Category Archives: 50 Recipes

July 12, 2012 · 9:45 pm

4 Ways to Beat the Heat

It’s been bloody hot the past few weeks. There were a few days when things cooled down a bit and I felt I could catch my breath, but otherwise I’ve been “perspie” as my Grammy Thompson used to say. “Perspie” was her delicate way of saying perspire. Since we don’t have air conditioning I’ve come up with four great ways to beat the heat.

My favorite swimming hole

1. Clean your basement. Seriously, the basement is always cooler than upstairs. I’m not talking heavy lifting, just some rearranging, a few loads of laundry. You’ll cool down and be happier. Heck, just tell everyone you’re going down to clean the basement and instead grab a folding chair and a good book and read for a while.

2. Find a Swimming Hole. This tip is for folks in the country. There are several near and far from me (unfortunately nothing within walking distance). What you’re looking for is something on the icy side so you can bring your core temperature down. Don’t forget to put an extra towel on your car seat so you don’t fry your bottom when you leave.

3. Turn on the Brooklyn AC. When I lived in Brooklyn there were no swimming holes, and we couldn’t afford the electricity an AC unit sucked down so we made our own AC. First set up a chair with a towel on it. Beach or bath it doesn’t matter. Second position an oscillating fan in front of your chair. Third grab all the bandanas you own and soak them in cold water, wring out most but not all of the water. Fourth strip naked. Then sit on the chair, place the damp bandanas all over your body and turn the fan on high. It will feel like you have AC. Re-wet the bandanas as they dry.

4. Make a pitcher of ice tea. I covered the basic concept for ice tea here. My friend Hilary Zaloom made this divine ice tea for our monthly knitting group when we were crazy enough to meet during a similar heat wave last summer. We ended up at Hilary’s house because she has AC (and not the Brooklyn kind) and she also makes the most delicious drinks. Needless to say between the beverages and the AC we were all happy to sit there for several hours chatting with a bunch of wool in our laps.

Hilary’s Herbal Ice Tea with Honey Water

Hilary’s Herbal Ice Tea

The genius of this ice tea isn’t just in the flavor combination, but in the sweetener. Instead of using a simple syrup (one part water to one part sugar) Hilary adds honey and some warm water to a squirt bottle. Once shaken to combine the honey water can be squirted into any cool beverage as a sweetener without clumping as it is want to do in cold drinks. Brilliant!

Red Zinger or Hibiscus tea

1 orange

2-4 spring mint

honey water* to taste (I make mine at a 1 part honey to 2-3 parts water)

Place teabags in a large pitcher of water and let soak 3+ hours or overnight. Remove bags and add mint sprigs. Slice half the orange and juice the remaining half. Add juice and slices to the tea. Sweeten to taste with honey water.

*Store honey water in the fridge if you don’t use it immediately, it will keep for a week or so.

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Filed under 50 Recipes, In between

Tagged as beat the heat, brooklyn ac, Grammy Thompson, herbal ice tea, Hilary, honey, Summer

July 10, 2012 · 11:06 am

Hello and Goodbye

I almost didn’t make it to the hospital to deliver my first child because I had a craving the night I went into labor which sent me to town to satisfy said craving on a very foggy evening. After I returned home I forgot to turn off the lights in my car, which of course killed the battery*. The next morning when my husband realized what I’d done he called AAA to get a jump-start. The AAA guy got lost trying to find our house and in his panic once he finally did arrived crossed the wires and fried the battery. I guess watching a pregnant woman walk around holding her ginormous belly and moaning can cause the level of anxiety in someone who is just there to fix the car, not deliver the baby, to rise to such an epic point that they then make mistakes. Thankfully my husband, who had not lost his cool, was able to come up with an alternative plan to get us to the hospital, and figured he’d worry about replacing the battery later. At that point I didn’t really care since my craving had been satisfied. We eventually made it to the hospital, and 36 hours later said hello to our daughter Isabelle.

It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I first tasted one of these magical things I later developed cravings for, but after the first bite I was hooked. Chuck Hettinger introduced me to turkey burgers over twenty-five years ago when I was helping him organize his home office. When Chuck and I thought we’d done enough work to deserve a break we would leave his apartment and wander a few blocks over to a little lunch joint. There we would ordered turkey burgers covered with caramelized onions and a generous squirt of dijon mustard on the bun, and devour them. They were glorious and flavourful and surprisingly juicy, and I was in food heaven.

Clearly at this point my life can be divided in two by those lunches. There is my pre-turkey burger existence, spent eating turkey in one of two ways – Thanksgiving dinner or sliced thin from the deli counter and layered on a sandwich. Then there is my post-turkey burger life which includes turkey burgers in a myriad of forms. Turkey burgers were one of two foods I craved while pregnant (the other was watermelon). I just wish I’d known sooner how fantastic turkey could be in burger form.

I’ll admit the one draw back is turkey meat can get dry if you don’t pay attention, it’s poultry after all, but with a little care and a few tricks it will be divine. One thing I often do is mix a package of ground breast meat with another of ground thighs/legs both for moisture as well as economy (ground breast meat is usually more expensive – sometimes by as much as $2/pound). Then I think extra moisture, something that can be added to the ground turkey before cooking to add a juicy component. A little bit of shredded zucchini or apples both work, a trick I learned from my friend Rick Ellis. Lately though I’ve been adding mango chutney along with a few teaspoons of curry powder which transforms a turkey burger into something so juicy and exotic you don’t even need a bun.

While the sugars in mango chutney help caramelize the burgers you have to beware of mango chunks which can make the burgers fall apart as they cook. my friend Hilary showed me a nifty tool she uses for quick chops and I highly recommend it. It’s like a salad spinner got married to a food processor and they had a baby. You load the handful or two of whatever you want to chop, put the top on, and pull the handle like you would for a salad spinner. Voila, no more mango chunks.

This recipe is an adaptation of a curried chicken salad that everyone used to make in the 80s. Back then you cooked curry in a little butter to release the flavors, added mango chutney, mayonnaise, grape halves and tossed it all with cubed chicken breasts. For these burgers you don’t need to pre-cook the curry since you’re cooking the meat, and of course no mayo or grape halves.

Mango Curry Turkey Burgers

1 pound ground turkey breast (light)

1 pound ground turkey thighs (dark)

1/3 cup mango chutney

2 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon salt

oil for the pan (vegetable is fine)

If your mango chutney is chunky puree or smash or pick out the biggest chunks. Add curry, chutney and salt to the turkey meat and squeeze it all gently until everything is mixed. Heat up a large sauté pan and add a little oil. I bounce back and forth between using a well seasoned cast iron pan and a non-stick pan. Form the seasoned turkey meat into burger shapes and cook until well browned on the outside and cooked through on the inside. As much as I like my beef burgers medium rare, turkey burgers should be thoroughly cooked.

*One note of advise as these burgers cook and caramelize your pan may end up with some hyper caramelized bits cooked on. I soak before scrubbing (even though you’re not supposed to soak cast iron sometimes it is the only thing you can do-just reseason the pan and you should be good). Trust me that these burgers are worth the extra bit of clean up.

Isabelle served these turkey burgers at a small going away party for her friend Katja who was returning to Germany after going to school with her in the US for two years. The turkey burgers were delicious with a dollop of mango chutney instead of catsup, sesame noodles, and a whole lot of kale sautéed with olive oil, garlic and onions. For dessert they ate molten chocolate death, which was fine since the effect of the excessive caffeine in the dessert was lost on teenagers.

Sauté the stems, onions and garlic first, then add leaves.

It was a bittersweet dinner for Isabelle and friends saying goodbye to Katja. Hopefully the next time we serve turkey burgers it will be to say hello again.

*My husband corrected me and said it was the main fuse, not the battery. In either case the car wouldn’t go and we had to find a different way to get the hospital (and this I do remember the AAA guy did not want to drive us in his truck).

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Filed under 50 Recipes

Tagged as Chuck Hettinger, food heaven, Hilary, mango chutney, turkey burger

July 4, 2012 · 10:26 am

DIY Pizza

I’m from New York and my husband is from Chicago which should mean we don’t speak the same language when it comes to pizza, but we do. That’s because we don’t debate thin crust vs. deep dish we take our pizza discussions straight out to the grill. Grilled pizza seems to be something everyone can agree on.

I first learned about grilling pizza from Lou Ekus about 20 years ago. Lou can grill or smoke just about anything – pig, peach or pizza. He and his wife Leslie were the owners of Holy Smokes, our favorite BBQ restaurant which was located in a deconsecrated church in Hatfield where the wait was often long but always worth every bite (unfortunately the restaurant burned to the ground five years ago). Grilling pizza was simple Lou explained, you simply divide the grill in two. The coal side was for cooking the pizza dough and the non-coal side for melting the cheese.

My friend Allison gave me a fool-proof pizza dough recipe that I’ve adapted slightly. Add a big salad and plenty of nibbles because people have to take turns and you have a fantastic DIY dinner. Last night the kids invited their friends Richard and Clay over and here are some of the results:

Clay building his pizza

Clay had come out to the cape with us a few weeks ago so we knew there would be some post-cooking addition of hot sauce (his consumption of hot sauce and soy sauce are legendary) to whatever pizza he built. Luckily for Clay our neighbor Joyce had just sent over a jar of her home-made hot sauce.

Clay’s older brother Richard turned out to be a man of contrasts. Shredded mozzarella and fresh mozzarella, red sauce and pesto, pepperoni and chicken sausage.

Russell tried peppers for the first time, which surprised me. Pizza as a conveyance for unloved foods? Hmmmm….. That is however one of the things I most love most about a DIY dinner – people can be as picky or not about what they make and eat and it’s not a big deal. It also works because you can accommodate a variety of dietary needs with little fuss. In our family we have cheese eaters and non-cheese eaters so there is always regular mozzarella and soy mozzarella. Last night the cheese eaters actually hit the trifecta with shredded mozzarella, fresh locally made mozzarella, as well as fresh goat cheese.

Russell’s pizza with peppers

Isabelle listened to Russell’s advice of “add lots of sauce” and created a very juicy pizza.

Sauce-y and delicious

It was stretching it to make DIY pizzas on one grill for six people. Fortunately we had a giant salad and plenty of fruit to nibble on as we waited our turn. Isabelle made the dough for us, but you could also buy it as many grocery stores carry decent pizza dough in their prepared food or freezer sections. The rest requires little prep, mostly putting things in bowls for people to choose from. Here’s what I put out last night:

Red Sauce

Pesto

Sautéed Onions

Black Olives

Green Peppers

Garlic Chicken Sausage

Pepperoni

Goat Cheese

Shredded Mozzarella

Fresh Mozzarella

Soy Mozzarella

You could add just about anything you like or have at hand. Need some inspiration? Take a peek at one of our favorite pizzeria’s list of toppings (scroll to the bottom).

Pizza Dough

1 cup warm water

1 package yeast (you can use slightly less if you make the dough well in advance and give it plenty of time to rise)

1 Tablespoon honey

1 pound flour – I mix white with whole wheat, plus extra for kneading

3-4 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

1-2 teaspoons salt

Put honey in warm water and sprinkle yeast over it to proof. Mix flour, salt, and 2-3 Tablespoons of the olive oil together. When the yeast has proofed (gotten all foam-y) dump into the flour mix and combine. When you have a mass of shaggy dough take out and start kneading. Keep going for about ten minutes. Oil the bowl you mixed the dough in, roll the dough ball to coat lightly with olive oil, and cover with a tea towel. Let rise until double.

To make pizzas punch dough down and grab a fist size piece. Roll out thinly. Grill on one side. You will know it’s cooked when you see crazy bubbles all over the top. We call it moon bread, though if it looked like the surface of the moon there would be craters not bubbles. Then you can do one of two things. If there are just a few of you and you can arrange to have all the toppings next to the grill you can flip the half-cooked dough to the non-coal side of the grill and add your toppings right there. Cover until the cheese has melted and the other side of the dough has cooked. If you have a bigger crowd you may want to cook the dough on both sides then place it on a cookie sheet* and give it to people to top as they wish. When the toppings are complete slide it back onto the grill (non-coal side), cover and cook until cheese has melted.

Crazy big bubbles

For the four of us I usually make a single batch of dough. I double it as we invite more people over. You can always freeze the dough or use any that is leftover to make calzones for the next day’s lunch. To make a calzone roll out the dough a smidge thicker than for pizza and top half with sauce, cheese, and anything else you might want to stuff inside. Make sure to leave a 1/2″ edge to the dough that doesn’t get any sauce on it. Fold the dough in half and squeeze the seam shut. Let rise for 15 minutes or so. Bake in a 400ºF oven for 17-26 minutes (depending on how much stuff you put in there) or until the dough is brown and looking cooked. Calzones are a perfect lunch to eat on the go because they are self-contained.

Shawn building a pizza

* A cookie sheets really are better than jelly roll pans like the one above since you can slide a pizza off a cookie sheet, but you need to negotiate the lip of a jelly roll pan.

P.S. One time our DIY meal was so successful we ran out of dough (embarrassing) and ended up using some tortillas instead. All things are possible when faced with a hungry crowd asking for more. The lesson learned was you can never have too much dough.

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Filed under 50 Recipes

Tagged as Allison, grilled pizza, Lou Ekus, make-your-own-pizza, pizza dough recipe

June 28, 2012 · 3:56 pm

Molten Chocolate Death on a Spoon

Upfront disclaimers:

1. If you are not given a spoon you may start licking this straight out of the cup. Not very dignified, but you might not be able to help yourself. Ask my friend Diane.

2. Eating this dessert may make you groan out loud. In public.

3. If your body is unaccustomed to lots of caffeine you will probably not be able to go to sleep until 2 am unless you were smart enough to eat this at 4:30 in the afternoon. I know because I’m clearly not very smart and I eat it after dinner, which in turn keeps me up way past my bedtime.

Molten Chocolate Death with a spoon

Why am I even bothering to give you a recipe that needs disclaimers? Because this molten chocolate death in a cup is awesome and once in a while you just need a dessert so delicious that your knees buckle. This is that recipe.

When I first moved back to the happy valley I would occasionally work for the Lisa Ekus Group prepping food for their media trainings. I would slice and dice then drop off several recipes in various stages of preparation so that that week’s author could practice talking and cooking at the same time (harder than it looks) while making their favorite dishes (even complicated ones) in three minutes or less. My favorite part of the job was getting to try so many fantastic recipes as well as the cookbooks I was able to add to my collection.

Molten Chocolate Death

The recipe originally came from Mon Cheri Cooking School in California (they’ve since closed), and called for a white chocolate espresso sauce. Since I’m not found of white chocolate I’ve eliminated the sauce and no one has ever complained they didn’t get any. If you want that recipe send me an email and I’ll forward it to you.

3/4 cup espresso (if you don’t drink espresso use 2 Tablespoons instant espresso powder dissolved in 3/4 cup hot water)

1/4 cup kaluha

8 Tablespoons Dutch process cocoa

10 Tablespoons sweet butter, plus more for greasing cups

1 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

8 frozen ganache balls*

Preheat oven to 325ºF and grease 8 small custard cups with butter. Place on a jelly roll pan and set aside. In a medium saucepan heat espresso, kaluha, cocoa, and butter, whisking a bit. This mixture will smell heavenly but don’t be tempted to lick the whisk yet. Pour the hot liquid into a bowl and whisk in the sugar, stirring for about a minute. Add the flour, salt, baking soda and whisk some more. Plop in the egg and vanilla and when you’ve whisked everything is a velvety smoothness pour evenly into the prepared custard cups and slip into the oven for 6-9 minutes or until the edges of the cakes are just starting to set. At this moment you may lick the whisk. Pull the tray out, plunk a ganache ball into the center of each cake and return the tray to the oven for another 6-9 minutes. You don’t want to over cook these, but you want the cake batter to be cooked and the ganache melted and oozy in its chocolatey-ness. I suggest you look at the pictures below.

Prepped custard cups

Uncooked batter

Adding frozen ganache balls

Just baked molten chocolate death

* Frozen Ganache Balls

Basically you have two choices here. You can make an enormous quantity of chocolate ganache, let it firm up, then roll all of it into balls which you store in your freezer. Or you simply steal eight balls worth of ganache when you’re making truffles or glazing a cake.

What is ganache you ask? Heavy cream and really good chocolate plus maybe a bit of flavoring. How could you go wrong?

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate

7 ounces heavy cream (1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup)

1 Tablespoon cognac, honey or espresso (optional)

Put the cream on the stove to boil in a small pan. Chop the chocolate very fine and dump into a shallow dish. Pour boiling cream over chocolate and let sit for a minute or two. Add flavorings (or not) and stir gently with a spatula until the mixture looks like velvet but doesn’t have too many air bubbles. Put in fridge to solidify and lick your spatula. When the ganache has firmed up scoop out large marble size chunks and roll into balls. Freeze. You will be messy, but you get to lick your hands this time.

Solid ganache

: Marble size ganache ball

Ganache balls ready to freeze

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Tagged as chocolate ganache, lava cake, lisa ekus, molten chocolate death

April 29, 2012 · 8:34 pm

Green Pea Jelape

I am not sure what May flowers we’ll be seeing after a mere two days of April showers this month. The lack of rain has been truly astonishing. Things are so dry our town clerk Lynn Sibley put out a robo-call to let everyone know that not only had spring burnings been prohibited but the fire department and town selectman didn’t even want us firing up our grills to cook dinner. Despite the lack of precipitation somehow the landscape has still managed to green up. Week by week the yard, trees, and garden have gotten greener and greener.

Being surrounded by all of this green has made me crave green, and one of the greenest foods I know is Green Pea Jelape. That wasn’t its original name. I’m sure it had a dignified, lovely, even appetizing sounding name when it was featured in an article in Food and Wine magazine a few decades ago. The problem is that at an Easter dinner long ago my brother Jay dug into a bowl and asked, “What is this awesome stuff–green pea jelape?” I couldn’t think of its name after hearing that. If you can come up with a better name (or know the actual title from that long ago F&W article) leave me a message below.

While I associate this appetizer with spring, it actually can be made at any time of year since it uses frozen peas. And while I can’t recall its name I do remember that in the original version the recipe called for pancetta, which at the time was a new ingredient to me. In the ensuing years I’ve substituted bacon for the pancetta and when I’m serving vegetarian friends I leave out the meat completely and flavored the dip with mint instead. The recipe calls for you to let the peas defrost, though if you forget to do this step simply give them a quick saute to quickly thaw them after you’ve cooked the bacon and shallots but before you dump them into the food processor. The finished dish will be a brighter green if you don’t need to cook them, but it will be delicious either way.

Personally I like this dish served as a dip, but some ladies at my church use it as a filling for tea sandwiches. It’s quite tasty when spread between two slices of buttered, crustless white bread (thanks Sue and Olivia). Drought or no, spring or no, vegetarian or meat eater I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

Green Pea Jelape

4 slices bacon or pancetta, cut into small pieces

1-2 largish shallots, minced

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 pound frozen peas, defrosted

1/2 cup chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

Saute the bacon until it starts to brown and crisp, drain on a paper towel and set aside. Wipe out the pan, add the shallots and olive oil and saute until soft. Toss the shallots, bacon, peas and chicken stock in a small food processor and zap until everything is pulverized. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with crackers.

Mint Green Pea Jelape

Use the recipe above but omit the bacon and substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock. Before adding to the food processor add the leaves from 4-7 sprigs of fresh mint.

If crackers aren’t in your cupboards you could always serve this with some lightly toasted slivers of baguette.

Category Archives: 50 Recipes

4 Ways to Beat the Heat

Hello and Goodbye

DIY Pizza

Molten Chocolate Death on a Spoon

Green Pea Jelape

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