Author: christine

I knew we’d need something comforting to chew on while watching Sen. Obama and the Old Man “debate” their povs. As the weather was drizzly and chill, the only logical solution was pot roast. The genesis of this recipe comes from Craig Claiborne, late food editor of the NY Times. Note that you need to start it the night before to get the most from the mingled flavors of wine, herbs, and vegetables.

Pot Roast with Red Wine Sauce

*For the marinade:

4-6 lb. beef roast (I used chuck, because it was on sale at Whole Foods)

1/2 c. red wine vinegar

1 1/2 c. chopped onion

1 1/2 c. chopped carrot

1 c. chopped celery

4 garlic cloves, crushed

3 parsley sprigs

1 rosemary sprig

1 sage or thyme sprig (or both)

1 t. each mustard seeds and coriander seeds

sea salt & freshly ground pepper

4-5 c. dry red wine

Put the beef in a glass mixing bowl. Combine all other ingredients (except the wine) in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Pour over the beef. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, pour in enough wine to completely cover the beef. Seal tightly and refrigerate overnight.

*For the finished dish:

2 T. olive oil

3/4 c. chopped onion

3/4 c. chopped carrot

1/2 c. chopped celery

1/2 c. flour

2 c. beef broth

When ready to cook, remove beef from the marinade and pat dry. Strain the wine mixture, reserving at least 3 cups of liquid. Discard the veg and herbs. Turn the oven to 400F.

In a heavy Dutch oven with lid, heat oil and add the beef, browning on all sides. Transfer beef to a plate. Add onion, carrot, and celery to the pot, stirring and scraping up the browned bits. When onion has wilted, sprinkle in the flour and stir well. Pour in the marinade liquid and beef broth, stir until thickened. Add the beef, cover the pot, and put in the oven. Bake until the meat is very tender, 2-3 hours. If the sauce needs thickening, remove the beef and heat the sauce on the stovetop, stirring until it reaches desired consistency.

To go with, I roasted potatoes, turnips, and mushrooms in the oven with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary. Their browned crispiness was a nice counterbalance to the falling-apart beef and soft, sweet carrots. Absolutely delicious! Made the presidential debate go down a little easier. Or maybe that was the wine? The wine is why there’s no picture of the finished dish, sorry readers. Tom Brokaw can come for dinner any time he likes.

Once again, I felt compelled to join the effort of some 500 bakers and send cookies to a soldier in Iraq (at least that’s where I imagine he is stationed). This time the good Marines of the 10th Mountain Division will be receiving molasses cookies and oatmeal toffee cookies. If anyone’s interested in doing a good deed, check out the Baking GALS site.

My standard brownie recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Thin, fudgy and not too sweet, it provides the perfect hit of chocolatey goodness I tend to crave every afternoon.

So I was excited to see a variation on her blog that incorporates fresh raspberries. It’s absolutely delicious: the raspberries dry a bit in the baking and become more intense, which pairs perfectly with the bittersweet chocolate.

I usually cut her recipe in half and bake the batter in a tart pan with a removable bottom (place the pan on a cookie sheet to protect your oven). Cut into slim wedges and served with a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream, it’s an elegant dinner party dessert. Go ahead: use the pretty dessert plates. Makes 8-12 servings, depending on how much your guests ate for dinner.

Dorie Greenspan’s Bittersweet Brownies with Raspberries

1 stick unsalted butter

5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

3/4 c. sugar

2 eggs

1/2 t. pure vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1/2 c. flour

1 pint raspberries

Preheat oven to 325F. Butter and flour a tart pan or make it easier on yourself and use Baker’s Joy. Place the tart pan on a cookie sheet.

Put the butter and chocolate into a large heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted. Remove bowl from heat. Whisk in the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, then vanilla. Stir until you have a smooth batter. Add flour and salt and mix just until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Scrape the batter into the pan, and smooth the top, scatter the raspberries over the batter.

Bake the brownies until the top is dull and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, 30-40 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool the brownies to room temperature. When ready to serve, remove the tart pan sides and cut into wedges with a large knife.

I have a love/hate with pancakes, Johnny cakes, flapjacks, griddle cakes, call them what you will. Love: sweet for breakfast, maple syrup paired with bacon, crisp dry brown edges. Hate: too-sweet for breakfast, flabby middles, the ill feeling that comes after eating just one. I’m always tempted to order them when the Husband and I go out for breakfast, but have been let down too many times to fall for their maple-drenched sweet song. So I make them at home, but rarely. Pancakes are a pain in that unless one has a giant griddle, only one serving can be delivered at a time. Which means the Husband is eating a plate of hot cakes and reading the Sunday paper while I’m standing at the stove. This paints a picture of Rockwellian domesticity I never, ever thought could be my life. So I really have to want them to make the damn things. Which I did last Sunday morning.

This recipe comes from the venerable Joy of Cooking, specifically the 1975 Rombauer/Becker edition (55th printing). I look something up in this book at least once a day, and it shows: falling apart, pages stuck together, spattered, homely. But it knows it’s the queen of the kitchen bookcase, and I know it makes the reviled 1997 version feel like the unloved bastard stepchild it is, languishing unopened on the bottom shelf.

I added a cup of fresh sweet corn, cut from the cob, to the batter. The sauce consists of maple syrup and frozen summer blueberries, warmed up in a pot. Bacon on the side is a must (there was none left at picture time). Once you get your pan to the right temperature, you are guaranteed a crispy, corny, delicious cake.

Crisp Corn Flapjacks

Mix together in a bowl:

1-1/3 c. cornmeal (not too coarsely ground!)

1/4 c. flour

1-1/4 t. salt

1/2 t. baking soda

Cut in with a pastry blender or fork:

1/4 c. unsalted butter

In a big measuring cup, combine:

2 c. buttermilk

2 eggs

1 c. fresh corn from the cob

Blend the liquid ingredients into the dry using a few swift strokes until just combined. Spoon onto a hot buttered cast iron skillet..I prefer smaller cakes because they’re easier to flip. You may need to rebeat the batter a couple of times.

…but stay tuned for next summer. Sigh. No more home-grown tomatoes. I was watching a friends’ place while they were out of town, collecting mail and watering the garden. And picking the last of their cherry tomatoes. Sweet basil, too. The flower pot (an excellent conveyance for small produce) was decorated by their kid.

I had a basket of figs. I wanted melted cheese. So for dinner last night: a sweet and savory pizza, plus a salad.

Using my mixer with the dough hook, I cranked out a batch of pizza dough. Go for the rapid-rise yeast, it’s fantastic for the procrastinating baker….although I don’t recommend it for breads or rolls. [A pizza dough recipe that’s become a standby is from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, but any one that calls for olive oil should work fine.]

Covered the bowl with a clean towel…and then walked down the street to the grocery for fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, and salad greens. Ran into my old kitchen buddies on the way, who speak only Polish but somehow always manage to express both their love for me and their disappointment that I’m not pregnant.

When I got home with the goods, the figs were delivered to a bath of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and chopped basil. Cranked the oven to 450F. Rolled out half of the dough, which had ballooned during my short excursion. [The other half went into the freezer.] Brushed the crust with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, put into oven. [Use a pizza stone if you have one, and get it plenty hot beforehand. Or put a heavy baking sheet in the oven to hotten up. Which ever you use, sprinkle the surface with a little cornmeal…makes for a crisp crust bottom.] After the crust puffed a bit, I sprinkled on a handful of grated asiago to prevent the ingredients from sogging things up. When the crust had just begun to show signs of browning, it was time lay on the fresh mozzarella and the macerated figs. [I used the soaking liquid as the basis for our salad’s vinaigrette.]

After about 10 minutes of baking, the broiler took care of browning the bubbly cheese. A sprinkling of chopped parsley, a scattering of prosciutto, and we had a dyn-o-mite pizza to munch on while the Cubs lost to the Brewers.

From childhood I’ve loved cornbread, begging my mom to buy the Jiffy mixes that were 4 for a dollar at the A&P a few blocks away. So moist, so corny. The Husband shares my love for the corn, which we enjoy as a great accompaniment to stews, cheese-filled omelets, and anything pork. Our local bakery produces an interesting variation with a whole hard-boiled egg inside. Delicious! Riding that fine line between sweet and savory, cornbread satisfies like no other member of the “quick” bread family.

Fortunately, I’ve grown out of baking from a box. The other night I made a batch using the hot skillet method and a recipe from my dinner hero, Mark Bittman. Of course I modified things just a bit, mostly to allow for what I did (and didn’t) have on hand. This is a perfect late-summer dish because it calls for corn cut straight from the cob. Be sure to use stone-ground cornmeal; my current fave is Bob’s Red Mill. Don’t even bother with the Aunt Jemima kind in the cardboard container…it’s got none of the tasty, nutritious germ from the corn left in it.

Brown Butter Cornbread with Cheese & Thyme

– Preheat the oven to 375F. Put a stick of butter in a cast iron skillet (at least a 9-inch) and place in the oven.

– In a large bowl, mix together 1 cup each of flour and stone-ground white or yellow cornmeal, 1 T. baking powder, 1 t. salt, and 3 T. sugar.

– Pour 1 1/4 c. buttermilk into a 2-cup measuring cup. Add 1 egg and mix together. Check the butter in the oven: when it’s brown, pour 1/4 cup into the measuring cup and mix together. Leave the rest of the butter in the pan.

– Add the buttermilk mixture to the dry, mix until just combined. Fold in 3/4 c. kernels from a cob or two of sweet corn, 1 T. chopped fresh thyme leaves, and 4 oz. of crumbly cheese….farmer, goat, fresh ricotta all work well.

– Spread the batter in the pan and bake for 30 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.

The Husband and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on Sunday with Champagne, cheese, and little gifts. If you’re paying attention, we went to dinner a few weeks ago under the “anniversary” heading but we have two anniversaries and dammit, we celebrate both….it’s complicated.

Anyway, back to the gifts:

Every neighborhood should have a chocolate shop. If you’re lucky, you have Coco Rouge.

I love this place. Owned by an insanely talented couple who crank out some serious chocolate love, they’ve been making confections for years. Sipping a cup of thick, highly flavored hot chocolate in their elegant-met-groovy-on-a-corner-in-Berlin store is my absolute favorite guilty pleasure.

The wonderful Husband knows of my affection and presented me with a box of dark chocolate truffles from the Evolved collection: leatherwood (fruity honey with sea salt), miel a la lavande (lavender honey), Turkish coffee (espresso, pistachio, cardamom), and the deeply delicious cassius (single malt scotch).

I’m trying so hard to share. So…very….hard.

Oh dear. I stayed up too late on Saturday night to make it to my neighborhood farmer’s market on Sunday morning. So I made my very first trip to the Green City Market in Lincoln Park today (Wednesday). Reader, I am in trouble. It’s a much bigger market than my lil neighborhoodie one. People sit around on chairs, chatting and drinking what appeared to be free coffee. A couple of vendors sell cheese. There are lots and lots of pastries: both Bennison’s and Bleeding Heart were in the house. A chef was making crepes. The hot guys from Nichols Farms were there. And there’s a nice man from Mint Creek Farm selling lamb chops…and he takes Visa. So much for my $10 limit.

I came home with ears of sweet corn, a big bunch of basil, yellow heirloom tomatoes, the lamb chops, baby arugula, and some crazy looking baby eggplants. And I’m not telling how much I spent.

Plum Kuchen

*You can make this traditional German coffee cake in under an hour, which includes baking time. Slip out of bed before everyone else does and let the baking aroma wake up the family. Great with a cup of coffee. Also good with bacon.

For the cake:

1 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. kosher salt
6 T. unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2/3 c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. almond extract
1/2 c. sour cream or Greek-style yogurt

For on top:

5-6 large plums, pitted and cut into wedges

1/4 t. cinnamon

3 T. raw sugar

2 t. melted butter

Heat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour your baking pan (I usually use 2 6-inch springforms so we can give one of the cakes to a friend, but you can use a 9×13 pan, 2 loaf pans, etc.)

Combine flour, baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and salt into small bowl. Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs and extracts. Alternate adding flour mix and sour cream (or yogurt) until just combined. Spread batter in pan, smoothing the top.

Arrange plum wedges on the batter. Take an extra minute and make it look pretty. Sprinkle cinnamon-n-sugar over plums. Drizzle the melted butter on top.

Bake about 40 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Let cool to just barely warm before removing from the pan. Or leave it in the pan and just cut pieces for the hungry family to have with their morning coffee. Covered with foil, the kuchen can sit on your counter for a day or two. Serves 4-8, I guess.