Be skilled or be killed

Leek, Fiddlehead Fern and Mushroom Quiche

This spring I have become completely and wholeheartedly obsessed with quiches. I think I made one a week for about a month, and now, using all the restraint I can muster, am down to just one quiche a month … or so. 

Quiches are delightful vehicles for any matter of egg-y filling. I was particularly pleased with this fiddlehead fern/leek/mushroom concoction.

And these mushrooms are cooked down in port (or in my case - marsala wine) - how can you go wrong?

I can’t say it’s all that appetizing in the in between stage. You just wait though.

Pop it in the oven. And out comes perfection in meal form.

I do recommend the attempt of making a quiche. It’s pretty satisfying and not nearly as complicated as I would have thought.

Pate Brisee
From Smitten Kitchen, adapted from Martha Stewart and Julia Child

Makes one tart dough

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
2 to 3 tablespoons ice water

1. In the bowl of a food processor, combine flour, salt, and sugar. Add butter, and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, 8 to 10 seconds.

2. With machine running, add ice water in a slow, steady stream through feed tube. Pulse until dough holds together without being wet or sticky; be careful not to process more than 30 seconds. To test, squeeze a small amount together: If it is crumbly, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

3. Form dough into a single ball, flatten it into a disk, and wrap in plastic. Transfer to the refrigerator, and chill at least 1 hour. Dough may be stored, frozen, up to 1 month.

4. To par-bake the shell: Roll out the chilled dough as quickly as possible on a lightly-floured surface until is about 2 inches large all around than your pie pan. Either reverse the dough onto the rolling pin and unroll it over the mold or fold it into quarters and lay it over the mold, unfolding it. Press the dough lightly into the bottom of the pan, lifting the edges and working it gently down into the mold. Trim off excess dough by rolling the pin over the top of the mold.

5. With your thumbs, push the dough 1/8-inch above the edge of the mold, to make an even, rounded rim of dough around the inside circumference of the mold. You can then press a decorative edge around the rim of the pastry with the dull edge of a knife. Prick the bottom of the pastry with a fork at 1/2-inch intervals.

6. Line the pastry with foil and fill it with pie weights, uncooked rice or beans and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 8 to 9 minutes. Remove the foil and bake the shell for 2 to 3 minutes more. Remove it from the oven when the shell is just starting to color and just beginning to shrink from the sides of the mold.

7. If it seems to you that the sides of the shell are too fragile, or liable to crack or leak with the weight of the pie filling to come, do not unmold until your tart or quiche is filled and fully baked. To unmold it, slip it onto a rack so air will circulate and cool it, preventing it from getting soggy.

Leek, Fiddlehead Fern and Mushroom Quiche
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking

3 to 4 leeks, white part only, sliced
1/2 cup water
1/2 pound fiddlehead ferns, stems trimmed
Salt
3 tablespoons butter
5 to 6 large white mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon port (I used Marsala Wine)
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups whipping cream (I use a mix of cream and milk - whatever I have on hand)
An 8-inch partially-cooked pastry shell on a baking sheet
1/4 cup grated Swiss cheese
1 tablespoon butter cut into pea-sized dots (I don’t use this)

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Boil the leeks (and fiddleheads) over moderately high heat in a heavy-bottomed, covered saucepan with 1/2 cup water, two tablespoons butter and a teaspoon of salt until it the liquid has almost evaporated. Lower heat and stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes until leeks are very tender (I find that mine are super tender after 10 minutes - so just keep an eye on them). Put them aside in a bowl.

3. Add a tablespoon of butter to the pan along with the sliced mushrooms, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and port (er, marsala wine). Cover pan and cook over moderately low heat for 8 minutes. Uncover. Raise heat and boil for several minutes until liquid is completely evaporated and mushrooms are beginning to saute in their butter. Stir cooked mushrooms into leek mixture.

3. Beat the eggs, cream/milk and seasoning in a large mixing bowl to blend. Gradually stir in the leek/fiddlehead and mushroom mixture. Check seasoning. Pour into pastry shell. Spread on the cheese and distribute to the butter over it (I think the quiche is rich enough on its own without the butter). Bake in upper third of pre-heated oven for 25 to 30 minutes until puffed and browned.

Easter, a little late

I am the oldest of a darling multitude of cousins. In the particular branch of the family that we celebrated Easter with, Katie and Eric are the youngest - but are really not so young anymore as both are graduating from high school this year. But who said spring sphere hunts were for kids only! My aunt, uncle and I hid the eggs and everyone ran outside for a delightful northwest egg hunt (translation: it was raining while they were hunting).

My aunt came up with another amazing party game: the dessert scavenger hunt. We were all divided into teams of 4, and had to race around collecting 8 different clues and dessert ingredients. Whichever team got the clue first got to keep the ingredient found at that spot. Once all the clues had been found and we had all re-assembled in the kitchen, each team had 45 minutes to concoct a dessert based upon their ingredients + anything else found in the kitchen. 

And we were off!

Team 4: My mom, Alex, Marc and Thomas got the ingredients ‘oranges’ and ‘phyllo dough’ and concocted a pastry filled with caramelized bacon, something creamy and sweet, oranges and maybe a few other things. The details escape me. But it was tasty.

Team 3: Uncle David, Aunt Cheryl, Matthew and Laura got the ingredients coconut and chocolate. This was an unfair advantage on several counts. A) my aunt Brenda, the judge, loves coconut almost more than life itself. She is also known by some delightful young ones as “Aunt Chocolate” B) they knew that even though my uncle Chris, also the judge, does not typically like coconut, he likes it toasted on vanilla ice cream, of which there happened to be some of the home made variety in the freezer. Even with their vanilla ice cream topped with toasted coconut, and delightful toasted coconut macaroons, they did not come out on top because they failed to utilize chocolate in a full way considering it was one of their main ingredients.

Team 2: Myself, Joel, Eric and Don found peanut butter and pecans. We made peanut butter cups, naturally. It helps to have good quality chocolate, and delicious peanut butter in a recipe heavily relying on those two ingredients. Had we carmelized the pecans, I think that might have put us out on top, but none of us thought about it until it was too late in the game.

Team 1: Grammie, Papa, Katie and Peter really seemed to be out of luck with ritz crackers and peeps as their main ingredients. They were undaunted though. And were they ever creative. First, they smeared one ritz cracker with peanut butter. Then they laid down a softened peep, and made a little sandwich out of it with another ritz cracker. The whole sandwich was dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with caramelized bacon. Whoa. They managed to pull out a win despite their seemingly subpar beginnings. Way to go!

The prize was a set of spatulas highly coveted by anyone who has ever spent time in the Kinsman kitchen. As the runner up (shh don’t tell anyone) my aunt also slipped me a set too. WOOHOO! They are amazing.

The judges sampling our delicious wares

If you would like to recreate home made peanut butter cups to end all peanut butter cups, please proceed. They are so easy to make, if just a tad tedious, but the end result is totally worth it.

Peanut Butter Cups
adapted from several sources online, until the original recipes are unrecognizable.

yield 48 small cups

1.5 cups natural peanut butter, soft
1 cup butter, soft
1 cup smashed ritz crackers (or other buttery, sort of salty crackers)
1 cup powdered sugar
8 ozish Callebaut Guittard Etienne prestige chocolate

Line a mini muffin tin with wrappers. 

Melt your chocolate in a microwave-safe dish (I always use a pyrex measuring cup). They key is melt it slowly and stir often. Heat for 20 seconds, stir, heat for 20 more seconds, stir. This way you won’t over heat your chocolate, and you won’t risk seizing it by introducing water accidentally (as you might if you double boiled the chocolate).

Drop a dollop of the chocolate in the bottom of each cup and smear around the edges. Place in the freezer for a few minutes til the chocolate is hardened.

Mix together the peanut butter, crackers, butter and powdered sugar. Adjust any of the ingredient amounts at this stage to suit your taste, as this is really how it will taste in the end.

Pull the cups out of the freezer and fill them with peanut butter mixture. Add more chocolate to the top (you may need to reheat your chocolate again, just a tad) and smear around until all the peanut butter is covered. If your peanut butter mixture is really soupy, as ours was initially from our melted butter, you might want to pop the cups in the freezer to let them set a bit before adding the chocolate. Subsequent times I made them, the peanut butter was already pretty solid so I skipped that step.

I put mine back in the freezer to let the tops set a bit et voila. Miraculous peanut butter cups are now yours to help win over new friends.

Biscuits

My niece, Marilouise, came over the other day. We made biscuits. It was great.

These biscuits are essential to a quality every day life. I pretty much have a stash of them in the freezer at all times because you never know when you’ll just need to pop one in the oven. 15 minutes later, you have a delightful, fresh biscuit ready to rescue you from the doldrums of gray Seattle skies.

Here’s what you need

Yep, only 4 ingredients. Flour, cream, salt, baking powder.

Add your first 3 ingredients together.

Whisk it all together

Pour in your cream

Smoosh it all together

Pat out your dough on a floured surface

Cut out your biscuits. (you could also do this with a knife and make wedges)

Dip the tops of the biscuits in melted butter, and place on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, or pop them into the freezer. 

Enjoy!

and don’t forget your banana phone

Cream Biscuits
From Smitten Kitchen and also here

Makes about 10-12 biscuits

3 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the surface
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Melt butter in a small pot or microwave dish, and set aside. Sift two cups flour, the baking powder, salt and (if using) sugar into a large bowl. Fold in 1 1/4 cups cream. If the dough is not soft or easily handled, fold in the remaining 1/4 cup cream, little by little. (Sometimes I use just the 1 1/4 cup, other times it needs the whole additional 1/4 cup - who knows.)

Turn dough onto a floured surface, mound it into a ball and, using your hands, press it to a thickness of about 3/4 inch. Cut into rounds, 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Gather dough scraps and continue to make rounds. Dip the top of each round in melted butter and arrange on the baking sheet. Bake until golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Serve immediately, or flash freeze for future use.

flash freezing: put all the biscuits, dipped in butter, on the baking sheet, directly into the freezer. after a couple hours they should be hard, so you can transfer them from the sheet to a tupperware or freezer bag. biscuits can be baked straight from the freezer, and additional few minutes baking time will be needed, usually around 3 to 5.

The empanada game

My family definitely has a set of noticeable quirks, and that might be the most boring observation ever, because what family doesn’t have their quirks.

Growing up everything was a game. “Let’s see how fast we can unload the dishwasher!” “Let’s play a game! Let’s see how much we can clean in 10 minutes”. When we were kids, it worked great. OOH! A GAME! I BET I CAN WIN! And then we got older and the game was exposed for what it really was: not a game. And now that I’m even older, I have fallen into a trap. “Let’s play a game” I say. Joel has taken to responding with “Mind games? you want to play mind games? that’s weird”. 

All this to say though, it’s not just my little family that does this. My aunt had a fun party game on easter in which her hedge trees were planted before anyone could realize it wasn’t a game. “Parties” often consist of going to someone’s house and cleaning their yard. My grandma likes to point out that life should be fun, so why not turn everything into a game. That’s probably a good point.

Lately, my grandma has been playing the “empanada game”. And that is the point of all of this. Because I decided I wanted to play too, and let’s just say this is a game I never want to stop playing.

It’s pretty simple actually. Make some dough, roll it out, fill it with some stuff, fold it shut and bake it. DONE.

For my first foray into empanada land, I followed a fairly traditional Argentinean version. I’m glad I did.

I followed a recipe I found, based purely on the photograph, because, you know, that’s a good way to vett a recipe. I followed it to the T, so I’m actually not going to take the time to write it all out. Instead I’ll just give you the link I followed and urge you to try your own variation. Empanadas. (The only thing I’d add is that you can use what ever size circle you want to cut out the dough, you don’t have to make tiny ones.)

I approve of the empanada game.

Limoncello update

So, the lemon zest sat with the vodka for about 46 days. 

Next step:

Add simple syrup and another bottle of vodka 

and let sit for another 40 days.

Ginger ale

When I was a kid, and the flight attendant came down the rows asking what you wanted to drink, I always said “Ginger ale!”. We didn’t drink much pop in our house growing up so it was always a treat, and I loved that ginger ale.

Last summer I found a recipe for homemade ginger ale, and it was definitely one of those “What! you can actually make that stuff!” moments. I immediately knew I had to try it out and it did not disappoint. It is not only delicious but incredibly easy to make.

Start with some ginger root. 

Boil it with some sugar and water.

Strain your ginger syrup.

Add some lemon juice, yeast and a bunch of water

And you’ve got some ginger ale!

Homemade Ginger Ale
from Aran Goyoaga via Design*Sponge

2 Tbs grated fresh ginger
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
Juice of 1 lemon
1/8 tsp active dry yeast
8 cups water

In a small pot, add the grated ginger, sugar and ½ cup water. Bring to a boil and let sugar dissolve. Remove pan from heat and let the syrup steep and cool for about 30 minutes. Strain the syrup through a fine sieve. Mix with the lemon juice, yeast and 2 qts of water. Whisk together and using a funnel, pour into a plastic bottle. Screw the cap on the bottle. Make sure it is a plastic bottle and not glass as the gases from the fermentation can crack the glass jar.

Let it ferment at room temperature for about 2 days until carbonation forms. Make sure to refrigerate after it starts to carbonate.

note: For this particular batch, I did not have any plastic bottles lying around but I did have a growler - and it worked just fine for me. But, please, do be careful.

What became of the lemons that arrived on our doorstep

The jar contains the beginning of the limoncello. The juice became lemon curd, also known as liquid sunshine. The limoncello will have to sit in the pantry for another month or so before we do anything else with it, so it can wait. 

Joel’s mom happened to be visiting for the day so she helped me juice and zest all the lemons. In the middle of our juicing and zesting, Marilouise stopped by. 

She was very curious about the lemon juice, and ended up drinking quite a bit. What a kid.

Anyways, the lemon curd. I am serious about this stuff. The last couple years that we’ve spent the winter in Palm Springs, I have come home with a veritable heap of the curd to last me through the next few months of winter. Add another thing to the list that made me sad we weren’t in Palm Springs this winter - the lack of lemon trees in my back yard.

I got this recipe from my aunt Brenda a few years ago - when we were first in Palm Springs and I realized we had an abundance if citrus right in our backyard. It is seriously the best lemon curd ever. 

Aunt Brenda’s Lemon Curd

4 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
Zests of two lemons (about two teaspoons)
4 teaspoons butter

Whisk together yolks and eggs, and then set aside.

Bring to boil sugar, juice, and zest in a sauce pan. Remove from heat. (If you want a smooth curd, strain out zest now.)

This next step can be a little tricky, but it’s the key to your curd’s success. Slowly drizzle some of the hot syrup mixture into eggs, whisking continually. (If you don’t whisk continually you will accidentally scramble your eggs. That would be gross.) Whisk in enough of the hot syrup to warm the eggs up. Then transfer the warmed egg mixture back to sauce pan whisking continually to incorporate the rest of the syrup into the eggs. Add butter.

Heat mixture on low temperature until thickened.

You can refrigerate the curd once it has cooled - or you could can it while it’s still hot. I’ve never had trouble canning lemon curd, even though it has eggs in it. But I also usually eat everything I’ve made in about 6 months.

Feastful morning

I love brunch. On Saturday morning Joel’s mom and dad + my mom and alex joined us for a really festive Christmas morning brunch.

We had thick-cut maple bacon and really delicious fruit with honey yogurt. 

We also had a spinach and cheese strata.

mimosas

And cinnamon rolls

I got this special cinnamon roll recipe when I lived in England - and it was passed down to me as a super secret family recipe dating back a very long time. It wasn’t passed down by a member of my own family mind you, just a family I was living with at the time. The rolls are perfect, not too gooey, not dry at all, not too sweet, not too bready. I don’t know - they really are just perfect.

After you’ve made the dough, the recipe says “let dough rest for 3 hours up to 3 days”. No mention about refrigerating the dough (not very friendly for the yeasting, rising process), but also no mention of salmonella. Well I didn’t give it a second thought and made the dough Thursday night as I was preparing Christmas eve snacks, leaving the dough until Saturday morning. I lifted the towel on Christmas morning and was met with a very fragrant odor of fermentation. Joel had decided that right then was the perfect time to try infusing vodka with tea (he got a cocktail book for christmas) so we weren’t sure if the over whelming vodka smell coming from the dough was just already heavy in the air, or if something was wrong with the dough. It seemed fine in every other way, but it dawned on me that there was an egg in the recipe and perhaps I shouldn’t have left it at room temperature for several days. I sat there wringing my hands for a few minutes and then decided what the heck! I’ll make them, and if they taste rotten we’ll throw them out. But chances are, they’re still great. 

Now if that’s not the most appetizing introduction to a recipe, I don’t know what is. But don’t be alarmed, and if you are ever in need of seriously good cinnamon rolls, look no further.

And it’s pretty fun to make them too. After you make the dough, and let it rise, you roll it out nice and flat

Pour on the butter, and make sure it covers all the dough

Add your cinnamon and sugar 

Roll up the dough

Cinnamon log

Cinnamon Rolls
from a secret family recipe in which the family will remain unnamed so that the recipe can live on and the family will not be sad.

Sweet Rich Dough

3/4 C milk
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp salt
1/2 C (one stick) butter
1/2 C warmed water
1/2 oz (two packets) dried yeast
1 lg egg
4 C all purpose unsifted flour

Scald the milk.

Stir sugar, salt and butter into the scalded milk and cool to lukewarm.

Pour the water into a separate (warmed) bowl. Sprinkle the yeast into the water until dissolved.

Stir in the milk mixture. Stir in the egg and add half of the flour. Blend with the batter paddle until smooth and then add the rest of the flour and blend until stiff with a dough hook. 

Cover for 2 hours up to 3 days.

For the insides

1 C sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 C (one stick) butter, melted

Split the dough into two lumps. (Make sure to pinch the dough to separate it, don’t just pull and pull til it comes apart.) Roll out half the dough into (roughly) an 18x9 inch rectangle. Pour 1/4 C of the butter on the dough and smear it all around. Pour half of the sugar/cinnamon mix on the dough and spread it all around. Roll the dough into a log and slice into 7 pieces. Lay them on their side in a generously buttered cake tin. (I used 2 8” pans, with 7 in each pan. Use whatever works, but don’t smoosh them too close together before you bake them as they’ll expand a bit still.) Let them rise for 30 minutes and then bake for 25 minutes at 375º.

For the icing

1 1/2 C powdered sugar
1/4 C milk
bit of vanilla

mix it all together and pour over the hot cinnamon rolls. adjust the amounts of milk and sugar to make the icing to the thickness of your liking.

Motivation

Last weekend Joel and I were in Pike Place Market, killing a bit of time and happened to wander by the little donut stand. How could we resist? Fresh, hot little bundles of oily dough? Yes please! And then I started scheming about making donuts at home, just for fun. This week at work has been intense. I have so many projects going and I worked really hard. Early on in the week I told myself I would try to make donuts on Saturday morning, and I’m not exaggerating much when I say it really got me through the week.

They were everything you’d hope a homemade donut would be - light, airy, hot and delicious. Isaac came over in the morning to join in the donut fun.

I recently got biscuit cutters so we used the largest cutter for the outer diameter of the donuts. We were then stumped as to what to use to cut out the inner diameter. The smallest of the biscuit cutters was far too large, the dough was so spongy and yeasty it was impossible to cut a hole in the middle. What to do?! Isaac, ever resourceful, discovered that a water bottle cap does the trick perfectly.

Cute little rounds

And then comes the part I thought would be really scary, but was actually no big deal at all. First you have to heat oil. Then you have to drop the rings of dough into the hot oil. Scary! But really, not at all.

The temperature wavered a bit initially, so I kept an eye on it. You don’t want the oil to get too hot or it’ll cook the outside too fast, and you don’t want it to cook too slowly or the dough will soak up too much oil. Bleh.

Check the temperature:

They cook quick, about a minute on each side. Then you scoop them out, let them cool on some paper towels. We put cinnamon and sugar on the outside. 

And before you know it, you have a whole plate full of heaven. 

Apple Cider Doughnuts

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
3/4 cup milk, at room temperature
1/4 cup apple cider, at room temperature
1/4 cup warm apple cider (about 110 degrees)
3 1/4 cups flour
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
3 egg yolks
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoons salt

First, combine the yeast and warm apple cider in the bowl of a stand mixer, or a large bowl. After about 5 minutes it should be foamy. Now add the rest of your ingredients. (I wasn’t sure if you should add them in a certain order or in separate steps, but the directions I was following weren’t super thorough, so I just added everything together and it worked fine for me.) Use the dough hook on medium-high until everything is combined and has formed an elastic-y ball. Turn it out into a greased bowl and keep it in a warm place with a kitchen towel over it for about an hour and a half - until it’s doubled in size.

After it’s risen, turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and roll it out to about 1/2 inch thick. They say you should avoid rolling the dough out more than once or the donuts will be too stiff, but I accidentally rolled out the dough way way too thin at first, so I balled it all back up and re-rolled and everything still turned out great. Using a round cutter of some sort cut out the circles. Using a much smaller cutter (wide end of a frosting tip? water bottle cap?) cut out the little balls that will eventually be donut holes.

Let them rest for a half hour or so. Heat about 3 inches of oil to 350˚. I used a dutch oven, but you could use a pot with high ish sides or an actual deep fryer just fine. Combine 1 cup of sugar with 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Place some paper towels on a wire rack or plate. Plop a few rounds of dough in the hot oil. Flip over after about a minute. About 45 seconds later take the donut out of the oil and place it to cool for a few seconds. Then dunk in the sugar cinnamon mixture.

CONSUME. The recipe said it would make 12, but I got a lot more than that. Like maybe 20?

Pesto

This is Carol:

This is my mom:

All growing up, we always had a supply of fresh pesto on hand. You may think I exaggerate, but I do not. Carol and my mom (who have been friends for pretty much as long as I can remember) would get humungous bags of basil in the summer and then spend the day making batch after batch of fresh pesto, packing it into little bags ready for the freezer.

Yesterday, I got to join in on the pesto fun for the first time, and now I have fresh bags of pesto in my freezer ready to be eaten all winter long. 

Fresh basil from the farmer’s market

Parmesan and pine nuts

Becoming one big heavenly mixture

We had an excellent view while we worked

What an fantastic way to spend a stormy Sunday.

To make a fairly reasonable amount of pesto

1 1/2 cups packed basil
1 cup shredded parmesan
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup pine nuts
5-6 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine in a food processor. The end.

Eat it all now, or split it in half so you can have some later.