Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Tea and Honey Pots de Crème
May 26, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: custard
We’ve made several versions of pots de crème during our TWD journey, but these Tea and Honey Pots de Créme might be my favorite. Shocking since no chocolate is involved. Haha. I steeped the cream with a tea from Kusmi called Sweet Love that I originally got as a small sample tin, but I liked it so much that just yesterday I ordered a big one. It’s a black tea with things like cardamom, cinnamon, liquorice and pink peppercorn, and it went really well with the rose extract Dorie suggests adding to the honey-sweetened tea base. It was really flavorful and this round of PdC for some reason baked nicer that my last one, which developed something of a fatty skin on top. I didn’t even feel the need to decorate these with whipped cream and sprinkles! I baked them off in some cute little teacups that I got when we lived in Sydney. I’m down to only three of them now though– broke one during wash-up in the kitchen sink! Oopsies. Stuff happens, I guess, and they weren’t expensive (although this is the third thing I’ve shattered in the last couple of weeks, so maybe I need to be better focused).
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Everyday Dorie: Ponzu Chicken
May 22, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, savory things | 7 CommentsTags: chicken, everyday dorie, savory
I should call this particular Ponzu Chicken the “pandemic pantry version.” I made a few fiddley-dos to get this dish on the table for dinner, but I don’t think they strayed too far from Dorie’s original. Ponzu sauce is the star of a spicy marinade that flavors chicken breasts. I had neither ponzu nor chicken breasts. Hmmm…I did have boneless, skinless chicken thighs (which I prefer anyway) and thought I could concoct a faux/substitute ponzu blend from soy, mirin, and mixed citrus juice. Too bad I didn’t have granulated dashi on hand as well, but I went with it and marinated my thighs for for several hours before cooking them up in my cast iron pan. I gave the thighs a bit more time than breasts would have taken, and made sure they were cooked through by checking their internal temp. I poured the leftover marinade straight over the thighs in the pan (rather then transfer them to a plate) near the end of the cook time, and basted the meat with it as it came to a boil and reduced down to a sticky glaze. I had some leftover veggies from Chinese take-out the night before and some fresh ramen noodles in the fridge to serve with it…a yummy hodgepodge.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see what else the group made this week. Next time, we’ll go back to making the same recipe as a group.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Salt-and-Pepper Sugar-and-Spice Galettes
May 19, 2020 at 12:02 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, snacks
Dorie calls these Salt-and-Pepper Sugar-and-Spice Galettes “winter cookies” because of the warm spices (including cinnamon, sugar, cloves and black pepper), but they are good little sugar cookies any time of year. The leaves on my backyard tree tell me it’s spring out there, and I found these galettes perfectly lovely with a cup of coffee just the other day. In fact, I added an extra bit of the spices, because they didn’t come through that strongly in the dough. A little almond flour makes the baked cookies crumble nicely. They are baked in a muffin tin so they keep that good puck-like shape. I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top before baking.
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 anytime!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Fruit and Nut Croquants
May 12, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 5 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
These Fruit and Nut Croquants look a lot biscotti…they are full of good tidbits and formed into logs that are baked and sliced just like biscotti. But they are only once-baked, so while croquant means “crunchy,” they aren’t that crunchy. Mine got softer as the days went days went by, and I actually liked that, especially since they still stayed sturdy enough to dip into coffee.
I used whole skin-on almonds, sliced dried figs and raisins and I swapped some of the AP flour for einkorn. They also have vanilla and almond extracts, orange zest, nutmeg and cloves. They had lots of flavor and were just sweet enough.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Western Frittata
May 8, 2020 at 4:22 pm | Posted in breakfast things, cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, other savory, savory things | 9 CommentsTags: breakfast, eggs, everyday dorie, savory
I have made many versions of this Western Frittata since getting the book Everyday Dorie— most of them were not even very Western. I also have many photos of the many versions and I don’t even exactly remember what I put in them. I think this particular one is probably more of an Italian Frittata…looks like I used sun-dried tomatoes, red peppers and pesto. I can’t be sure because there are so many things you can do with a frittata. It’s a lot like the Ginger Fried Rice we made, in that it’s a fridge-raiding, use what you have, get rid of bits and bobs kinda thing. It’s perfect for what’s going down right now, and I mix it up on the regular now that I’m making breakfast for two every.single.morning.
I have a small cast iron pan, so I do roughly a half-recipe of Dorie’s frittata, except instead of four eggs I only use three because I prefer them a little thinner and they cook a little quicker.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to what everyone made this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Cocktail Puffs
May 5, 2020 at 8:11 pm | Posted in DC, groups, savory things, snacks, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 4 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, savory, snacks
In addition to my daily afternoon tea time, I have daily pre-dinner apéro time. That sounds fancier than it is– last night we had popcorn– but the point is that I’m on the look out for some good savory snacks. Cocktail Puffs are in the “cocktail cookies” section of the book and, filled with anything from olive tapenade (my choice) to pesto to cheese, they sounded promising with a half-glass of wine.
The full recipe makes 50 puffs. Even if NYC is quarantined through summer, I don’t know if I can deal with that many! I need some snack variety, so I made just a quarter recipe. The dough is a snap to do in the food processor, and a combo of cold yogurt and butter, plus one fold of the dough, makes it flaky. It’s also soft and requires a lengthy chill time. I know my focus is not the sharpest these days, but I had to read the instructions like 5 times to figure out how the heck to form the puffs. There was a lengthy description of measurements and the cutting of strips, and, as a visual learner, I wished for an illustration. But I think I got it in the end and I was totes ready for a cocktail after that.
When I pulled my puffs out of the oven, I dusted them with a little paprika. I liked them…they were flaky and savory…but I would have liked them a little bigger. They were thimble sized, and I wish they had been double that to get more puff and filling. Also, I couldn’t help but think that they’d work just as well with bought puff pastry. On the flip side, it probably means this dough would be good used in other ways, too, so maybe I’ll give that some thought.
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 anytime!
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Martine’s Lemon and Apple Tart
April 28, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in BCM, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 6 CommentsTags: baking, tarts
Someone last round described Martine’s Lemon and Apple Tart as being like a lemon bar that happens to have a bit of grated apple in. I can’t find who said it, but she was spot-on, I’m terms of both preparation and taste. It’s a little strange-looking, I will admit, but the filling is sweet-tart and delicious.
I decided to make just two individual tarts, rather than a big one, so I had to take the ingredient list and kind of wing it a bit with the amounts I’d need to fill them. I felt like this fit with the spirit of the recipe though, since Dorie’s friend Martine, who came up with it, sounds like she can cook on the fly. In the time it took my lemon-apple filling to set, my baby sweet tart dough shells did get a little browned, but I guess that’s just the “French bake” Dorie describes elsewhere in the book.
For the recipe, see Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll!
Everyday Dorie: Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade
April 24, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in cook the book fridays, everyday dorie, groups, pies & tarts, sweet things | 12 CommentsTags: baking, everyday dorie
Ever since I made hot cross buns for Easter, basically all of my thoughts not somehow related to the current pandemic have been about how insanely delicious booze-soaked dried fruit is. Small pleasures help get through tough times, I guess. With lots of dried fruit and ready-made phyllo, the Boozy Jumbled-Fruit Croustade from Everyday Dorie may be a good dessert to save for the middle of winter, but it’s also a good choice when you are cooking from your pantry (and jonesing for booze-soaked dried fruit). I have small amounts of lots of different fruits in my cupboard, all of them need a home and any of them would be just dandy steeped in bourbon, but here I went with dried cherries, raisins and figs combined with candied orange peel and fresh apple and clementine bits.
I had two sheets of phyllo kicking around my freezer for a few months. To say that they were tattered would be an understatement. They were borderline shredded, almost unusable, and certainly not enough in either quantity or quality to make the big croustade in the book. But…if i took the recipe and minified it, along the lines of the Petite Apple Croustades I made made with TWD, I thought I could save that phyllo from the bin. I was able to make two baby croustades for dessert by cutting the tatters into strips that I overlapped in a muffin tin. I piled the the jumbled bourbon-fruit into each one and and carefully brought the overhanging phyllo up to cover. It was quite a sloppy affair, with buttered phyllo bits flying everywhere, but they came out of the oven bronzed and ruffled, and looking way nicer than they did when they went in. A magical transformation: crispy, boozy, sweet and incredibly tasty.
For the recipe, see Everyday Dorie by Dorie Greenspan, and head over to Cook the Book Fridays to see what everyone else made this week.
Tuesdays with Dorie DC: Every-Way Shortbread Fans: The Lemon-Poppy Seed Version
April 21, 2020 at 12:01 am | Posted in cookies & bars, DC, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 3 CommentsTags: baking, cookies, shortbread
I mentioned last week that I’m now offering coffee or tea service at home every afternoon (don’t you wish you could come over?), and I’m constantly on the lookout for a good saucer treat. Homemade shortbread fits the bill quite nicely. As the name implies, Every-Way Shortbread Fans can go in a lot of different flavor directions. I went down the suggested lemon-poppy seed topped with glaze route. They have a delicious, buttery Scottish shortbread base, flecked with lemon zest and poppy seeds. I love the crisp, sandy texture of these cookies, and baking them in a cake pan is an easy way to form and shape them nicely. Another elevenses winner here.
For the recipe, see Dorie’s Cookies by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie BCM: Green Tea Sablés
April 14, 2020 at 8:39 am | Posted in BCM, cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 9 CommentsTags: baking, cookies
Now being home 24/7, elevenses seems to have become a thing I do to break up the day. Green Tea Sablés are a perfect side treat for my new-found tradition. We’ve made many varieties of these buttery, sandy cookies by now, and these ones are flavored, not with matcha, but with more delicate green tea leaves. We have (had? *sniff*) beautiful loose leaf tea at work, including one labeled “Japanese Pan-Fried Green Tea,” which I believe is kamairicha. I brought home a couple of tablespoons just before we closed in anticipation of these cookies.
The dough for these sablés is easily made by hand…like, the butter is actually rubbed in with your fingers, which are the cleanest they have even been, I’m sure. Then it is rolled into logs, chilled, and sliced. Okay, is it just me, or are slice-and-bake cookies infuriating? I feel like they are supposed to be the easiest way to cute round cookies, but, in fact, they always totally crumble when I slice them and then I have to press them back into some sloppy, patched together blobs. Or I cut them slanted. Or some cookies are too thick and others are too thin. Rather than let slice-and-bake cookies make me feel totally lame, I have picked up a few tricks from all of our DC baking and did these sablés in a muffin tin to get a nice coin shape. I only made a quarter-recipe of this dough (my lockdown freezer is stacked up with the half-finished coffee cakes and hot cross buns I am apparently hoarding for the apocalypse), so I took out my mini muffin pan and made these petits sablés.
I had enough of that green tea left over to not only make a small pot to go along with the cookies for elevenses, but also to make a bit of green tea sugar for garnish. Because I was baking the sablés in a tin instead of free-form, rather than roll my log in sugar before slicing, I sprinkled the tops of each cookie with it before baking.
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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