Tonight's Challenge: "Pan Roasted" Halibut with herbed lentils and breadcrumbs

Huh? "Game on?" Really? I didn't realize she was so competitive! Last week I simply suggested to a good friend and coworker that we both try the same fish recipe I had saved from SippitySup and each blog about it. I had previously gone to her for some fish prep advice so I know she was aware that I'm not much of a "fish chef". My spouse doesn't even like fish! I have never, ever, pan-roasted fish. (Isn't that what we more commonly called 'frying'?) So how this friendly exchange became "Top Chef: Blogger Edition" (complete with judging categories) I can't tell you but I don't like to shirk from a challenge! (But how convenient for her to deem that our spouses are the judges in this competition! Did I mention that mine doesn't even like fish?) I think someone has been watching too much cable TV, don't you? But seriously, she got her photo and post listed at Foodgawker which is pretty darn fantastic so congrats Leslie (and Hunter, her husband slash photographer!) She is a great cook and I have learned a lot in the short time she has been sharing with us on her blog. I even learned enough to knock the butter out of tonight's recipe. Be sure to check out her blog!

So for my part tonight I had to pretty much kick it in gear to get something up on these pages for you and my "judge" spouse. (Or is that for Padme, Tom, and Gail?) I didn't want to anger the judge or have him disqualify me for being late with my entre now did I? To beat the buzzer tonight I had to to work in a few shortcuts as I had no time to get to the market after work. I'm a big lover of those already prepared fresh lentils at Trader Joe's so using those saved me a good 15 minutes of cooking time. Not quite as elegant as doing the green lentils (which I love too) but tonight I had to make do. I hope Greg forgives me. Also saving me a trip to the supermarket tonight was the container of prepared mirepoix that I had bought (also at Trader Joe's) last night thinking I would make a quick chicken soup tonight for a dear sick friend. He won't mind, I'm sure, since this is a competition and I'm sure just knowing that I'm cooking fabulous halibut for a competition will make him feel better.

So here it goes:

"Pan Roasted" Halibut with herbed lentils and breadcrumbs

(truly inspired by SippitySup's Greg Henry)

• 1 package Trader Joe's prepared lentils, OR 2 c french green lentils, picked over & rinsed, boiled in salted water for 20 minutes and drained.
• 1 1⁄2 t minced garlic
• 1 cup mirepoix
  
• 3/4 c chicken stock
• 1/2 t chicken demi-glace (I only had canned stock and was using only a little -- see above re: lentils)
  
• 2 t flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 t fresh sage, chopped
• 1 t fresh rosemary, chopped
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 c coarsley chopped fresh breadcrumbs (2 pieces of bread taken from the lunch room worked here.)
  
• 1⁄2 c loosely packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 T lemon zest
• lemon vinaigrette (see 3 T olive oil, juice of one lemon, 1 T minced shallot, 1/2 t lemon zest, salt and pepper. I'm not a dill fan and I didn't want to mess up the sage taste.)
  
• 1 1⁄2 pounds halibut fillets, cut into 4 portions
• kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper

Heat 2 TBS olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat, add garlic, stirring rapidly until fragrant (about 1 minute._ Add the mirepoixe (mixture of carrots, celery and onions) and cook, stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the lentils, chicken stock, and chopped herbs and bring to a boil. Add the butter, stirring until emulsified, and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm

Make the breadcrumb mixture by heating 3 TBS olive oil over medium high-high heat in a saute pan and then adding the breadcrumbs and pan-fry until golden and crunchy. Season with salt and pepper, remove from pan and let cool. In a small bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, parsley leaves and lemon zest. Toss this with a little lemon vinaigrette right before serving. (Save the remainder for the great halibut salad you will have with the leftovers!)

Pan-roast the halibut, using a large saute pan over high heat. Add to the pan the remaining 2 TBS olive oil and heat until nearly smoking. Season the fish on both sides with salt and pepper and sear until golden brown on one side, 4-5 minutes. Flip and finsih cooking 2-3 more minutes. Remove pan from heat.

To serve. Ladle the lentils onto a plate and place the fish in the center and top it with some of the dressed breadcrumb and parsley mixture. Lemon garnish

Enjoy and await the decision of the judges in your house! My judge ate it all and actually asked me to make this for his finicky uncle. So regardless, I'm a winner. Thanks Leslie for the fun! Lets do this again! Greg, is it beginning to feel a bit like "Tuesdays with SippitySup" around here? (Don't tempt me! )

Summer Cocktails (early edition):The Diablo

I'm surprised Greg didn't think of it but the penultimate tequila cocktail around here is The Diablo! It means "The Devil" but it brings nothing but goodness as far as I'm concerned. I first learned of it a few years ago when I was looking up alternatives to the margarita when ordering at Mexican restaurants. The drink is Californian in origin first listed in The Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink. That is a good enough pedigree for me! It was probably a scorcher of a day like today when this drink was first invented because it is by far one of the more refreshing cocktails around. Far from being just a "juice with tequilla" kind of drink this one surely deserves the cocktail moniker for its wonderful use of creme de cassis in the equation. The splash of ginger ale makes it even more refreshing.

The Diablo:

• 1 and 1/2 oz tequila repasodo (I only had silver in the house tonight.)
• 1 and 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/2 oz creme de cassis
• splash of ginger beer or ginger ale. (Get the spiciest you can find. Hansen's is surprisingly good and spicy. Use more than a splace on the hottest of afternoons.)
• garnish with lime.

Mix first three ingredients in a shaker and strain over a tall glass filled with ice. Splash ginger ale and garnish with lime. Repeat as often as necessary to stay cool.

Spotlight on the Blog Roll: Evernote and Guacamole Salad

I know it seems like I am a shill for Evernote.com but, if I may be a bit hyperbolic, I really can't imagine life without it now. As a maven, I really do think it is my duty to connect you to useful software when I find it and this my friends, is it. Definitely one of the most life changing things I've found on the internet in a long time. Uncrate describes it the best of anyone:

"Evernote lets you capture nearly anything you want — including text and voice memos, web pages, photos (with text recognition!), documents, and more — and then automagically processing and indexing it all, adding it to a personal database that can be searched and accessed from nearly anywhere, including from your iPhone, Android phone, or BlackBerry, as well as any Mac, PC, or other web-enabled device."

Got that? Think of Evernote as a set of giant file drawers up in the cloud that you can put just about anything you think you might want to get at later. You can organize your notes anyway you want into as many notebooks as you can dream up. Or not. Its pretty good at finding things anyway. Travel documents, tax receipts, recipes, articles to read, you get the idea. Explore their website to see the many different ways you can get things in and out of Evernote and you'll see why it is the only web clipping service you should consider. Factor in an iPhone or any other smartphone and you can see how dynamic the service can get. Suddenly just about anything you think you might want to refer to later is easily saved and reviewed. Best of all, it is all free until you become a "superuser" and even then, you will be grateful to fork over the tidy sum of $5/month to get unlimited use (and even more incredible abilities from the system.)

You with me? No? Perhaps the best way to explain what it is would be to just show you how I have used it recently. Several months ago I decided to put all my recipes into the system. Like everyone, my recipes came in several formats. Magazine articles, index cards, emails, computer printouts, word documents, pdf's, etc. Once all these files were uploaded as notes in Evernote they all became search-able immediately. They are now in the same notebook with the web clips of the blog recipes I intend to try someday. (Web clips take just the part of the web page you want to save - the recipe .

So what does this have to do with Guacamole Salad? A few weeks ago when I had decided to throw a party for our cat I created a notebook in Evernote to help me get organized. As I figured what I wanted to do I used the notebook to keep track of the parties various elements. The menu, recipes, my general plan and shopping list, flowers, etc. As I thought it through I just used the various notes in Evernote. I kept an excel sheet of my shopping list and 'to-do" items in there as well.


So click on the picture of the Evernote notebook from my party (or one of the pictures of Guacamole Salad) on this post and you will see a shared version of my party notebook and you can poke around into my party planning process a bit and see the PDF files of the recipes from that evening. I really needed to plan as the party took place one hour after quitting time! You will also see my notes to myself and a couple of the secrets that made that hectic deadline possible including my secret for a tasty ceviche in minutes! You will see that notebooks can be made up around any topic and can contain anything and everything. In addition to recipes and parties I have notebooks for tax receipts, travel plans and research, shopping items under consideration, equipment owners manuals and warranty receipts, and much more. Use it for one thing and I guarantee you will find more uses. Check out the Evernote blog for more information on how this very useful tool is used!


And if you still can't find the recipes in the notebook, leave me your email and I'll send them to you. This salad got lots of raves at the party!

Saturday Haiku: Omelet Followup

Huy cooked an omelet!

You have to break a few eggs...

Here are the results:

I think he did great!
Now its your turn to make one
Send me the photo.

(I will post them too!)

Getting My Bake On at the Library!

.. with Banana Coffee Cake Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Streusel Muffins!

Did you see her? She was here. One of my new blog idols, Mary the Food Librarian was here! I let her know I made her blood orange cardamom cake and she came over to take a look and left a lovely comment. [gush]Thanks Mary! [/gush] When I first discovered her online she was challenging herself to make 30 bundt cakes in 30 days. I knew she was someone to watch as she entitled her challenge "I Like Big Bundts: 30 Bundt Cakes in 30 Days." Of course, I started following her blog immediately. Now in my Google Reader there is something sweet and caloric waiting to inspire and tempt me nearly every day.

Given that I am nearly always trying to lose "these last 10 pounds" my obsession with becoming a better baker (and following Mary's blog ) is particularly odd I suppose. I get in this mood to bake but truthfully, I never actually eat the goodies. Well, sometimes just a taste but I usually just take them to work, leave them in the lunchroom and they are gone in just a few minutes as word spreads around the office.

Tonight all the stars were in line for baking. I got home and realized that tomorrow is "cleaning lady day" which is always a good time to mess up the kitchen. My dear husband was at a class and 3 ripe bananas were sitting on the counter. "Time to bake those muffins!" I'll have to wait until the reviews come in tomorrow morning to know how they turned out. I'm guessing I should have swirled the streusel a bit into the muffin instead of letting it rest on top as you would with a blueberry muffin. The sugar didn't get too "melty" or crispy and some of the chips still wanted to fall off the tops so I put them some parchment tulips so they wouldn't make a mess. I think it would have been fun to use a cooking torch on the sugar topping to melt it a bit too. Oh well. Too tired to do it now. I'm betting these paper tulips will help with the 'curb appeal' in the lunchroom as well. Next time (if there is one) I will put a bit of butter in the streuesel mixture or swirl it in. The recipe is here on Mary's blog. She didn't recall how long she baked the muffins but these ended up baking for 21 minutes which might have been a minute or two too much. Hopefully an eater will comment below the post to let us know.



I've set my blogger post to go off at 9AM when these will be debuted in the kitchen at work. Lets see how many of my workmates follow the blog and go running to try one!

Again, the recipe is here at The Food Librarian. The only modification I made was to use heavy cream instead of buttermilk. Nobody seemed to complain.

Added Note: True to form I did not eat one of these. I asked everyone to be brutally honest but everyone lied and said they were great. I was particularly interested in the dryness factor since I was unsure but everyone said they were moist. So 21 minutes it is.

Nu Yir with Blood Orange Cardamom Cake!

Here is our Haft-Sin this year. It is modest in comparison to most but, of course, it is the principle here that counts. (Think Charlie Brown Christmas tree!)


Had I thought of it years ago I would have focused my blog on the slow, often amusing introduction I had to Persian culture nearly 9 years ago. After all, I don't think my "universe" ever expanded in such a complete and foreign way as it did after falling in love with a Persian man. Most of the those first moments are now memories. Every now and then, however, something new and exciting happens. On Saturday, my mother-in-law handed me $20. The gesture meant more to me than any $20 ever did...

Its Norouz. Or Nowruz. Or Norooz. Or Nawroz. (When you convert alphabets you get a wide range of latitude in spelling!) Its the Persian New Year celebration based on the Zoroastrian calendar. The Zoroastrians used the astronomical vernal equinox to indicate when the year actually starts. Leave it to the Western world to mess up something so simple. Wouldn't you rather have your new year start on the day that everything changes and gets "reborn"? Regular readers of this blog could have probably guessed that celebrating anything "Persian style" isn't really so simple. The days prior to and after Norouz are very busy with various and sometimes complicated traditions.

The holiday is about rebirth and as such, everyone does an extensive spring cleaning. The kind of cleaning where you take just about everything out of the house and scrub down every corner before bringing it back in. This is actually a national event! There went the weekend. Depending on how many Persians you know you might be surprised to learn that purchasing a new set of clothes is integral to the celebration. It seems you must dress in them to kick off the 12 day celebration. (So all you Newport Beach ladies who thought St. John looked particularly picked over this month, now you know why.) In addition to new clothes the celebration involves everything from jumping over fire to visiting all of your family members, starting with the elders and handing out cash to kids. That is a gross oversimplification as tradition strictly outlines to ordering of all these visits, what you must serve to guests, etc. Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when my mother in law gave me $20 on Saturday when we went to visit! It was a very clear indication of her acceptance of me in her family. Wow. This was quite a milestone moment!

And the Cardamom Cake? I almost forgot. I needed a dessert and while I LOVE Persian food, I'm not really fond of traditional Persian desserts. Most of them are either sticky sweet and/or flavored with rosewater. I can't help but think of my grandmother's cosmetics cabinet whenever I taste rosewater. Another prevailing flavor used in Persian sweets and baked goods is cardamom so when I saw this recipe over at The Food Librarian I put it away in the 'to do' file in my Evernote. I don't usually make for company anything I haven't tried out but there wasn't much time for a trial run and I actually had the blood oranges. It turned out ok. It tasted fantastic but with a few tweaks such as layering the fruit flush with the bottom of the pan (duh!) it would have looked more like the Mary the Librarian's.

Other learnings? Yes. If possible you will want to make this cake just before serving as it is best warm with ice cream or a dollop of sweetened whipped cream (WITHOUT rosewater!) I made this about 6 hours before it was to be eaten and not only did it come to room temperature but the blood oranges oxidized a bit and darkened a bit. Nobody but me really seemed to notice (or care) as even the non dessert eaters polished off a piece or two of this. The original recipe uses navels so that seems like a good idea to try next. Blood oranges, however, gave it the "exotic" feel I was after this time around. And yes, I will get all the seeds out next time too. All in all, not bad for a beta test cake.


(Do be sure and check out The Food Librarian. The recipe is here. Probably one of the most prolific bakers I've encountered on the blogosphere. Mary couldn't possibly eat all the stuff she makes so her co-workers must be extremely lucky if she brings her goodies to work to share.)

Saturday Haiku: Its a (Persian) New Year!

Winter is over.
Makes sense to START a year now.
Norouz Mobarak!

Haft-Sin from last year at khaleh Dina Joon's house.


White House Haft-Sin. I don't think Obama put one up this year. Perhaps because he doesn't want to give ammo to those who want to brand him a Moslem. (Even though Norouz is a completely secular Persian tradition that predates Islam-- and the crazies think Hawaii is too foreign!)

The Omelet: A Tutorial

While we are on the subject of leftovers (and we were just yesterday), we should now consider the omelet. I've been considering it for a few days now ever since I made this tasty version a couple days ago. We still had a kitchen full of leftovers after our party but nothing special to eat so it was a green salad and this. Not bad! At work we have been talking about omelets as well. One of our IT guys, Huy, has been taking cooking classes and has been coming in early to try out his new creations on those "lucky" enough to get to work early. I learned about this after stumbling through the kitchen one morning, still have asleep, to find him making a dozen eggs in ham cups for his workmates around the firm. Quite a stark contrast to the oatmeal and cold cereal most people here make for their workplace breakfast! It seems that Huy has been bitten by the cooking bug and is taking classes -- his most recent being a brunch class. The resulting conversation had me once again considering the omelet...something it turns out Huy did not know how to make. So Huy, this one is for you!

As long as there are eggs in the house, leftovers have a home and you will have something to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner. As with quesadillas, there is no need for a recipe here -- the omelet is all technique. Start by breaking 2 or three eggs in a bowl and beating well. Add a splash of water or milk if that is to your liking. Some say it helps keep the eggs from getting too tough but you can accomplish this by just not overcooking the eggs. Put one TBS of butter in a good, non-stick omelet pan. Pan shoud be hot and the butter should be fully melted and slightly bubbling.

As the eggs cook, use a spatula or rubber scrapper to pull the edges of the egg into the center of the pan. While you do this, tilt the pan to fill the exposed pan area with uncooked egg in the pan. Do this uniformly around the pan.

Continue with this until your pan looks like the one below. Run your spatula around the edge and shake the pan a bit so that your egg 'disk' moves freely without sticking:

Give it a good strong flip so it lands back into the pan with the cooked side up! I know this sounds hard but you can practice this move in advance by putting a piece of toast in the pan and flipping it over in one motion. After doing this a few times you will have the confidence to try the real thing.

Let the 'disk' sit there for only a couple seconds before flipping it back. You don't want to cook this part too much as you want to keep the inside of your omelet light and tender.

This completes the cooking of the omelet shell. Now you just need to put in your filling and turn the omelet. Here I'm using (what else?) some leftover mushrooms, green chillies and cheese.

Use your spatula to fold the shell over the filling and plate immediately. The heat from the eggs will melt the cheese.

I garnished this one with some leftover avocado and some mango-papaya salsa from the party.


Wallah. OK Huy. Your turn!

(Update: Since I'm getting a few hits here from Tastespotting today I thought I would link to Huy's first omelet attempt which I featured along with some pointless haiku -- which is a weekly feature of this blog. Send me your omelet works of art and I will post them here as well.)

Tivo as Art

Every now and then I have to get my geek on with this blog as its not supposed to always be about food. So, if you happen to have a Series 2 or higher Tivo connected to your home network via a router you should try this trick. Go into your menu and set it to run a slide show off of one of your online Picasa albums. (You can also set it to run random Picasa images based on keywords you select such as"nature" or "modern art".) I will frequently take pictures of art I like and run the slide-show when company comes. My favorite art will get flashed across the screen every few minutes and the TV will never look better. For Valentines day I had the TV running pictures of hearts and antique valentines. Last week I set up an entire album with hundreds of pictures of our cat for her birthday party but forgot to run it. Oh well. Here she is relaxing and enjoying one of the latest shows.

Making Leftovers, Large Families, and The Quesadilla

I was going through some of the pictures I had in my camera just now and chuckled when I got to this picture. I made these last week but now it seems like so long ago. You see, we had two huge buffet feasts over the weekend...

When I roasted these chickens, things were still peaceful. Things were going according to plan and I was doing all my prep work for our birthday celebration. I was feeding 18 or so on Friday and quesadillas were on the menu and they had to be filled with something. While others I know rely on pasta for receiving their leftovers and assorted odd ingredients, it is the quesadilla in our house that typically gets this responsibility. This time around, however, I had to make the leftovers the night before.

These chicken breasts were to be cooled, skinned, boned, shredded, seasoned, mixed with onions, garlic, cheese, green chillies, red peppers and a few other things before being cooked on a grill pan and put out on a platter for a roomful of birthday party guests. I would encourage you not to look at it the recipe when I get around to putting it up. Quesdadillas, you see, should know no boundaries. At their very best, they are more "art" than "science". Get creative with whatever you have. No rules, just tortillas and whatever cheese you have on hand. Goat cheese? Fine. Perfect even. Mix it with leftover turkey, leeks, and some of that tomato about ready to go bad. Brie? Yum. Try this with a that piece of steak you brought home from the restaurant and some cilantro or mushrooms. Believe it or not, I have actually turned soup into a quesadilla! (It was lentil in case you are curious.)

We had a second, quite unplanned feast on Sunday. Our "quiet dinner" with my uncle-in-law and his wife quickly turned into a full-on feast requiring multiple menu items and extra chairs from the garage. I'm not from a large family so the "large family dynamic" always catches me off guard. It went down like this:

"Baby, my uncle and his wife are coming for dinner on Sunday."

"OK, great!" I said, "I'll think of something nice to make." I can do dinner for 4 without breaking a sweat (usually) and its a chance for me to try out a new dessert too.

A few hours later: "Baby, my aunt heard that Paul was coming for dinner and she has been wanting to see us so I invited her and Larry." Six people. Still, easy! I could go to the gym and pick up two extra pieces of salmon on the way home.

When I got home from the gym (and market) the note on the counter read: "Baby, my mother is coming too. I asked my brother and his family to bring her." 10 adults, 2 children!

The "quiet dinner" is now a distant memory and we were now way larger than my dining room table can accommodate so we have entered buffet territory. In a large family when you want to have a quiet dinner with a relative you do it in secret. Back to the store for more salmon. And some chicken too because the kids don't likes salmon. And more vegables. And I needed to make a larger salad too... Sigh.

So that is why despite making a ton of quesadillas this weekend the house is still loaded with leftovers. (How do salmon, roasted red pepper, and Gruyere quesadillas sound?)

Oh, and the roasted chicken? If you ever do find yourself without leftovers and need to make something up special for quesadillas then just get some chicken breasts on the bone and skin on. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast at 350 for 35 minutes. Let cool and do with it what you will. This chicken will be flavorful, moist and just great for whipping up into chicken salad, making sandwiches, etc.

I won't be making it for awhile. I have tons of leftovers to use already.

Saturday Haiku: Cupcakes

Beautiful cupcake
Portion controlled indulgence
Have two, they are small.

You're Having a What?

Tomorrow we are throwing a birthday party for our cat, Margarita. She is one year old tomorrow and its been 9 months since she joined our family. I do realize that by sharing these plans with you I risk sounding completely pathetic. You might get images of my Dear Husband and I going completely nuts fawning all over our cat in a sad sort of way when you contemplate our party plans. "How sad...these two old gay guys and their cat...." I wouldn't blame you but believe me, we think the imagery is funny too! That is exactly why we decided to not only do it but embrace it and go completely overboard! Balloons, cake, the works. (If I could afford it I would have rented a clown.) You can't laugh at us if we are the ones telling the joke. Well you can but we'll be laughing too.

Actually this is just an excuse to have some of our friends from work over for cocktails. They have been witnessing my transformation into a devoted cat person this past year so it is fitting to invite them to celebrate this milestone in our daughter's life. (See, I'm messin' with you just a bit too.)

We would like to be able to say we named her after the famous Russian novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita" but we can't. Naming her turned into the most difficult decision our married life and we couldn't seem to agree. The compromise was to name her after our favorite cocktail -- something we DID agree on. So guess what our party theme is? Easy, huh? Her guests will be enjoying south-of-the-border treats and, or course, Margaritas. I'll have more on the party later as I want to share with you my organization technique since the decision to have this party on a worknight had some ramifications. Maybe a recipe of two as well. Here's our girl playing with a mouse and a balloon:

Fame: From Croquembouche to Cupcakes?

I always get a giggle whenever someone tells me about their "famous [fill in name of food dish]". Recently while dining with acquaintances we were informed that we were about to be treated too our hostess's "famous meatloaf". She actually informed us that she "was famous for her meatloaf"! Now don't get me wrong, it was actually quite a delicious meatloaf but I had no idea our hostess had acquired a degree of notoriety for it. Quite honestly, I had never heard of her meatloaf before that evening. Perhaps I'm just not as au currant as I thought I was? (I read the New York Times daily. I even read People magazine and when nobody is looking I'll even pick up The Enquirer. Never heard of her meatloaf.) Just this past year, however, I have been treated to "famous lemon bars", "famous Asian salmon", and more recently, "famous artichoke dip". (Trust me, as delicious as it is, NOBODY'S artichoke dip is worthy of fame.)

Within my group of closest friends, each is somewhat associated with a particular dish and yet none claim real fame for it. If you say 'popovers' we would immediately think of John who will make these (and strawberry butter!) for any gathering we might have. Michael makes an amazing carrot soup. (His other specialty is egg whites believe it or not!) Gary can whip up a pork tenderloin dinner with all the sides to perfection in just minutes. (I have made his recipe so many times that I call it "mine" when he is not around.) Lastly, Steve can turn any leftover chicken into a chicken salad so good you would be surprised that chicken salad can get even get that tasty. And yet, as good as it is, it certainly hasn't made Steve famous yet -- though it probably should.

My friends would probably have a hard time associating me with any one particular dish. Maybe if you pressed them they might laugh and say "croquembouche" -- even though I haven't actually made one since 1996. I was young and too foolish to know that some recipes should only be admired --not attempted. I had just caught my first glimpse of a younger, slimmer Martha Stewart in a set of VHS videos that belonged to my mother. She stepped her viewers through the very complicated recipe -- assuring us along the way how easy it was at each step. When I saw Martha spinning the sugar and wrapping it around the festive assembly of puff pastries I was hooke and determined to make it for my next holiday party. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty darn nice even thought it took several batches of cream puffs to get enough good ones to complete. One of my guests was so enthralled by the whole thing that he started eating it piece by piece, one puff at a time, turning my creating into a culinary game of Jenga. Before I could do a formal presentation to my guests most of its structural support had been eaten away. When I went to check on it and get it ready I found 25% of it missing! Traumatized, I have not made another one since. The stuff of legend.

Martha has since simplified her recipe-- and I now see is has become "famous" as well. I wonder if I had anything to do with that?

Which brings us to chocolate cupcakes. Specifically, my "famous chocolate cupcakes".

I'm not famous for them at all though they are one of those recipes that I wouldn't mind being famous for or at the very least associated with. They do have quite a few fans at the office when I make a batch to bring in and they always seem to disappear at dinner gatherings -- even when I've invited the 'no dessert for me" crowd. Despite the surprising inclusion of Hershey's syrup in the ingredient list they are not children's cupcakes and before you blanch at the thought of using Hershey's in your baking I will tell you that I think the distinctive flavor actually works quite well here as it delivers a certain note that your guests won't quite get a handle on.

The recipe is adapted from Ina's to make them less sweet and a bit deeper and darker in cocoa flavor. I also add some baking powder to get just a tad more lift. She makes them plain but I always decorate a few with toasted walnuts or slivered almonds.




Ingredients: nocoupons

• 1/4 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 11 fluid ounces Hershey's chocolate syrup (1 can)
  
• 1 TBS baking powder
• 1 TBS cocoa powder
  
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• Toasted slivered almonds
  
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee granules

Ganache:

nocoupons

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in the chocolate syrup and vanilla. Add the flour and coffee granules and mix until just combined. Don't overbeat, or the cupcakes will be tough.

Scoop the batter into the muffin cups and bake for 30 minutes, or until just set in the middle. Don't overbake! Let cool thoroughly in the muffin pan.

For the ganache, cook the heavy cream, chocolate chips, and instant coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally.

Dip the tops of the cupcakes into the ganache. Do not refrigerate.

Saturday Haiku: Enuii

Cold, damp, blah morning.
Time for it to get warmer?
Not feelin' the haiku.

Hotel Room Wisdom

Love this. There it was, right up on the wall of my hotel room at the W Hotel. Quite profound really. After having given it some thought (there isn't much to do right now) I realize that we can create ourselves in many ways, not just by choosing what to wear and what to do with our hair. We create ourselves by exploring new music, meeting new people, traveling, trying new things (like blogging!) But even more importantly, we can create and define ourselves by choosing our own attitudes and deciding how to feel about the things that are happening around us or to us. Its not always easy, but we can do it.

Think about it.

What do you do to create yourself?