Al Dente

Power Up With Flavored Cream Cheese

Are you a food processor fan? I certainly am. I've learned over the years that my Cuisinart food processors are positively indispensable for cranking out affordable family friendly food.

For example,  I used my Cuisinart Elite food processor on Tuesday when I made my Jumbleberry Jam Bars. Then, I used it last night for guacamole. Immediately after making the guacamole, I cranked up the motor again in order to make my homemade salsa. 

Sometimes, when I'm in a pinch and the cupboards appear empty, I rely on my food processor in order to gussy up some plain old boring cream cheese. By processing the cream cheese with garlic and herbs, chutney, or even jam, I can create a flavorful fairly fluffy spread for pinwheel sandwiches, wholegrain crackers, or bagels.

Here's one of my simplest cream cheese concoctions. It's just great on turkey and tomato pinwheel sandwiches.

Pesto Cream Cheese

6 ounces cream cheese, cut into chunks
2 tablespoons store bought or homemade pesto, or to taste

1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade, distribute the cream cheese and pesto evenly around the work bowl. Then process the cream cheese and the pesto until smooth and creamy. If necessary, wipe the sides of the work bowl with a rubber spatula.  

2. The mixture can be transferred to a container and stored in the fridge, although it’s softest and most easily spreadable immediately after processing.  To reduce the calories, simply use a low fat cream cheese.

--Melissa A. Trainer

Pop Open a Refreshing Can of....Sandwich

Thanks to Mark One Foods, the dream of one day having a sandwich in a can is now nearly a reality. Hoping to go into production later this year, the president of Mark One Foods says the Candwich has an excellent shelf life, and we can look forward to four delicious flavors: PBJ Strawberry, PBJ Grape, BBQ Chicken, and Pepperoni Pizza. As an added bonus, the two PBJ varieties come with a candy surprise inside the can (?!). Marketed as a convenient and no-refrigeration-needed food, the Candwich website touts the canned sandwiches as "the perfect product for people on the go such as students, construction workers, soccer moms, and outdoor enthusiasts." I'm not sure which to be more wary of--this convoluted canned sandwich, or the new mozzarella-stuffed grilled-cheese sandwich from Denny's...

--AndreaLeigh

Where Do Orangette and the Blue Grotto Converge?

If you''ve read the memoir by Orangette creator Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life, you already know the answer to this question. It's one of the books I brought along with me to Capri, and devoured in a day or so. Initially I found it hard to get into, but I was coming off of Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw, and the styles and personalities are distinctly different: Wizenberg a little more country, and Bourdain a little more rock 'n' roll.

Serendipity struck today, as I finally made it to the Blue Grotto this morning, and coincidentally came across her recipe for "Italian Grotto Eggs," a dish she made for her dying father. At first glance these eggs have nothing to do with Italy or grottos: you'll have to read the book to discern the deeper meaning. (Note: Be sure to use salmonella-free eggs for this dish!)

Italian Grotto Eggs

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon (1/2 ounce) unsalted butter
5 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon heavy cream
3 tablespoons of fresh goat cheese, such as Laura Chenel, coarsely crumbled
Freshly ground black pepper, for serving

Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.

2. Crack the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. Add the salt and cream to blend.

3. When the pan is hot, pour in the eggs and swirl to coat. Reduce the heat to low, and using a heatproof rubber spatula, stir the eggs gently, scraping the spatula along the bottom of the skillet, until they are loosely set in large, pillowy curds. They should be slightly runnier than you want them. Remove the pan from the heat and scatter the goat cheese over the eggs. Give them one more gentle stir to melt and distribute the cheese.

4. Serve immediately, with additional salt and black pepper to taste, and if you like, slices of buttered toast.

Serves: 2

Recipe credit: Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life, 2009
Photo credit (Blue Grotto, Capri) StellaCadente*

--StellaCadente*

Follow me on Twitter @pomodorista

One Cute Cupcake From Nordic Ware

I'm not a huge fan of cupcakes, but I am a huge fan of Nordic Ware baking pans. Hence, when I was offered the Nordic Ware Cute Cupcake Cake Pan as a sample from my editor at Al Dente, I was happy to take it home and put it to the test.  The pan consists of two cake halves, which form one giant cupcake when stacked together.

My husband recently had a birthday, so I decided to make a cupcake cake for the celebration. I enlisted my teenage daughter who thought the pan was ultra cool. Even before we started working with the pan, she said she wanted to use it to make birthday cupcakes for her friends.

My daughter wanted to use a boxed cake, which is not something we usually use. Hence, I bought a basic cake mix and my daughter mixed it up. We sprayed the pan with Baking Pam and preheated the oven. Unfortunately, the cake overflowed in the oven, because I didn't have the sense to read the front of the label where it clearly states that two large cupcakes can be made from one standard  12-cup cake mix! Duh! I know better. Haste definitely made a little waste.

Nonetheless, the cupcake released beautifully from the pan and when we were ready to frost it, I simply trimmed the cupcake accordingly. To "glue" the two cupcake halves together, I smeared a little homemade frosting on the base, but my cupcake was a little too top heavy in the end. To remedy the situation, I grabbed a kebab skewer and used that to secure the two halves by poking it straight through the top. In the end, we loved our Cute Cupcake even though it was a bit unstable and wonky to say the least!

For those who buy the pan and want to make the cake from scratch,  rest assured that there is a Vanilla Cupcake recipe included on the back of the label! I'm quite certain you won't need a kebab skewer with that recipe!

Photo by Carolyn B. Trainer

--Melissa A. Trainer

Italian Love Bombs

If you've been following along, you already know of my love for fried dough, which manifests namely in the form of the churro, and occasionally a beignet. When I am in Italy that love extends to the bombolone, a round, soft ball of fried dough, rolled in granulated sugar, with a generous mound of pastry cream piped into the center. Little Italian love bombs.

While you can make these at home, these are best enjoyed between 4 and 5 a.m. after a night of socializing with friends in the piazza, when you can get them warm from the nearest bakery with a caffe macchiato before stumbling home to bed.

Bomboloni

Ingredients for Pastry Cream:

6 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup sugar
A vanilla bean, or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
The yolks of 6 very fresh eggs
1 pint (500 ml) whole milk
A pinch of salt

Ingredients for the Bomboloni:

1/2 ounce fresh yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons warm water
9 ounces all-purpose flour
1 1/2 ounces granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 1/2 ounces butter

To serve:

1 pound granulated sugar
1 gallon canola oil
Pastry cream, as needed, from above

Pastry Cream Directions:

Pastry cream is not difficult to make, though it does require care and attention lest it curdle. Fernanda Gosetti, author of Il Dolcissimo, suggests you use a copper pot because it conducts heat better, and adds that if you make pastry cream frequently you should invest in a round-bottomed pot because its entire contents will be accessible to the whisk or spoon. She also notes that the cream should be transferred to a bowl as soon as it's ready, because it will continue to cook in the pot. The quantities given above can easily be expanded or reduced.

1. Set all but 1/2 cup of the milk to warm over a slow burner with the vanilla bean. In the meantime, lightly whisk the yolks in a bowl to break them. Strain the flour into the bowl, whisking gently, and making sure that no lumps form. Whisk in the sugar too, and then the remaining half cup of milk, keeping a wary eye for lumps.

2. By this time the milk on the stove will be about ready to boil. Fish out and discard the vanilla bean, and slowly whisk the milk into the egg-and-milk mixture. Return the cream to the pot and the pot to the fire, and continue cooking over a low flame, stirring gently, until it barely reaches a slow boil. Count to 120 while stirring constantly and it's done. (Note -- depending on your eggs and milk it may thicken to the proper consistency before it boils. If it reaches roughly the consistency of commercially prepared plain yogurt of the sort that will pour from the cup it's done).

3. Transfer it to a bowl and let it cool, gently stirring it often to keep a skin from forming across top, or place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the cream until ready to use.

Bomboloni Directions:

In bowl, place yeast, water, a pinch of flour and a pinch of sugar. Set aside until yeast mixture has doubled in size, about 20-25 minutes. Stir in remaining sugar and flour, eggs and salt. In bowl of electric mixture fitted with hook, place sugar mixture and mix until dough forms. Mix in butter. Cover surface of dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours. Roll dough into 3/4-ounce balls and place on oiled, parchment-lined sheet tray. Set aside until tripled in size, about four to five hours.

To serve: In bowl, mix together sugar and cinnamon. In pot, place oil and heat to 315 degrees-F. Fry balls in oil until puffed and golden brown. Drain on paper towels; Dredge in granulated sugar. Cool five minutes. Poke hole in center. Using piping bag, fill interior of bomboloni with pastry cream.

Makes 24.

Have you ever tried a bombolone?

Related Items:
*Deep Fat Fryers
*Disposable Pastry Bags
*Pastry tips

Recipe credit, pastry cream: Kyle Phillips, italianfood.about.com
Recipe credit, bomboloni: 2009 Culinaire, Inc.
Photo credit: StellaCadente*

--StellaCadente*

Follow me on Twitter @pomodorista

100 Perfect Pairings and Cold Peach Shooters

 Ever wonder what appetizer to pair with your favorite bottle of Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Noir? Tired of giving up in frustration and settling for the same old run-of-the-mill cheese plate or bowl of olives?

Then pick up a copy of food writer and recipe developer Jill Silver
man Hough’s new book, “100 Perfect Pairings: Small Plates to Enjoy With Wine You Love” (Wiley, 2010, $16.95). This lovely hardcover tome, handily packaged in a small format so it’s easy to tote along to the wine shop or grocery store, is organized by the 12 most common wine varietals.

You’ll find everything from Chardonnay to Zinfandel paired with 100 sophisticated, yet easy-to-make appetizers—small plates such as Lobster Claw Slaw (paired with Viognier), Green Apple Caesar Salad (Pinot Grigio), or Peppercorn-Crusted Tuna (Syrah).

Hough begins each chapter with a broad-brush description of the varietal followed by the recipes for that section. The recipes often include more detailed food- and wine-pairing tips, such as “If you want a wine to work with a recipe, it always helps to put the wine in the recipe.” The book also includes 40 luscious color plate shots for inspiration.

Hough’s Cold Peach and Mango Soup Shooters pair perfectly with  the fruity, floral, often spicy notes in a good Gewürztraminer. The cool, sweet gulps are sublime for simple summer sipping at a cocktail party, on the patio, or by the pool. They also make a creative alternative to sorbet as an amuse-bouche between courses.

Hough also suggests serving the soup as a first course for a summer-time dinner party. If that’s your plan, double the recipe to make six one-cup servings.

Cold Peach and Mango Soup Shooters

Wine Varietal: Gewürztraminer

Makes 12 Shooters (1⁄4 cup each)

Ingredients:
2 limes
1 ripe freestone (the flesh doesn’t cling to the pit) yellow peach, pitted and cut into chunks
1 ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and cut into chunks
3⁄4 cup buttermilk
1⁄2 cup orange juice
1⁄2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, or more to taste
Pinch cayenne pepper
12 fresh cilantro leaves

Directions:

1. Zest the limes. Set the zest aside. Juice the limes to yield 3 tablespoons of juice. In a blender or food processor, combine the lime juice, peach, mango, buttermilk, orange juice, salt, and cayenne and process until very smooth, scraping down the jar or bowl as necessary (you may have to do this in batches).

2. Transfer the soup to a container and chill for at least 2 hours. (You can prepare the soup up to 3 days in advance, storing it covered in the refrigerator.)

3. Taste, ideally with your wine, and add more lime juice and/or salt if you like. Serve the soup chilled, each serving garnished with a cilantro leaf and some of the lime zest.

Cook’s Hint: For best results, make the shooters in the summer when fresh peaches are in season. In a pinch, you can use frozen fruit, but make sure it’s unsweetened.

Food and Wine Tip: If your fruit is particularly sweet, you might notice that the soup makes your wine seem a little sour. To fix this, just add more lime juice, a teaspoon or two at a time, until the soup and the wine nicely complement each other.

Photo Credit: Lucy Schaeffer

Cheese-a-Topia Was Cheese-Tastic!

I am coming down from a three-day cheese high after attending the American Cheese Society's annual conference in Seattle. The event concluded with superstar speaker Michael Pollan giving artisan cheese producers a well-deserved pat on the back for their efforts to get people thinking differently about food. (More on his presentation in another post.)

This gathering of more than 1,000 cheesemakers, retailers, wholesalers, chef-types and authors featured lectures on How To Taste Cheese, for beginners and advanced cheese lovers, seminars on making various cheeses with sheep's milk, goat and cow milk and a field trip to Beecher's, whose big cheese, Kurt Dammeier, was the co-chair of the conference. There was also a fascinating guided tasting on pairing beer and cheese led by Seattle's own Charles and Rose Ann Finkel, owners of The Pike Brewing Co., as well as a heated competition to put together the coolest cheese case. The champs were from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market.

Along with the scholarly -- but never dry -- discussions, there was a whole lot of cheese tasting. The dazzling Festival of Cheese showcased more than 500 American cheeses. I was blown away by a number of cheeses I sampled including the Dinah from Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island, a quick ferry ride from West Seattle. It's made with milk from Jersey cows, which produce a richer, ultra-creamy milk and is featured on the cover of this month's Culture magazine. Another surprising favorite was a Smoked Black Pepper Cheese from Tillamook. Love to be able to pick that specialty cheese up in local stores, but it's a bit challenging to find.

The final cherry on top of this epic event was a cheese sale on Sunday. I was so tempted to load up on bargains, but there's only so much space in my fridge. Keeping cheese fresh is a little easier since I discovered Cheese Paper, the coolest thing since somebody decided to slip cheddar between a couple slices of bread and toast it. It lets the cheese -- a living thing -- "breathe" while keeping it from drying out. It's brilliant. 

--Leslie Kelly

Jon Rowley's A True Food Hero

While I've yet to see food guru Jon Rowley leap a tall building in a single bound, I have watched the man lead a busload of people on a late night oyster run, where bivalve fans opened oysters they found on the beach at low tide. In his quiet, yet determined way, Rowley knows how to whip food lovers into a frenzy over some of his favorite subjects: salmon, oysters, strawberries and peaches. Julia Child called him a fish missionary. If you've seen him touting Frog Hollow fruit this time of year, he's a peach preacher.

Georgia Pellegrini calls him a hero in her new book. Food Heroes: 16 Culinary Artisans Preserving Tradition recognizes a batch of folks most people whose names aren't familiar: Sue Forrester, aka The Butter Poet, Jean-Benoit Hughes, an olive farmer in Provence and Allan Benton, the country ham maestro from Madisonville, Tenn.

The author (pictured above, with her subject) met Rowley at an oyster shucking event in New York City and while prying open shells, he turned her into an oyster believer. She traveled to the Northwest to watch him work, pulling his refractometer from a pocket to measure the sugar content of tree-ripened fruit and, sometimes, even vegetables. His attention pushes farmers to do better work, to cut back on watering tomatoes so they're sweeter. He has made fragile Shuksan strawberries a sensation and put the Copper River on the map.

He was almost too big for this book, Pellegrini said. The book's mission was to introduce readers to heros flying under the radar. Michael Pollan is not included, nor Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation.

I'm sure glad she included Rowley. He's an invaluable resource and an agitator of the best sort. Farmers might shudder when they see him pull out his refractometer, but his squeaky wheel pushes them in the right direction.

I've learned many lessons from Rowley, who's been a great source over the years. The one lesson I most often put to the test is his sure-fire method for cooking salmon, searing it in my Scanpan and finishing it in a 275-degree oven for 10 minutes. (He goes even lower, setting the temp at 250-degrees, but every oven is different.)

Who's your food hero?

Relax And Have Fun With The New KitchenAid Pasta Press!

I hadn’t made homemade pasta in years, but when I was offered a KitchenAid Pasta Press as a sample, I was anxious to test drive the accessory. Made in Italy, the heavy duty pasta press fits on all KitchenAid stand mixers and allows home cooks to crank out tubular pastas such as rigatoni, bucatini, macaroni, fusilli, and spaghetti.

After multiple rounds of experimentation in my home kitchen, I’ve concluded that the KitchenAid accessory is awesome. I’ve also concluded that it is important for cooks to experiment and follow their intuition when making homemade pasta dough.

For my first round of experimentation,  I decided to get everyone involved. I think of pasta as a family-friendly food, so  I invited my mother-in-law over to work with me and told the children that we’d be making pasta for the afternoon.

To get started, I readied my sixteen-year old KitchenAid Classic mixer and cleared the countertop. I then opened the pasta press box and reached for the owner’s manual.   I followed the assembly instructions and decided to make the Basic Egg Noodle Pasta, which is the first recipe listed in the recipe section of the booklet.  The dough is made in the bowl of the stand mixer and calls for 4 large eggs, 3 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon water, and 1 teaspoon salt.

My mother-in-law has used the pasta press accessory before and warned me not to make the dough too wet or it would be difficult to feed through the disks.  Hence, I followed the booklet recipe exactly.  When I was mixing the dough in the KitchenAid, we sensed it was too dry, but we carried on as instructed. When I kneaded the dough by hand on the counter, it still seemed dry, but it was fairly manageable. 

The press comes with six disks—rigatoni, fusilli, spaghetti, bucatini, large macaroni, and small macaroni. I was in the mood for a rigatoni, so we started with that one.   As instructed by the manual, we formed the pasta dough into walnut-sized pieces and fed it through the press while the machine was running.  It was slow at first.   My mother-in-law eventually figured out that if she added a little water to her hands and rolled the dough in her wet palms, the dough seemed to feed through better.  Prior to that, the machine seemed like it was clogging and the dough wasn’t feeding through easily enough. We sensed that the issue was with the dough and not with the press itself.

We made rigatoni and fusilli that day. Even though my dough was a little too stiff and dry,  the pasta was very good once it was cooked.  Nonetheless, I wasn’t fully satisfied with the dough and the way in which it fed through the machine. I sensed that the dough and the extrusion process could be better. 

So, the next day I woke up early with a bee in my bonnet. I wanted  a better dough --a dough that was easier to feed through the press and that felt more malleable.  On a mission,  I ferreted through my cookbook collection and found the perfect recipe in Beard on Pasta by James Beard. Published by Knopf, the book is a treasure trove of information on pasta.  On page 33 in my 1987 edition, I found Beard’s recipe for Basic Egg Pasta.  I immediately knew that was the one.

The recipe only calls for four ingredients—1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, ½ teaspoon salt, 2 large eggs, and 1 tablespoon oil if using the electric mixer or the food processor.  Indeed, when I made the dough in the bowl of my KitchenAid, it felt right. It was malleable yet substantial. (When I was putting it in the fridge to "relax" as directed in the recipe, I had a brief flashback to my childhood, because the dough felt just like Play-Doh!) After I chilled it and broke off walnut-sized pieces, the dough fed through the machine like butter and held its shape once it was formed. I made bucatini that night. The long tubular pasta was sublime. I think the chilling of the dough and the little bit of oil made the difference in the finished product.

So, if you purchase the new KitchenAid Pasta Press, my advice to you is this:  Loosen up.  Have some fun. Try different  recipes.  Be prepared for a little trial and error.  Invite your friends over for a pasta making party.  Make the dough in advance and let it relax in the fridge before you get started. Set the table and enjoy some really delicious homemade tubular pasta made right in your own home!

Do you have any tips for making homemade pasta? If so, I'd love to hear them, because I am still tweaking, experimenting, and hunting for new ideas!

Photo by Carolyn B. Trainer

--Melissa A. Trainer

 

A Bowl of Summer

In many parts, even if the temperatures climb during the day, there's a nip in the air--the first sign of fall. Leave it to my friends in Vermont, Zachary and Clark, for sharing this recipe for summer in a bowl.

We had this soup recently at the home of our friends Tom and Thomas, and we thought this was the best gazpacho we'd ever had. The recipe comes from The Taste of Summer cookbook by Diane Rossen Worthington, and it is indeed a great way to have a delicious bowl of summer.

You can build this soup in several ways. We've adapted the recipe for the food processor, which makes the soup even easier and creates a fun, multi-colored confetti of vegetables in the red soup base. But you could also purée everything, or you could peel, seed, and slice the tomatoes instead of milling them if you'd like pieces of tomato in it. Whatever you do, don't skip the sour cream or crème fraiche--it adds a lovely creamy texture that, together with the anchovy paste, makes this gazpacho special.

Creamy Gazpacho

Ingredients:
2 teaspoons anchovy paste
3 cups tomato juice/low-sodium V8 juice

2-1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled
2 cucumbers, peeled and chopped into large chunks
1/4-1/2 red onion, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 red sweet pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped into chunks
1 yellow sweet pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped into chunks
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

2 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoos red wine vinegar

Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Sour cream or crème fraiche

Directions:
1. In large bowl, whisk anchovy paste and tomato juice together until paste is dissolved.

2. In food mill, grind tomatoes through finest mesh (leaving behind skin, seeds, and pulp). Add third group of ingredients to food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add all remaining ingredients except sour cream/crème fraiche to the large bowl and combine; season to taste. Seal tightly and refrigerate until ready to serve.

3. Serve in individual bowls, each garnished with a generous dollop of sour cream or crème fraiche.

--Tracy Schneider