The Well Stocked Baker's Kitchen

Apologies for the severe lack of original content here as of late.  Life has gotten busy, and there are  lots of changes on the horizon. 

Soon I will be moving on from the events job I've had at Harvard these past 3 years, and I've also recently started a new job at Sofra Bakery in Cambridge, which I'm digging.  But the having two jobs at once thing is cramping my style a bit right now.  Just three more weeks....I can do it!  But then I'm moving to a new apartment.  While I hate moving, I am looking forward to a more spacious kitchen, a GAS STOVE!!!, and a proper dining room.  So many luxuries await me!  And it's going  to be a stone's throw from the original Formaggio Kitchen.  Could I be any luckier?

With the extra work I have barely had time to cook, let alone blog about it.  (Or run, or read, or all of those other things that I like to do.)  But, I did see a good quick article on Food52 that I wanted to share.

If you're not familiar with it, Food52 is a fantastic website co-founded by Amanda Hesser, former New York Times food writer, and author and editor of several books.  (Her memoir Cooking for Mr. Latte is one of my all-time favorites.)  Food52 features awesome recipes submitted from home cooks, as well as columns written by some serious chefs and other food writers.  My favorites include Molly Wizenberg of Orangette (a gem of a blog--read it!), and husband Brandon, who submit weekly cocktail recipes, and star baker Alice Medrich, whose articles are full of helpful tips and delicious recipes.

This week Alice names 10 essential baking tools that you should not live without.  I read the list--just to make sure I had them all.  I do.  And the list is perfect, so I thought I'd share it. 

While the list is fairly baking-specific, I think I use each and every one of these items at least once a week, if not more.  If you scroll through some of the reader comments you'll notice some...excellent?... insights, such as: "What about a cutting board!" and, "I can't live without my scissors!"  Okay, yes.  If you don't have a cutting board, then hold off on the offset spatula.  But if you DO have a cutting board, and all of the other basics, AND you like to bake, you'll put all of these items to good use.

Greens, Eggs (and Ham?)

I love a dish that gives me room to experiment, and this this versatile greens and eggs dish certainly fits the bill.  A combination of hearty greens, tomatoes, sausage, eggs, and cheese all baked together makes a great weekend breakfast or a quick weeknight dinner.  

I made this for dinner the other night using a blend of pre-cut "Southern Greens" from Trader Joe's--Mustard, Turnip, Collard, and Spinach.  A blend is a great way to incorporate several types of greens at once, without having to buy bunches of all of them.  (And it's a great shortcut!)  For cheese I used some Gouda that was kicking around in the back of the fridge, and a chicken andouille sausage to add some kick!  I was very happy with the results, but I look forward to playing around and using different greens, trying both hard and soft cheeses, and different sausage flavors.  (And obviously, the sausage can be omitted to make this a vegetarian meal.)  It's easy to double or triple for a crowd; I can see myself making this for a brunch buffet and just dumping the whole thing in a casserole dish.

Spiced Carrot Soup

  
I love love love soups, particularly in winter.  Paired with a big salad full of veggies, nuts, and tasty greens (spinach and arugula are my faves), it makes a warming, filling, and healthy meal.

If you've read this blog a few times you know that I always have a lot of pantry foods on hand, making soup-making a cinch whenever I have a few veggies kicking around.  This time I had carrots and celery on hand, and the rest was in my pantry and freezer (I keep sliced ginger in the freezer for soups and smoothies--so useful!).  I added a bit of this and a bit of that, and it became a darn good soup, if I do say so myself.  In addition to being a very healthy food, fresh ginger can actually be a bit spicy.  I used about 1½ tablespoons of roughly minced ginger, and there was some heat to this soup.  Use less if you prefer less kick, more for more.  While I didn't measure the stock, I think I used about 3 cups, which made a fairly thick soup, perfect when it's an entree.  More stock will make more (thinner) soup, better as a starter course.  

Zucchini Noodles and Sausage-y Tomato Sauce

Maintaining three blogs is a bit time consuming these days (in addition to Macy Bakes, I write YearOfChees.es, and the blog for Wiggle Room, a Boston-based personal organization company.)  Okay there's the plug for all the blogs.  Go read 'em all and then meet me back here.

I was sort of playing blog roulette: which one shall I update today?  Jordan has been anxious to see our zucchini noodle creation in writing, so that one is today's winner.  

Brussels Sprout Salad Splendor

For most people look forward to Fridays because it's the end of the work week.  I keep a pretty unconventional work schedule, so that isn't always the case.  But I still look forward to Fridays because I get to wake up and read the Cook's Illustrated e-Newsletter.  Each week it highlights 3 or 4 recipes from the archives, many of which I probably would never think of or search for if they didn't show up in my inbox each Friday morning.  I don't always want to cook each and every one of them, but there's usually at least one that strikes my fancy.  Last month this awesome Brussels sprout salad recipe was in the newsletter, and it immediately made the leap to my "Things from Cook's Illustrated to Make" list.  (Yes, there is such a list in my life.)

Five Spice Pork Loin With Oranges and Prunes

Friends, I am entering new territory here.  I don't think I've ever done this before, but there's a first time for everything, right?  I am going to blog about something that I didn't make.  It was made for me, but it was just so delicious that I cannot keep it to myself.   

On Tuesday night Jordan made me this simple but absolutely scrumptious pork loin, that combines several of my favorite flavors.  First, 5 spice powder is one of those ingredients that I often forget about, which is sad, because it lends a wonderful slightly exotic but not overpowering flavor that I adore.  You can never go wrong with onions, which also bulk up the sauce, and orange juice and prunes lend a sweet fruitiness that I absolutely cannot resist.  (Prune skeptics, just stop.  Prunes aren't just for old people anymore.  Have you not seen Sunsweet's aggressive marketing campaign?  They're delicious, and that's all there is to it,)

Combine spices, rub meat, brown, add liquid, cover, braise.  So easy.  The result is deliciously tender pork, and a sauce that becomes rich and thick with caramelized onions, sweet, sticky prunes and zesty orange flavor.  I couldn't get enough of it.  (I was eating it out of the pan by the end!)   We tweaked this recipe a little, upping each of the sauce ingredients, because in this case, more is more (delicious sauce).  

It's no glamour shot, but check out that sauce!  God, it was good.

Baked Winter Fruit

I've been on a baked fruit kick lately after rediscovering a recipe I'd clipped a while back.  (Remember that actually using all the recipes that I clip project that I started at the beginning of this year? It's still going....sort of.)

A couple weeks ago I was looking for a dessert to bring to some friends who were having me over for dinner.  I was keen to find something light, since I feel like the bounty of the season is already catching up with me (specifically my hips).  I decided upon a simple recipe for baked winter fruit from the Boston Globe.  It's just a simple combination of apples, pears (you don't even need to peel them!), prunes, raisins, and dried cranberries, with a touch of orange juice, cinnamon, and brown sugar.  You can also add slivered almonds or walnut pieces, if you wish.  Mix, cover, and bake--that's all there is to it!  

Grilled Cheese, For Grown Ups

A couple weeks ago I went to a talk by Christopher Kimball, founder of America's Test Kitchen.  (ATK publishes Cook's Illustrated magazine, probably my favorite and most trusted food resource.  If you're not already familiar with the magazine, check it out!)

It was only fitting that I'd already planned on making Cook's Illustrated's "Grown Up Grilled Cheese" after the talk.  Quick background: my boyfriend Jordan and I have embarked on a project called The Year of Cheese, which we'll also be blogging.  (As of today there's only an "About" page, but hopefully that will be remedied soon.)  The project is pretty straight forward: sample a new cheese or two each week, sometimes straight up, sometimes in a cooked preparation, record impressions.  We're only a few weeks in, but so far it's going deliciously.  

"The Thing That Makes Me Most Excited About Fall Right Now...

...is being able to make this chutney!"

This is approximately what a friend said last night when a group of us got together and made dinner, and I brought this mango chutney.  

Inspired by a chutney my Mom made for me a few weeks ago (although it turned out to be entirely different), this mango chutney is as easy and delicious as it comes.  The peeling and chopping is a tad bit time consuming, but once the fruits and veggies are all diced up, everything is dumped in one pot and cooks together.  Spices and a dash of acid at the end complete this delicious condiment that you'll want to serve (or just eat with a spoon!) all winter long.  Last night we served it over a brined pork tenderloin (more inspiration from Mom!), but I suspect it would be fantastic on chicken and lamb as well.

(Apologies for forgetting pictures--by the time dinner was on the table we all dug in and forgot the photos!  I can guarantee I'll be making this again and again, so pictures will come eventually)

Frangipane Tart With Seasonal Fruit

  
I've had a short but intense love affair with frangipane, otherwise known as almond pastry cream.  I can't remember the first time I had it--either at my first bakery job, where we made Cherry Frangipane Galettes, or perhaps it was on vacation with my family a few months prior to starting that job.  Either way, it was about two years ago, and I've been hooked ever since.  With almond paste at its base, it is similar in flavor to almond macaroons, (which happen to be my favorite cookies), but with a denser, richer texture.  My favorite uses for frangipane are in tarts and galettes (rustic tarts), embellished with seasonal fruits of choice.  I've made this tart several times in the winter with ginger poached pears, but for the summer, I love a combination of stone fruits and berries.  A few weeks ago a dinner with friends gave me the opportunity to make this favorite dessert again.  

I am a fan of all things Martha [Stewart], and her recipe has been my go-to since I discovered this delicious dessert.  A basic pate sucree crust can be prepared up to a day ahead of time.  The crust is pre-baked in a tart pan; the frangipane can be prepared while the tart shell cools.  I've streamlined her fussy crust baking method just a bit--I think the results are probably comparable.  You definitely need to start early in the day to allow sufficient time for chilling and cooling at the various stages, but it's not too hard to execute, and certainly worth the effort....At least that's what I gathered from the second helpings accepted all around! 

Boston Is In Lockdown. Carrot Cake, Anyone?

So Boston/Cambridge/Watertown/Surrounding areas are on lockdown.  I'm sure you know that.  

I was woken up shortly after 6am this morning with simultaneous texts from my roommate, who was stuck at Logan Airport, and from the Cambridge Police.  The police text said:

"This is the city of Cambridge. Do [sic] to the police investigation in Water Town [sic] and the surrounding area, MBTA."  

TOTALLY unhelpful, but by then I was wide awake, so I turned on my computer to learn more.  Good lord, things are CRAZY in this city right now.  From my kitchen window I saw MBTA buses full of police being transported while I was eating breakfast.  Otherwise there's been very little vehicular traffic and few people out along the river, which is usually packed with walkers, runners, and bikers.  With the exception of occasional sirens, my neighborhood is very quiet, much like the whole city.  After what seemed like a lot of activity this morning, mostly from various media outlets catching up on the night's activity, there's been little fresh news since late morning.  It's kind of crazy to think that a city can literally shut down, and people more or less respect the command to stay inside, but so far it's working.

One friend wrote on Facebook that it feels like "a scary, weird snow day in spring."  Which is true.  Can't go outside, no where to go, and nothing to do.  So clearly, that called for snow day amusement tactics, namely baking.  

Wednesday Morning Pecan-Toffee Oatmeal Cookies

So Harvard is maybe moving me three times this year.  Once in June, then again in July, for sure.  And then maybe once in November.  Yipeeeeee.... 

(For the record, I hate moving.  Well, packing/unpacking.  Luckily Harvard is doing all the actual heavy lifting.)

So what is a baker with an overly full pantry to do in advance of all these moves?  Start depleting the pantry!  Clearly Wednesday morning cookies were in order. 

These cookies in particular happened because the recipe is a recent addition to the folder (and therefore in need of testing, see Recipe Folder Project, January 2013).  Also, as luck would have it, I had almost exactly the right amounts of oats, pecans, and Heath Bars (don't ask).  So really, Fate was telling me to give them a whirl. 

Oats, both ground and whole, make up half the base, giving these cookies a hearty crunch.  Lots of butter and a mix of white and brown sugars makes these cookies crisp on the outside but chewy in the center.  A generous amount of Heath Bar pieces amplify the brown sugar's deep toffee flavor.  Toasty pecans round out the flavor profile and make everything delicious, no?  These aren't fancy or beautiful cookies by any means, but are a great picnic treat or a deeply satisfying afternoon pick-me-up.

Thin Crust Caramelized Onion, Sausage, and Spinach Pizza

 
The photography department here at Macy Bakes has been on an extended vacation, but they're back with (mediocre) pictures of (awesome!) pizza.  They kind of forgot to take a picture of the masterpiece before it was mostly-devoured, but here's a little slice (groan) of what was going on in the kitchen:

Please excuse the terrible cell phone picture. 

Last night I revisited the awesome thin crust pizza dough that I posted about in January, with real toppings that were only partially pilfered from the dining hall!  I wanted to make pizza, but didn't want to shop, so I poked around my pantry and freezer and came up with Caramelized Onion, Spicy Sausage, and Spinach Pizza with Pecorino-Romano and Mozzarella.  

Multigrain Sandwich Bread

 
So many recipes lately, and so little initiative in the Taking Photos, Writing Them Down, and Posting Them department.  That department is full of slackers.  (Update 4/17/13: Per the request of the fans, bread was made again and photographed--poorly.  Enjoy :)

A couple months ago I made this really great loaf of bread from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.  Last week I wanted to make it again, but it was blizzarding (again!) and I realized that I hadn't scanned the recipe out of the cookbook.  I tried another whole wheat sandwich bread from America's Test Kitchen, assuming they'd be nearly the same, but they were not; the second go around was much less fantastic AND much more time consuming.  Seriously, ATK--2 different whole wheat sandwich loaves with the same ingredients but different results?  Isn't that kind of excessive/unnecessary?  So today I trekked to the library to find the first recipe.  For my benefit, and yours, I'm sharing it, forever to be recorded on the internet so that I'm never without the recipe in the future.  (Do any other food bloggers cook from their own blogs?  Because I definitely do that!)

Easier, Thinner, and Tastier Than Ever

 
No, I'm not talking about myself.  Stop that.  

Today I tried a new pizza dough recipe, and readers, I am hooked.  It's another recipe from My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss, (with the technique modified by me to make it even more simple, using a stand mixer). In her book Luisa prefaces this recipe with a sweet story about falling in love (with her now-husband); my story is simply that I love pizza, I love making pizza, and now, I have newfound love for this pizza dough.

I was experimenting with this dough as a trial run for a pizza lesson tomorrow, so I hadn't given any thought to toppings.  But once you've made pizza dough from scratch and stretched it out you can't just leave it there.  That would be cruel...to you, and to the pizza.  The recipe makes enough dough for 2 sheet pan-sized pizzas, so I had room to play.  Improvising, I topped the first with a handful of baby spinach, some sliced kalamata olives, roasted onions, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese (because I am that person that has all of those things on hand...).  I also wanted to see how this dough would stand up to a more traditional, saucy pizza, so for the second I pilfered some marinara sauce, green bell peppers, and shredded cheese from the dining hall.*  With such a thin crust a little goes a long way--I used less than a cup of sauce spread sparingly over the pizza, distributed half a cup of green pepper slices over it, and covered with about a cup of shredded cheese (I supplemented the pilfered mozzarella with some grated cheddar that I had leftover from chili).  

Apple Tart, Pure & Simple

I've started giving cooking & food blogging lessons to a great girl named Molly.  (Check out her blog, After the Bell Cooking).  For our first lesson Molly wanted to make the apple tart recipe in the food memoir My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss.  (Luisa also writes the blog The Wednesday Chef.)  The tart was a great success, and it smelled so delicious when we were baking it that I decided to try it for myself the following week.  

The recipe couldn't be more simple nor the results more delicious.  The dough is a basic pastry crust that comes together in the food processor in minutes.  The filling is simply apples sprinkled with sugar before baking.  While it bakes you cook the apple peels and cores with water and sugar to make an intensely sweet and apple-y glaze that gets brushed over the whole thing out of the oven.  I thought that a homemade salted caramel ice cream would be the perfect accompaniment to this dessert, but alas I didn't think of it in time to make any--next time.  Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream would also be great, although we enjoyed this just fine with no frills at all.  

Resolution Keeping Cookies

 
I want to tell you about some cookies I made the other day.  Essentially heartier, ostensibly healthier jam thumbprint cookies, they're a little weird, but oddly delicious as well, and I feel like I need to share them and get some feedback to wrap my mind around them.

A year ago or so I checked out Gwenyth Paltrow's cookbook:
  
 

It was a bit of a whim; I think it was propped up by the checkout section--the library equivalent of impulse-buying People magazine at the grocery store.

Like most cookbooks I check out, it sat on my desk for a month and then I realized it was overdue, so I quickly scanned through it, copied a few recipes, filed them away and didn't think about it again. 

But then 2 things happened.  The first, which I already blogged about, was the great recipe reorganization.  The second was that the other day my sweet tooth was out of control.  I really wanted a cookie, and I had nothing.  Nothing!  (For the record, that rarely happens.) 

Warm to the Bone Lentil Soup

After a relatively warm early December, winter has finally hit Cambridge, and nothing says "winter" like a big pot of soup.  (Although, as I write this, a mild warm front is moving in, but I'm not complaining about that.)  

Multiple Christmas parties left me with three ham hocks, which got me thinking about lentil soup.  I bookmarked the Barefoot Contessa's recipe a while back, and as a fan of all things Ina, I was eager to try it (especially after an unsolicited ringing endorsement from a friend).  It becomes a vegetarian recipe if you swap out chicken broth for vegetable stock, has a classic vegetable backbone, and uses French green lentils, which I had in my pantry and wanted to use up.  But since I had so much ham and even more lentils in my pantry--red ones--I turned to Google for further inspiration.  This led me to a blogger's Red Lentil and Ham Soup with an Indian spice flavor profile.  Realizing I had all the necessary spices in my ridiculously stocked pantry I ambitiously, and perhaps foolishly, decided to do both.  (Honestly, how much soup can a single girl eat?)

Fresh Starts in 2013!

Happy New Year, Readers!  Thanks for checking in!  

If you're asking yourself, dear god, what is going on in that picture, you're not alone.  That was my floor a few days ago, and every time I walked into my room I had a similar reaction.  To answer your question, what is going on was the great recipe binder reorganization project of 2012/13.

Right after I graduated from college and was new to the world of fending for oneself without the aid of a dining hall and a comprehensive meal plan (a world from which I have since regressed in my current job) I barely owned any cookbooks, nor did I subscribe to any cooking magazines.  (True story: The first recipe book I was given was Cooking for Kids when I was about 8.  The second one was Cooking for Dummies when I was 17.  Ahhh, the irony.  I only keep that one because there's a recipe for Cranberry Orange Quick Bread that I like...but I digress.)  So back when I was 22 and started cooking for real, recipes seemed like a somewhat rare and novel thing, and I collected them indiscriminately from a variety of sources.  As I started collecting more and more, and I went from keeping them in stacks to manila folders, and finally to an accordion folder that I separated into sections by meal and by main ingredient.  I was probably 23 or so when I made this folder, and the sections represent the way I ate back then--three sections for breakfast foods, sections for every type of protein, including ones I don't even eat, and three different sections for desserts.  When I started eating primarily vegetarian cuisine circa 2009 or so I actually had to change the "Eggs" section to "Eggs, Veggies, and Vegetarian Entrees."  That section, along with "Salads," are by far the fastest growing sections--it seems nearly impossible to believe that I didn't give Veggies their own section the first time around!  Now the folder is so bulging that it is football-shaped in profile, and it's so overwhelming to sort through that recipes are ending up in stacks again because I can't be bothered to file them.  So I knew it was time to reassess the recipe folder situation.  

When I started reorganizing I had three main objectives.  The first was to separate out the recipes that I had already tried and liked, and store them in a new folder.  That way they'd be easier to find, and there would be fewer recipes in Exploding Folder #1.  The second objective was to discard any recipes that I didn't think I'd ever try.  A testament to how my eating habits have evolved is the fact that I threw out several recipes, including one for a chicken casserole that called for several different cans of creamed vegetables.  So far as I know I have never bought nor cooked with a creamed vegetable product.  I suspect I clipped that recipe when I was 22 and had had so few opinions on food that anything seemed like fair game.  I also discarded recipes for "roasted veggies," because honestly, I no longer need a recipe to roast veggies anymore.  The third goal, only cosmetic, was to trim the edges of any raggedy or unevenly cut recipes, because I'm compulsive like that.  I had so many skinny strips of paper floating around my room, it looked like a ticker tape parade had come barging through.  

As I was undertaking this project I noticed a few trends:  First, I barely ever cook from this folder; relatively few recipes made the jump into the new "Tried and True" folder.  The online food world has exploded since I started collecting recipes, so I'm never more than a quick Google search away from the specific recipe I want, and the tremendous growth of my online recipe folders illustrates my reliance on the internet for recipe searches.  Plus the advantage of these resources is there is often helpful reader feedback, whereas it's not always easy to tell from a list of ingredients if this chocolate cookie is better than that chocolate cookie or arugula salad or whatever it is.  Although sometimes it is, such as when you discover that in your youthful naivete you tore out a recipe for Chicken Satay and Peanut Sauce, and there are only four ingredients.  At that point it's pretty easy to know it's not a keeper, or even a try-er...into the recycle bin that one goes.  But, I also noticed that there were a ton of recipes that still look appealing and I do want to try (including no fewer than 20 variations on Quinoa Salad).  To that end, I am going to make a point of cooking from it more often, and when the recipes are successful, I will blog about them.  Having promised a friend some baked treats, I started out by trying two new cookie recipes, instead of my go-tos, World Peace and Mexican Wedding Cookies.  I think I was having an off-day, because in addition to those cookies I made my high school's signature Lemon Poppy Seed Cake (the recipe for which is bestowed upon students on graduation day).  I have made it many times in the past 10 years, always to rave reviews, and this time it turned out gummy and stuck to the pan, which never happens!  In any case, the cookies were fine, but not as good as others in my arsenal.  Two more recipes into the recycle bin!  Live and learn.  (PS, they were still well received by my gracious friends, but I know I can do better.)

Do you, dear readers, have similar recipe-collecting conundrums?  If so, I hope this has inspired you to reevaluate or reorganize in the new year (I'm all about fresh starts), or, if you have any tips that you think can help me, please share!

Macy is Baking for the Holidays!!

Attention, Cambridge/Boston Area Readers!!   

I (Macy) am still baking for the holidays.  It's not too late to surprise your coworkers with "homemade" cookies (I won't tell)!  Or, send a special holiday treat to family, friends, and all the other important people in your life.  Click the banner below (the proper scaling of which has eluded me all night), to find my contact info.