s'mores brownies

I always fancied myself the family baker and then my cousin's boyfriend, Cory, made these. Good Lord.

S'mores Brownies
adapted from Cory

your favorite brownie recipe
marshmallows
graham crackers

Bake your brownies. Once a toothpick comes out clean, layer marshmallows on top. Continue to bake in the oven for a few minutes or until the top becomes a soft golden brown (like when you toast marshmallows for s'mores!). When the marshmallows are ready, press graham crackers on top and let cool. Bring to a family gathering to impress everyone.

thumbprint valentines (and potatoes)

Happy Valentine's Day, blogland! Have a cookie. Or a potato.

Thumbprint Valentines
adapted from Simply Recipes

1 cup of butter, room temperature
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
pinch of salt
2 cups of flour
your favorite jam

Cream butter and sugar together until incorporated. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, vanilla, and salt. Mix in the flour until just combined. Roll out the dough and cut out hearts with a cookie cutter. Place cut outs on a greased cookie sheet. Press your thumb into the dough (twice) to make a heart, then fill the heart with jam using a spoon. Bake at 350F until golden, about 15 minutes.

Accidentally eat the entire first batch yourself then repeat recipe to share with friends.

mama's frittata

Today is my beautiful mama's birthday. She is strong, clever, and gorgeous beyond words. For her birthday, I'd like to share one of my favorite recipes from her. She's made it for as long as I can remember and I can't think of a better breakfast than a slice of her frittata with warm, buttered pan de sal.

It's simple and easy to make with whatever you have in the kitchen, but I like it with onions and potatoes best.

Mama's Frittata
(thanks, mom)

a pat of butter
an onion, sliced
one potato, peeled and sliced like french fries
three eggs
a few tablespoons of milk or water
salt
fresh pepper

Caramelize the onions in butter over low/medium heat in a skillet. Add the potatoes. While the potatoes are cooking, whisk the eggs in a bowl and add the milk and/or water, salt and fresh pepper. Once the potatoes are soft, add the eggs. Do not stir. As the bottom of the frittata cooks, slightly lift the edges and allow more eggs to run underneath. Once the majority of the frittata is cooked, flip the frittata onto a plate (i.e. the plate goes facedown onto the skillet and then you flip it over so the frittata falls onto the plate). Slide the frittata back onto the skillet with the uncooked side down. After a minute or two, it'll be ready. Serve with warm bread and butter.

wassail for your weekend

This wassail is another of Jenna's famous recipes*. It's my favorite warm drink during these cold months-- it's fruity and spicy and perfect topped off with some good whiskey.

Jenna's Wassail
adapted from her aunt

12 oz. apricot nectar
46 oz. orange juice
46 oz. apple juice
46 oz. pineapple juice
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup red hot candies

Heat all of the ingredients in a large pot.** Keep the pot on low heat to enjoy throughout the day. Spike with whiskey.

*Also see Jenna's Pimm's cups, tuna casserole, and sushi casserole.
** You can keep all the spices in a tea ball if you don't want them floating around.

Happy February!

PS - I've added some new work to my portfolio. Check it out here.

chocolate raspberry tart

This tart came to life purely for experimentation. Ashley and Dave had just finished making their coffee table (isn't it beautiful?) so we thought we'd christen it with powdered sugar and a photo shoot.

As much as I wish I was, I'm not the kind of person who can "just whip up something" from the only five random ingredients in a pantry. Ashley and I chose this recipe because of its aesthetic-- we knew the raspberries would pop against the dark chocolate and sugar. We wanted it to be decadent.

And while I wouldn't say that this was effortless, I will say that everything fell into place nicely. It felt like a composition, not a science.

It didn't taste bad, either.


Chocolate Raspberry Tart
Inspired by Martha and Ashley's new table

8 ounces of your favorite cookie, crushed
two pinches of salt
6 tablespoons salted butter, melted
12 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2 cups fresh raspberries
as much powdered sugar as you want

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Combine cookies and a pinch of salt in a food processor. Slowly add melted butter and pulse until the mixture starts sticking. After greasing your 8 or 9 inch tart pan, press the crumbs firmly into the dish to create a crust. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, or until set.

While the crust is cooling, bring the cream to a simmer in a small pot. Pour the cream over the chocolate in a large bowl and stir until the chocolate melts and the mixture combines. Fold in a pinch of salt. Pour the mixture into the cooled tart crust and refrigerate for 30 minutes, or until set. Sprinkle with raspberries and powdered sugar.

pimm's cups

Pimm's was our go-to drink while punting in Oxford but I hadn't heard of Pimm's cups until Jenna made them in our apartment last year. I saw Pimm's on the shelf at Happy Hour last week and after ordering a Pimm's cup, got lots of questions about what I was drinking. I (shamefully) was terrible at explaining what Pimm's was, but here's Jenna's world-famous recipe to clear up the rest of the mystery.



Jenna's Pimm's Cups
(makes 2)

6 oz Pimm's
3 in. piece of cucumber, sliced
3 T lemon juice
1/2 tsp sugar
Ginger beer (J highly recommends the Maine Root Ginger Brew)

Muddle cucumber in shaker. Add Pimm's, lemon juice, and sugar and shake. Strain into glasses over ice and top with ginger beer to taste.

They're light, refreshing, and remind me of summer.

saturday brunch

I don't seem to get much quality time in the kitchen as of late. This isn't to say I haven't been eating (quite the opposite, really) but that breakfast and lunch at work mean I don't really have to plan food ahead at home. It also means I don't have a lot to eat at home.

Oftentimes having scarce ingredients leads me to abandon my cooking venture altogether, but lately, I've had Tamar Adler's voice in my mind saying, "Don't go out and buy more ingredients. Use what you have."

So on Saturday morning I did just that. A feta salad and truffle-poached eggs over toast








... in bed.

"the morning after" pancakes

I don't know why I named them this. It felt right.

I think there's something comforting in knowing you're going to have pancakes when you wake up. The inevitable dust of flour. The lumpy batter. That you're patient enough to wait until all the pancakes are done rather than eating them as they finish.

I like that they stack and keep one another warm.






These are Martha's buttermilk pancakes-- except I accidentally added two extra tablespoons of butter and added blueberries.

And, as if they couldn't get any better, I served them with honey butter. No syrup necessary.

honey butter:
When butter is at room temperature, mix three parts butter with one part honey until combined. Do not refrigerate-- store at room temperature in an air-tight container.

Put. On. EVERYTHING.

dinner

Our dinner party wasn't fancy-- David and Kyle made chili, Amy and Norris made corn bread, Jamie worked on tartine appetizers, and I made my shells. It seemed like a strange combination but everything worked together really well and everything finished cooking around the same time.

Dinner was hearty and warming but my favorite part was seeing six of us squeezed into the kitchen, working to bring the meal together.

The homemade milk tea and tapioca weren't bad, either.

crab, pea, & leek-stuffed shells

When my friend, Anna, cooks, she almost only uses Martha Stewart recipes exclusively. At first I thought this was a joke, and then I thought it was cute, and then I realized it's brilliant. Before this weekend I'd never made a recipe from my seasonal Martha cookbook. I'm not exactly sure why I decided to bring it with me for our staycation, but it was the perfect book to bring along.

This recipe was conveniently located in the "February" section of her book, and when David's mom gave me pasta shells for Valentine's Day, I knew destiny (or Martha?) was calling me to use them.










crab, pea & leek-stuffed shells
adapted from Martha

9 tablespoons butter
3 leeks, halved lengthwise, cut into half-moons, washed well, and drained
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen peas
salt and pepper to taste
16 ounces claw crab meat (I got mine from Trader Joe's)
6 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
juice of 1 lemon
1 pound jumbo pasta shells
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 bunch minced parsley leaves
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Cook the leeks in 3 tablespoons of butter, about 5 minutes Add the peas and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the peas are also cooked (2-3 minutes). Once cooked, transfer the vegetables to a large mixing bowl and mix together with the crab meat.

In the same skillet, melt the remaining 6 tablespoons of butter. Once browned, slowly add the flour while whisking the butter and flour together. Once incorporated, slowly pour in the milk-- a little at a time and while whisking to create a thick béchamel sauce. Once the mixture thickens and begins bubbling, remove from heat and add the heavy cream and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

In a large pot, cook the pasta shells for 5-7 minutes, just before they become al dente. Once you drain them, stir in a drizzle of olive oil so they don't stick together while you assemble.

In a buttered 9x13" baking dish, spread a cup of the béchamel sauce on the bottom. Mix another 1 1/4 cups of the béchamel in the crab and vegetable mixture. Begin stuffing the shells with spoonfuls of the crab mixture. Once the shells are filled and placed in the baking dish, spread the remaining béchamel on top of the shells. Mix the breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley and olive oil in a bowl then sprinkle the mixture on top of the pasta.

Bake 375°F for 25-30 minutes, or until the breadcrumbs are golden brown and the pasta is bubbling.

poached egg over lemony kale and polenta

This recipe is up on The Violet blog today!

Happy Friday!

cinnamon sugar bread

There were a lot of things working against me when I decided to make this cinnamon sugar bread from Joy the Baker. I've been daydreaming of making the recipe for months and finally decided to go for it the morning before my last day of work at Stanford. I knew the process would take a while but I wanted to say thank you to the ASCO team for being so kind, friendly, and supportive.



However, after deciding to do this, there were challenges to overcome:

- I started at 2am (and the bread needed to rise twice)
- I only had one bowl
- We only have small chopping boards and our kitchen counter is tiled
- (i.e. I had to lay down saran wrap on my tiled counter to roll out the dough)
- No rolling pin
- During the bread's first rise, I accidentally left it in our freezing cold kitchen. Whoops.

But, by some miracle, I had all of the ingredients. I took weird 1 hour naps during the rising/waiting/baking process. And the bread came out really well!

And I wasn't late to work!





cinnamon sugar bread
adapted from Joy the Baker

dough:
2 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 envelope active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 ounces butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

filling:
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 ounces butter, melted until browned

Mix 2 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt in one bowl and set aside. In another bowl, whisk eggs and set aside. Melt the butter with the milk in a small pot, remove from heat, then add water and vanilla. Add milk mixture to dry ingredients. Add eggs and mix until incorporated. Joy said that her mixture felt soupy, but mine felt dry. Add the remaining 3/4 cups of flour. Just keep mixing until everything is incorporated and sticky.

Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic and a tea towel, and leave it to rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Once the dough rises, mix the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together. Melt the remaining butter. Set aside both items.

Knead your newly risen dough with about 2 tablespoons of flour. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 5 minutes. Roll out the dough until it's about 12" x 20" if you can. I couldn't just roll it out as much as you can.

Spread melted butter on rolled dough then sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Cut the dough into strips of six. Stack the strips on top of one another until you have just one strip. Then cut that single strip into six squares (like this). Layer the squares sideways into a greased bread pan. (My squares weren't really even but it didn't matter.)

Cover with a kitchen towel and leave to rise for another hour.

Bake at 350°F for 30-35 minutes, or until dark golden brown on top. Let rest for 30 minutes then remove from pan.

Eat and die of happiness.

danish food week, day 5: the miscellany

Dear friends, I hope you have enjoyed my self-proclaimed Danish Food Week as much as I've loved putting these posts together. Since I wrote about æbleskiver before I decided to pursue this venture, I thought I'd dedicate the final post to all of the little (edible) things that made Denmark... well, Denmark, for me.

A little tea and coffee cake break in Holbæk.

Baked sesame bun, by Maibritt.

Simple yet perfect rice and carrots, by Maibritt.

Sliced cucumbers and tomatoes.

Dinner outside just before sunset.

Honey toast and Danish cream (for tea and baking).

We had tea every morning and every afternoon. My ideal ritual.

Really and truly, the best honey I've ever tried. I'm so glad I brought some home with me.

______________________
A few week-end thoughts:

1. In none of my posts did I mention rødgrød med fløde. This was a fruit pudding we ate multiple evenings but the lighting was always so bad that my photos came out like this, at best. We made it from gooseberries.

2. Speaking of which, it sounds like I wasn't the only one who thought gooseberries were mystery fruit!

3. I'm not done with my Denmark posts yet, but, I know I wouldn't have been able to experience any of these amazing foods without even-more-amazing host parents.

4. A special thanks to Pugly Pixel for the free downloads to make my banners this week. Your website is a creativity gold mind.