Bitte ein Bit!
From the category archives:
Clocking in at an extraordinary 25g of fiber/serving (the minimum for a woman’s entire daily need), homemade New York Times Red Lentil Soup. Note the gorgeous food photography, which reminds me of Heidi Swanson’s style.
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Cranberry Sorbet with Clementines and Mint
I love me some cranberries. The cranberry’s tangy, tart taste rivals rhubarb for my fruits-from-up-north-which-must-have-sugar affection. (Even if rhubarb isn’t really a fruit.)
Every holiday season I buy up bags and bags of cranberries to freeze and keep throughout the year. Generally, the vast majority are made into bread using an old family recipe. One or two others become cranberry compote of various flavors - with citrus, ginger, or jalapeno. (We can’t neglect the jalapeno, now can we. Tart and hot: the resident food critic’s favorites.)
After 34 years of the same bread and compotes, it’s nice to branch out into other ventures. Explore new frontiers of the cranberry expanse. No sooner had the thought occurred to me than did I stumble upon a recipe for Cranberry Sorbet by Simply Recipes while reading blogs on my iPhone early one morning before work. All day long I dreamed about the tangy-sweet-COLD combination.
That weekend, I ventured to three grocery stores before I found the requisite white cranberry juice. Save yourself some trouble: go to a mainstream grocer to procure this key ingredient, rather than Whole Foods or Target. Whole Foods, however, is an excellent choice for affordable crates of clementines, also in season now. (Did you know they’re also called “Christmas oranges?”) At any rate, while I didn’t plan the clementines for this recipe when I bought them, their addition offered a nice citrus flavor as well as upped the seasonality ante on the dish.
As for the mint garnish, that was also a last minute addition offered up more so for appearance than for flavor. I just couldn’t bring myself to add a sprig of pine to the vibrant pink sorbet this time. Blame the cats, who delight in nothing so much as eating the Christmas tree, both real and artificial. (A little cat with your sorbet, madam?)
A Spoonful of Cranberry Sorbet with Clementines and Mint
Related Links:
Resident Critic Verdict: Great, intense flavor. None of this watered down bullshit or subtle flavors. To be thorough, it wasn’t smooth. Either puree the mixture more, or use a different strainer. There’s a cranberry residue in the bottom of my cup. [untranslated face.]
NB: The strainer I used was the very cute and extremely multi-functional KitchenAid 7″ Strainer - Red
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One of my favorite memories of Graham’s sister, Catherine, is of her ordering champagne for dinner. It was the night I first met her, and we were both Graham’s dates for an evening at a fancy-schmancy Indian fusion restaurant. Before that evening, it never occurred to me to order champagne for dinner. The experience felt deliciously decadent and ostentatious.
Today, almost 4.5 years later, champagne and the rest of the “sparkling wine” genre are still completely overlooked. Some folks prefer merlot, others pinot noir or chardonnay. No offense to them, but thanks to Catherine, I’ll take a nice glass of bubbly over the others any day. Sparking wine - it’s not just for special occasions anymore.
Iron Horse Russian Cuvee 2001
Unless, you know, it is an actual special occasion, in which case all the better!
Last evening we celebrated Christmas Eve with Graham’s parents, and enjoyed a nice bottle of bubbly. Iron Horse Russian Cuvee 2002, which “commemorates the style of Sparkling that Iron Horse made for the historic Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings, which ended the Cold War.”
Iron Horse would be a lovely choice to bring along to a New Year’s Eve celebration as a host gift. At ~$25/bottle, it’s not too expensive either. Go ahead - be decadent. (You’ll never look back.)
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While we’re on the subject of cookie baking, I couldn’t help but pass along this NPR segment with food scientist Shirley Corriher that aired yesterday. Flat cookies, crumbly cookies, pale cookies - she’s got a great scientific explanation for each that’ll not only solve your problem, but make you a better baker in the process. (Well, maybe not you, but definitely me!)
Plus - she’s got a book on solving all these baking problems. (I’m such a sucker for a book)
BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes.
And Corriher won a James Beard Foundation award in 1998 for her book Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed
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With Christmas just a week away, I found Gourmet Magazine’s Holiday Cookie Collection 1941-2008.
A Sample of the offering from the Gourmet Magazine Holiday Coolie Collection Beautiful Stained Glass Teardrops!
Honestly, most of them look both scrumptious and beautiful. I also love these “Old Fashioned” Christmas Butter Cookies from 1947 cut in the shape of little Christmas trees. What’s really nice is that they include a bit about each decade’s trend.
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I made pancakes! Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix
In response to Graham’s frequent request for pancakes, I recently picked up a can of Stonewall Kitchen’s Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix. With Graham as my guinea pig, I figured I could mangle of few batches of pancakes before Christmas when Santa will be kind enough to bestow upon me an ebelskiver. Filled pancake goodness will be mine! (Let’s be honest, if we’re lucky I’ll probably only use it twice.)
Williams-Sonoma Ebelskiver Pan: Rumor has it Santa's got one in his bag of treats for me.
I could have picked up plain ‘ole pancake mix for these pre-Christmas trials, but I figured what with it being the holidays and all, we could go ahead and splurge on the gingerbread stuff since we love gingerbread so very much. Not that this mix costs any more for the gingerbread variety versus the 10 other flavors it comes in including another love of mine - pumpkin. At the last moment, I debated placing the can back on it’s lovely end-cap home there with the good folks of Central Market, mindful of the dreary economy and ever vigilant about my budget. But I didn’t. At a price of only $6.00 at Central Market, we’ll only need to add one additional night of soup for dinner to afford it.
In general, I find these prepared mixes have the tendency to be a little bland and/or cook up to an odd consistency. There’s a particular brand of muffin/coffee cake mixes that invariably leaves a sugar water by-product that coats the bottom of my pans. It’s a sticky, icky mess and, after one too many of these culinary disasters, I stopped buying the manufacturer’s mixes altogether.
Other prepared mixes just leave you thinking, “is that all?!” because all the flavor is lost in the time that passes between the product’s original “born on” date and when it’s actually made it to your taste buds. Special added bonus: preservative after-taste.
Stonewall Kitchen Gingerbread Pancake and Waffle Mix - The product description says: The aroma and flavor of this spiced pancake and waffle mix make it the ideal choice for holiday breakfasts. Topped with our Cinnamon Apple Syrup they are incredible.
Not so on either count for this Stonewall Kitchen mix. The instructions were clear and the added ingredients - milk, an egg, and a tablespoon of butter - are all readily available in most kitchens. The batter smelled nice, but belied the lovely flavor that awaited us.
But let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves.
Once I’d added my ingredients, I carefully stirred together the mixture, paying particular attention to the Achilles heal of pancake making: batter’s final consistency. Again, no troubles. In fact, the only thing that could have gone wrong was for me to massacre a perfectly good breakfast with poor pancake making technique. Et voila!
Lovely, mostly round!, very nicely constituted pancakes.
The best was yet to come: flavorful gingerbread goodness dominated neither by ginger nor molasses. The word gentle comes to mind, though it may mislead one to believe that the pancakes are weak, which they are decidedly are not.
Stonewall Kitchen Maine Maple Syrup
My only misstep, perhaps, was in not choosing Stonewall’s Holiday Syrup to go along with the gingerbread goodness. Stonewall Kitchen has this to say of it:
The delightful blend of cranberries, raspberries and pears makes our Holiday Jam a top selling preserve year after year. This luscious syrup was made to compliment this incredible flavor blend. The color, flavor and smooth rich texture of this syrup make it ideal for the holidays.
The Holiday Syrup would have paired quite nicely with the gingerbread flavor, though I’m not convinced it would have been as extensible as good ‘ole maple syrup is.
On Christmas morning, should Santa decided I was indeed a good girl as we expect (or a bit naughty, but still pretty nice), Graham shall once again enjoy gingerbread pancakes cooked anew in my prized ebelskiver.
Goods by Stonewall Kitchen also available at amazon.com:
Let’s just exhaust this whole gingerbread subject by visiting these other fun! exciting! links:
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Gingerbread Barn in Gingerbread: Things to Make and BakeWhy settle for the same, boring gingerbread house? You know the book's a gem when it's listed on
Why settle for the same, boring gingerbread house? You know the book’s a gem when it’s listed on amazon’s marketplace
Gingerbread: Things to Make and Bake
But if the recession dashed your dreams of home ownership, there’s something for you instead.
The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes
With The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes
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As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30’s.)
A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.
Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.
South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)
I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )
The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.
The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.
As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.
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Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup
Shortly after we married, Graham found an article in the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of soup. High in volume, but low in calories. From my perspective, soup’s also a huge time saver. I can easily make a couple of different pots over the weekend, and because the flavors have time to meld, they taste even better on Tuesday than on Sunday. Plus I always know what we can have for dinner on weeknights, and reheating is fast and easy. If I want, I can also easily freeze individual servings, though I always wait until after the flavors meld.
This is particularly true of one of my very favorites - Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup. It’ll warm you to your bones in the winter months, but its hearty enough that I feel like I got some good protein and fiber for dinner.
I have my aunt to thank for the recipe. Years ago, she sent me a recipe from the the November 1998 Cooking Light magazine. I modified the recipe, adding in jalapeno and chili powder for a bit of extra kick, and using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock to make it vegetarian friendly. My Texas sensibilities cannot fathom the canned chopped green chilies in the original version, so I opt for 1-2 fresh jalapenos instead. The final version is a vegan, and packed with fiber and flavor.
Ingredients:
Ingredients: black beans, kidney beans, no-salt diced tomatoes, fire roasted tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, garlic (not pictured), olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, pepper, chili powder. OPTIONAL: fresh crinkle cut carrots, frozen whole kernel corn.
You’ll need 1 can each:
The most important ingredient: Muir Glen Organic Fire Roast Tomatoes with Green Chilies
I’ve tried other Fire Roasted Tomatoes on the market, and every one seems to fall short of Muir Glen’s flavor. The only problem is that they can be a little hard to find. Locally, they’re available at Central Market. If you love the recipe as much as I do, buy in bulk on amazon, where a pack of 12 cans will cost you $24.80 - a great deal. In a pinch, you can also use a can of Rotel Tomatoes with Green Chilies, but the result won’t have the fire roasted taste that really kicks the recipe up a notch. You’ll still have lots of good flavor though.
You’ll also need these fresh, whole ingredients:
You can also use any of these optional ingredients
Crinkle cut carrots and whole kernel corn are optional additions to this recipe. I buy low-salt added diced tomatoes to offer a measure of control over the amount of salt that’s included in the soup. (The canned beans used for convenience, also contain salt.) Fire roasted diced tomatoes come with and without medium green chilies. For less heat, try the latter over the former and consider eliminating the jalapeno, though it practically kills me to type those words because these things make the soup. This recipe can also be made in a slow cooker, cooking the first hour on HIGH, and the next hours on LOW.
OPTIONAL:
Open canned beans and gently rinse in a strainer. (It’s okay to mix the beans.)
In a stock pot or dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium high heat until hot. Add onion, jalapeno, and optional carrots, sauteing for ~4 minutes. Add garlic, and saute the mixture for another minute. Stir in tomatoes and vegetable broth. Mix.
Stir in rinsed beans and whole kernel corn. Add salt, pepper, and chili powder. Bring to boil, reduce heat and cover. Simmer for 1-2 hours.
Serve with crackers.
Makes about 6 servings, more if including optional ingredients.
Enjoy!
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As we venture into this, the season of the giant tin of stale, over cheaply flavored popcorn, I just happened to sample three different popcorns. One was the tried and true movie popcorn in the HUMONGOUS “1-person” bag (I think I made it through 1/5th). I’ll do you, and the distant relative/sales account/office co-worker you tolerate but must gift anyway, the great favor of not recommending this sort of mediocre treat. Afterall, if you’re going to gift someone with calories, you should at least make them worthwhile.
The other two popcorns are worth the calories, though they admittedly don’t come with the fancy tin you can store trinkets in after the holiday season. Such a sacrifice, however, is easily obfuscated under some babble about “green holiday gifts” during this time of economic downturn.
Rocky Mountain Popcorn Company - Jalapeno Popcorn. Also comes in Red Chili & Lime!
Rocky Mountain Popcorn Company - Jalapeno Popcorn - $10 for 1.5 oz.
(Just Honest Popcorn! Real and good. Good and real.) Available at rockymountainpopcorn.com.
Not only will the spicy good flavor of this popcorn naturally limit your consumption, the flavor itself is pleasant escape from the familiar “caramel” and “white cheddar” your taste buds are accustomed to. And if caramel and white cheddar are your thing, they’ve got those too. Packaged with the helpful “fresh until” expiration date, you know this stuff hasn’t been sitting in a warehouse since the end of the Clinton Administration. Plus it’s got 2 grams of fiber per 150 calorie serving.
Order by Dec. 31, 2008, and get a 5% discount with coupon code: Rocky.
Williams-Sonoma Dale Thomas Popcorn Gift Collection
Williams-Sonoma - Dale & Thomas Popcorn Gift Collection - $34 for 7 popcorn treats
Available at williams-sonoma.com
Featuring Peanut Butter & White Chocolate Drizzlecorn, Chocolate Chunk ‘n’ Caramel, Toffee Crunch Drizzlecorn and Dark Fudge Chunk ‘n’ Caramel, along with something called a “popster.” Also enclosed is a $15 gift certificate that can be applied to a mail-order purchase from Dale & Thomas.
This stuff won’t be as good for the waistline; I could eat my weight in Toffee Crunch Drizzlecorn. Our one saving grace here is again portion size; what we lose in volume, we gain in taste. Personally, I prefer the latter over the former.
The mystery meat product description, “popster,” is intriguing and makes for an element of surprise upon opening the gift box. Why regift when you can find out what a “popster” actually is yourself? It’s from Williams-Sonoma, so how bad could it be?
And the $15 “gift certificate” included in the box is sheer marketing genius - give folks the illusion of saving money by spending money. Brilliant! Bonus points for routing folks away from Williams-Sonoma and to Dale & Thomas, thereby cleverly avoiding the Williams Sonoma cut on profits. This alone makes me appreciate the company that much more, and Williams-Sonoma for going along with the scheme. Well, that and the yummy taste.
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