Food Lush

A champagne toast with a twist

Editor's note: For our last week at Food Lush, I've asked the writers to share both a favorite post by another writer, from over the last three years, and a favorite post of their own. You'll see these posts linked to at the top of their new post for the week. Enjoy a stroll down Lush memory lane!

by Katie

I was hard-pressed to choose a favorite post, but this granola from Elissa has become a staple in our house, and from me I'll link to these perfect cupcakes, because they are so delicious and I think everyone should have an easy, reliable cupcake recipe in their repertoire.

***

Oh, it is a poignant thing, this writing of my last FoodLush post. I feel so fortunate to have been part of this great group, and so grateful to Jennie for putting it together and nurturing it for the past two years. So I figured it was only fitting to make my last post a toast – with champagne, of course. (Could it be anything else, with Jennie involved?)

I am a big fan of champagne cocktails. Festive, a little different, fun for a DIY bar at a party. I love a good kir royale, and my affection for a French 75 is well-known. For a FoodLush sendoff, I wanted to do a classic with a twist. And so, I give you a riff on a French 75 featuring one of my favorite liqueurs: St. Germain. Floral and subtle and with a gorgeous bottle that looks great on a bar, St. Germain is definitely worth having around. It plays particularly nicely with gin and citrus, making a French 75 a natural choice.

(Photo: cooking4theweek.blogspot.com)

St. Germain 75

• 1 oz gin
• ½ oz st germain
• ½ oz fresh lemon juice
• 3 oz champagne
• lemon twist

Combine gin, St. Germain, and lemon in a glass with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass; top with champagne and garnish with a lemon peel. Raise a glass to 2 great years.

Brownie, salted caramel, and pretzel sundaes

by Katie

Back when my husband and I used to go out for dinner a lot more often than we do now, one of our standby places, particularly for dessert, was a great spot called Hot Chocolate. Mindy Segal, the proprietor, is a pastry chef extraordinare, so the desserts are to die for (though they also have a full, and very tasty, savory menu.) Our favorite dessert was one of the signature dishes, called "Chocolate #1," which featured a rich chocolate mousse cake, a salted caramel ice cream, and a homemade pretzel on top:

(Photo from: sweettoothchicago.wordpress.com)

Man, that was some good dessert.

We had some friends over for dinner recently and I thought hey, why not try to recreate that at home? I made a batch of Smitten Kitchen's favorite brownies, a batch of Jeni's salty caramel ice cream, and crushed up some Trader Joe's pretzel slims. I cut the brownies into small cubes and put them in a bowl, set the ice cream and a scoop alongside it, and let people assemble their own sundaes.

Was it as transcendent as the real deal? No. But it was pretty darn good, and a big hit with our guests. If you're not in the mood to make the ice cream, I bet Haagen Dazs dulce de leche would be a nice choice here, too. It's just hard to beat the combination of chocolate, caramel, and salt.

The best dishwaster detergent: Method pods

By Katie

Our kitchen (our whole house, really,) was outfitted by the previous owners in a style I like to call “looks high end, performs like crap.” This applies to our refrigerator, our (now-replaced) oven, our washer/dryer, and most especially our dishwasher. Yes, technically it “washed” dishes, but you could not leave any speck of food on them anywhere before loading them in or they’d come out with that speck of food caked on forever. The streaking on the glassware and silverware was actually kind of embarrassing. I hated the thing.

Then, on a whim, I picked up this:

Method Smarty Dish Plus. I bought it because it said on the package, it’s “suitable for hard water.” I know Chicago has a reputation for having hard water, but I’d never really thought about what that meant for dishwasher purposes. Apparently, it means I need to get on board with rinse aids.

This stuff has totally changed my tune about our dishwasher. Dishes now come out clean and non-spotted. No more cloudy glasses. No more embarrassing flatware. And unlike the Cascade that I had been using,
this stuff doesn’t have any nasty phosphates or other chemicals that can damage the water supply. Plus it comes in cute little non-messy pods.

It’s not perfect- I still have to rinse the dishes before I put them in, as caked-on food is still a challenge for our sad little machine. But it’s a HUGE improvement. I highly recommend it. It has, for now, taken the dishwasher off the “replace as soon as budgetarily possible” list. (Washing machine: I’m coming for you next.)

(Image from: drugstore.com)

Dorie Greenspan's lentils

by Katie

As a New Year's resolution of sorts, I have decided to try to resist buying new cookbooks in 2013. That does not stop me from checking them out of the library, and my first library acquisition of the year was Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table.

This book is huge, and gorgeous, and I'm only going to be able to make a fraction of what I want to before I have to return it, but let me tell you: this recipe alone has me already questioning my resolve on the "do not buy cookbooks" thing, because if the rest of them are half as good as this one, I'm going to want this book in my kitchen full time.

These lentils may not be pretty and the technique- boiling twice, chopping vegetables, blending- may seem a little fussy, but let me tell you, these put all other lentils I've ever made to shame. And I was a vegetarian for 10 years- I've made a lot of lentils.

Lentils du Puy

from Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan

1 cup dried lentils du puy (french green lentils)

1 small onion, peeled

1 carrot, peeled and cut into 4 chunks

1 stalk of celery, cut into 4 chunks

1 bay leaf

3 1/2 cups water or chicken broth or vegetable broth

1. In a saucepan, cover the lentils with cool water. Bring to a boil and boil for two minutes. Drain, and rinse out the pot.

2. Put the lentils back in the pot with the onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, and broth. Bring to a boil, then turn down to an active simmer and cook until almost tender, 25-30 minutes.

3. Add salt to taste (I added about 1/2 teaspoon). Continue to cook until full tender, 5-10 minutes more.

4. Remove the vegetables and bay leaf from the pot. Discard the onion and bay leaf; chop the carrot and celery to put back into the lentils at the end.

5. Drain the lentils over a measuring cup so you save the broth/cooking liquid. Blend 3/4 cup of the cooked lentils with 1/2 cup of the reserved broth in a blender or small food processor until a paste forms. Stir the paste, the chopped carrots and celery, and an additional 1/2 cup of the reserved broth into the lentils.

This can be made several hours or even days in advance; just reheat gently on the stove before serving. Enjoy!

Homemade cookie giveaway!

by Katie

Somewhat unintentionally, I have really turned this month into a season-o-cookies, subjecting you to posts about making your own caramel, and cookie cookbooks, and cookie packaging methods.

So I thought it was only fair to reward a reader for putting up with all that cookie blather by giving them some actual cookies. I put together my cookie boxes this weekend, and made one extra to send to a FoodLush reader (in the U.S. only, sadly.)

The box includes:

- espresso toffee

- fleur de sel caramels

- linzer sandwich cookies

- chocolate peppermint cookies

- rolled sugar cookies

- spice thins

- peanut blossoms

(It is a rather... beige assortment, actually, but tasty, I promise!)

To enter, just leave a comment on this post by midnight EST on Thursday, December 20, and I will put it in the mail on Friday morning. Yay cookies!

Making salted caramels at home: Tips, tricks, and hard-won lessons

by Katie

So! Those of you who know me from Twitter have already heard me whine about my weekend, wherein I made FOUR BATCHES of caramels that came out hard as rocks, and it wasn't until the fifth time that I finally got it right, and even then they were still a little firmer than I like, but WHATEVER, I AM CALLING IT GOOD.

(Four! Batches! In the trash!)

The weirdest thing is, I have used this same recipe for YEARS without incident (this one from Ina Garten: it's great, try it, skip the vanilla and don't bother rolling them). So while I had been planning to write an encouraging "Caramels! So easy! Don't be intimidated!" post, this has instead morphed into a "Caramels! I still recommend making them, but perhaps let me share a little bit of the wisdom of my experience" kind of thing.

If you have no intention of ever making caramels at home, or if you cannot believe I am wasting this many words on the topic, I will understand if you click away. No hard feelings. For those of you who ARE considering caramel-making, however, and find yourselves intimidated: read on.

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR CARAMEL-MAKING

TEMPERATURE IS EVERYTHING. It is from this truth that all other advice derives. A difference of only a few degrees can be the difference between caramel sauce that never sets up and “caramels” so hard that they’ll break your teeth. This is where I’m fairly certain all my problems were this weekend, and this is the topic about which I have notes. Many, many notes. Sorry.

First, the basics: there is a two-step process to most caramel recipes: in the first, you heat sugar with some corn syrup and maybe some water to a very high heat while the sugar takes on color; and in the second, you add scalded butter and cream to the cooked sugar and cook it again, this time to a very precise temperature. The temperature does not matter nearly so much in the first  step- you’re just building flavor. Let it go a nice long time until it gets deep amber.  Really the only thing you have to watch is not to burn it- just watch it closely, no thermometer needed.

The second step, when you add the butter and cream back into the cooked sugar, is where things get precise. The exact target temperature will vary by recipe (based, in my limited understanding, on the ratio of sugar to cream/fat) but will likely fall somewhere in the range of 240-250 degrees. You'll want a candy thermometer for this. My tips:

• LOW AND SLOW. Use a medium-low flame. Seriously. The biggest risk, and the thing that kept screwing me up this weekend, is that you blow right past your target temperature. At high heat, this is harder to avoid.

• Move your thermometer around. There are likely to be hot spots on your stove and your pot. Find them, and put the thermometer THERE. You want to remove the candy as soon as the hottest part of your pot hits your target temperature. 

• Fits and starts. In my experience, sugar does not heat on an even trajectory. It will stall out, then suddenly surge up, then cool back down. I am not a scientist, I cannot explain exactly what is happening here- something about evaporation? And chemistry? But it is normal. Do not be tempted to turn up the heat if you see the temperature going down- it will come back up eventually.

• Skip the water brushing. Virtually every caramel recipe I’ve ever read insists that you should brush down the sides of the pot with water to avoid crystallizing and gritty texture. SKIP THIS. Seriously, you’ve got enough to worry about, and I’ve never seen it happen (apparently the corn syrup in most recipes is designed to prevent all that chain crystallizing reaction business anyway.)

• Be ready to work quickly. Have your pan greased and ready before you start cooking. Watch that thermometer like a hawk. And when you hit your target temperature, pull the candy off the flame immediately. The residual heat from the pan will keep things heating up.

My best guess about my failures this weekend is that my hot stove and heavy pan created enough heat that I kept blowing the target temperature: the batch that finally worked was the one where I pulled it off the flame at 240, instead of 248. In my opinion, it’s far better to serve your friends slightly-squishy caramels than inadvertent Werthers-style hard candies. When in doubt, err on the side of too soon.

After all this, though, I still say: worth it. I made caramels for YEARS with no problems, and even after this year's debacle, they're still a great, tasty, impressive gift. Happy candy making!

Gift idea for a young baker: Rose's Christmas Cookies Cookbook

In the late 1980s, when I was 11, my grandmother gave me this book for Christmas:

This is Rose's Christmas Cookies cookbook, and it was the first cookbook I ever had. My grandmother inscribed it with a message that she hoped I would use it for years of Christmas cookie making.  I certainly did not adequately appreciate the gift at the time. In fact, I remember feeling a little perplexed: she gave it to me on Christmas, just as it became irrelevant -- one can hardly make Christmas cookies on December 26th, right?

But over time, it has come to one of my most treasured gifts. It strikes me now that my grandmother must have realized even then that I loved food, and cooking, in a way that neither she nor my mother did, and that I might find such a book interesting and useful. Although I might not have fully appreciated it immediately, I do remember that it made me feel very grown up, to receive a cookbook of my own.

And I don't keep it around solely for nostalgia- Rose knows her stuff. The recipes are clearly-written and full of useful tips, and are helpfully sorted into categories like "good for shipping" and "to make with children." And the book includes all the classics, like Spritz and gingerbread men and moravian spice cookies, and Mexican wedding cakes.

A Christmas cookie book makes an excellent gift for this reason: while the pestos and sun-dried tomato dishes of the late 80s have given way to other trends, Christmas cookies are classics, and this book has stood the test of time. It was my first cookbook, yes, but it is also the only one besides The Joy of Cooking that has made it through all my many moves and closet clean-outs and changing tastes.

Every year when I bring it out, I read the inscription from my grandmother, who has now been gone for over five years, and send up another thank you. If you're looking for a gift for a special young baker in your life, I cannot recommend this book highly enough -- it really is a winner.

Containers for holiday cookie gifting

by Katie

Every year at the holidays I buy pounds of butter and sugar and spend a weekend baking a half-dozen different kinds of cookies. And every year, I drag myself to JoAnn and Michaels and Target and the grocery store, looking for cute holiday-ish containers in which to deliver them to friends, neighbors, and colleagues. I've tried them all: printed tins, which are expensive and often kind of hokey looking and seem always to come pre-dented and dinged; tupperware-type containers, which are effective but lack the "stylishly-presented" vibe I'm aiming for; and specialty holiday treat packaging from companies like Martha Stewart that are adorable but also expensive.

This year, I wised up. A few weeks ago, I found an online paper goods retailer and bought a package of these:

For 16 bucks (about the cost of 6 of the Martha boxes), I got a pack of 50 of these Bio-Pak takeout containers. They're made from 100% recycled paper (35% post-consumer) so I don't feel so horribly wasteful about using single-use packaging, and I love the kraft look- easy to customize with gift tags, rubber stamps, baker's twine, stickers, or even washi tape. Fifty boxes is more than I will use in a single holiday season, but I can see myself using these for all kinds of things- hostess gifts, birthday brownies for a co-worker, or just to bring my lunch to work in a pinch. Better than a bunch of hokey tins printed with cheesy-looking santas, that's for sure.

(Images from: http://www.eksuccessbrands.com; webrestaurantstore.com)

Herbsaint: the key to New Orleans-style cocktails

by Katie

Like many other Food Lush and Style Lush writers, I was fortunate enough to spend the past weekend hanging out in New Orleans. And one of my favorite things to do in New Orleans is drink.

Wait. That sounds bad. Well whatever, it's true. If you can see beyond the neon-colored jello shots and the hurricaines-from-a-mix from Bourbon Street, New Orleans has a great and storied cocktail culture, and I always like to take advantage while I'm in town.

I could go on and on about my favorite cocktail bars, and what I drink at each, but instead I thought I'd highlight a common element in many classic New Orleans cocktails: Herbsaint.

(picture from: wormwoodsociety.org)

Herbsaint is a green, anise-flavored spirit that was actually created in New Orleans. It was originally used as a substitute for absinthe, which for nearly 100 years was banned in the United States and Europe for its supposed hallucenogenic properties. Absinthe has had a renaissance and is widely available again, but most absinthes are from artisan producers and can be quite expensive, so Herbsaint is still often used as a substitute.

Arguably the most famous New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac, uses a rinse of Herbsaint in the glass that gets poured out before the rest of the booze is poured in- infusing the whole drink with a subtle herbal flavor that's really delicious. I drank several Herbsaint-using sazeracs this weekend, and give them an enthusiastic thumbs up.

A slightly lesser-known but also delicious New Orleans cocktail that features Herbsaint is the corpse reviver. There are as many recipes for corpse revivers as there are bartenders, but here's one very close to the one I drank at the Carousel Bar this weekend. It was delicious.

Corpse Reviver No. 2

1 oz. gin
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. Lillet Blanc (a french aperetif wine flavored with citrus peels- a worth addition to any bar)
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 dash Herbsaint

Shake all ingredients over ice; strain into a cocktail glass

Tuscany Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

by Katie

I rarely get to Whole Foods, as it’s a little out of the way (and out of the budget) but when I do get there, I enjoy browsing the aisles checking out the interesting things. (Perhaps it’s good I don’t get there often- I can’t seem to get out of there without impulse purchasing a few things, and suddenly I’m spending $75 when I just walked in for a couple specific items.)

Last week, my impulse purchase was this:



(Picture from: Cucina Antica )

It was $8, which is absurd, but I was too intrigued by the idea of pumpkin pasta sauce to pass it up. I warmed up half the jar, tossed it with a package of fresh cheese tortellini and some frozen peas I’d thrown into the pasta water as it finished cooking to call it healthy.

(Picture from: me)

It was so, so good. I liked it, my husband liked it, our 18 month old liked it- the rare dinner that we can all agree upon, without modification. Unlike a lot of squash products and recipes, it wasn’t overly sweet or spiced, and it didn't taste too rich. There are plenty of tomatoes in the sauce, which gives it a nice acidity, and the pumpkin provides a nice mellow counterpoint that doesn’t cross the line into cloying. It went great with tortellini, and the jar says you can stir in a little cream and actually eat it as a soup! (I believe it. It was that good.)

I realize $8 for a jar of pasta sauce is a little ridiculous, but it lasted us two full meals for my little family of three, so I’d rate it as a worthy splurge.