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A great cheesecake

Published on April 14, 2008 in recipe. 1 Comment

When I’m asked to bring a dish to a party, I usually suggest a cheesecake. This dessert feeds a lot of people with very little effort and no chance of failure. Since it doesn’t rise, it can’t fall. As my Dad used to say, it’s big enough to bother about, and once you add the fruit topping it’s almost like a health food, if you’re feeling fondly towards cream cheese and eggs.

Here we have the Leaning Tower of Cheesecake. This is a cake that needs to be shopped for, since it uses up 5 packs of cream cheese and most of a box of eggs in a fell swoop. The box of graham cracker crumbs makes three cheesecake bottoms, and the recipe also calls for flour and sugar, but they don’t fit in the picture. As for the lemon, vanilla, butter and heavy cream, well, it’s possible that these might already be at home.

Making cheesecake requires a commitment not only because of the box of graham crackers (and the implicit promise that you’ll make a second and third crust), it also needs a cheesecake pan. I prefer two.

This makes a little one for the house or Miss Roberta down the road, and a big one for the party.

The first step is the graham cracker crust, and the recipe is on the back of the box. It takes the oven at 350F, and

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
5 TBSP butter, melted

You dump it all in a medium bowl

and mix it up with a fork, and then you line the bottom of both cheesecake pans.

Just use your fingertips to press it into a sheet on the bottom of the pans, and as far up the sides as it goes. In this case, not very far, because the little pan uses most of the excess. When the oven is heated, put it in for 6-8 minutes, or until it’s browned. And when you take it out, turn up the oven to 475F.

Meanwhile, that cream cheese wants to be whipped.

5 packages of cream cheese (8 oz. each) AT ROOM TEMPERATURE
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 TBSP flour
1/4 tsp salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

This project is easy if the creamcheese is at room temperature, and not-so-easy if it’s not.

In a big bowl, beat the cream cheese with the vanilla and lemon rind.

With room temperature cream cheese, this makes a smooth paste. Then you beat in the sugar, and the flour and salt. One by one, beat in the eggs,

and then add the egg yolks. Beat in the cream.

If you started with room temparture cream cheese, the batter is smooth and creamy at this point. Fill the pans and check to make sure the oven is at 475F. When it is, pop in the cheesecake(s) and bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until the top edge is golden. Turn down the temperature to 200F, and let it cook an hour or longer, until the cheesecake is set. Then turn off the oven and crack the door, and leave the cheesecake there overnight to cool slowly slowly on the rack. This prevents cracks.

You cut the sidewalls and put the cake on a plate, and then the final step (when the cheesecake is cool) is a fruit topping, depending on what kind of fruit you might have in your freezer. It only takes about ten minutes, so it’s hardly worth it’s own tower of ingredients, but here goes

Any kind of berry will do–I’m using raspberries from last summer–and we also need sugar, lemon and cornstarch.

Put a few cups of frozen berries in a non-metal pan along with a scant 1/4 cup sugar, the juice of a lemon, and a few tsps cornstarch. I stick it on high heat and stir it until it boils and the cornstarch-y liquid has gone from chalky to clear, and then pour it on top of the cheesecake.

And that’s it: a big, tasty, professional looking dessert that doesn’t have a trick.

White Sauce with Prosciutto for pasta

Published on April 6, 2008 in recipe. 1 Comment

One of Sam’s favorite dishes is pasta with white sauce. This white-on-white meal is classic comfort food. It’s like macaroni and cheese without the baking, and it’s made out of stuff that I’m likely to have in the kitchen.

Here’s the tower of ingredients: flour, butter and Parmesan cheese (or Romano or Asiago), heavy cream, milk and some kind of vinegar. It’s the dash of vinegar that balances the fats and makes it complex and delicious. Use a white wine vinegar if you want a lighter note, or balsamic vinegar for a bolder tone. I forgot to put the prosciutto in the picture, and by the time I realized it the Parmesan was gone.

First you take a chunk of butter: I measured it especially for you and found I liked starting with 3 TBS butter.

On low heat, you melt the butter and wisk in an equal amount of flour–3 TBS.

Wisk it until it is nice and smooth, and then wisk it as it thickens.

Wisk in 1/2 cup heavy cream, and it’ll keep on thickening.

Wisk in about 1/2 a cup of milk, until it’s the exact white sauce consistency that will thickly coat the noodles.

Grate a pile of cheese, and stir a handful into the white sauce; keep wisking until it’s completely melted. You could add the vinegar and call it done at this point, after you salted and peppered it. But we’re going one step further because it’s a payback for shovelling mulch.

The prosciutto has to be fried until the fat is clear, and the meat is slightly browned. Sam thinks this is a crucial step.

Then you wisk it into the white sauce, and add a dollop of vinegar–somewhere more than a tsp and less than a TBS. This works some alchemy with the fats to make the sauce taste cleaner and brighter. Sam is a big fan of vinegar.

And that’s it, except for salt and pepper. (And maybe thyme, it you’re so inclined.)

If you put it on spinach pasta, you won’t have a white-on-white meal. But even if the colors aren’t inspiring, it’s a nice dinner.

Deer Repellent

Published on April 3, 2008 in deer herd, gardening and recipe. 2 Comments

I tie on bars of Irish Spring soap to deter deer, while Bob uses a less subtle approach: he sprays the foliage with a product called “Liquid Fence”, layering the chemical soap scent with the odors of rotten eggs and garlic.

The price tag on this gallon jug reads “$124.99″. He must have bought it when he bought trees, because that’s the only way he could have justified the cost. Our deer herd could take down a young tree overnight, and this is the only deer repellent I’ve seen with a money-back guarantee (and it’s organic). This is the second year he has been using this single gallon, and it’s still 2/3 full. Liquid Fence’s motto is “It Really Works“, and it does… so when you think of it as a garden-saver, the $40 of Liquid Fence Bob sprayed on the foliage last year was a bargain.

Meanwhile, two longtime gardeners I know swear by their old-time homemade deer repellent:

Beat together 2 eggs, a cup of milk, and a few cloves of pressed garlic. Add a dollop of cooking oil and good squirt of dish soap, shake it well, and put it in a tightly capped jar for a few days of sun. When it is ripe, add it to a gallon of water; spray liberally on any foliage you want deer to avoid. (Vary by adding a tablespoon of cayenne.)

When I read the fine print, it turned out that the ingredient list for Liquid Fence is putrescent egg solids, garlic, sodium laureth sulfate (soap) and potassium sorbate, a preservative. So Bob paid $125 for a jug of rotten eggs, garlic and soap, the exact same deer repellent that our friends make in mayonnaise jars. Woops!

It makes me think that while the people at Liquid Fence use the motto “It Really Works” on their label, they might have a different motto in-house. I’m guessing it’s something like “I can’t believe that people will pay such inflated prices for rotten eggs and garlic.” Of course, now that I have the recipe we’ll never ante up for Liquid Fence again. And now you have the recipe, too.

Excellent recipe.

Hot Apricot Jam

Published on March 21, 2008 in recipe. 5 Comments

When I found bags and bags of apricots at the bottom of the deep freeze, I got that spring-cleaning feeling that it was time to take care of them. So I did.

Sadly, the apricot raspberry jam is a bust. It’s a beautiful color and has enough seeds that you think it might be raspberry, and when it turns out to be apricot it’s a big let-down. But this apricot-jalapeno jam is killer. It’s out-of-this-world. It’s such a great invention that I thought I must be exaggerating and took some over to the bakery this morning, and they all agreed: this stuff is darned good.

I learned to make jam from my friend Theresa who made jam her whole life, and died two and a half years ago. She had very definite jam rules—there’s-a-right-way-and-a-wrong-way kind of rules—that I can share with you. Here is my tower of ingredients:

I forgot to include a garlic bulb in the group picture, and now it’s too late; other critical ingredients include a bag of sugar, some lemons and jalapenos, and some bags of frozen apricots. I’m sure you can use any kind of liquid pectin, but I always use Certo. And I usually get new flat tops for my jars, and reuse the ring of the two-piece lid. (This is one of Theresa’s rules).

The first step is to sterilize the jars (which I do in the dishwasher) and to clear a counter so you can spread out.

Locate some clean kitchen rags, pull out your lobster pot, an enamel pot for cooking the fruit, and a food processor.

This is where another of Theresa’s rules must be taken into account: no matter how much fruit you have, you may never never EVER double the recipe.

The instructions for jam is in the enclosure from the Certo package; their apricot jam recipe calls for 3 1/2 cups of fruit, 1/3 cup lemon juice, 5 3/4 cups sugar and a packet of Certo. In those 3 1/2 cups of apricots I included 2 jalapenos and one clove of garlic,

split, seeded

and cut into pieces.

And that’s all the chopping that’s called for

because the food processor chips up the frozen apricots into perfect jam-sized chunks. Do you notice that this whole series of photos has my shadow in it? How gauche.

Here’s another of Theresa’s rules: although the ingredients for jam are large quantities, they must be precisely measured. If you do not use these exact amounts your jam will not set and you will have wasted your supplies. (Theresa called sugar and Certo ”supplies”.)

You carefully measure all of the ingredients and dump them into the pan. Put the flame on high, and start stirring.

Keep stirring and soon it looks like this

and then you stir stir stir until it comes to a full rolling boil. Really a full boil. At that point you dump in the Certo all at once

and stir through a full rolling boil for 60 seconds exactly. (Theresa’s Rule: count one potato, two potato, three potato….) And then it’s off with the heat, ladle jam into each jar to within 1/8″ of the top, and slap on the flat lids.

This is the step I don’t like, wiping the threads clean before you screw on the lids. The jars are hot, and you need a wet rag to wipe with and a dry rag to hold with. Toss all six jars into the lobster pot to boil for 10 minutes, and think about starting another batch.

I have broken all of Theresa’s jam rules over the years, and she was always right. Jam is supposed to be tricky, but if you follow her rules you can’t go wrong… and she would have thought this combination of apricots, jalapenos and garlic was the bee’s knees.

From croutons to chicken Caesar salad

Published on March 5, 2008 in recipe. 4 Comments

I recently started making croutons. It’s a great way to use a half loaf of day-old bread, they’re much tastier than supermarket croutons, and you get to skip those unfortunate half-boxes of stale bread products. Saving money, simplifying the pantry, using up stale bread… it’s all good. But not so fast: it takes a looong time for croutons to toast, about as long as it takes to clean up the kitchen. By the time the croutons are evenly toasted you feel like you’ve cooked and you have a clean kitchen, but there isn’t actually much for dinner. Which is why I’ve been making chicken Caesar salad regularly/ pasta is optional.

This is a half loaf of day-old bread begging to be made into croutons.

Take a big pan and put in a dollop of olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic, pressed. Go low on the heat.

When the garlic is almost done, pour the olive oil in the pan into a cup. Instead of ”Leave the gun; Take the canolli”, we get ”Leave the garlic; Pour off the oil”. This is the critical step that is missing from cookbooks. If you don’t pour off the olive oil you end up with greasy croutons, which are not tasty. If you pour off all of the oil, it turns out that oil retained in the garlic is enough for the batch of croutons.

Cut a short half a loaf of bread into cubes, toss it thoroughly with the garlic bits and some herbs, and leave it on low. There should be a single layer of bread cubes in the pan.

Now you get to empty the sink, do the pots, and wipe the counter with an occasional toss of the croutons. Don’t you feel blessed? Plus you still have to make something for dinner, since croutons barely count. At a minimum for the salad you need romaine and either Parmesan, Asiago or Romano. Since I’m feeding teenaged boys, I’m adding chicken breasts; if it was just Bob and me I’d use hard-boiled eggs instead.

Pull out a salad bowl, and tear up romaine. By the time the kitchen is clean and the salad bowl is ready, the croutons are done too. Take the whole frying pan of croutons and garlic bits, and dump them over the lettuce.

Dice the chicken breasts and cook them in the frypan you cooked the croutons in. The heat can be turned up to medium, and it’s time to make the dressing.

Take the cup with the oil you poured off the pan, and add the following:

Start with half a lemon, one clove of garlic pressed, a dash of worcestershire instead of anchovies (unless you happen to have some anchovy paste), a smear of dijon mustard, and add some more olive oil–classic caesar salad dressing so far, and then instead of raw egg yolk do a cheat with a little Hellman’s mayo as a binder. Taste it–a little salt?

Grate the cheese, and the chicken will be done. Toss the chicken on top of the croutons, toss the cheese on top of that and mix in the dressing. Grind lots of pepper on top. It’s a pretty salad, don’t you think?

Ginger Juice

Published on March 3, 2008 in recipe. 1 Comment

Last year I had Bob’s Christmas present stashed in my office by early December, and was so pleased that I told a few friends. Everyone said the same thing. “Ginger juice? Four bottles of ginger juice? I think you better get him something else.” The response was unanimous. Just in case everyone was right and I was wrong, I got him a nice scarf as back-up, and lucky thing because he wasn’t very excited about the ginger juice.

Two months later, and I’m still thrilled by it. This stuff has big flavor with almost no calories, and it works on sweet or savory. Yogurt, ginger juice and agave nectar is a sensational combination. A splash of ginger juice makes lemonade or limeade into a grown-up treat. Hot lemon, honey and ginger juice tea will cure you of things you didn’t know were ailing you. Ginger juice brings together the flavors of oil and vinegar in salad dressings, and ginger marinade is a bona fide tenderizer. Finally, the heat from ginger juice makes your belly feel full, a useful sensation as spring rolls around. It’s made by The Ginger People.

In retrospect, I must have been out of my mind to think that my husband might be secretly yearning for a cooking ingredient. I’m sure there’s a lesson here about selfishness, and choosing presents for other people based on what you want yourself. I’ll take the gentler interpretation: when friends tell you a present isn’t sufficient, believe them even if they’re wrong. Because honestly, this ginger juice is a revelation.

The Lost Art of making Hot Chocolate

Published on January 16, 2008 in recipe. 0 Comments

When people talk about hot chocolate, they are often referring to envelopes of powder that they mix with milk or water. THAT IS NOT HOT CHOCOLATE. That is something that was sold to you under false pretenses.

I did a little research and found that real hot chocolate, as taught to me by a Vermont grandmother, is a lost recipe. This hot chocolate is so good that if you have a child in elementary school, you’ll get a reputation. Your child’s friend’s siblings will have heard about it. Whole grades of young kids will be aware that you make the best hot chocolate in town. This is absolute truth.

Don’t let the ingredients scare you.

There is milk, of course, and sugar, cocoa (which has recently been recast as a health food) and then my trusty carton of heavy whipping cream, the key ingredient. Since your brain is 60% fat, you might think of the cream as brain food. In hot chocolate, it is indispensable: it makes small children moan. In the winter, this hot chocolate can be a staple snack for kids when they come in from playing. When teenagers come back from skiing, hot chocolate rules. If you need to gain 10 pounds, have it daily. Otherwise, it’s worth skipping lunch for, because this is the hot chocolate your grandmother warned you about.

In a small saucepan, make a pile of cocoa, and half that of sugar. Don’t be stingy, maybe 4 TBS cocoa and 2 TBS sugar.

Add about as much heavy cream as dry ingredents, and wisk them together. This is your chance to get out all the lumps, so make it into a nice smooth sauce. Taste it and maybe add more sugar. Or not.

Put the heat on high, wisk in the milk, and keep it sort of moving until it’s warm.

And you’re done. The thing about this snack is that you get maximum credit for minimum effort. One sip, and you understand what the whole hot chocolate thing is all about. And it couldn’t have more calories than french fries… could it?

Honey mustard chicken

Published on January 9, 2008 in Snow storm and recipe. 0 Comments

Still snowing, and I’m not the only one ready for a change in the weather. Bob pointed out this doe sleeping under a big ponderosa pine in the early dawn.

One of the best things to do when it won’t stop snowing is to cook. I like to cook a lot. When I was making honey mustard chicken last night, Bob said that in his opinion, that recipe was a whole lot more interesting than a steady diet of animal photos in the snow. So I pulled out my trusty camera and did a photo essay of dinner. Here goes:

Honey mustard works with pork or chicken, but my current favorite is chicken thighs so that’s what I’m using. In addition, a few staples.

You can use up your oldest back-of-the-shelf crystallized honey for this dish, since it cooks a long time. I use either Dijon or stone ground mustard, depending. Some people may not think heavy cream is a staple, but I’m from Vermont.

Start with a cast iron pan and a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, run the chicken under water and strip off the fat.

The chicken thighs go skin down, and should nestle together so each one is cozy but not crowded.

Then wash your hands, and use your fingers to smear a thick layer of mustard on the flesh. Wash again.

Over medium heat, cook these thighs until the skin is brown, flip ‘em, and wait until they’re fully browned on the other side too. You can’t rush this step because the recipe doesn’t work unless you have a crusty pan, and it’s not very good when it’s scorched.

Once both sides are browned and the pan has a brown crust on it, take out the meat, turn down the heat to low, and pour in 1/2 an inch of heavy cream.

Use your spatula to scrape down that pan until it’s clean. When all of the crusty brown bits are mixed in with the heavy cream, and the fat from the chicken has mixed smoothly with the cream, and it’s thick and reduced, dump the whole bowl of chicken and juices back into the pan.

Add chicken broth until it almost covers the thighs, maybe an inch or so in the pan.

Turn up the heat to medium, and stir it all up. Add a big spoonful of honey.

No, not that much honey! Less than this… I got carried away posing the spoon. You shouldn’t have that problem.

Mix it all up, add salt, and let it cook down over medium low until the thighs are falling apart in a thick mahogany glaze.

You’ll say, Dadgumit, that is a mighty fine way to cook chicken.

Served over rice, with salad, this makes a serious winter meal.

And this is, after all, a serious winter.

Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'recipe' Category

A great cheesecake

White Sauce with Prosciutto for pasta

Deer Repellent

Hot Apricot Jam

From croutons to chicken Caesar salad

Ginger Juice

The Lost Art of making Hot Chocolate

Honey mustard chicken

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