Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Old Bay Pretzel-and-Cheese Cookies
May 21, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory
I grew up in Northern Virginia and when I was a kid, my dad and a friend from Maryland co-owned a boat together on the Chesapeake Bay. My mother would wrinkle her nose at this, but Old Bay is a flavor of my childhood, I guess, and one I still like lot today. Now I mostly sprinkle it on corn or oven fries, but here it’s used in savory Old Bay Pretzel-and-Cheese Cookies. With chunks of pretzel rods and bits of cheddar cheese, too, they’re just the thing to have with a beer or a Bloody Mary, or even a bowl of tomato soup.
The dough is like a shortbread and is made in the food processor. I actually had a hard time getting mine to come together, even before adding the pretzel bits, and wound up adding a blob of sour cream for a bit of extra moisture to make it less crumbly. It’s slice-and-bake, so I managed to finagle the dough into a rough log, but then it crumbled again when i sliced it. I wound up having to hand-form my cookie crumbles into little nuggets on the sheet tray. When baked, I’m happy to report that they finally held together! They’re salty and savory and crunchy, and if I find myself going boating again anytime soon, they’ll find their way into my snack bag.
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: Green-as-Spring Soup
May 10, 2019 at 4:24 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, soups | 8 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, soup
This Green-as-Spring Soup was pretty easily put together after a walk through my neighborhood farmers’ market. After a long winter of turnips, the stalls are overflowing with green stuff right now! Armed with some leeks, garlic and shallots, a bunch of asparagus (which I trimmed, but did not bother to peel) and a zucchini, I got to work. After a quick sweat down of the alliums, it was everything else in the pot with some broth to simmer till soft. I had some nice spinach from my favorite farmer and I threw in just a handful of that, along with my herbs, for extra pop. Happily for those of us lacking amazing knife skills, it doesn’t matter how neatly things are cut up…it all gets puréed smooth in the blender. I fished out a few of the asparagus tips before blending the soup, which I used as garnish, along with a quick herb cream I made from pesto and greek yogurt. I added a drizzle of good olive oil, too, because, well, more green!
This soup was delicious and velvety even though it contains no dairy (apart from the garnish). It’s fresh and satisfying, and was even better reheated the next day.
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.
Everyday Dorie: Salmon Burgers
April 12, 2019 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 13 CommentsTags: burgers, everyday dorie, fish, savory
One of my grandmas used to like to make salmon patties for dinner. They were a regular thing on nights when she’d babysit my brother and me. I can’t say that I loved them, but I thought about her as I made the Salmon Burgers from Everyday Dorie. Grandma used canned salmon, but these burgers are made with fresh salmon fillets, quickly zipped in the food processor. The fish mince is mixed with a lemony, herby yogurt concoction for moisture and flavor and formed into burgers. There was a lot of chatter on the C&Cs about how well the burgers held together (or didn’t) while cooking, so I took Mardi’s advice to add a sprinkling of breadcrumbs to the mix. After chilling the burger mix in the fridge for a couple of hours, I didn’t have any problem flipping them or getting them out of my nonstick pan.
The guy in this house got his burger on a bun. I had mine on a bed of lettuce instead, and ate it with a fork. Both got pickled red onions and a schmear of yogurt-herb sauce that pretty much mimicked the dressing mixed into the burgers themselves. I’d say this is an upgrade from Grandma’s canned salmon cakes, and I’d make them again.
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.
Everyday Dorie: Potato Tourte
March 8, 2019 at 5:54 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things, veggies | 10 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, tourte
I thought about not making the Potato Tourte this week for Cook the Book Fridays. It’s not that a potato gratin wrapped inside puff pastry isn’t appealing to me. It’s that it’s too appealing to me. I decided that if I made about half a recipe (which I totally eyeballed) in one of my 6-inch pie plates, then things wouldn’t spiral too out of control.
There are certain things that I am notoriously stingy with. Parchment paper is one…I will re-use a piece until it basically turns to ashes on a sheet tray. Puff pastry is another. There is no trimming of excess and there is never waste. I decided to allocate one half of a sheet of puff pastry to this project (the other half I’m saving intact for something else later this month). I wanted my top crust to look great, so I cut that round first. Then I patchworked the bottom crust in with the rest of the sheet and the off cuts from the top round. It looked kind of crazy pre-filling, but seems to have worked fine. I popped all that in the fridge while I assembled my oniony, garlicky herb mix (using fresh parsley, basil puree that I keep in the freezer and dried thyme) and my butter bits (which I actually grated so I could disperse them more evenly) and lemon strips (which I also actually grated) and mandolined a couple of yukon golds without any incident (I did not soak them in water). It didn’t take too long before everything was stacked and egg washed and in the oven.
For the final third of the baking time, cream gets drizzled into the steam vent in the top. I had a fair amount of butter bubbling and sizzling out of the tourte and onto the baking sheet, so I decided to only use a couple of tablespoons of cream instead of the half cup I otherwise would have. It seemed to be telling me it could barley contain all the fat that was in it already. Hahaha.
This is truly delicious. I served it with a bitter radicchio salad and a glass white wine to cut through the richness. Not only do you get the beautiful layers in the puff pastry, put also beautiful layers of creamy herbed potato. As yummy as this was for dinner, I’m looking forward to brunch leftovers tomorrow.
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: Honey-Blue Cheese Madeleines
March 5, 2019 at 2:59 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 8 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
I like the chance to break out my madeleine pan, and here’s an interesting reason– Honey-Blue Cheese Madeleines. A sweet and savory combo, Dorie says she was inspired to create these mads after enjoying blue cheese and honey together on a cheese plate at a wine bar. That in turn inspired me to pair them with some typical cheese plate accompaniments: a few slices of pear (mine were poached) and some dried fruit and nuts. Vin santo, too, although I think they’d go nicely with most wines, or with a dirty martini, if that’s your jam. These are “cocktail cookies,” after all.
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: Sweet Chili Chicken Thighs
February 8, 2019 at 2:06 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things | 8 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
It’s Sunday and that means I’m two days tardy for Cook the Book Fridays. Please forgive me, and know that these Sweet Chili Chicken Thighs will make an excellent Sunday supper, so I think I actually just solved your dinner problems for the evening. It’s an easy one-pot meal (although getting out a second pot for rice isn’t a bad idea) of chicken thighs braised in a sweet and spicy, sticky sauce made from Thai sweet chili sauce, white wine, soy, Dijon and Sriracha.
I tampered a bit with this recipe, but only in the order in which I cooked off the ingredients. If I had used boneless, skinless chicken thighs here, I may have gone ahead and done it as written, which is to sauté onions, garlic and ginger in oil in a Dutch oven, remove them while browning the chicken thighs and add them back in so everything braises together in the sauce. But I used chicken thighs with the bones and skin. These render a lot of fat when you brown them, and I wanted to sauté my aromatics in that delicious liquid gold, rather than just discard it. Schmaltz is not to be wasted, so I browned the chicken thighs first (starting skin side down, then flipping them) to render it out. I removed the thighs to a plate and carried on cooking the”onions and friends,” as Dorie says, before adding back the chicken with the sauce to braise.
Rice is the natural thing to help soak up the extra sauce on these thighs, and I added a little furikake sprinkle to mine and some quick rice wine vinegar pickles on the side. Maybe I mish-moshed cuisines a little, but all was devoured, and I don’t think anyone minded. P.S.: Dorie says this also works well with pork tenderloin.
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 (spoiler alert: we all did!).
Everyday Dorie: Potato Chowder Lots of Ways
January 11, 2019 at 3:15 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, soups, veggies | 13 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, soup, vegetables
Well, it’s officially frigid here and all I want to make for dinner is soup. Luckily, Cook the Book Fridays picked Dorie’s Potato Chowder Lots of Ways for the recipe of the month. I like the “lots of ways” bit because it pretty much tells me I’ll have room to improvise, which I usually do anyway but having permission is a refreshing change. Hahaha. I actually didn’t really veer too far off base here, just a few tweaks and some flavoring and topping customization. This is really a potato and onion chowder, using just about every allium you can think of: yellow onions, leeks, shallots and garlic. Any not on this list can be added as a topping. I first pre-crisped some turkey bacon bits in my Dutch oven and set them aside for garnish. As the alliums cooked down all soft and sweet, I seasoned them with Old Bay. My dad used to have a boat on the Chesapeake, so I love that stuff. I never peel potatoes if I don’t have to, and didn’t see a reason to here, so I left the skins on mine.
I don’t always love how I feel after eating soup with a cream base, so I skipped the cream here and instead stole a couple of ladlefuls of soup out of my pot (the liquid with some potatoes and onions) and whizzed it really smooth in my blender. I stirred that back into the soup to give the base a thicker, velvety texture and then added about 1/4 cup of 2% milk just to give it a slightly lighter, more chowdery, color. Because I’d been restrained with the dairy in the soup, I felt no guilt when adding a blop of crème fraîche as a topping. Also on top of the “my way” chowder, I sprinkled those bacon bits, some sliced scallion and some tiny potatoes that I crisped up in olive oil, crouton-style. Delicious. I will definitely try this chowder other ways as the season goes on.
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.
Everyday Dorie: Roasted Squash Hummus
December 14, 2018 at 10:21 pm | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, snacks, veggies | 14 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, vegetables
You know I’m having an exciting Friday night when I’m writing up a blog post about hummus! At least this Roasted Squash Hummus has a little something different going on. In place of the traditional chickpeas, this hummus gets its body from a roasted squash. Of course there’s tahini and lemon, but also some cool ingredients like za’atar and pomegranate molasses. I used a small carnival squash, and although Dorie just has you mash together the ingredients with a fork, I put everything into my mini food processor and gave it a whiz. I plated it up with a smear of thick yogurt, drizzles of olive oil and more pom molasses and a sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds. It’s earthy and creamy with a touch of sweetness. This was more interesting than my normal Sunday football food, and I thought it made a nice dip for veggies and pita chips.
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.
Everyday Dorie: Maple-Syrup-and-Mustard Brussels Sprouts
November 9, 2018 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things, veggies | 19 CommentsTags: everyday dorie, savory, vegetables
I was never the kid who pushed away the dish of brussels sprouts. In fact, they were always a highlight of Thanksgiving dinner, right up there with stuffing! I know…weird, right? When I make sprouts at home, I usually just simply roast them with a little s&p. Sometimes I shred and sauté them. I’m always happy to try out something new, though. These Maple-Syrup-and-Mustard Brussels Sprouts are steamed first and then they’re finished off in a skillet, where they take on some color before being combined with the maple and mustard and some crispy bacon (of the turkey variety for me). They’re sweet and savory and a little zingy. And steaming is a really easy way to cook them, so I don’t know why I haven’t done it before. I have a little container of leftovers that I plan to heat up and top with a fried egg, and I’m so looking forward to it!
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: Cranberry Five-Spice Cookies
November 6, 2018 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 7 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory
When these Cranberry Five-Spice Cookies were being floated around in the month’s nominations, I didn’t realize that they are in the “cocktail cookies” section of the book. This is the section where the cookies lean more savory than sweet…nibbles to go with a glass of wine or an aperitif. These ones have the texture of sugar cookies, but they are only very lightly sweetened, and are flavored with tart fresh cranberries, salty peanuts and Chinese five-spice powder, an exotic mixture of ground cloves, cinnamon, fennel seeds, star anise and Szechuan pepper.
A lot of times, I like to cut roll-out cookies like these into squares rather than rounds so I don’t have any waste. I sprinkled these with a little mix of extra sugar, salt and five-spice before baking. Even though they weren’t quite what I had in mind when I cracked open the book to make them, I did like them. I thought a bit of spreadable goat cheese on top went rather nicely.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
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