Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Croquets
November 12, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
If you are like me and need a little treat to go with your coffee, then you’ll appreciate what these Croquets have to offer. Crisp and sugary, with lotsa nuts (I used macadamias, and also a pinch of cinnamon), they are a perfect saucer sidekick.
They are not flourless, but the base of the dough is a meringue. Therefore, the dough is sticky but it bakes up sweet and with a crackly crust. The dough is formed into logs, which are cut after baking, biscotti-style. The croquets don’t need a second bake, though– they are very crunchy. In fact I think croquet must be a play on the word croquant, which means “crunchy” in French (unless it has to do with the lawn game, in which case I’m baffled!). This crunchiness makes them excellent coffee dunkers, but they’re also good smashed up a bit and sprinkled on an ice cream sundae.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Lightening-Fast Tahini Chicken (or Pork)
November 10, 2019 at 11:02 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 4 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
I’m such a dipstick– I totally thought the second Friday of November was next week and I missed the posting date for CBF. But this recipe is called Lightening-Fast Tahini Chicken, so once I realized, I was able to get it together in a flash!
As written in Dorie’s recipe, this dish is “Tahini Pork” and is made with pork tenderloin. I don’t eat pork, but have found that chicken can often make a fine swap for it, so I used boneless, skinless breasts in place of the tenderloin here. Cube the meat and toss it in a spice mix, brown it up a bit and make a quick sauce straight in the pan to finish cooking it through. I didn’t even bother to pre-mix the tahini and lemon juice– I just added them to the skillet at the same time. Lightening-fast, flavorful and delicious!
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one. And P.S., she also has a honey-mustard variation here.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Chocolate-Pecan Pie Cookie Bars
November 5, 2019 at 8:36 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, pie
Dare I say that I like these Chocolate-Pecan Pie Cookie Bars even more than I like pecan pie? These have heaps of pecan and chocolate pieces, with just enough goo to hold them together. And the base is Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough, which is so easy to work with. I didn’t even need to roll it out or to chill it before baking it here…I whizzed the dough up in the food processor, pressed it into the pan, weighed it down and it was ready to blind bake right away. The cookie bars are easier and faster to make than pie, and they cool faster, too. (That means you can be eating them faster!)
I made a half recipe in a loaf pan, but if you have a big crowd to serve, go for the full 9-inch square because they’ll be gone fast. If you need to make them in advance, they seem to keep just fine for a few days in the fridge.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll and please join us if you haven’t already.
Everyday Dorie: Miso-Glazed Salmon
October 25, 2019 at 11:41 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 9 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, fish, savory
I love fish but I don’t cook it that often at home. I don’t feel like I’m great at it so I usually save it for a nice dinner out, where someone more competent can perfectly prepare it for me. When I do cook fish at home, I’ve found that baking it is the way to go…it’s easier, it’s cleaner, and the delicate (and often expensive!) fish doesn’t fall apart on me as readily as it does on the stovetop. This Miso-Glazed Salmon is a great make-at-home fish dinner, as there’s very little prep to do before it’s ready to be popped into the oven.
I covered my salmon fillets in the miso and soy glaze and let them hang out in a glass pie plate in the fridge for a few hours. When I took the dish out, the whole set up still looked pretty clean, so I just went straight into the oven with the pie plate, rather than transferring the salmon to a lined baking sheet. After the fish was baked, I was able to just lift the flesh right off the skin in one piece and leave it behind. The downside of the glass pie plate is that I was nervous to put it under the broiler once I saw that the marinade hadn’t really taken on any color in the oven. I’ve seen sushi chefs blowtorch raw fish to give it a quick sear, so I pulled out my little kitchen torch to brown things up a bit.
I do wonder if I had removed some of the excess marinade (which I didn’t want to waste since it was more a glaze than a liquid) or used red miso instead of white, would it have gotten more bronzed in the oven? I do think next time I’ll let the salmon marinate for the better part of a day for even more flavor. Well, no matter, it was delicious, and I served it with furikake rice and some cute baby bok choy.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: White Chocolate and Poppy Seed Cookies
October 15, 2019 at 8:04 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
White Chocolate and Poppy Seed Cookies are another riff on Dorie’s Do-Almost-Anything Vanilla Cookie Dough. This time the tasty sugar cookie dough contains, you guessed it, chopped white chocolate and poppy seeds. These bake up nice and crisp and the little bits of white chocolate in the dough kind of caramelize with the heat of the baking sheet. Do watch them in the oven at the end though…the edges can go from blonde to brown quite quickly. After the cookies have cooled, you can ice them with a bit more melted white chocolate, or just leave them be if you want something a tad less sweet.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Chicken and Salad Milanese Style
October 11, 2019 at 2:59 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, salads, savory things, veggies | 7 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, salad, savory
Chicken and Salad Milanese Style was my dinner last night and my lunch today. I can tell you it’s perfect for either meal. I’d probably also eat it for breakfast, not gonna lie. So good.
I have to say, though, that when I got home from work last night, pounding out and breading chicken breasts was not what I felt like doing at all. I felt like eating cereal in front of the TV. Hahaha. But I’m on my own for a couple of days and only needed to do two cutlets, so I sucked it up. I did the prep dirty work, and then let the breaded cutlets chill (Dorie says some chill time makes them cook up crispier) while I loaded up the dishwasher with my messy stuff, put on my PJs and washed my face. In the end it was a pretty simple and quick process.
The cutlets are sautéed in a combo of butter and oil, and you can taste the butteriness in the finished dish. My favorite dude at the neighborhood greenmarket sells a really interesting salad greens mix, with stuff like super peppery arugula, pea shoots, tatsoi, baby kale and purple mizuna. Dressed in a lemony vinaigrette, the salad gives a bit of fresh sharpness alongside the chicken. I’ll make this again for sure, like probably this weekend.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here), and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets
October 8, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
This recipe for Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets is one I’d had my eye on for years. It sounded a little wacky to me– a sweet tart crust filled with cream cheese and cubes of cinnamon toast. Wacky but good, so I’m glad its TWD time has finally come.
It’s another one of those component recipes, made from several (easy) parts. The tartlets use Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough, which we’ve employed so often that half the time I can find a chunk of it hiding in the freezer. The garnish (both inside and outside) is butter-crisped bread cubes tossed in a cocoa-cinnamon-sugar mix. A bit of the toast goes on the bottom the pre-baked tartlet shells and a bit is reserved to top them at the end. The filling is a fluffy cream cheese whipped cream set with a little gelatin. Gelatin is not my favorite ingredient, and if I can leave it out or think of an easy swap, then I do. Commercial cream cheese has a lot of gums and stabilizers that help to thicken up heavy cream without added assistance, so I just decided to skip the gelatin. I only made two tartlets and we were going to eat them the night I made them anyway so I knew the filling wouldn’t have time to break down or weep.
When It came time to garnish my tartlets, I remembered that I happen to be in possession of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch single serve cereal cup that my husband bizarrely brought me home as a “gift.” (Despite the fact that I’ve never eaten or requested the stuff…am I ungrateful?) It’s been in my cupboard for a couple of months and I thought to use some of the cereal as a topper instead of more bread crumbs. Then I tried to get a little too cute and sprinkled on a bunch of chocolate jimmies and pearls. I knew I’d gone overboard, but there was no turning back. I liked the creamy-crunchy combo, and I’m a sucker for little tartlets…these got thumbs up from both of us.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Parmesan Galettes
October 1, 2019 at 8:27 am | Posted in DC, groups, savory things, snacks, tuesdays with dorie | 2 CommentsTags: baking, cheese, cookies, savory
Not that there’s anything wrong with Cheez-Its (no, nothing at all, really), but if you’re looking for a cheese cracker that’s a bit more elevated, maybe you should really be looking for a cheese cookie. Parmesan Galettes could be a better answer for your next wine and cheese party.
The dough is just butter, four, salt and parm, and it comes together in a snap in the food processor. Rather than hand-grate the cheese, I broke it down to bits in the Cuisinart before I made the dough–double duty! The dough is slice-and-bake and, although it can be baked freeform, baking it in a muffin tin will make perfect rounds. I sometimes find slice-and-bake cookies to be a bit annoying, tbh. I can almost never slice a cold log of dough nicely…I don’t cut it evenly, it always gets flat on one side and the first and last pieces are always wonky. It was easy enough with this dough to just roll it into a log, cut it while soft and press the pieces into the muffin tin. I flattened the tops down with a little juice glass and put the whole tin into the freezer for an hour before baking. I sprinkled on a bit of extra parmesan when I popped them into the oven.
Without an egg to bind the dough, these are very delicate cookies (although I had no problem getting them out of the tin unbroken). They are salty and cheesy and almost melt away when you bite into them. Delicious with a glass of crisp white wine.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
September 27, 2019 at 10:13 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, cookies & bars, everyday dorie, groups, sweet things | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, everyday dorie
Sometimes I feel like my kitchen is just a cookie factory, but I really do love making them and they’re certainly easy to share. I know I’ll have no problem finding takers for these Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, Dorie’s latest take on the CCC (I guess this one is the CCCC). Dorie’s tricky tweak for these is to add a small amount of oats to the dough…not enough to turn them into an oatmeal cookie, but enough to make them a bit chewy. Also there is so much chocolate, and that makes them nice and gooey, too!
The cookies use a combo of regular granulated and light brown sugars. I don’t have any light brown in the cupboard right now, but I do have plenty of dark muscovado, so I swapped that in, and it definitely made my dough darker in color. I had these in the fridge for a few days before I baked them off, so they stayed chubby and didn’t spread out too much. There are a few in the freezer, too, waiting for the next time a chocolate chip cookie craving strikes. Likely this weekend. Hahaha.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan (it’s also here), and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see how the group liked this one.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Caramel-Topped Rice Pudding Cake
September 24, 2019 at 8:25 pm | Posted in BCM, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, cake, rice pudding
I talked to my mom on the phone the other day and she asked if I’d baked anything good lately. I told her I’d just made a Caramel-Topped Rice Pudding Cake that’s made like flan or crème caramel, except with rice pudding instead of eggy custard. My mom, who studied and lived in Paris for a few years before I came along, said, “Oh, that’s very French!” Dorie says this is a dessert so common and loved in France, that supermarkets sell it as a box mix. From scratch, it’s a fun project that isn’t too hard. The caramel is a simple water and sugar one. The rice pudding takes a while to cook, but I didn’t have any boil-overs or scorched rice, so things went pretty smoothly. An egg tempered into the pudding at the end keeps it together when it’s turned out after baking.
I made half the recipe and decided to bake personal-sized puddings in ramekins. I got four ramekins out of the half batch, and they only took about 30 minutes to bake in the covered water bath. We ate them at room temperature and I thought they were just delicious. Next time (and I’m not sure why I didn’t think to do it this time), I’ll add some booze-soaked raisins into the mix.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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