conversation between John and I:
Jen: Is there an extra ice scraper that I can steal?
John: There's the one from your old car in the basement.
Jen: I don't go to the basement.
John: You do if you want your ice scraper.
Jen: There are BUGS in the basement.
John: There are no bugs in the basement. I killed all the bugs.
(Time passes as Jen goes down to the basement, opens the door and finds a bug directly in front of her feet, then calls John back...)
Jen: I thought you killed all the bugs.
John: I did kill all the bugs.
Jen: There is a bug right where I have to walk to get to the ice scraper!
John: It's dead.
Jen: I know it's dead... wait, how do you know there's a DEAD bug right when you enter the basement?
John: I left it there.
Jen: Why would you leave a dead bug right at the entrance to the basement?!
John: To send a message to the others.
(silence.)
Jen: To send a message.
John: Did you see any other bugs?
Jen: ...no.
John: Then I guess it worked.
I've been thinking about it for awhile, and now that the holidays are upon us, I think it's time. I get asked constantly about kitchen equipment - what you should buy, how much you should spend on it, what's the best brand for X, why is Y product so much more expensive than Z, etc.
For December, I'm going to work on writing some recommendations for the home kitchen. Considering the source, expect things to be fairly minimalist - I own a house that is 865 square feet, and while the kitchen is suitable for my needs, that's only because I refuse to fill it with unnecessary products.
If anyone has good suggestions on what I should write about, let me know in the comments - in the meantime, I'll be assembling my favorite products and gearing up to post the first version in the next couple of days.
(A short post today, because I've only got a few minutes before my black bottom cupcakes come out of the oven. I couldn't be any more excited!)
So, I didn't really make NaBloPoMo. It happens. It's been a busy month in my life, and December is about to be much, much worse.
I'll leave you with an image of my favorite comfort food of 2007. Have you ever had spanakopita? I don't mean the spanakopita that's kind of dry and awful that you get at your local Greek takeout place. I mean spanakopita carefully crafted by a Greek grandmother that's been making it for decades. I am the closest to a Greek grandmother that most of my friends are going to get, so they deal with mine. I hesitate to share the recipe with you, because it's my go-to food when I need to impress someone in under ten minutes. We're all friends here, so I've decided to give it up.
Most spanakopita is sold in triangle shapes, but I'm sort of lazy. My version comes in a 9x13 casserole dish, and it's cut into squares. It's delicious, easy to make, and not terribly expensive.
I honestly think this is a recipe to experiment with, though many people will probably disagree with me. My basic recipe is a little adapted from my mother's: two bricks of frozen chopped spinach, a pound of crumbled feta cheese, eight ounces of cream cheese, two tablespoons of minced onion and three eggs. Mix it all together (defrost the spinach and drain it first), and put it between about 16 sheets of phyllo.
My basic phyllo technique requires defrosted phyllo. You can try to buy it and use it the same day, but that never works for me. You can find phyllo in your grocery store with all the frozen pie crusts. Throw it in your fridge and it'll last for months. (Three or four, to be exact.) Melt two sticks of butter, and get a pastry brush. Brush the inside of a casserole dish, then lay down two sheets of phyllo. Brush those with butter and lay down two more sheets. Repeat until you've got about eight sheets on the bottom, pour in the spinach and cheese mixture, and repeat with the sheets on top. Put as many sheets on there as you like, really. I do about eight, but with how delicious the buttery phyllo was last night, I'm about to upgrade it to twelve.
It takes ten minutes to throw this together. Bake it about 35 minutes at 350, or until the phyllo is golden and crispy. Reheat it, share it with your friends - it's a recipe for everyone.
Happy NaBloPoMo, everyone. It's been a pleasure seeing many of you succeed. We'll keep our fingers crossed for more success from me next year.
I'm sitting at my desk today, working diligently as per usual, when an email came that would change the course of the next two weeks of my life. Office restructuring? Much more important than that. A new project? Well, sort of. This email, my friends, refers to a cupcake challenge.
A CHALLENGE. A competition. About. Food.
Now, I'm not much of a baker, but I am a fabulous cook, and I don't like to lose. Cupcake time is on.
I don't even particularly like cupcakes. I'm in it for the power.
So, folks, you might be seeing a whole lot of cupcakes from me over the next couple of weeks. The challenge is on December 14th. I've got some interesting ideas in the works, but tonight was all about simplicity and technique. A simple chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Sure, it's not the best cupcake I've ever had, but that's why I'm doing some practice runs. With great power comes great responsibility, and today I was granted the power of cupcakes.
So, I gave up. I had planned to do NaBloPoMo, and then I didn't. Best-laid plans, et cetera.
The reasons are many, notably that my mom came to visit me and I decided to go on a week-long computer hiatus. Mom came in Wednesday night and we proceeded to spend four days away from a computer. With the exception of the things I have to do to keep my job, I've managed to stay relatively computer-free.
It's hard to adjust back to a constantly connected life, though. My phone has been on the charger for three days, unanswered. (I'm really sorry to all of you that I haven't called back. I literally have not touched it.) I have unreturned emails for the first time in my life. When I get home, I just want to hang out with my husband or play with the cat or go shopping. I don't want to instantly jump on the computer. The computer is work to me right now - I need to detach from it.
I've been rekindling my romance with paper, though, which is nice. I've been subtly dropping hints to my husband that I want a super cool planner for 2008. Something I can write all over and be creative with. I've been sketching more at work.
My professional life is going well, though it's a little bit complicated. Last week I started to go through all of the projects from my undergraduate career and figure out what might be good portfolio pieces down the line. I'm sure everyone goes through this at one time or another in their educational career, but man - I wish I could take all those classes over again, knowing what I know now. I'd be awesome.
Sorry, guys. Life took over. I'll get back in the swing of things eventually. Good luck to the rest of you bloggers out there that are still giving it your best shots!
Today was not an easy day at work, for reasons that are simply unimportant (and confidential, of course). The one high point of my day was a "town hall" meeting in our lobby. This is a somewhat rare event where everyone in the company is invited to come up for an hour or so while the heads of the various studios give presentations and discuss the business they've been doing lately.
The head of my studio was the one that really hit the spot for me. He talked about the new American Girl store we opened, and how little girls were camped out to be the first ones inside. How happy they were when they saw all the toys. This is what we all got into this for, he remarked. And he's right. Sometimes I feel like the job I'm doing right now isn't quite why I got into design. I wanted to help people. I wanted to make changes in people's lives. I worry from time to time that all I'm doing is figuring out how to make people spend more money so the companies are happy.
It's hard in our world today to find something that's purely good, something that's only about helping people with no negative aspects. Steve's right - this is what we got into it for. We're making money for American Girl, sure. We're getting parents to spend more money. But ultimately, we're making little girls happy. That's how we get to win, even if there's an additional cost or two.
My mom's going to be here in two days. I'm sure I'll talk about the other kind of retail therapy then.
I originally wrote this for My Wine Education, where I'm guest-blogging this week, but it took so long that I'm a little bit spent as far as my daily writing goes. I'm going to cheat and paste it here as well.
There are people out there that live for the week between Christmas and New Year's. Hot chocolate or mulled cider on Christmas Eve while you stare longingly at the presents under the tree, seeing the joy on your loved one's faces as they tear into the boxes on Christmas morning to find exactly what they were hoping for, and getting to be with all your friends to share a glass (okay, three) of champagne a week later. I see the appeal of this week, but for me, the holiday season is all about the food. If you've got to have a completely over-the-top holiday, make mine Thanksgiving.
Many people are overwhelmed by Thanksgiving, and rightfully so. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that's always orchestrated by the grownups. No one really knows how these people came to be so knowledgeable about how it all comes together, but somehow a feast just appears while the rest of the family watches football. A few years ago, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. I would single-handedly craft my own Thanksgiving meal, a meal to beat all others. I'm lucky enough that I have my husband's mom to make a delicious feast on Thursday, while I cook for friends on Friday so we can recount all the great stories from the day before.
If you don't have decades worth of turkey feasts under your belt, here are some pointers. These are the things I wish I would have known years ago. I'm sure I'll regret giving up some secrets, but I firmly believe everyone deserves a beautiful feast. Happy eating!
The Turkey - You'll inevitably know your family's eating habits much better than I do, but the general rule is to estimate somewhere around a pound of bird for each guest. I always estimate a little higher, because we all love our turkey - and I like to be able to send guests home with enough to make a sandwich the next day. If that's your philosophy, go for about two pounds or so per person.Making the big bird is great, but if it's a feast for a small group, consider just buying a turkey breast or two. They'll cook up much easier and faster and you can slice them so no one will be the wiser. Of course, you'll lose the presentation factor and the drumsticks, but it might be worth the trade-off.
Don't be intimidated by carving the turkey. You can use an electric knife if that works best for you, but I'd suggest using a regular, very sharp knife with a thin blade to do the initial prep work. There are countless visual guides out there (google "carving a turkey" and you won't be disappointed), but here's the basics: separate the thigh and drumstick from the body, then separate the two from one another. Cut the meat into small slices and arrange them on a platter. Separate the wings from the body. After all the limbs are separated (dark meat will stay moist longer than light meat), slice the breasts. Try to stay parallel to the body to preserve the flavor of the meat. That's it! Oh, and be sure to sample lots of the meat along the way. Quality control is important.
The Sides - Decide on how many side dishes you want to cook based on how many people will be there - or how much you like to cook. My feast inevitably has way too much food and people end up taking a whole lot of leftovers home, but I like to err on the side of variety. Consider your heavier dishes versus your lighter ones. It's easy to load up on casseroles, but just make sure you've got a little bit of contrast in your dishes. I love having mashed potatoes and gravy, and I have a particularly special stuffing recipe, but that's as much starch as I like to put in my meal.
Adding a little something to your standard dishes gives Thanksgiving a special spin. My mashed potatoes have horseradish and roasted garlic in them, I add sage sausage and apples to my stuffing, and the secret to my cornbread is a mixture of cornbread and yellow cake. It's not too innovative, but it's just enough to make the meal feel special.
Cook ahead when you can. Casseroles can usually be done ahead of time, and desserts are okay to do on Tuesday or Wednesday. I'd save things like veggies for the day-of, and there's not much you can do for the bird. Save time where you can - it's definitely less stressful on Wednesday than when your guests are already there on Thursday!
The Guests - People will inevitably ask you what you'd like them to bring. I always have guests bring drinks so I can focus on the food. Don't forget about little things like paper napkins, as well as plates and cups if you don't have enough. Something simple like fresh bread can be found at a grocery store along the way, and it's a big timesaver for you. Your guests will be able to contribute to the meal and make life a little easier for you, but you still get to have the spotlight (and obsessively plan your menu, if you're anything like me).
Also, there's something to be said for potluck. Many people have a special holiday recipe tucked away for occasions just like this, so if someone asks what they should bring, ask them what their specialty is. If they've got a stuffing recipe that's been handed down for five generations, let them share it with you! It's less effort on your part and you'll get to try something new.
Most importantly, don't get too stressed. Thanksgiving is a fun holiday, and like all others, is about getting together with your loved ones and sharing a special occasion. It will be special because you're all there together, regardless of whether or not you use those special turkey-shaped napkin rings. Have fun and take time to enjoy this time with your friends and family!
