Fiddling thru Fiddlehead

Bean Burgers

2012-01-03T21:12:00.010-09:00

"They sell those at Costco, you know," my friend offered simply. I had finished telling her the tale of woe of the bowl of bean mash that'd the bean burgers had become. Of course, to successfully cook all the recipes in the Fiddlehead cookbook, buying the patties at Costco wasn't gonna cut it. Boy, that would've been easier.

You see, making bean burgers patties entails a long process involving: buying three types of beans (navy, red, and lentils), setting them out to soak overnight, boiling them for over an hour, boiling them longer with rice, cooking up a mixture of onion and spices, stirring in flour and soy sauce,

...stirring that to the consistency of mashed potatoes,

...letting that sit covered so the flour can cook, cooling it in the fridge 'til all that packed-in heat chills out, then forming them by hand into patties. The mixture sticks to your hand. The patties don't hold a firm shape.

The result was tasty, nonetheless.

Especially served with homemade french fries:

But seriously, I wound up with a bowl of bean burger mash that looked like this:

Maybe more flour would hold the burger shape better? How do you do it, Costco?! Agh, better luck next time...

Smoked Turkey Pasta Salad with (Highbush) Cranberry Apple Butter

2011-12-30T10:53:00.018-09:00

What is it with this dish? It's really weird, but super delicious. Borderline addictive. Smoked turkey atop noodles over a bed of lettuce. It doesn't sound that good. But the strong flavors are refreshingly unique, and surprisingly cohesive.

(Highbush) cranberry-apple butter

My, how I love highbush cranberries. They have that earthy, skunky smell that is so quintessentially fall. I've made killer syrup and liqueur from wild Yukon cranberry. Yum. This time, I didn't have the wild variety in store, so I used fresh domestic cranberries. The result was still good, but my mouth waters thinking about how much richer the flavor would be with wild highbush.

Interestingly, the Fiddlehead debunks a longstanding belief about highbush cranberries which is that you wait until after a frost to harvest them. On the contrary, FH recommends picking them before they freeze and mush/rot.

This butter is a concentrated, smooth, spiced fruit spread. The recipe makes a large quantity using a pound of dried apple and four cups of cranberry. The yield is about four pint jars of the tasty condiment.

Start by soaking apples in water for an hour:

Mix in the cranberries and heat, then add spices:

Strain out seeds and skins through a sieve. Save the pulp and measure it to know how much sugar to add (you'll need 3/4 the quantity of sugar as pulp):

The butter is so smooth. Take a look at the pan on the left pictured below:

Pour it into canning jars:

Seal the jars according to directions. A pressure cooker would be easier, and my pot wasn't quite big enough:

Smoked turkey pasta salad

Luckily, Jerry's Meats sells delicious smoked turkey in reasonable quantity:

Tear the turkey in pieces:

Chop tomato and green onion; shred carrot:

Prepare a batch of Fiddlehead vinaigrette and toss into cooked fettuccine noodles (I used this sprouted whole grain--read hippie food--noodle that was hearty and great). Next toss in your chopped vegetables:

Plate your meal by setting the dressed noodles on a bed of lettuce. Top with turkey and dollop with the cranberry-apple butter. (Note: plating was inspired by an episode of 'Chopped.')

Serve & enjoy! The richness of the smoked turkey pairs well with the sharpness of the vinaigrette and fruit butter. This is a creative way to eat up holiday leftovers, but is delectable anytime of year.

Alaskan Coastal Salad

2011-12-21T12:34:00.004-09:00

Too many sweets this holiday season? Here's a low-calorie, sugar-free, and savory respite to the pile of cookies on your counter: Alaskan Coastal Salad.

This is a very simple salad: a curried mayonnaise (from scratch) brings together seafood and tomato slices.

Choose your own seafood--I used salmon because it was what I had in the freezer. To poach salmon, boil water, white wine (I used red), lemon slices, and bay leaves in a pan. Preheat the oven, and when hot, pour over a filet of salmon and bake for 20-30 minutes.

Homemade mayo: who knew it was as easy as blending egg yolk and oil?! I feel like that's a big childhood mystery revealed. It's fairly quick to make, and it's all from things in your fridge or cupboard. The particular sort of mayonnaise in this refreshing salad recipe is curried, which is a tasty--and unusual--experience.

Chicken Marsala

2011-12-13T08:14:00.011-09:00

This wine and mushroom sauce in this chicken dish is to die for. Even a mushroom-hater was loving it!

First, chop up your mushrooms:

Next, pound your chicken breasts flat:

Dust your chicken in flour and salt & pepper, then brown the breasts on each side in butter in a pot. Next, add marsala wine, orange zest, and mushrooms. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through. It's as simple as that.

Remove the chicken and boil the sauce down. Serve over hot rice. Garnish with chives or parsley.

Linzer Cookies

2011-12-13T08:14:00.006-09:00

It's nice around the holidays to go to a Christmas cookie baking party. Everyone makes their dough ahead of time, so the host's kitchen doesn't explode in a frenzy of flour and butter. At the end of the night, everyone goes home with a nice assortment of cookies. I thought immediately of the Linzer Cookie recipe for this event--partly because I'd made the Linzer torte and knew it was scrumptious, and also because it is one of the less than 30 recipes left in the cookbook to make. As you may recall, it's a very spicy, nutty, and citrusy dough. We chilled it so we could better roll it out once we got to the party.

Things didn't quite go as planned, on a number of fronts. First of all, the proper Linzer cookie is made by sandwiching jam between two layers of cookie--a smaller cut-out is placed decoratively atop a slightly-larger, but same-shaped base. We didn't have nestled cutters to exactly accomplish this, but we did have some similarly-shaped trees, plus we had candy canes, gingerbread men, and whale cutters. But then we didn't have the heart to attempt the photo-finish layering effect when the cookies came out of our friend's oven looking like this:

Never fear, there was a salvageable tray, though the conjoined mass was better nibbled and crumbled in pieces for ice cream topping:

I chalk the disastrous baking up to cooking in an unfamiliar oven. Turns out the oven hadn't been preheated and so the dough slowly melted across the tray. And perhaps the ugly sweaters and spiked egg nog had the party bunch distracted? In any case, it was still a fun and festive evening. Everyone went home with a variety of cookies--including unidentifiable (but tasty) shapes of Linzer Cookies...

Sourdough French Bread

2011-12-13T08:13:00.011-09:00

My sourdough pot

Bread-making is no easy task. You have to start early, knead until your arms ache, and plan your day around letting the darn thing rise four different times. Ugh--who has time for it anymore? Just kidding, I don't mean that. It's good practice to make a loaf from scratch from time to time. And I've been following directions for 26 long years now, so I could manage the tedious steps for Sourdough French Bread outlined in the Fiddlehead.

Start the night before by taking your Sourdough Starter out of the fridge. Set a 1/4 cup in another bowl with one cup each of flour and water to be used for your bread. Replenish the starter part with the same addition.

The next morning, put your starter back in the fridge (the Fiddlehead offers some great advice on how to feed, store, and maintain your sourdough properly).

Bloom some yeast in warm water with honey, then add flour and knead for ten minutes.

Let rise in a draft-free, warm location (a great location is in the microwave above the stove with that overhanging light on, if that's how your kitchen is set up).

Once it's risen, punch it down and let it rise again.

Next, roll it out into a 12" x 8" x 1" sheet and roll up from the narrow end, pinching the seams underneath. Let that rise.

Finally brush with egg yolk and water, sprinkle with sesame seeds, score the top, and bake in a hot oven for 20-30 mins.

It turned out alright. Better than any sourdough bread I've attempted before. My primary criticism is that I got a little too crazy with my scoring, so it sort of unhinged from the center. Next time I'll try shorter score lines. Overall, a successful loaf: the taste was sour, the texture fluffy, and my belly happy.

(Wild) Blueberry Pie

2011-12-13T08:13:00.005-09:00

Nothing beats a classic blueberry pie. And the Fiddlehead has a great go-to recipe. It's easy and quite delicious. It wasn't a great berry year, and so I used domestic berries from Costco--not quite the same as harvested wild blueberries, but still tasty.

Stir flour, sugar, spices, and lemon juice in with your blueberries and dump into an unbaked pie shell.

Cover with a top crust, bake, and enjoy. Serve a la mode (though it'll be a bit soupy when warm). Or enjoy a room temperature slice for breakfast.

Italian Lentil Soup

2011-11-23T08:41:00.003-09:00

It's tough to make lentils taste particularly appealing. The hard little seeds can be earthy and plain. But the Fiddlehead's done it. Seasoned with basil, oregano, garlic, Worcestershire, and dijon, and including baby-butt (garbanzo) beans, this lentil dish is far from boring. And it's so healthy, too! Lentils are high in protein, fiber, folate, and minerals.

Soak the lentils overnight:

Saute your onion, celery, and garlic until soft. Add stock, tomatoes, lentils, and seasonings and bring to a boil. Then simmer for an hour and a half. Add cooked baby-butt beans at the end, and serve with parmesan cheese. I took two liberties for ingredient availability--instead of a can of diced tomatoes, I substituted red pepper-tomato soup. Instead of parm, we sprinkled our hot soup with cheddar (and thus the yellow-orange color).

Grilled Cheese, Please: San Fransisco Sandwich & KT Grill

2011-11-18T09:47:00.010-09:00

The San Fransisco Sandwich.

Weeknight meals are funny. Sometimes you're tired from work, or you've got another function to run off to later in the evening; but unless your primary activity for the evening revolves around the kitchen, you often just want something easy, darn it! When that's the case, I usually hope there's some leftovers in the fridge or the goods for a big hearty salad that I can throw together without much effort. Or, as was the case thrice this week, I make grilled cheese.

Gathering the goods for the San Fransisco Sandwich.

Wednesday I had a quick turnaround at the house before heading back out for a meeting. I grabbed a loaf of sandwich bread and cheese and that was that. The next day, I had a bit more time. I headed to the quaint and cozy Wild Oven bakery and chose a loaf of Daniel's Country French sourdough bread (after mulling over his German Rye, which was sweet, moist, and likely far healthier).

Country French sourdough loaf from the Wild Oven.

Once at home, I pulled out that trusty peach-colored cookbook, and found the recipe for KT Grill. A gourmet grilled cheese, it's sauteed onion and green bell pepper (I omitted the latter), with cheddar and jack cheeses.

KT Grill grilling in the pan, with its rambunctious onion spilling everywhere.

Now, it's hard to go wrong with grilled cheese, but the large-diced onions the recipe called for just weren't doing it for me. They were impossibly stubborn about staying atop the bread. Granted the bread was thin, but I can't imagine that it would be any easier with a larger loaf. When grilling, the slippery squares squirmed right out of the sandwich and into the pan. When eating, the onions weren't any more cooperative. It was tasty enough, sure. Anything involving Wild Oven bread and Dubliner white cheddar cheese will be. Comforting and quick, the grilled cheese is a never fail weeknight go-to.

KT Grill with most of its large-diced onions escaped.

On the third night of grilled cheese (please don't judge), I looked to the San Fransisco Sandwich. This recipe is a bit more sophisticated, involving vegetables marinated overnight in the Fiddlehead vinaigrette.

Zucchini, onion, and bell pepper soaking in the Fiddlehead vinaigrette.

The San Fransisco is grilled under the broiler.

Upon biting into the sharp flavors of Dubliner cheddar cheese, sourdough bread, and marinated vegetables, I pronounced this the favorite grilled cheese sandwich of the week.

Thai Fish Soup

2011-11-02T10:59:00.005-08:00

When I visit my friend Poranan's house in Auke Bay for Thai fish soup, there's always a fish head stewing in the pot. Prik nam pla (spicy fish water) is usually on the table, and fish sauce has been splashed into the dish. The Fiddlehead's Thai Fish Soup doesn't include any of those things, but it is still a winner: tasty, spicy, and nourishing with refreshing hints of cilantro and lemongrass.

The recipe calls for white fish, but I used salmon from the freezer.

Saute the veggies in a soup pot, add the fish stock, and stew.

Many flavors meld together in this soup. Cilantro, sesame oil, sherry, soy sauce, tomato, bell pepper, bok choy (my first time cooking with it), and lemongrass.

The Factory Worker

2011-10-24T12:17:00.005-08:00

I used Silverbow garlic-rosemary bread for the base of this delicious vegetarian sandwich. First, spread each slice with guacamole, then layer with cheddar and jack cheeses (I used a sharp white cheddar and pepperjack), and broil. Top with tomato slices, sunflower seeds, and sprouts. Healthy & delicious. A gourmet sandwich for the factory worker in each of us. (Apparently, Fiddlehead author Deborah Marshall worked at the Bread Factory in Anchorage where this was her favorite sandwich.)

Ingredients

Each slice spread with guac. Half get (white) cheddar, the other (pepper) jack.

After broiling

Served open-face

Crunchy, cheesy vegetarian delight

Condiments

2011-10-24T12:07:00.006-08:00

Just before you reach the index, you'll find a section called "From the Pantry." This collection of recipes includes pie crust, marinades, beverages, sauces, and stocks. Here's a sampling of some of those condiments...

Garlic Butter

Mm. Very garlicy. This butter would be great spread on a hot, hearty loaf of bread. Yes, there's a splash of sherry in it! I also want to try the bourbon butter, and the basil-mustard butter. In case you forgot or maybe didn't realize, the Fiddlehead offers a myriad of flavored butter recipes, all with serving suggestions: there's garlic, anchovy, basil-mustard, bourbon, lemon-caper, lemon-garlic, and tarrgon butter.

Salsa

A cooked salsa goes great atop fried eggs, chicken, or in a burrito. It's simply tomatoes, onion, and green pepper, spiced with crushed ancho chili pepper, and simmered for 45 mins.

Blue Cheese Salad Dressing

Creamy, potently stinky, this is a great recipe to have on hand for a salad that needs a little love. Combine mayo, sour cream (I used Greek yogurt), orange juice, grated onion, and some good ol' S&P to crumbled blue. Blend it until its smooth, or leave it chunky--whatever's your pleasure.

Oriental Vinaigrette

Minced garlic and ginger in a sesame oil, soy sauce & rice vinegar base. Making Chinese cabbage salad? Toss this Oriental dressing on!

Tofu Stir-fry

2011-10-20T16:37:00.004-08:00

Breakfast for dinner, anyone? Tofu-stir fry can go either way. I don't typically crave sesame, soy sauce, ginger or tofu in the morning, so I made a weeknight meal out of the dish. It's so healthy. The tofu soaks up savory flavor, the eggs are buttery, and it's all served on a bed of chopped vegetables and brown rice.

Ingredients!

Add chopped veggies to hot sesame and vegetable oil.

Add the ginger, soy sauce, and and tofu.

Softly scramble your eggs in butter.

Finished. Eating time.

Sourdough French Bread

2011-10-15T15:01:00.003-08:00

Saturday morning. Sleep 'til eight. Brew coffee. Cup in hand, head out the door for a little garage sale-ing. Then home for some Fiddlehead Sourdough French Bread. Comfort food on a sleepy, rainy day.

The older and drier your bread is, the more egg it will soak up. Slice in 1/2 inch pieces.

Whisk together egg, half-and-half, cinnamon (or cardamom), and vanilla. Soak your slices in the mixture.

Grilled to perfection!

Served with maple syrup, orange slices, and love!

Turkey Scaloppine with Cranberries

2011-10-14T13:10:00.003-08:00

Mm, mm. The flavors of fall. This creamy, wine-infused cranberry turkey recipe is a simple and delicious dish, perfect for the season. Look out for these fresh cranberries! They're so darn sour. Biting into one, you get an burst of intense flavor. Little explosive flavor pockets. What is it in sour foods that makes your jaw cramp? Anyway, there's enough cream and wine to balance out the intensity of the cranberry.

First, slice the turkey breast into thin steaks, a.k.a. scaloppine. Then douse in flour with salt and pepper. Fry those in butter until browned on both sides. Remove from pan and add wine and cream. Add turkey back in a finish cooking.

The result is a pink and exciting fall meal. Enjoy!

Linzer Torte

2011-10-10T12:21:00.007-08:00

Oi! Boasting an array of flavors, the Linzer Torte tastes a little like Christmas. Into the dough splashes a mixture of spices typical of the holiday season--clove, cinnamon--along with orange and lemon zest. It's a party of flavors backed up by a buttery and nutty (1 cup finely ground walnut) base.

Zesting the lemon (this is not an optical illusion; it's a giant lemon with a mini grater)

Zesting station!

The dough is very soft, and in our case, we needed to chill it for about an hour before we could remotely begin working it. Even then, it was very soft and sticky to hand and counter surfaces. You'll get a feel for the lattice top from the pictures included here. Start by pressing a bit more than half the dough into the bottom of a cake pan (preferable with removable bottom). Then cut the remaining dough into two pieces, forming half into long strips to form the lattice, and rolling the other half into a rope to pinch off into balls for the sides.

Shaping the dough

With the soft dough, this step was easier said than done--the lattice strips lay crosswise atop the jam, and the balls of dough are placed around the circumference of the torte and pressed together to join all the dough together.

Before baking

The Fiddlehead says the Linzer Torte recipe, is "a great way to show off jams and jellies." Indeed! The shortbread is a great vehicle for a sweet preserve. I used a sour cherry jam and was pleased with how it blended with the flavors of the dough.

\We served our torte with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. At once, delightfully spicy, nutty, buttery, and zesty! Quite a treat! Perhaps I'll cook up the cookie variety toward December.

The Fiddlehead Cookbook Turns 20

2011-10-03T17:15:00.002-08:00

The Fiddlehead Cookbook is "dedicated to that spirit of adventure known as hospitality, which draws people together and brings well-being and harmony to the planet."

The Fiddlehead Cookbook turned 20 this year, and there was a party to celebrate! Friends, family, and former employees of the Fiddlehead turned out for drinks & freshly baked carolyn's cookies, ginger crinkles, fantasy and reality cookies. Mm... Jazz music filled the hall and silent and outcry auctions raised money for the Juneau Arts & Culture Center. The Ann's Lemon Cake that was donated was fit for a queen. Seriously, did someone get a photo?

I had to the chance to meet all the Fiddlehead authors at the celebration: Nancy and John DeCherney, Susan Brook. and Deborah Marshall. They were all very friendly and gracious, not like in Julie & Julia when Julia Child disses Julie the blogger. You guys are great! What a legacy you've created.

The spirit is still alive! It was obvious there's some serious love surrounding this book. Heck, the "Most Loved Cookbook" contest said it all--grease-spackled pages barely left threaded to the book's spine.

The introduction of the cookbook, penned by Deborah Marshall, is beautifully written. In her concluding paragraph, she writes:

"Remember what Alaska teaches--that it is possible to do what you don't know how to do. If you don't have all the ingredients, substitute. If you lack self-confidence, face the stove and pray. Most important, let your home-cooked meal celebrate your time together and the creativity in your soul. Enjoy your repast."

Amen. Happy birthday dear Fiddlehead.

Ginger Crinkles

2011-09-26T11:17:00.003-08:00

"The most requested Fiddlehead recipe...pleases both those who prefer their ginger cookies soft in the center and those who want them crisp (FH)."

Crinkle dough dipped in sugar, shown before baking. No photos were taken after baking.

Orange-Mace-Raisin Bread

2011-09-26T10:07:00.003-08:00

Here's yet another spice I'm not familiar with: mace. I came about acquiring it in a roundabout way, and it lent a complimentary flavor to the orange and molasses in this wholewheat Orange-Mace-Raisin Bread.

Whole mace

The Red Onion Spice & Tea Company is owned by Kathy and Gareth Jones, who live and do business right here in Juneau. I had failed to locate mace at local stores when a friend found it at Red Onion's table at the farmers market. She bought the organic, whole pieces of leathery tissue (shown above) which I ground into a powder for use in this Fiddlehead bread recipe. Related to nutmeg, and also derived from the nutmeg tree, mace is not the most common spice. Read more about mace--including its origins, medicinal uses, and mild hallucinogenic properties--here.

Dissolve molasses in warm water and add yeast to activate. Once bubbly, add spice, zest, raisins, and flour, and beat for ten minutes. Let rise.

After 1 1/2 hours, punch the dough down and let rise until doubled in bulk.

Bake and serve fresh out of the oven--the Fiddlehead recommends spreading with cream cheese.

Salad Seeds

2011-09-26T09:48:00.003-08:00

Need to dress up a salad? If your garden greens have any oriental flavor leanings, this Salad Seeds recipe will be the perfect topping. Sunflower and sesame seeds are mixed with just a hint of soy sauce, then roasted for a delightfully nutty finish.

Hot Spiced Cider

2011-09-26T09:24:00.003-08:00

What a gorgeous fall weekend. Fresh snow dusted the mountains, and colorful leaves blanketed the ground. It's the kind of weather that inspires you to wrap a scarf around your neck when you head out into the crisp, cold air. It's also the time of year that a hot, spicy beverage like Hot Spiced Cider feels calming and cozy.

I highly recommend using a high-quality juice as your base. This organic Knudsen variety was cloudy with sediment on the bottom--the closest in liquid you can probably come to the fruit form. I also used organic orange and lemon.

The spicing is simple--whole cloves, cardamom seed and allspice seed. I forget allspice is a seed all its own--a berry, in fact, from a tree grown in warm climates--and not a mixture of pumpkin pie spices as the English thought back in the 1600s when they named it).

Simmered with citrus, the cider is at once stimulating and soothing.

Drink up!

Seafood Fettuccine

2011-09-22T11:23:00.004-08:00

This was the perfect weeknight meal on the first official fall day, while outside 70mph wind whipped the rain horizontal. Creamy and nourishing, this seafood fettuccine dish cooks up in about 1/2 an hour. Just using simple S&P spicing, the flavors blend well together with chunks of tomato and salmon. I recommend having a glass of that white wine you're pouring into the dish.

I used fresh coho for the occasion:

Saute salmon (or other seafood of your choice) in a pan with butter and garlic.

Add white wine and tomatoes and cook until salmon is cooked through. I used cherry tomatoes that I had lying around (though the recipe calls for regular) and enjoyed the sweetness.

Remove the salmon and add cream to the juices left in the pan. Simmer until the sauce thickens. Add cooked noodles, salt and pepper, green onions, parmesan cheese, and salmon into pan. Stir, and enjoy!

Fiddlehead Cookbook's 20th Anniversary Celebration

2011-09-21T15:49:00.004-08:00

The Fiddlehead Cookbook is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, and throwing a party!

It's Sunday, September 25th from 4-6pm at the Juneau Arts & Cultural Center featuring live music, a dessert auction to benefit the JACC, and a no-host beer and wine bar.

You can starting bidding ahead of time on the Fiddlehead Dessert Auction's website.

Come out and celebrate!

Salmon Wellington

2011-09-19T07:57:00.007-08:00

Here's a decadent way to eat salmon. Salmon Wellington is a filet topped with wine-infused mushroom duxelles and wrapped in phyllo dough. It's so delicious. And perfectly fancy for a gourmet occasion.

Saute onion, mushrooms, and garlic in butter. Add wine and spices and cook off liquid. This mixture is called duxelles.

Generously brush a sheet of phyllo with butter.

Place your salmon filet (pre-baked for 10 minutes) in the center and top with the duxelles.

Fold the dough over the filet, brushing with butter between each layer.

Bake until the phyllo puffs and browns.

Bon appetit!

Fiddlehead Omelets with R&H Cheese Spread

2011-09-19T07:48:00.010-08:00

The Fiddlehead's R & H Cheese Spread is quick and easy to make. Use it to spread on a bagel, or in this case, as filling in a Fiddlehead Omelet.

Chop chives.
Blend them into cream cheese and mayo, and you've got R&H spread!

Making omelets requires speedy work. So get your speedy work face on.

First, melt butter in your omelet pan.

The pan is ripe just as the foaming subsides, but before the butter browns. Beware: it's a tiny timing window!
Add scrambled eggs to the hot pan. Maneuver the pan and manipulate your spatula in order to cook the eggs just right* (*omelete finesse simply requires practice. I will not go into a thorough explanation here, though the Fiddlehead does a good job of describing the twists and turns involved).

When cooked, remove from the heat and add your filling. I used that R & H cheese spread.
Sprinkle with grated cheese and melt briefly under the broiler. The result is a rich and tasty omelete to get your morning started right.

Salmon Veronique

2011-09-05T22:12:00.004-08:00

Ooh la la! This is a fun and fancy salmon recipe. Veronique means the dish is made using white grapes. It has a really tantalizing sauce of cream, white wine, a hint of dijon, a bit of vinegar, and of course, the grapes.

Begin by dusting the salmon filets and browning them in a fry pan. Cook the wine, dijon, and vinegar briefly, and add them to the baking pan with the fish.

When the salmon has baked, pour the leftover juices back into the sauce pan with the cream...

Add grapes and bring to a boil.

Spread the sauce over the salmon and serve.

Grilled Chicken Salad

2011-09-04T19:26:00.007-08:00

Rum, lime, and soy-drenched chicken.

Chili-cumin dressing.

Served with avocado, red onion, and tomato atop a bed of greens, these flavors really pop for a refreshing salad dinner. Served with a tortilla on the side, they can be eaten as a wrap as well.

Burn the alcohol off rum by warming rum in a small pan, then lighting it on fire with a match! Notice the blue flame in this picture...

Marinate chicken in rum, soy sauce, and lime juice.

Make the dressing in a blender. Oil and vinegar are emulsified, by initially pulsing an egg with the vinegar, then slowly adding the oil while the motor is turning.

The result is a thick and creamy base. The zesty spices infused throughout--including chili, cumin, garlic, and cayenne--create a most stellar dressing.

Broil the chicken 5 minutes on each side.

Arrange slices of chicken, tomato, avocado, and red onion over a bed of greens and drizzle with salad dressing. Bon appetit!

French Onion Soup

2011-09-04T12:28:00.008-08:00

Chop up 6 large onions. Get them frying in a pan with some oil.

Later, add some sherry (I used white wine). Once they're cooked down a bit, add broth, tomato paste, and garlic. Cook a little longer.

Chop old sourdough bread into chunks for croutons. Lay the croutons out on a cookie sheet and dry in a warm oven 5-10 minutes.

Ladle soup into oven-proof bowls (I forgot to add the miso, so our soup had a reddish tint where usually French Onion has a brownish broth).

Arrange croutons over soup.

Layer slices of mozzarella and swiss cheeses, then sprinkle with parmesan.

Broil for just a few minutes to melt the cheese.

Soup's on! Melty cheeses, hot brothy onion soup, flavorful sourdough bread. Pretty darn good.

Shrimp Quesadillas

2011-09-04T12:20:00.002-08:00

It's a quesadilla with shrimp! A creative take--and Southeast twist--on the classic appetizer.

Shelling shrimp

Prepping the quesadillas

Garnished with guacamole

Tomato Millet Soup

2011-09-02T19:57:00.004-08:00

Mm, soothing tomato soup. I'd initially thought to make this in the classic American style, with grilled cheese. The Fiddlehead's KT Grill sandwich looks basically like a gourmet grilled cheese. Instead, I'd done a five day cleanse this week, Monday through Friday. This was my warm, healthy soup treat to ease back into eating after days gone by on juices, broth, and master cleanse lemonade. But you don't have to be starved for this to taste good. It's delicious. And simple to make--dice carrot, celery, onion & garlic. Then add canned diced tomato and spices and simmer. The millet cooks separately and is stirred in at the end.

All the flavors blend well together--not any one single flavor gets overwhelmed by any of the others. It's a nice texture. The chunkiness makes it heartier than tomato soups you can usually drink. The millet offers a really nice texture. I've not cooked with it before, but it has a bit of a couscous feel to it. I have an African ground nut soup recipe, one of my favorites, that reminds me vaguely of this recipe. Rice instead of millet, peppers, and curry spicing, plus peanut butter. I could almost see the latter being good here. Just a touch?

Cannelloni

2011-08-29T12:06:00.005-08:00

It's time for stuffed pasta! These cheese and spinach pockets are so tasty. They're a little time consuming, mainly in the making of the crepes. Give yourself at least 2.5 hours of prep time before baking to get them together.

First, combine the crepe dough and let it rest for an hour while you mix all the cheeses and spinach together. You can also get the bechamel made during this window. I've made bechamel before (see post on new potatoes and peas)--it's a creamy white sauce thickened with flour and flavored by cooking with onion, clove, and nutmeg.

Next, fry the crepes. The batter is thin, the consistency of heavy cream. The tricky part is disbursing the batter around the pan into a circle. Work quickly! Heat just until set, and flip--less than 30 seconds on each side.

Scoop 1/4 C of the filling onto each crepe.

Fold up into a little package.

These little snack packages are bigger than you'd think. Place them in a buttered baking dish.

There's a bold emphasis on nutmeg in this recipe, which I don't usually associate with pasta. It's added to most of the main components at least once. It worked surprisingly well (I'm not always the biggest nutmeg person), lending a subtle sweetness.

Spread marinara sauce over the whole dish, and pour the bechamel sauce down the middle. Then bake.

Bon appetit!

Saag Panir

2011-08-23T10:52:00.005-08:00

Who wants Indian? Oh, how I wish there was an Indian restaurant in Juneau! Anyone plan to start one? After making Saag Panir, my friend and I proved we are not the ones to do it. No. While it was fun and novel to homemake cheese, we couldn't make the flavors of the spinach and spices meld together to the right affect.

Making cheese is simple enough:

Boil milk (I used 2%) in a large pot:

Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. It curdles immediately! Let it sit for 1o minutes.

The curds and whey should separate. Pour both through a colander lined with cheese cloth. The curds will collect in the colander, and the whey will drain through into the pot beneath.

You've got cheese! After draining a half hour, squeeze the remaining whey out of the cheese cloth (save the whey for later if using frozen spinach, and refrigerate or freeze for use in soups, etc).

Cube the cheese into small pieces. Stir them into the spinach mixture before serving.

Blend spinach, garlic, cayenne, and jalapeno in a food processor. I used frozen spinach, so I mixed in a cup of whey to give it a creamy consistency.

Saute cumin, coriander, and turmeric in butter and oil. Add onion and tomato.

Add spinach, then cheese.

Serve over brown rice for an extra healthy meal! I think if we'd have cooked it a little longer to let all the flavors blend more thoroughly, added a bit more whey and cooked the spinach down, it would've made it creamier. Ah well, still fun to try. Until we get a good Indian restaurant in town, I'll surely cook this again. The next time around will be better.

Halibut Nicoise

2011-08-22T07:50:00.005-08:00

It's raining hard. The clouds are totally socked in, down to sea level, and it's gloomy. It gets dark early, and feels like fall. It's only mid-August and we're already setting records for the quantity of water deluging from the sky. The forecast is depressing, too, calling for "heavy rain." This weekend, the rains caused the runoff in streams and rivers to flow milky brown. We typically don't get such storms until later in the year when people have been hibernating awhile already.

I started my hibernation this weekend, leading an entirely lazy few days, centered mostly in my kitchen (save for running the ten mile Herbert Glacier leg of the Nifty 50 (km) relay race out the road). It was in this cozy context I cooked up Halibut Nicoise. The recipe is lighter than some of the other halibut recipes out there that are smothered in mayonnaise. It's inspired with flavors of the Mediterranean--garlic, basil, wine, and olives. The tomatoes atop it are refreshing.

Mince garlic and basil.

Slice halibut into 4" x 2" pieces.

Pat halibut in flour, salt and pepper.

Pan fry halibut for a few minutes on each side. Place in oiled baking dish.

Briefly boil sauce in the frying pan; spread over halibut. Bake 10 minutes.

Serve & enjoy!

Shrimp Fried Rice

2011-08-16T19:08:00.006-08:00

I don't remember the Fiddlehead restaurant for its fried rice (I remember it for things like its baked goods counter). But sure enough, the cookbook includes a good recipe for this staple rice dish. It uses local ingredients. And it is, of course, delicious.

It's the perfect midweek meal.It's simple, quick (50 mins), and healthy--and you're left with just one pot to clean. I used a pound of lime-cilantro-seasoned shrimp from Costco which added some flavor. You can also use Petersburg shrimp or small cocktail shrimp.

I got my brown rice going, then started the fried half. Scramble the eggs first, then set aside.

Saute the pepper, onion, and mushroom next.

Add the shrimp, garlic and soy sauce.

Mix it all together with the cooked rice and egg and you're set to serve!

Hermits

2011-08-03T11:23:00.005-08:00

Heading out for a hike? Take a couple hermit bar cookies with you! Packed with raisins, walnuts, and molasses for energy, they'll keep you going full steam ahead. I'm leaving for the Chilkoot next week (they'll freeze well 'til then), and I'm sure these will taste extra delicious on the trail (as all food seems to when you're out in the boonies).

Mix goopey wet ingredients with flour mixture

Divide dough into four balls, wrap tightly, and refrigerate overnight

Form the dough into snakes the length of your cookie sheet, then press them out flat.

Brush with powdered sugar and milk glaze to make them shiny. Cool, and cut into bars.

Fiddlehead Pesto

2011-08-01T11:49:00.007-08:00

Is it still called pesto when it's not made with basil? I suppose the rest of the sauce is the same: nuts, olive oil, and parmesan cheese get blended into whatever herb (or in this case vegetable) you're using. The Fiddlehead pesto calls for fiddleheads or asparagus. I wanted to use fiddleheads, and anticipated the spring harvest season all through our long winter...but! I then missed the short window we have to pick the curly fern sprouts. Oh well. They always say fiddleheads taste just like asparagus, anyway. It's a tasty dish. Creamy, light, quick, and healthy, it's a great weeknight meal.

First, blend all the pesto ingredients in a food processor.

Saute the asparagus (or fiddleheads, in season) in butter.

While the noodles are boiling, heat the cream and mix in the pesto.

Combine pesto sauce with noodles (I used angel hair) & enjoy!

Halibut Caddy Ganty

2011-07-23T18:35:00.006-08:00

Soak halibut filets in white wine.

Puree the cream sauce.

Coat in bread crumbs.

Smother in cream sauce.

Bake and enjoy.

Caddy Ganty lived in Pelican in the 1920's (or so the story goes), the wife of a fish packer in the small Southeast fishing village. It remains one of our region's most popular dishes. It's a tradition that won JoAnn and David Lesh of the Gustavus Inn an "America's Classics" award by the prestigious James Beard Foundation last year. Soak the filets in white wine. Pat them dry and coat fish in bread crumbs. Add cream sauce and bake on high heat. It's a delicious combination, blending the wine flavor with the rich mayo and sour cream-based topping.

This Fiddlehead Caddy Ganty recipe is similar to a recipe my mom has called "drunken halibut." There are a few subtle differences between "Drunken Halibut" and "Caddy Ganty." The latter adds vinegar, tomato and green onion, where the first heaps a greater ratio of mayo atop the fish. Between the two, I'd say the winner is drunken halibut. It's much easier without having to puree the veggies into the sauce, and I prefer the richness of the cream uninterrupted by bits of vegetable.

However you like your Caddy Ganty, it's a delicious choice for fresh (or frozen) halibut.

Roast Beef Pizzaiola

2011-07-22T14:11:00.006-08:00

He himself--the Grinch!--carved the roast beast. When the grinch stole Christmas, he also stole my heart--I still watch the original cartoon each Christmas and usually call it "roast beast." Coincidentally, the same week I tried the Fiddlehead's Roast Beast Pizzaiola, I watched a Dr. Seuss movie: Horton Hears a Who, the 2008 version. It's a remake of the 1970 film based on the 1954 Seuss book. Jim Carrey is the voice of Horton the Elephant and Steve Carrell the voice of Whoville's Mayor. With his big ears, Horton hears life on this little dust speck in the jungle. It's Whoville! He talks to the Mayor of Whoville, but other animals think he's crazy and try to boil the dust speck. Finally little Jojo the Who makes a "yopp" so the other jungle animals can hear all the Whos yelling, "We are here!" and Whoville is not boiled. It's so good. But, it gets better. The creators add a super weird character to Dr. Seuss' already weird world of Jungle Nool. Seriously, you have to meet Katie.

Anyway, back to the roast beast...

This might be my new fave. Why? Because it's so dang quick and easy! 4 ingredients (all available at Costco), 10 minutes of prep, 5 minutes under the broiler. That's it! All you have to do is stack the beast, marinara sauce and mozzarella atop a croissant bottom, broiler, and cap it with the top. You've got a gourmet sandwich!

Fantasy Cookies

2011-07-20T09:19:00.006-08:00

First things first. You need a special rosette press to shape these cookies. I'm not actually clear on what the press is for. Something to do with pancakes, maybe? I would've made this recipe a long time ago was it not for the characteristic shape required. They're just not fantasy cookies without the rosette shape. Martha Hopson, who is credited in the book as Originator of Fantasy Cookie Shape Idea, suggested I scour garage sales for one. Google Images helped me understand what I was looking for. Eventually, it was when I least expected it that I ran across a press. Making sushi at my friend's house, I found not one, but two while rummaging through a drawer looking for wasabi or chopsticks (or some such sushi-related item). Anyway, they're hard to come by, so good luck on your hunt.

Now when using the press, you don't want the star side, just the rosette. Easier said than done. Some of our cookies wound up with the star points pressed into them. It also takes experience to achieve any kind of consistency. We aimed for pressing the form to about half the depth of the cookie, leaving a base around the bottom. It helped to spray the iron with cooking oil. They all turned out differently, regardless. It's all worth it. The rosette gives the cookies convenient sections so you can break them off in perfect bite-sizes.

The cookie itself is a honey-sweetened shortbread with chocolate chips. It melts in your mouth. Probably has enough calories to call one breakfast. Enjoy your trip to fantasy-land.

Boonville Chops

2011-07-12T08:10:00.003-08:00

This simple pork recipe is easy to prepare and cooks in just 15-20 minutes. The Asian flavor is excellent.

Simply mix ginger, cilantro, and soy sauce in a baking dish and let the pork marinate for a few hours.

Then broil on both sides and you're set! Though the recipe calls for chops, I used pork medallions cut from a loin, and liked the smaller bites.

Holiday Cookies

2011-06-11T10:00:00.003-08:00

These basic sugar cookies are perfect for any special occasion. I made them to celebrate summer and used a special whale-shaped cookie cutter.

Red Pepper Pasta

2011-06-10T11:34:00.002-08:00

I don't think this belongs in the appetizer section of the book. It would be easy to turn this fettuccini dish into a light weeknight meal. It’s quick to prepare and features savory morsels of sundried tomatoes and (homemade) roasted red peppers. Pictured here served with pork Szechuan.

Pork Szechuan

2011-06-10T11:04:00.009-08:00

Pork Szechuan. Now you’ve got me going all kinds of directions, Fiddlehead. Chinese food? I don’t have much prior experience. I sure don’t have many of the spices and pastes required. Hot bean paste, for example. Now I know why there’s a mail-order section of the book. No grocery in Juneau has this ingredient. Seriously, I stopped looking at store number five. They all have these crazy other ingredients in their Asian sections like spicy squid bits, organic ramen (oxymoron?!) and coconut jam. They also have things that came really close to being what I thought I needed like curry paste, chili paste, and tamarind paste. A Google search later proved I could probably have used chili paste—or maybe even miso which I have on hand (and just used in German Mushroom Soup). Who knows, I’m not the expert on Chinese cooking. So after spending a longer time grocery gathering than I was entirely enthused about, I settled on “prepared red beans” (photo included above) and just made paste out of them (this quest seemed all the more frivolous as the pre-made Szechuan sauce stared back at me from the shelf at all the stores I visited—oh, for going it from scratch…).

Setting about the actual cooking was so much simpler.

Make the Szechuan sauce.

Marinate the sliced pork.

Chop all the veggies.

Cook the veggies.

Sear the pork.

Add in this rice wine/mirin (another ingredient new to my cupboards) mixture to make a thickening sauce.

And voila! Chinese food at home. Delicious stuff, with a delightfully complex sweet-spicy-gingery-garlicy flavor. Very healthy too. And using pork tenderloin meant extra tender meat.

After it was all said and done, I’m glad the Fiddlehead forced me to branch out a bit. I’ll be totally set the next time I’m invited to a Chinese potluck. Hopefully I’ll be motivated to use the Asian cuisine cupboard inventory again soon.

Pork Szechuan served with Red Pepper Pasta and a cabbage salad

Roasted Red Peppers

2011-06-10T07:55:00.005-08:00

Once upon a time, there were three red peppers.

They basked under the broiler for awhile.

And turned into blackened roasted peppers!

Roasted peppers remind me of strolling through a Sunday market, seeing someone hand-turning a black iron mesh cylinder full of peppers above licking flames. Walking away with fresh roasted peppers was such a novelty when I lived in Colorado. Living in Juneau, the standard is peppers from a jar. It was fun with this recipe to try roasting peppers at home under the broiler. And they turned out great! It’s super easy to do—keep your eye on them and rotate them regularly until all the sides are blackened. Once they’re cool, peel them and use them in any Fiddlehead recipe you please (guliano sandwich, red pepper pasta).

Bean Supreme

2011-05-31T10:14:00.009-08:00

Bean Supreme. Fun name for a soup, right? It's pretty supreme. I mean it tastes good when there's usually nothing too exciting or enticing about a bean soup. It's a long process, though, between soaking the beans overnight, cooking them for an hour and a half, then folding in everything else that's doesn't start as a dehydrated rock toward the end of cook time. Get ready for all that folate, iron, fiber, and protein and have yourself a bowl of Bean Supreme!

Elizabeth's Chicken Salad

2011-05-31T10:14:00.008-08:00

Perfect for a picnic, Elizabeth's Chicken Salad is a low-fat, high-protein meal with great flavor. It's simple to throw together (once you've poached the chicken over a vegetables-and-herbs-broth), and chunks of grape and walnut are a highlight. But ask me in a week if I remember the taste of this recipe.

As I was cooking I was listening to NPR, there was a story about food memory. Some expert is saying that in order to make a meal memorable, each course has to be vivid, distinct from one another, and tied together with a story. They had actors and lights (not sure how watching a play makes you remember what you're eating)--I thought it was some interesting food for thought. Here, you can read about the Sensorium Dinner Project if you're interested in learning more. There's a video (even though it was a radio story). There's even a course served on miniature furniture. Check it out!

Maybe I need some props and lighting to make Elizabeth's Chicken Salad even more memorable...

Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

2011-05-31T10:13:00.010-08:00

Do you love raisins in your Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies? For me, it totally depends. In this recipe, the Fiddlehead offers substituting one-for-one chocolate chips for raisins. I like that idea. I tried half-and-half and and really enjoyed it. Buttery and chewy, this is a classic recipe for a classic cookie! Whether you favor chocolate or raisins, enjoy!

German Mushroom Soup

2011-05-31T10:13:00.009-08:00

This healthy bowl of goodness really tastes European. Has that borschty (yes, using it as an adjective) flavor. Must come from the mixture of caraway seed and wine. Ooh, but then the Fiddlehead throws a crazy curve ball. A cross-continental fusion ingredient: miso! It's just a touch, but it works and probably makes the flavor more complex than my little palatte could fully appreciate. It's a delightful soup, chock-full of mushrooms and onion, and I recommend it!

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

2011-05-25T10:16:00.006-08:00

I know you want a slice. Two quintessential flavors of summer, rhubarb and strawberry, are fruits that are born for each other, and they marry happily ever after in this classic pie. Spring's coming a bit late this year in Southeast Alaska, and it was just this weekend when planting the vegetable garden that I found enough rhubarb for the first Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie of the summer!

Some skinny 1st-of-the-year rhubarb on the chopping block

I used the Pie Crust recipe from the Fiddlehead cookbook. I couldn't remember if I'd posted it before or not, but it's easy and it's good. Flour, butter, water. That's it.

I used a short cut. I think it was extra delicious. I used a couple pints of frozen, SWEETENED strawberries, and the result was an extra sweet pie. Yum.

Can you make out the "1st" on the crust? 1st rhubarb of the season! Alriiiight.

Warm Mushroom Salad

2011-05-20T08:26:00.004-08:00

The name of the Warm Mushroom Salad recipe really says it like it is. It's simple:

Saute mushrooms in olive oil. Add a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Pile atop a bed of greens.

Enjoy!

Guliano Sandwich

2011-05-19T13:35:00.003-08:00

Yum. I would be so happy if I ordered this at a restaurant. And to eat it at home! Oh my. The Guliano Sandwich is breaded eggplant, roasted pepper, pesto, and mozzarella between slices of bread. The Fiddlehead cookbook writes, "This is not just a collection of everything trendy between two slices of bread...but is, in fact, a great combination."

The Guliano is a simple recipe--the only time intensive step is the eggplant. As with the eggplant parmesan recipe, you have to sweat the slices by sprinkling with salt and setting them out. Then you rinse and pat dry before breading and frying.

Using an artisan bread makes a big difference in taste and appearance. I used my go-to no-knead bread and baked in chunks of garlic. The flavors meld together so nicely. It's almost vegan too--if you went without the melted mozzarella and egg.

The assembly line for breading the eggplant: flour, egg, and bread crumb

You have to sweat the eggplant slices

Spread each slice with pesto--layer half with breaded eggplant, roasted pepper, and mozzarella--and broil

The Guliani is a masterpiece of a sandwich

Fettuccine Alfredo

2011-05-17T16:05:00.005-08:00

Hand-making fettuccine noodles is like being transported to the kichens of Italy a century ago. Working the dough with our hands, we slowly turned semolina flour with a little egg and oil into the clay from which we sculpted our Fettuccine Alfredo!

Three old friends in no hurry, we fell easily into conversation while we cooked, losing ourselves in reflections about love, laughing about memories. The laborious task of crafting our own pasta from scratch was levened by fruity red wine; our hunger abated by nibbles of mushroom and tomato drizzled with olive oil.

We took turns rolling out each eighth chunk of dough and slicing the flattened rectangle into strips. The fettuccine pulled up off the counter without any need for rice flour. Until the whole batch was ready to boil, we used the oven racks to hang each noodle to dry. In the meantime, we chopped up the garlic and green onion for the alfredo sauce.

Finally the noodles were plunged into boiling water-- but just for a few minutes! Once al dente, we drained them and added them to a saucepan where they swam in butter and garlic. Next, we added heavy cream and brought it all to a boil before adding the green onion and parmesan cheese. The dish was heavenly, melt-in-your-mouth delicious. And we all felt so satisfied to have made them completely from scratch. Buen provecho!

Fresh Cilantro Salsa and Guacamole

2011-05-17T15:07:00.007-08:00

Hot temps call for cool, refreshing foods. It was a beautiful bluebird Spring day. My beau and I were cooking up moose tacos, and salsa and guac from the Fiddlehead complimented the meal nicely.

Mm, moose tacos with Fiddlehead salsa and guac

Fresh Cilantro Salsa: I held this perception that salsa is tricky to make, but with a food processor, the fresh cilantro salsa was as easy as rounding up the vegetables and plopping them in! It broke a barrier in homemade salsa making for me, and I'll definitely blend this up more often.

Salsa is as easy as dumping these veggies...

...into a food processor and pushing the button!

It's so fresh! And healthy--be sure to let it rest the recommended two hours as it melds and steeps the flavors together. I really pulverised the stuff--I might try it a little chunkier next time.

Avocado!

Guacamole: Creamy avocado is accented by the sharp, refreshing tastes of red onion, cilantro, tomato, and lime. Guacamole is a food of the gods for how pure and nourishing it is! The lime's acidity and cilantro's distinct flavor penetrates through each bite. This is a recipe I'm glad to have on hand to use again.

Ole! Creamy guacamole bursting with flavor

Charlene's Salad

2011-05-09T13:14:00.002-08:00

Melt-in-your-mouth goat cheese, savory bacon, and a walnut-garlic mixture heated in bacon grease make this salad to die for. The greens are tossed with a bit of balsamic vinegar, and the flavors meld so well together. Charlene's Salad (page 27) is a sure crowd-pleaser, and one of my favorite recipes so far.

Sour Cream-Strawberry Coffee Cake

2011-05-09T13:09:00.003-08:00

Strawberries scream summer, and this coffee cake is great way to celebrate the season. The recipe calls for blueberries, but I was eager to try it, and couldn't wait until August for our wild blueberries to be ready. Strawberries worked very well in this moist, slightly sweet treat. I recommend taking it a step farther and using it as a base for strawberry shortcake. A dollop of real whipped cream and a sprinkling of fresh strawberries makes a divine dessert. It's quick and easy. And if you don't have a tube cake pan, never fear: I used a 9" x 13" cake pan, and just cut the cake in rectangles.

Chicken Teriyaki - on a stick

2011-05-09T12:39:00.006-08:00

Springtime is BBQ season, and it was refreshing to take this dish to the grill! The Fiddlehead offers a barbeque option to the standard stovetop Chicken Teriyaki (page 82), and so it was shish kabob time! If you're using wooden skewers, remember to soak them overnight so they're less likely to scorch over the heat. Alternate marinated chicken, peppers, onion, and mushroom to made a colorful and healthy meal that is fun to eat!

The Teriyaki Marinade (page 210) is fairly simple, and the flavor really comes through after cooking. It takes just a wee bit of planning ahead to get the chicken cubed and marinating the night before, but it's worth it for the fresh-off-the-grill taste. I marinated it overnight, and would recommend that longer time length (the book says you can marinate for just 2 hours). Garlic, ginger, soy sauce, honey, sherry, and sesame oil combine for a quintessentially Asian flavor. Yum!

The meat a'marinating

Raisin Bran Muffins

2011-05-06T11:03:00.003-08:00

Here’s a delicious way to combine baked goods with eating healthy. The Fiddlehead’s Raisin Bran Muffins are honey and molasses sweetened, full of whole wheat and, you guessed it: bran. Plus, they taste good.

They’re easy to throw together, and I’ll bet you have all the ingredients already in your cupboard and fridge. Except maybe buttermilk, but that can be improvised: I used a mix of cow and soy milk soured with lemon juice.

Wholesome and just the right amount of sweet, these fiber-packed treats are a sturdy way to start your day, and simple enough to bake before you get to the office. Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cookies

2011-05-01T20:55:00.013-08:00

These are tulips that were in my house when I was making cookies. They are pretty.

I'm realizing that if this project is ever going to end (and at last count there's something like 85 recipes left), I am eventually going to have to tackle the complicated and challenging recipes. I mean there's the Saag Panir recipe that involves making your own cheese for a tasty Indian recipe. Or there's the whole baked fish. Hand made fettuccine noodles aren't exactly a 30-minute meal, either. But for now I'm reaching for the low-hanging fruit, recipes that I can fit in here and there. As evidence, the desserts are all mostly done. Desserts are easy because they're typically recipes that involve ingredients you already have on hand--namely sugar and flour. That trend continued with today's recipe...In choosing what to take to a Royal Wedding-watching brunch, I opted for a simple and classic treat: peanut butter cookies.

Ooey-gooey peanut butter cookie dough

Blend all the ooey-gooey ingredients first (butter, peanut butter, sugar, vanilla). Keep in mind that if you're every stranded on an island and you have to choose just one food to eat, you might want to consider choosing this tasty dough (so good). The flour and leavening goes in next. Mix all together, roll into balls, flatten with a fork, and bake yourself some cookies.

So while the newlyweds and other royals are enjoying their bacon sandwiches, we're indulging in the Fiddlehead's peanut butter cookies--yum!

Fresh out of the oven. Enjoy!

Fiddlehead Easter: Curried Carrot Soup and Creamed New Potatoes and Peas with Bechamel Sauce

2011-04-26T21:48:00.011-08:00

Like many of you, I celebrated Easter by eating a large meal around the dining table together with family and friends. We also threw miniature marshmallows at each other in the backyard, but that's another story. We ate in courses, and a few of the dishes came from the Fiddlehead cookbook. Our first course was the Curried Cream of Carrot Soup. We served it in cups with a dollop (love that word) of sour cream and a sprinkling of green onion.

The soup is carrots, onion, and garlic mixed with with curry powder and garam masala, and simmered in cream and chicken broth. It's then pulsed in the food processor to leave a smooth finished product. It's very tasty, and has quite a kick with just 1/2 a teaspoon of cayenne. We had it as a starter, but I'm sure it would stand well on its own as a meal with just a thick slice of bread on the side.

For the main course, we had a non-Fiddlehead stuffed pork roast accompanied by a few dishes, including Creamed New Potatoes and Peas with Bechamel Sauce. This is a fun way to make your typical potato side dish just a little more interesting. Use new potatoes from your garden, and if it's not your growing season, buy small potatoes. Mix these with peas, and drench in a creamy and slightly sweet white "bechamel" sauce.

It's fairly easy to do--the trickiest part is reading through the sauce instructions and understanding how to construct the vegetable figurine which stews: a clove poked into a quartered onion becomes the nose, and a bay leaf stuck in adds a feather in his cap. It was a little bland but I only simmered the onion for 5 minutes and it said 5-10. I would do 10 the next time, just to add more flavor. Or add more S&P. I did double the recipe and it was A LOT! A note for leftover eaters: it didn't reheat very well--it was runny when reheated, and lost its creaminess.

Reality Cookies

2011-04-17T16:11:00.004-08:00

These melt in your mouth. Buttery, nutty, with highlights of sweet M&M surprising your palette, it's no wonder Reality Cookies were so popular at the Fiddlehead bakery.

They’re easy to throw together. Simply cream butter with brown and white sugars, then add flour and ground almond, and fold in the candies. The signature Fiddlehead finish is to top them with a single M&M. As shortbread, they bake on a low temp—275—for twenty minutes. Just long enough to melt everything together. So good!

Mulled Wine

2011-04-17T15:41:00.007-08:00

My dad hilariously calls mulled wine "glue" wine, the Americanized pronunciation of "glühwein," the ubiquitous warm alcoholic beverage of Germany's Christmas markets.

This spicy, warm beverage is something I most look forward to during the Christmas season. And the Fiddlehead adds a secret ingredient: sherry!

Heat your wine (but don’t boil, as you’ll burn off the alcohol, and then what’s the point…), add spices.

Strain:

Add the concentrated spice-fruit liquid back to the pot with wine and sherry. Reheat and serve. Divine.

Proost (cheers)!

Eighteen-Carat Cake

2011-04-17T15:28:00.005-08:00

Orange roots have never tasted this good. Eighteen-Carat Cake is as good as gold! It’s very moist, with oozing cream cheese frosting between layers and smothered around the entire thing.

I’ve never microwaved a carrot. A friend in Colorado always microwaves his corn on the cob (8 minutes and they’re hot like they were fresh off the grill). That’s how this recipe calls for you to cook the vegetable before mixing with pineapple, flour, etc and baking.

Sadly, I didn’t catch a photo of the finished product. But it looks handsome and festive with 28 candles sticking out its top!

Salmon-Mushroom Quiche

2011-04-17T14:58:00.006-08:00

I used canned salmon

With its French name and delicious fusion of flavors, quiche is greater than the sum of its parts. A little of this and a little of that is tossed in a pie shell and held together with custard. All together the savory pie melts in your mouth nicely, and the flavors of the onion and mushroom blend well with the salmon, which is complimented by the cream cheese.

Salmon, cream cheese, and green onion inside an unbaked pie shell: almost ready to bake!

It’s a great dish to whip together quickly—it’d be perfect for a weeknight, especially if your crust was made ahead. This recipe is definitely one that will go in the “will make again” folder!

Creamy quiche filling inside a flaky crust

Swirl Bread

2011-04-17T11:09:00.014-08:00

How do you bring some sunshine to a rainy weekend? Cook up this playful loaf. It’s Honey Butter Oatmeal Bread and Dark Pumpernickel Bread swirled together to create an eye-pleasing spiral inside your loaf. Too fun!

Baking bread isn’t hard necessarily, but the yeast is a bit particular, and the rising process is time consuming. So make sure you have bad weather, and find some other activities to round out this daylong endeavor. Watch a movie, go skiing, or take a nap, for example. Organize your sock drawer, maybe?

I opted in for the onion in the pumpernickel loaf. Combined with the molasses, rye and whole wheat flours, whole caraway seeds, and cocoa powder, it’s a very flavorful & distinct bread. The oatmeal loaf is considerably more neutral, and the subtle honey and oat get overwhelmed by the flavor of the darker bread. At least it’s there for the color (and would be delicious on its own)…you have to have yin and yang.

Combine the yeast with warm water and sweetener. Let it sit 3-5 minutes to allow it to bloom (it’s really cool to watch it bubble and grow).

Then knead. With no dough-hook on my mixer, I had to put serious elbow grease into the kneading. Ten minutes on one loaf, and half an hour on another. I popped a movie in. The dark loaf was quite sticky, and needed quite a lot of additional flour to be worked in.

Cover and let rise. The dark loaf went wild, rising like crazy. On the other hand, I worried that I had over-developed the gluten in the white loaf, as it remained like a rock in my oiled bowl. So I went skiing...and my patience paid off. The dough had risen—the test is to push your finger in, and the dough should be spongy and not spring back right away.

At this point, it’s time to divide the loaves into balls, and roll out the dough into rectangles.

Then stack one bread on top of the other and roll up jelly-roll style.

Let rise (again) in loaf pans before baking. Brush loaves with egg before going in the oven.

Finally, bake (and nap). And 35-40 minutes later, when the buzzer sounds, you wake to a delightful loaf and heavenly smells.

I enjoyed many reiterations of this bread throughout the week. Slices of swirl bread make a great base to a ham-mustard-cheese-sprouts sandwich. I also enjoyed it toasted with butter, smothered in homemade high bush cranberry and rosehip jam.

Honey Cheesecake

2011-04-17T10:47:00.006-08:00

Who invented cheesecake? God bless them, whoever they might be! Pure genius created the simple yet rich (and oh-so-fattening), formula for cheesecake, a classic dessert. This version, the Fiddlehead’s Honey Cheesecake, is—as the name indicates—honey sweetened. That flavor really comes through. Drizzled in a mixed berry sauce, it’s exquisite!

Thorough mixing will be key in your cheesecake endeavors—you don’t want the smooth, creamy texture to be interrupted with lumps! No, ma’am. I mixed on high for ten full minutes. Again, as with the espresso cheesecake, the crust is rounded out using ground almonds. And there’s honey in the base, too.

Crabby Eggs

2011-04-05T21:15:00.008-08:00

The Crabby Eggs recipe is a nice, light, simple meal for breakfast or lunch. It's perfect to use up crab leftovers, or just if you’ve got croissants lying around (there are non-crabby alternatives outlined in the book).

Hollandaise sauce seems fancy, but all it is is egg, lemon juice, and a LOT of butter

I’ve never made Hollandaise sauce before. It’s pretty touchy. I read (and suggest you do the same) the page in the cookbook explaining emulsifying mayonnaise. It helps you understand that the egg yolk has a limited ability to absorb fat, and that it’s consequently quite important to the process that you add the fat in just a wee bit at a time. Yes, grasshopper, it takes patience to pull this one off. First, the egg yolks cook just a little bit on a low simmer. My first go around I managed to scramble them, so I was careful to keep the temp low the 2^nd time, and remove it from the heat of the double boiler fairly early. Next add the butter teaspoon by teaspoon, stirring thoroughly between each addition.

Cooking from scratch leaves nothing left to the imagination, and now I can no longer lie to myself about Hollandaise sauce. It’s mostly butter, with a little egg yolk and lemon juice. Oof-da. No wonder it’s good.

Poaching the egg on a low simmer

Poaching eggs is easy once you know a couple of tricks. You want to put your egg in a bowl and slide it into the low simmering water. This is how you avoid making egg drop soup. Four minutes was the perfect cooking time for softly cooked, slightly running yolks.

There’s no bad time for a croissant. Buttery and flaky, they’re good with savory or sweet accompaniments, or just plain. I lightly toasted mine before loading them open face with butter-sautéed crab. The poached egg sits on top and the whole thing is smothered in Hollandaise sauce.

Mm, a delicious bite. That yolk is perfect!

Chocolate Amaretto Cake

2011-03-31T22:08:00.006-08:00

This recipe takes the cake (pun intended) for most exciting dessert to put together. It calls for you, as the baker, to fold dry and wet ingredients together WITH YOUR HANDS. That's right—the moist and spongy finished product is a result of you actually rolling up your sleeves and oozing your fingers into the dough. This is going to delight your inner child! The best part is licking your fingers when you're done.

Chocolate Amaretto Cake is novel for its ingredients as well as construction. I've done sour cream and buttermilk before in baking, but I've never heard of putting mayonnaise in my chocolate cake. This recipe has all three. Guess it adds moisture and flavor. I love the almond tones. A touch of almond extract and amaretto adds a nice hint of nuttiness. Of course a sprinkling of sliced almonds atop the chocolate icing is an attractive presentation. Serve with ice and/or whipped creams.

Eggplant Parmigiana

2011-03-31T21:32:00.009-08:00

The only eggplant I could find in town was Japanese eggplant. Turned out great!

Let's start with the marinara sauce in the eggplant parmigiana. It's delightful. Has a nice spice to it from the pepper. Quite spicy really. It made me hiccough (I love to spell things the old-fashioned way, none of this ‘hiccup’ business). I do that when I eat spicy things. Does that happen to anyone else? Unless I focus on very regular and mindful breathing, I always hiccough when I eat something spicy. What’s your hiccough cure? I heard holding a pencil in your mouth while drinking water does the trick. What the heck is that?! My old standard is plugging my ears while drinking.

Anyway, back to the marinara. Nothing like some hearty Italian old world red sauce. Your house will smell amazing. Red wine, garlic, rosemary, oh my! This sauce really makes the eggplant dish. Well, that and the cheese. And the eggplant. Ooh, I love eggplant. I caught onto it in college, and fried slices became a favorite snack. The eggplant in this recipe is breaded and fried. Actually it's sliced and sweated first. That’s right. You set the slices out and sprinkle them with salt.

After 30 minutes, or when tiny beads of water form on them, they’re ready to be coated in flour, dropped in egg, and sizzled in oil.

From right to left: coat eggplant in flour, dip in egg, and fry in oil

Layers of fried eggplant, sauce, and cheeses blend into the hot, comforting, and quite delicious vegetarian recipe. Bon appétit!

P.S. It's quite easy to make this ahead. For a Sunday night meal, I chipped away on the prep throughout the weekend. I knew I was going to ski on Sunday, and didn't want to have to spend long daylight hours in the kitchen. I started Friday night slicing and salting/sweating and making the marinara. Saturday morning I fried the slices. Come Sunday all that was left was layering and baking--mercifully so, as it was a blue bird day with temps above 50 degrees!

P.P.S. I didn't take any pictures of the marinara sauce. It's red. You can probably make it out in the photo of the baked dish above. That and a bottle of pinot noir, and the no-knead bread that's changed my life.

Brown Rice Salad

2011-03-31T21:10:00.007-08:00

Got brown rice leftovers? Brown Rice Salad will spruce up any old brown rice into an attractive healthy meal. Over a bed of leafy greens drizzled in Fiddlehead vinaigrette (I keep some on-hand in the fridge), dollop a mound of warmed brown rice mixed with sautéed bell pepper, onion, tofu, and more vinaigrette. Top it with sliced tomatoes, sprouts, and cheddar cheese and you've got a hearty salad with a nice presentation. That vinaigrette gives it great flavor. The sprouts are grown here in Southeast and are so good! If you have some leftover leftover brown rice, re-heat it and wrap it in a tortilla with fried eggs to make a dandy breakfast burrito.

Fresh Vegetable Saute with Brown Rice

2011-03-24T19:10:00.009-08:00

Orange. Yellow. White. Green. Purple. Brown.

This colorful dish is a bowlful of health. It’s super simple, just some veggies and rice. It seems so unassuming, but it has just enough tads of this and dashes of that to draw out some nice subtle flavors. If you added red pepper and blueberries (do we have a blue-colored fruit?), you’d have ROY-G-BIV—all colors of the rainbow, in one bowl!

It felt like a particularly long day. When I got home, I poured myself a generous glass of Spanish rioja wine, turned on some music, threw my apron on, and started cooking. Some hot, fresh, healthy food sounded so good. On the menu: Fresh Vegetable Saute (Page 119) with Brown Rice (Page 209).

Golly gee willikers, this is a lot of chopping. Make yourself comfortable, because when you slice ten different kinds of vegetables at once, you’re in it for the long haul. Once everything’s chopped, into hot oil it goes! This stir-fry really makes me want a wok. But I don’t really sauté vegetables enough to justify that kind of investment (not to mention the space investment of another pan in my not-so-very-large kitchen). Oh well, a soup pot stood in for the part.

Get creative and add your favorite vegetables. The simple sauté—with a bit of dry white wine and a dash of soy sauce—is really nice. Only cooked for 5 minutes, the veggies were still a tad crunchy, and oh-so-tasty.

The rice has nice aromas of bay leaf, thyme, and pepper, and a quick hit of heat in oil brings out a nice nutty flavor. Brown rice is just so darn good.

I was applauding myself for choosing a Fiddlehead recipe that didn’t involve large quantities of cream and butter…just when the ½ pound of shredded cheddar cheese jumped out at me from the ingredient list. That’s for six servings, mind you, but I still wasn’t expecting it in this otherwise very virtuous recipe. Guess I shouldn’t be too surprised—and it was nice, at the end of the day, to have the sprinkling of cheese melted in. The chopped almonds were a nice topping, too! To serve, I made a well in the middle of the rice, filled it with veggies, and topped it all with cheese and almonds. Enjoy!

Salmon Matisse

2011-03-17T07:06:00.003-08:00

Salmon marinating in the freezer

My friend Laura told me once I have an energy efficient freezer, in that keeping it full means it takes less energy to cool. It’s completely stuffed to the gills with frozen salmon, halibut, moose, venison, and homemade ice cream—so stuffed there’s no space even for ice. It’s a treat to cook salmon mid-winter, a taste of summer that takes you straight to sitting on the back deck grilling after a day of play. I was looking forward to trying Salmon Matisse (page 104). With a yogurt-based topping, it sounded healthy and I thought it would satisfy my hunger for healthy omega-3s. But it just didn’t turn out quite right: I lit the oven on fire and thought the fish, once served, tasted like dirty socks. Guess you can’t win ‘em all.

The salmon marinates for four hours in a blend of oil, vermouth (I used dry white wine), and spices. Next it’s broiled and the yogurt topping added in the last couple minutes. I drizzled some of the oil over the salmon before placing it underneath the broiler coils set to “high.” After a couple minutes, flames licked inside the oven, my boyfriend and I frantically trying to get the fiery tray outside. Must’ve been that the excess oil ignited. Luckily, the filet survived. After the stress of the fire, we turned the broiler to low and checked frequently ‘til the salmon flaked nicely. But once plated, the taste was off. Maybe the thyme reacted funny when overheated, I don’t know what. I think it might be better another time/place. But for me, Salmon Matisse was more a disaster station than a winter treat from the freezer.

Cardamom Coffee Cake

2011-03-04T08:31:00.003-09:00

Mm, butter. It makes everything better. With one pound of butter, the Cardamom Coffee Cake (page 158) is darn good. It probably should be called a pound cake, though—it is serious! Seriously delicious that is, with its hint of the unique spice cardamom, and its attractive double swirl of streusel. It’s moist and robust. Did I mention there's lots-o-butter?

Now I’m a firm believer that a coffee cake should be featured as an accompaniment to coffee, and not much more. The cakey (sometimes dry and bland) aspect doesn’t do much for me if it’s a side on a plateful of other breakfast foods. But enjoyed alone with a cup of joe (with room for cream) really does it wonders. There’s nothing bland or dry about this recipe, though. Mm, mm.

With no cardamom on hand, I swung by the bulk spices section at Freddy’s to get the stuff. What a genius way to shop for spices, let me say. Instead of spending eight dollars for a tiny jar, I got more than enough for my recipe: total bill $1.06.

It’s been windy here the last week or so…No, that doesn’t quite capture it, let me try again…our community hunkered down the past week in the face of blasting, icy Taku winds—siding’s been torn off buildings, trash cans bounce like balls down the street. They’re clocking gusts at 90mph at sea level, and over 150 on our mountain tops—isn’t that hurricane force? I’m sure the guy who was just rescued off the ice field is enjoying his coffee cake an extra notch these days. Winter roared its ugly head, the people in Juneau quivering in its breath. There. That captures it a bit better…And it was in the might of this weather that I baked up this slice of comfort, viewing the world from the inside-out, and making it all the more satisfying.

I used organic butter in this recipe. Creamed with sugar, vanilla and eggs, it's mixed in with dry ingredients and sour cream and layered in a bundt pan between sprinklings of streusel. Pretty simple. The Fiddlehead says they borrowed this recipe from a cafe in Vermont; there, they served the slices grilled in butter and drizzled with real maple syrup. Whoa. You've got to try this recipe. Make a breakfast date with your loved ones, brew a pot of coffee, and hunker down inside.

Creme Brulee

2011-02-17T07:04:00.004-09:00

As intended, I made creme brulee this week. And it came earlier than I thought. Monday was Valentine's Day, and my roommate and I double-dated plus one for a delightful lamb roast for five. Since it was a week night, we ate late. While the roast cooked, we snacked on spinach-feta dip with pita chips, and the girls beat the boys at a lively round of Taboo. The lamb was cooked perfectly--still a bit pink, and deliciously flavorful from a good salt rub-down. Roasted purple fingerling potatoes and red cabbage were colorful accompaniments on the plate (I had nothing to do with dinner). We were stuffed. But dessert goes into a different stomach, and we enjoyed the creme brulee with port wine to top off the evening.

The Fiddlehead's Creme Brulee (Page 201) is fantastic. It's mostly just cream and sugar (as most great desserts are), plus egg yolks, and super simple to throw together. The trickiest part of the recipe is the timing of custard baking. My borrowed brulee dishes cooked in the suggested baking time, no problem. But the leftovers that I put into a larger baking dish took longer, and I was checking every couple of minutes. I'd estimate you need 8-10 of the classically-sized creme brulee dishes.

It turned out pretty great for a dish that literally means "burnt cream." I wish I had a torch to create that satisfying tap on the brulee crust, but a hot broiler worked fine to melt the brown sugar topping. It doesn't take very long at all--so keep your eye on it: you don't want burnt burnt cream.

Chocolate Mousse

2011-02-13T13:06:00.002-09:00

I love chocolate mousse. It’s so rich and fluffy. I made the Fiddlehead's Chocolate Mousse (page 202) for ten, and it was a hit! It only takes 30 minutes to prepare, and voila! Tasty gourmet dessert. Garnished with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, it looks darn good.

Melting, whipping, and folding. Those are the three basic steps of this recipe. Melt the chocolate; whip the cream and egg whites (separately); finally, fold them all together with a dash of dark rum!

I had most of the ingredients for this simple recipe, except whipped cream, which I bought at Costco. It’s a tricky thing to buy a half-gallon of heavy whipping cream and have your thighs not shudder—it’s a race against the expiration date to see if you can find enough recipes to use up that ingredient—and then you’d better have a lot of friends to help you eat it. Never fear, I’m already scheming the next fatty dessert: crème brulee. It calls for “1 cup heavy cream (no substitutions).” Plus, I used 8 egg whites for this recipe, and crème brulee calls for 7 egg yolks! So there’s crème brulee to be had sometime this week. Resourceful, right?

Coconut Macaroons

2011-01-30T14:54:00.003-09:00

I’ve never made macaroons before. My mom’s distaste for dried coconut banished them from our family treat menu growing up. As an adult, I’ve never had a hankering for food with this ingredient. I do like macaroons, however. They always seem fancy to me, and I like the light and airy texture. A chef in my office building’s kitchen makes an especially delicious coconut macaroon. I asked her before my attempt if there were any tricky steps. She said no—and was right.

Egg yolks: a lovely bi-product of this recipe

Mount Al'mond

Coconut Macaroons (Page 164-165) come together with the simple steps of whipping and folding. Whip stiff peaks of egg whites with salt, then add sugar until shiny. Ground almond and coconut give these treats good texture, folded in with flour and butter. This gooey mixture is spooned onto greased trays and baked for a quarter of an hour. That’s all there is to it.

An ice cream scoop makes nice round 'roons

I could take or leave the chocolate icing. While I’m a proponent of all things with heavy cream, dipping the macaroons in chocolate made them sticky and much more tricky to store or handle.

Chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons

As cookies go, they’re fairly healthy too. They have Vitamin E from the almonds, lots of nutrients and fiber from the coconut (and there’s a lot of coconut), and protein from a substantial amount of egg whites.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie

2011-01-03T10:10:00.003-09:00

Chocolate-PB pie topped with whipped cream and Panamanian chocolate bits

Wow. I have a serious "food hangover" today. You see, while most people resolve to be more healthy at the first of the New Year, I resolved to make Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie (Page 190-191). It's so good. But it's super rich. And on top of baked brie, prime rib and scalloped potatoes, my stomach is suffering the consequences. But today is my legs day at the gym, and I'll kick up the internal engines to burn some of the cream and sugar of last night's indulgence. Shoot, tonight I may sit down to the leftover pie.

Simple ingredients: I had everything already in my kitchen for this recipe

This pie will indeed send peanut-butter fans into ecstasy. It's rich, but not overly sweet. The peanutty creamy goodness rests on a solid foundation of graham and chocolate. The graham crust is liberally buttery. The layer of chocolate ganache coats the graham and creates a very aesthetically pleasing dark line between graham and PB.

Godly crust: Graham, brown sugar, and butter

A word to the planners: The recipe calls for using a 9" pie pan. I used an 8" pie pan plus another "pint-size" pie pan. The recipe makes a lot of filling. And I could easily stretch it into a pie and a half-pie.

I challenge you to make this recipe without taste testing a large amount of this creamy batter.

It's pretty easy to make. Only the crust bakes. The chocolate melts, and the whipped cream gets folded into cream cheese, peanut butter and confectioner's sugar mix. You can top it with Reese's bits, chocolate shavings, or whipped cream. Yum.

See? Doesn't that chocolate stripe look nice?

Ann's Lemon Cake for Christmas Dinner

2010-12-27T11:21:00.005-09:00

Pumpkin pie, step aside. This year I went unconventional for Christmas dessert and made the Fiddlehead's Ann's Lemon Cake (pg. ). It was light, had a nice balance of sweet with tart, and was a hit with the fam. I did suffer some serious rising issues (twice), and had to resort to using yellow cake box mix to layer with the lemon curd and lemon syrup.

I couldn't figure where I went wrong. I whipped the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, then folded them into the flour/cornstarch mix to bake. After producing two unrisen, dense pancakes (which were supposed to slice in thirds), I was pushing up against 3:00 and opted for the box mix backup. Could it have been my egg/sugar wasn't fluffy enough? Or that my cornstarch was inactive (the label says it expires in 2012)? It tried to rise in puffs here and there, but just didn't have enough umph for the whole thing. Hmm...

The final product was delicious despite. Two layers of sweet-tart curd spread between three slabs of lemon syrup-drizzled cake made each bite moist and packed with flavor. Smothered in whipped cream, Ann's Lemon Cake is a bright delight to enjoy for the holidays...

North Douglas Chocolate Cake: Halloween Remix

2010-10-26T08:42:00.004-08:00

North Douglas is a stretch of highway that leads to Eaglecrest, False Outer Point, and the End of the (Island) Road. An incredible place. And an incredible cake. With a festive spirit, I put a Halloween spin on this classic Fiddlehead recipe.

There's chocolate cake and then there's North Douglas Chocolate Cake (page ). Around here, this cake wins the highest dessert-auction bids, and is the most requested birthday cake. It's cake is springy and moist, its icing buttery and infused with dark, Dutch-processed cocoa. Oh-so-rich. And for being such a decadent cake, its a simple and quick recipe.

It's as easy as mixing wet ingredients:

with dry

Then bake - and add frosting!

Now here's where I add a little something for the season. Instead of baking the cake in the traditional 8" pans, I cooked them for a shorter period in cupcake cups. At a party, cupcakes make individual servings much handier.

A little inspiration from Woman's Day magazine goes a long way. Using edible, play-doh-esque fondant (pre-made and pre-colored to save hours of time), I constructed little witch legs and boots.

Topped with sparkly witch hats on sale at Jo-Ann's, the final product will leave you cackling, reveling, and covorting in a Wicked Witch of the East-meets-All Hallow's Eve kind of way.

Happy Halloween!

Late night herb bread

2010-09-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

Even the oregano knows it's autumn

Sometimes, internet, I don't know what I did when I was single. I know I cooked. A lot. It's not like I was suddenly imbued with magical cooking powers when my sweetheart came along. I have clear memories of cooking many tasty things in the kitchen, wine glass in hand, and belting out to Dar Williams, nary a boy in sight. I'm not single now, but this summer, I've felt like it. The sweetheart's on a job a couple hours away, and only home a few nights every couple weeks. Consequently, I just haven't felt like cooking.

I've been eating though. Usually a big salad, or (and I'm sharing my Number One Sexy Single Secret meal here) a baked sweet potato with sauteed kale and garlic on top. Topped off with a dollop of yogurt, and a dab of harissa mixed in if I'm feeling particularly ambitious. It's superfood heaven. Green, white and bright orange. Sweet and bitter. Creamy and crunchy.

All this to say, every time I've cracked open the cookbook this summer, it's been hard to motivate for a big meal I can't share with anyone. I don't want to hog all the sandwich recipes!

But fall is setting in here in Alaska, and I'm beginning to putter around the kitchen again. I've been making my way through 4 gallons of cherries that I picked last week, and last night I made herb bread. It was late, and I had blog guilt. But the bread was fantastic!

Mezza Luna Loveliness

My fresh herbs are still kicking. I went out to my garden and snipped chives, oregano, tarragon, thyme and parsley. While the yeast bloom was... blooming, I chopped the herbs with my lovely mezza luna.

Kneading away

I started out mixing and kneading in the KitchenAid, but switched to hand kneading a couple minutes in. I felt like kneading, and the the dough looked (and was) so sumptuous to the touch.

The loaves have risen!

Two healthy rises in the oven, a quick shape into loaves and one more rise. Out came perfect, fragrant bread. Great for toast on my way into work this morning. This is the second bread I've made from the cookbook, and both have suggested 3 rises. It paid off big time, as they loaves were the loftiest I've ever made. I think next time, I'll see if I can knock off one rise.

Morning toast