The blueberry G&T is basically a traditional gin and tonic, just made with blueberry gin. A little lime juice, homemade blueberry gin, tonic, and a few ice cubes and you have a sure cure for the blues. (I am not above bad puns and vague references.)
So you may remember from my last post that I was dabbling in the art of alcohol infusions. You may also remember that I promised you recipes. Well, here are the first (blue) fruits of my labor: Blueberry G&T and Blueberry French 75. The blueberry G&T is basically a traditional gin and tonic, just made with blueberry gin. A little lime juice, homemade blueberry gin, tonic, and a few ice cubes and you have a sure cure for the blues. (I am not above bad puns and vague references.) A French 75 is a completely different cocktail altogether, using gin and champagne as the base with a little lemon juice thrown in to liven things up. It is a classic cocktail that I used to order all the time at Bastille in Seattle when my friends and I would go out for late happy hour. But I'm not content to leave well enough alone and decided to up the ante on this one. My mom and I recently came across some beautiful blueberry sugar in a little spice shop in downtown Breckenridge. I was going to use it as a topper for scones, but this seemed like an acceptable application. I rimmed the glasses by dipping it first in lemon juice and then in the blueberry sugar. I poured the leftover lemon juice, about a teaspoon, into the glass followed by blueberry gin and topped with champagne. I found that my champagne masked the flavour of the blueberry gin a bit, so if you are going to try this one at home I recommend using a generous amount of gin and a fairly light and sweet champagne. You could probably even use a sparkling white wine, but what do I know. The only alcohol I like being picky with is beer. But it is truly a delightful drink and I highly recommend it, especially if you need a signature reddish-purple drink to match party colours or something.
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I've embarked upon a new little summer project, as inspired by this article from Bon Appetit: http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2011/05/homemade-flavored-vodka-recipe-infuse-alcohol.html Lis and I have been talking for a while about making our own vodka infusions, but this post got me thinking about other things I could try. The one I was most excited about finally putting into practice was peppercorn vodka. We've developed a recipe that would call for this, should it work out. I'll let you know how that goes. My other raw ingredients were coffee beans, blueberries, and peaches. The coffee went into whiskey, the blueberries into gin, and the peaches into vodka. I used old jars I found in our garage and at an antiques/junk store. Mason jars work the best, as you can seal them very tightly and be able to shake them once a week without anything spilling. I used five different kinds of peppercorns for a diverse flavour. Half were Lampong Peppercorns, which are much sharper and have more of a kick. The other half was a four peppercorn blend of traditional black, red, white and green. The red peppercorns are not true pepper, but are often included in these blends to give a hint of a floral note. Green and white peppercorns are the same as black, just in different stages of processing and slightly lighter flavours. I used pretty cheap alcohol for all of these, because I wasn't sure if the additions would enhance or mask the taste. So I figured, why waste money on an experiment of this level? If any of these do taste really good, though, you can be sure I'll try it again with some of the better stuff. The article said that it can take anywhere from 2-6 weeks for the flavour to fully develop. But I will definitely revisit these on the blog, maybe even with recipes, to let you know how it went. But in the meantime, why not try your own? Cherry season isn't quite over yet. How about pineapple rum? Lychee vodka? Jalapeno tequila? Your grocery store/farmer's market is the limit.
It's no surprise that I love coffee. Or at least, it shouldn't be. I only moved to Seattle, after all. And, never being satisfied to just forever take the easy way out, Lis and I decided that we had to one day roast our own. I thought it would be a long process, one that required hours of standing over the stove, stirring the precious beans slowly until they darkened. I was wrong. Really, it took no time at all. Granted, we roasted only a cup's worth of beans and not kilos. It was extremely similar to making popcorn, in fact. The beans are added to a heated pot, covered, and shaken over high heat until they pop prolifically. The chaff of the bean will burn and begin to smoke. When the popping stops and your beans are at your desired doneness, you take them outside and dump them into a colander. Then you shake them until all the chaff peels off and flies away. (By the way, it's a fantastic thing not to have a smoke alarm in your kitchen.) And that's it! Then you're ready to grind the beans and enjoy your coffee. And I just have to say, after years and years of drinking coffee, this is the first time I have ever even considered drinking coffee black. If I always roasted my own coffee I would probably drink the occasional cup black. But I still prefer my coffee with a little cream and sugar, which is how I enjoyed this house roast. If you like coffee as much as I do, or like being adventurous in the kitchen, I highly suggest you try roasting your own beans. If nothing else, you might end up appreciating your local coffee roaster a bit more. And, if you can find them, the green beans tend to be slightly less expensive per pound.
So raise your mug! Here's to Lis and I, for successfully roasting our first batch of Gin Palace coffee. One of the greatest things for my kitchen but worst for my bank account is the sale section at work. While the sale is going on I almost always end up buying something every week. A few weeks ago a cake pan went on sale that I just had to have. It was crazy; this pan was 12 inches in diameter. What would I ever need a 12in pan for? Do you know how big of a cake that is? It's ridiculous. But it was on sale, so I had to have it. Lis and I decided that the best way to christen the cake pan would be to use it for our upcoming Harry Potter marathon. Oh yes, marathon. We watched all 8 movies IN A ROW. It took from 6:30 in the morning to 2 am the following morning. But it was totally worth it and now I can say I've done it and never do it again. Anyway, back to cake... This picture is to just give you all an idea of just how much goes into a large cake. (Seriously, how do bakeries source this stuff?) For two layers of cake we needed 10 eggs, 5 cups of sugar, 10 cups of flour, 5 cups of milk and 5 sticks of butter. Our cake was four layers in the end, so you do the math. It took us about 6 hours to make all the layers. Each one represents one of the Hogwarts houses. And since it was such an enormous cake and the icing alone contributed upwards of 9 cups of powdered sugar, we didn't think it needed much more decoration. But it did need something, so I set to work. I used modeling chocolate to make the snitch and the letters. It's really easy to work with, tastes better than fondant and is pretty sturdy. And here's the final product! I used food gels instead of normal food colouring because you can get a much truer and more nuanced colour. They cost more but are totally worth it. And now you can see why we chose to do a white frosting instead of chocolate. The white just sets off the layers so nicely.
We waited to cut into it until the last movie. Even one thin slice was overkill at that point and I don't think any of us finished our pieces. And since the cake was so big I still have about half of it sitting in our kitchen waiting for someone to come along and devour it. I'm very proud of the way it turned out and hope that if anyone wants to show off at their next movie marathon they will consider doing the same. Cheers! When I was sixteen I worked in a little french cafe in my hometown called La Baguette. They were known for their fondue and french onion soup. It is one of those restaurants where recipes were used but not really followed with any stringency. It was definitely more, 'a little of this' and 'a little of that,' and even some, 'whatever tastes right.' I clearly internalized this cooking style quite a bit over the six months I worked there. And while this infuriates those people who need to know exactly how something is supposed to turn out, it makes it much easier to try and recreate 8 years after the fact. I only made the french onion soup once, although that didn't stop me from coming home smelling to high heaven like onions every single day. But I can say that having not made this soup since then, I have proven once and for all my amazing ability to recall the most random stuff. Granted, it helps that there are less than ten ingredients, which I will actually list for you this time. I know, I'm actually going to give you a recipe? What trickery is this? Don't worry, I'm still not giving you quantities or specifics. All is right in the kitchen. I've been wanting to do a post on this soup for a while, but needed to wait until I had finally given in and bought these little Staub coquettes. I've wanted them ever since I first started working at Williams-Sonoma and this Christmas I finally decided to buy them for myself. They are very small, perfect for individual portions. And since I do happen to be one of those girls who finds small things cute, these are a dream come true despite not really being very multi-purpose. They are, however, exactly the right size for this soup. This recipe calls for a lot of butter and cheese and is too rich to serve in gigantic portions. Alright, onward to the actual recipe. You will need: butter, yellow onions, salt, pepper, stock, baguette, and cheese. First- in a well-insulated pan, like a dutch oven, sauteuse, or soup pot, melt the butter over low heat. I'm talking like a 4 on the dial. Cut your onions in half then slice them like you were making rainbows (thanks, Lis, for that description) and add to pan. DO NOT DICE THEM. I used about a stick and a half of butter for 6-7 medium onions. Sprinkle some salt over the onions. Keep the stove on low and stir until the onions are coated in butter. Let sit, stirring occasionally. If your onions start to burn, lower the heat. You do want some colouring, however, so don't freak out if they start browning on the bottom of the pan. Depending on the quantity of onions this process could take up to a couple of hours. Mine took about an hour to get to the colouring you see in that terrible picture above. That is what you are going for. When they look dark enough add some pepper and the stock. Turn the heat up so the soup boils, then transfer into oven-proof bowls. Or, in my case, cast iron coquettes. Place slices of baguette on top of the soup. The more stale the bread, the better. Seriously. At the restaurant we had this bin that was just for old slices of baguettes that we didn't sell. They sat there for days, until they were so dry that when dipped into liquid they almost immediately became a soppy mess. Sprinkle some shredded cheese liberally over the top of the bread. I used fontina, because I am slightly cheap and that is what we used to use. But if you are feeling adventurous and possibly affluent, gruyere would make a great alternative. Slide under a broiler until the cheese bubbles and forms little brown spots. The longer you broil it, the better it will be. I probably could have left mine in for a little bit longer. But it was still absolutely delicious. It is a faintly sweet, deeply rich, extremely buttery and satisfying comfort food. If I were trying to impress someone (or someones, since there are three coquettes in a set), I would serve it with an arugula salad beforehand and poached pears with ginger-caramel for dessert.
Right around Thanksgiving Williams-Sonoma put out a new product for roasting chickens in clay. I was immediately in love with the idea. How rustic! How intriguing! Well, I finally bought a couple packs of the clay and today Lis and I decided to try it out. It was extremely easy and seriously the most fun you can have roasting a chicken without an open fire and a spit. (Not that I would know. Anyone want to remedy this and buy me a fire-pit?) We first stuffed the chicken with seven-ish garlic cloves, some salt and pepper, and some smoked paprika. By the way, if you have never tried cooking with smoked paprika, you need to change your ways. Then butter was placed under the skin and more salt and pepper rubbed over it. We then bundled the whole thing into a piece of parchment paper. We then rolled out the clay, which comes in two pieces, and snuggled the chicken into it. It's best if you can get the clay entirely air-tight. Ours leaked a tiny bit, which was fine, but I think the whole point is that the clay traps all the moisture and flavour. Then, when our chicken was sealed off, we did what any self-respecting home chef would do. We decorated it. Flames: always a good choice and totally not cliche at all. The chicken then sits merrily in the oven for a little over an hour at 425*. Then comes the best part of all- when you take the chicken out you get to smash the clay open. The clay doesn't get that hard but because we don't own a mallet or a meat tenderizer we used a cast iron pan. A bit overkill, but dramatic. You then peel away the clay and parchment paper and have the most amazingly tender chicken in the history of chicken. The skin doesn't get crispy, which I guess is the one downside. But if your bird is bigger than ours was and didn't quite finish cooking you could always throw it back into the oven to finish, which will help crisp the skin. Or you could take a culinary torch to it. We chose to attack it as it was because it smelled delicious and there was just no way we were going to wait. It was definitely as good as it smelled and fell apart at the slightest tug. I've already planned about five more things to try by clay roasting, it was so easy and so good. Seriously. Call your closest Williams-Sonoma and see if they have any more roasting clay kits left. (They're on sale...) You can thank me later.
Sometimes, rarely, I get a Sunday morning off of work. It is always an exciting day when this happens, because it means I get to attend the Ballard Farmer's Market. It is one of the best farmer's markets I have ever been to. (Barring those in Europe, of course.) They close off one of the streets in Old Ballard and jam it full of back-to-back produce, dairy, meat and flower stands. Lis and I always stop by the mini donut stand first; they are amazing and if you order a half dozen, chances are you'll get more like 7 or 8. Then we do a circuit to check out what is being offered and what we might want. Some people do this to check prices. We do this to compare cool factor. We try and get something new every time. One week it was dragon tongue beans, one week it was red wine and maple cured salmon. (Yes, I eat this now. It was FANTASTIC.) Most of the time though, we just make decisions based on colour. The more colourful the vegetable, the more we want it. One of the things we've gone back for more than once are pluots. A cross between a plum and an apricot, these are really amazing grilled. They get much sweeter over a fire and turn a vivid fuschia. Dragon tongue beans- these don't need to be shelled and can be stir-fried without blanching them first, which is great because then they retain more of their colouring. They didn't really have that distinct of a flavour besides "beany," but as a focal point they were totally worth it. One week we bought a bag full of different potato varieties. My favourite are the small purple ones, which some of you might remember from my post on Middle Ages Peasant Soup. Roasting them allows them to stay bright and purple, which makes eating them that much more fun. I love carrots and these were a nice change from the ubiquitous orange ones. The white ones had a milder flavour, close to the parsnips they resemble. Otherwise they basically tasted like carrot. They were a blast to photograph, however. If you have the chance, I highly recommend going to your local farmer's market. It is a great way to promote local businesses and to expand your eating horizons. Plus, you never know when you are going to encounter a busking band with a member dressed as a giant, fuzzy bunny.
Have you ever spent the entire day in the kitchen? I have. There is an upcoming class at work that will involve me helping little kids decorate Spider-Man cookies, so I needed to know how to actually do that. Now, I've decorated cookies before, but never like this. This is like professional decorating. It involves a ton of work and something called royal icing. I took some tips from over at Bake at 350 and set to work. First I made a basic sugar cookie dough, which I had chilled the night before. I rolled it out, cut it to bits, and baked them. A co-worker lent me some fun sea creature shapes, which made this all totally worth it. I also discovered that while one baking sheet is in the oven you should put the next batch of cookies in the freezer. This helps them to not spread as much while they bake. After all my cookies were finished I made the royal icing, divided it, colored it, and set to work piping outlines. After outlining everything I took more royal icing, divided it, coloured it again, and added some water. This creates an icing that will spread over your cookie then dry in a nice, flat sheet. It's called "flooding" and it is pretty entertaining and also the hardest part of this whole thing. These two are my favourite octopuses. Notice the guy on the bottom there is the same as in the first picture. His dots came out quite nicely. The best way to make designs though, is to wait until the base colour has set a little then go back and add the other colouring. I used the bottom of a bamboo skewer and just dipped it in. There wasn't any bleeding and all the dots came out round and flat. All my hard work! If you will take a moment you might even see my seahorse "horse" and Lis's baker whale. After you finish doing all the designs they have to sit out for a really long time so the icing will fully dry.
If this hadn't been fun and a good way to test my artistic abilities it might not have been worth it. I didn't leave the kitchen for a good 7 hour period and my neck really hurt from craning over these things while trying to ice them. But now that I can be proud of the end result I am anxious to try again. I'm thinking it will be a quarterly project. There were a few issues with my icing that I want to try and work out. But for the moment my roommates and I are just enjoying having cute things to munch on. Growing up I was always the adventurous eater when compared to my brother. At first I would be timid, sometimes for years refusing to eat icky things (like mushrooms). But then one or either of our parents would encourage us to not pick around the things we feared. So I slowly started to eat those icky things, as long as they were mixed in, like mushrooms in hot and sour soup. When we went abroad I was the one who wanted to eat (mostly) traditional fare; my brother kept asking if we could eat McDonald's. When I went off to college I decided that I wanted to like nearly everything. I had heard once that it took a baby at least seven tastes of an odd food to like it. So I started eating things I had never liked, over and over, hoping that I could also acquire tastes. I can now eat tomatoes, whereas when I was little I once waited hours for my Dad to leave the table so I could shove the hated things down the disposal. He had threatened us to sit there until we ate them. Now, whenever I see something I have never tried, or at least, never tried to prepare, I get the itch. It is much the same itch when a new book comes out, or a new exhibit to a much-loved museum. You must try it, see it, experience it for yourself. This happened to me the other day at Whole Foods when I was meandering the aisles with the little shopping carts they have. There, displayed amongst the other produce, were the humble looking fava beans. I had never actually cooked fava beans before and couldn't really remember ever having eaten any either, so I picked some up. I shelled them, boiled them for a couple minutes in salted water and decided to make a summer salad out of them. A little internet browsing told me that they do best when prepared simply, so that is exactly what I did. Once the beans were cool I mixed them with some chickpeas, cilantro, a little lemon juice, olive oil, pepper and Maldon salt. Lucero brand olive oil is my favourite for things like salads and drizzling. It is a very green oil, which means you can really taste it's rich, sunny flavour. This is not a cooking oil; leave that to the cheaper ones. Maldon salt is a flaky sea salt, perfect for garnishing. It is like (and probably sometimes is) the salt you see sprinkled on top of salted caramels and chocolates. It is also something you want to refrain from cooking with; you lose all the flavour and texture of the salt that way. It was a very delicious summer salad, perfect for a hot July evening. I added a little smoked paprika to give it a deeper flavour. If I ever make it again I am going to use dill instead of cilantro and add a dollop of sour cream, which sounds divine. Like a movie you would rent again, I will definitely be returning to fava beans. They were easy and fun! to prepare. They look ever so humble but are really quite impressive. If you have a good farmer's market and see these, I recommend picking some up. You will be much happier than if you went to McDonald's.
I would characterize myself as an Anglophile. No, I cannot list the names of all the royalty and, surprisingly, I did not watch the recent nuptials between Kate and William. But I love the United Kingdom and want nothing more than to move back there. So no doubt you will see why a holiday like the 4th of July would be distressing for someone who so desperately wants to be an expatriate. If we were still British I wouldn't have to move anywhere! So instead of celebrating the holiday my Anglophile roomie and I held a sort of wake instead, so we could mourn the passing of our mother land. Now, no doubt someone will get on my case about how come I didn't make an overly British meal for this occasion and I will tell you now it's because it is the sentiment behind the action that matters, not the action itself. That being said, I will move on to the important things- the food. I wanted to use my new grill and since the weather decided to cooperate with us everything went according to plan. Bamboo skewers were soaked while I was at work, being unpatriotic in an outfit that didn't even remotely hint at the old red, white and blue. I managed to light the charcoal somewhat quicker than the last time, still without using lighter fluid, but it takes a while nonetheless so as the briquettes sat and smoldered we made kabobs. First we stuffed basil leaves into mini peppers (a trick I would now highly recommend and then encourage you to try with other herbs as well). Then we strung up our other veggies: mushrooms, onions, garlic, potatoes and tomatillos. Oh man, were they good. The garlic pieces were sheer genius (my roomie's idea) but my favourite was definitely the onion. Once they were sufficiently browned we salted them and added a bit of hot sauce. I like marinades but sometimes it is better to let the grill do most of the flavouring. For dessert my roomie, Lis, made Sad Lemon Cake, which she named after our feelings towards the holiday. There was nothing sad about the actual cake, however, which paired perfectly with rum laced whipped cream. If you are still using canned whipped cream, shame on you.
So a very unmerry birthday to you, America, and long live the Queen! |
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