Health in a bowl

In my forays around the food blogosphere, I came across a reference to walnut sage pesto. And was immediately captivated. We have a nice little patch of sage growing outside the front door, and I don't cook with it nearly as much as our other herbs. But my husband and I love sage, so I excitedly searched for recipes.

One of the first things I learned was that most walnut sage pesto recipes have a lot of parsley because sage is a very strong flavor. Anyway, I bookmarked a few recipes, then I came across this recipe for Sweet Potato and White Bean Soup with Sage Walnut Pesto from Cooking Light and I was smitten. The picture is gorgeous. Of course. (I was planning to serve my soup in a wonderful artsy bowl, but in the end I grabbed bowls that were the right size. I only remembered about photographing after we sat down to eat. Blogging about dinner is kinda tough that way. So there's my soup, above, in an Easter bowl from The Bay! My husband's bowl had little chicks around the border...)

With this recipe in mind, I ordered sweet potatoes as part of my box of vegetables. I had to go to two stores to get leeks and cannellini beans and chard. The whole time, I was irrationally excited about making this soup. Finally it was all assembled.


So, just a little chopping and processing and the pesto was done.


The soup came together quickly. The most time consuming thing was making sure the leeks and the chard were well washed. Saute the leeks, throw a few things in, and it's done!


Here are a few notes of how I made the recipe:
- I used olive oil for cooking the leeks.
- I used homemade chicken stock from the freezer
- I forgot to add the lemon juice to the soup, although I had it all squeezed and ready to go
- for the pesto, I increased the sage and decreased the parsley. I'd add even more sage next time.
- I used olive oil in the pesto because my walnut oil had gone bad, unfortunately.
- the mini chopper was perfect for the pesto

We served the soup with crusty bread and a salad.

The Verdict:
Not only did this soup live up to my insane expectations, it exceeded them! I loved it!! The soup is packed with nutrition, especially from the sweet potato and chard, plus it has protein from the beans. The best part is how all of the flavors blended into a synergy of warm deliciousness. I can't wait to have the leftovers.

And after dinner I previewed the recipe for cookies I am going to bake this weekend that have, oh, five or six kinds of chocolate.

Box of goodness

I finally got my act together and registered with Moore Farms, an association of small sustainable, natural and/or organic food producers that serves Metro Atlanta and offers an option of custom ordering. Last Friday I chose my produce.

The pickup was today, at a location about a mile away, conveniently located between the gym and my house. Did I feel virtuous going to work out then to pick up my fabulous box o' veggies on the way home? You bet I did.

Inside the box:
lettuce
slicing tomatoes
roma tomatoes
peaches
sweet potatoes
white potatoes
and organic pasteurized eggs

I planned some of our meals this week around the contents. And it looks like a peach dimple cake for TWD.

{TWD} Chocolate Whopper Malted cookies

Oh, Dorie, you are a victim of your own chocolate cookie perfection. We discovered your World Peace Cookies earlier this summer, and they have pretty much spoiled me for other chocolate/chocolate cookies!

We've made numerous batches of World Peace Cookies (recipe online here) and have served them to several gatherings of friends (one group call them "Peace cookies", the other calls them "those salty cookies"). These cookies are amazing! Everybody LOVES them! Why am I waxing eloquent about a cookie that was NOT this week's challenge? Well, it would be no easy task to knock the World Peace Cookies off their chocolate cookie pedestal. And, imo, the Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops were not up to the challenge.

For the recipe I used:
Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder
Callebaut bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Whoppers (some cut in half, others in quarters)
Ovaltine

Preparation notes:
- the dough was VERY sticky
- the cookies puffed up in the oven
- the cookies softened overnight, but I don't know if that's because I covered them too soon (I thought they were fully cooled.)
- the malted milk balls sort of melted and caramelized as they baked. (I thought this was the best part)

The Verdict:
Overall, I'd rate them a VG.

They were very rich, and there was almost too much going on, especially when they were warm. Some of the richness might have come from the Special Dark cocoa powder we used. I liked them better once they cooled (but maybe that's how I feel about most cookies? That seems weird.)

I don't like malt flavor and luckily the malt taste was not very strong in these cookies. It seemed more pronounced when they were warm. If I were making them again, I'd use Nesquik rather than Ovaltine, to reduce the malt factor.

The cookies softened a LOT overnight - maybe I covered them too soon, or shouldn't have put them in two layers (they were separated by parchment)? The next day I let them sit in the air and that firmed them a little, but they were still distressingly soft for me. Of course that didn't stop me from eating them. A lot of them.

I served these as part of a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. When our guests saw them, they were very excited that I'd made "the salty cookies"; I had to break it to them gently that these were not the World Peace cookies. They got over their disappointment fairly quickly. Most everyone seemed to like them. I sent some home with them.

One guest, H, makes a similar cookie with malted milk balls and she said these were better. In fact, she made Dorie's version with her children the next day! Another guest, S, said that nothing can compare to the World Peace cookies. She has bought herself some fleur de sel to make those soon.

I tried making ice cream sandwiches with these cookies (and vanilla/honey ice cream) and I realized that I should have paid more attention when people have said how they did it. In the freezer my ice cream melted out from in between the cookies and made a total disaster. I found one of the sandwiches in the recesses of my freezer this weekend, and it actually was pretty tasty. But not pretty looking.

The bottom line for me:
These are quite acceptable cookies (and I personally polished off what I didn't give away) but ultimately Dorie's World Peace Cookies continue to reign unchallenged in their sublime chocolate perfection. I will be VERY interested to see how the Chocolate Chunkers (next week's challenge) turn out. The recipe seems similar to Dorie's Quintuple Chocolate Brownies, and I loved those.

Thanks to Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart for hosting this week. Check out her post for the Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops recipe or find it on page 85 of Dorie Greenspan's oh-so-fabulous book, Baking From My Home to Yours. To see how a couple hundred others baked this recipe, visit the TWD blogroll.

Blue and yellow and green all over

We love to eat Mexican food. I was browsing over at Simply Recipes, and this recipe for Chicken Enchiladas Verdes caught my eye. The recipe gives directions for a delicious-sounding homemade tomatillo sauce, but also gives the option of making this dish with bottled salsa verde. I'd love to experiment with tomatillos some day, but for this weeknight dinner, it was the jarred stuff all the way!


I kept pretty much to the recipe, using chicken thighs and cooking them as instructed. The meat turned out tender and fragrant. I softened the blue and yellow corn tortillas with the recipe's method (in a skillet with oil), dipped the tortillas in salsa verde, then filled them with a spicy chicken mixture and rolled the echiladas.


For the sauce, I substituted Greek Yogurt (2%) for the specified sour cream, spooned it on top of the enchiladas, sprinkled onions and organic shredded pepper jack cheese on top, and ran the dish under the broiler to melt the cheese. My enchiladas were nowhere near as beautiful as those over at Simply Recipes, but they had a great cheesy appeal of their own!

I served these with guacamole, salsa, chips, and a green salad.

The Verdict:
These enchiladas are excellent, and I will definitely make them again. The key is to get a salsa verde that is great, because the flavor is prominent. The salsa I used was quite tangy but tasty. The Greek yogurt worked perfectly in the sauce, and I'd do it again, possibly with nonfat yogurt.

I'd take a few shortcuts next time:
1. If possible, cook and shred the chicken in advance. This is a great recipe for using leftover roast chicken or turkey.
2. I'd soften the tortillas by putting them in the microwave between damp paper towels. This is easy and fast, and eliminates the added oil and dirty frying pan.
3. I'd skip the step of dipping the tortillas in the tomatillo sauce. Instead, I'd try making the recipe as a casserole: fill and roll the softened tortillas, place them in a baking dish, make up the sauce and spoon it over the rolls. Then sprinkle the cheese, cover with foil and bake in the oven until hot and melty. I'd serve with chopped onion, cilantro, chopped hot peppers and chopped tomatoes on the side, to be added as desired.

{Update November 19, 2008: I've now discovered a salsa verde/ enchilade recipe that I like even better! You can find the entry here.}

{Cool Tools} Small Wonder

I cannot begin to count the number of times that I've torn up the edge of a rubber scraper when coaxing tomato paste out of those tiny, narrow cans. Well, no more! Last time we were in a kitchen store, I found this nifty little scooping scraper, and it comes in quite handy for all those small scraping tasks, naturally. What can I say? It's the little things in life.... (And yes, that is a chicken-shaped cutting board in the picture below. I've had it for years, but sadly it's beginning to crack)

Serendipity

Today I looked in my fridge and discovered three well-chilled cookie dough mounds. Last week when I was making cookies, I had a tiny bit of dough left over from my Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chipsters and a little from my "still-in-experimental-stages" oatmeal cookies. I'd kneaded the two doughs together and stuck the mixture in the fridge. So today I popped them in the oven.

The Verdict:
I'll have to say, these are fantastic cookies! A slight hint of peanut butter and lots of oat-y goodness. No fruit, chips or nuts, just chewy oatmeal.

What's that you say about "three?" Well, I had to sample one, didn't I?

My husband enjoyed the cookies with his favorite ice cream - rum raisin - while he caught up on the weekend papers.

A Winning Season!

Cathy, whose blog is The Tortefeasor has given me another award for my blog!! Cathy's blog is one of my favorites (and would be even if it didn't have the world's best legal/baking pun for a blog name!) Her posts are written with wit and good humor. Some day, I hope to bestow an award on her...


Here are the Award Rules:

1. when you receive a diamond, make a post about it on your blog.
2. name the blogger from whom you got it.
3. award the diamonds to seven other bloggers.
4. link them.
5. and tell them they got one.

Here are the blogs I'd like to award a lovely diamond:

1. Matt of Matt's Kitchen
2. Tommi of Brown Interior
3. Elizabeth of Cake or Death
4. Wendy of Pink Stripes
5. Natashya of Living in the Kitchen With Puppies
6. Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen
7. Melly of Miscellany

I recommend you check out all these awesome blogs! I think you'll agree: they're award-worthy!!

Ginger Peach Shortcakes

Our book club met last evening (2x/month for us) and I, of course, offered to bring the sweets. I had the peanut butter/oatmeal chipsters in both variations, and I wanted to bring something else. I'd already baked and served the chocolate Whopper cookies to this group (will be posted next Tuesday), and I was hopeful that the new TWD recipes would be announced in time, but they weren't. I turned to my ever-growing list of desserts-to-be-baked and selected a Ginger Peach Shortcake recipe from Bon Appetit. I love cooking with local peaches when they're in season - nothing so good as a Georgia peach!


The cool thing about this recipe is that it uses ginger ale AND chopped candied ginger in the shortbread (along with just a little heavy cream and butter.) I wasn't sure if the shortcakes would puff or spread. I took a gamble that they would puff, but instead they spread. Instead of splitting them, we just piled the fruit and whipped cream on top.


The peaches are macerated with lime, a bit of sugar and some MORE candied ginger!



The Verdict:
This was absolutely delicious and a great way to enjoy fresh summer peaches. But not without guilt! The ginger/ginger ale really tastes great in the shortcake. And the ginger/lime is a fantastic combination in the fruit. I left the whipped cream unflavored and unsweetened, which was perfect.

I think the next time I make this I will try some of my usual healthful substitutions, and I'm guessing we will still like it a lot. With a bit more peace of mind!

Some changes I might try:
- Use at least half White Whole Wheat flour
- Substitute evaporated nonfat milk and whole milk for the cream
- reduce the amount of butter
- reduce the sugar in the shortbread and eliminate the sugar from the peaches


... The leftover ginger-lime peaches were yummy stirred with yogurt, blueberries and flaxmeal for lunch the next day.

And the Winner is...

Me! Wow!!!


Laura of She's Cooking Now gave me an award! How fun - I had no idea anyone really noticed my blog. Anyway, the award is adorable and I want to go ahead and pass it on. I think I'm supposed to give this to 10 blogs. Most of these blogs are from Tuesdays With Dorie, and good percentage of them are international!

A Year From Oak Cottage
This blog from England is filled with lovely photos, sweet poems and enticing food. Marie always takes the TWD challenges to creative heights.

Küchenlatein
Ulrike, from Germany, is an enthusiastic TWD baker and a courteous blogger who visits and encourages other bakers. I love that she takes the time to reach out in English and in German.

Kuya's Kitchen
My hat's off to James, a transplant from the US to the rural Philippines as he explores cooking using available ingredients. This makes for fascinating reading!

Kelly in the Wild
Kelly's posts always put a smile on my face. She's enthusiastic and realistic about baking, which is a refreshing combination, imo.

Magic Sprinkles
Food, Photography, and Fun; Lisa's blog has it all!

Postitively Fork Street
Susan blogs about food, family and good times, with lots of spirit and that wonderful curiosity that leads to great discoveries. Her blog is named for a Bob Dylan song! The biggest reason I picked her blog, however, is because her dog ate her peach pie. I think her dog is somehow related to mine...

Sherry Trifle - Lovely Cats
I stand in admiration of Heather's baking energy: TWD, Daring Bakers, Operation BakingGALS - she bakes loads of beautiful things, and she has a really cute cat!

Mevrouw Cupcake
Mari is a cake baker from Amsterdam who bakes the most beautiful creations and enthusiastically contributes to TWD.

Chocolate Moosey
I love reading Carla's blog - her recipes are varied, everything looks so scrumptious, and boy is that moose cute!

Like June Cleaver in Legwarmers
Karleen says, "I've got some sass. And I can't stop baking." She's also got an pink Kitchen Aid mixer and some great looking baked goods in her kitchen.

When life gives you cabbage...

Make coleslaw!

I had another head of cabbage in my fridge (after making this coleslaw last weekend), and although I have two old standby coleslaw recipes that I love, I thought I'd try something new to accompany our hot dogs on Labor Day. I tried a recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (a Costco find):

Creamy New York Deli Coleslaw

1 head cabbage (2 lbs) cored and shredded, (12-14 c)
salt
1/2 tsp caraway seeds (can substitute celery seeds)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (I used Hellman's light)
2T white vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar (I used the tiniest pinch)
pepper
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 small onion, minced
(I added thinly sliced red bell pepper)

Toss cabbage with 1 tsp salt and allow to sit in a colander for at least 1 hour or up to 4 hours.

Meanwhile, toast the caraway seeds in a small skillet over medium heat until fragrant, about 3 minutes.

Rinse the cabbage, then pat thoroughly dry with paper towels.

Whisk the toasted caraway seeds, mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and 1/4 tsp pepper together in a bowl large enough to hold the salad.

Add the cabbage, carrots, and onion and toss. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving. Season with salt and pepper to taste.



According to the Test Kitchen, salting and draining the cabbage keeps the slaw from getting water-y in your fridge. By the time I decided on this recipe, I didn't have enough time to drain for an hour, so my cabbage drained for about 25 minutes. I also didn't have time to chill it before serving, and we had no leftovers (except for that little container, above, which I set aside at the last minute so I could photograph it!) so I didn't get to check the wateriness.

I made a bit less of the dressing - just measured everything about 1/4 short - and there was plenty of dressing to coat the cabbage. I'm not fond of my slaw swimming in mayonnaise-y dressing, and this was perfect.

The Verdict:

We loved this coleslaw and I can see making it again and again.


{update}
I did make this again, and this time I remembered to take a picture (below). The caraway seeds are missing, because I add them to my serving only (my husband thinks they taste bitter).

{TWD} Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chipsters, two ways

Joining TWD has changed my personality. I’ve become generous. Magnanimous even. I give friends plates of sweets. I’m constantly sending large quantities of baked goods to work with my husband. I'm contemplating getting “I’ll bring the dessert” tattooed on my forehead.

So when the neighborhood supper club invitation arrived a few weeks ago, of course I offered to bring a dessert. I mean, I bake every single week now. The hostess told me that someone else was bringing brownies, and asked that I bring something non-chocolate. No problem. I was confident that the upcoming TWD recipe rotation would provide an adequate choice of recipes.

Then I saw the TWD recipe line-up:

Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte. Hmmm, no, it was chocolate, plus difficult to transport and serve to a group out of someone else’s kitchen. (I ended up serving this to a family dinner gathering. Results posted last week)

Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops. Waaaay too chocolate-y for my assigned dish. (I served this to my book club dinner party last weekend – watch for next week’s TWD post)

That left the Chunky Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters for the supper club. The main recipe calls for chocolate, but Dorie lists a raisin option with these cookies, so I could use it. I decided to split the batch and make half with dried fruit - using dried sweet cherries along with some raisins, aiming for a PB&J effect. The other half would be chocolate.


Comments in the P&Q showed that people were finding the peanut flavor to be a bit weak, so I made two small changes in the recipe, each to boost the peanut butter quotient:
1) I added 6 oz of peanut butter chips, and
2)I replaced 3 T of the butter with approximately 2 ½ T of additional peanut butter. (I got the idea from Amy Ruth of amyruthbakes, a new TWD member, who made a similar substitution in the Granola Grabbers challenge two weeks ago. Thanks, Amy Ruth, I really liked how it worked in this recipe.)

This was the first time I’ve ever grated fresh nutmeg – wow! It smelled amazing. My microplane worked like a charm (but I was a bit concerned that I was going to grate my knuckles…) The pack of nutmeg I bought is enough to cover the holiday baking needs for my entire neighborhood for the rest of the decade, at least. I’ll be looking for recipes that call for lots and lots of grated nutmeg...


I divided the dough in half and added chocolate to one half and to the other I stirred in raisins and dried sweet cherries. I baked 5 separate cookie sheets-full, and I think I managed to overcook each batch by just a tiny bit. Needless to say, I found it tricky to determine the done-ness. Luckily the recipe is forgiving, and the cookies were moist and chewy and were not dry.


I ended up with 26 of the raisin/cherry and 28 of the chocolate chip, very close to Dorie's estimated quantity. I used the chill-the-dough (several hours), make-balls, and flatten-them method of forming the cookies. I found that if I didn’t flatten them too much and kept them well-chilled they kept a nice shape and didn’t spread too much in the oven. Even so, the chocolate version of the cookies spread a bit more than the raisin/cherry.


The Verdict:
I'd rate these cookies VG+ (the dough was even better than the baked cookies!). I liked the peanut flavor and am glad I added the extra peanut butter to the dough. I found the peanut butter chips to be a distraction, however, and I regretted adding them. They tasted a bit artificial in this recipe and I think the peanut butter flavor came close to overwhelming the chocolate. Several people have mentioned that the cinnamon flavor was strong, but I can’t say I noticed the flavor overly much. I wonder if it’s one of those things that some people are more susceptible to tasting than others?

I actually preferred the cookies with the dried fruit to those with the chocolate. The chewyness of the dried fruit matched the heft and chewy quality of the oats. And they DID taste like a (chewy) PB&J sandwich.

My husband ate some of the cookies but he wasn’t wild about them. His opinion: “I’d rather have a regular oatmeal cookie.” [btw, I am still working out the leavening issue with my “perfect” oatmeal cookie recipe; then I will post it. I promise!] He liked the Granola Grabbers better than this cookie.

A final word about the quantity: I made a full batch and ended up with nearly 5 dozen cookies. Supper club made a dent in my cookie stash. I brought some on a cookie platter to a Memorial Day cookout. A fair number were eaten, and I left the rest of the platter with the hosts. Even after these two events I still have cookies left (which I've frozen and may bring to my book group on Thursday evening). This recipe gives me LOTS of opportunities to be magnanimous!


Thanks to Stefany of Proceed with Caution for picking this recipe. If you want to bake these cookies, you can find the recipe on page 73 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours, or on Stefany's post. Check out the TWD blogroll to see how a couple hundred others baked this recipe.

Pizza time

This week daughter J.D.E. departed, after spending a summer at home. To distract myself from how much I miss her (sniff sniff), I got busy using the ingredients that she left behind in my kitchen.

I found a recipe for pizza with arugula and goat cheese on allrecipes.com that would use the Whole Foods pizza crust and the tub of crumbled goat cheese that were in my fridge.

I used pesto from the freezer and seasoned the goat cheese with red pepper flakes and a handful of herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary) from the garden.


It was easier to make two separate pizzas, especially since my husband wanted tons of sliced onions on his. Once the pizza is cooked, I piled some arugula on top. It was an unusual pizza combination (pesto, goat cheese and arugula) but I liked the way the flavors combined. My husband wasn't so crazy about the finished product, and said it tasted like some salad thrown on a weird assortment of tastes.