Baked Alaska

For Thanksgiving Day, I wanted to begin with crudites and a dip. I found the recipe for this dip in the Martha Stewart's Hors D'oeuvres Handbook. It is a nice refreshing dip. It has a little tang from the sour cream and buttermilk, a little punch from the peppercorns, and is rounded out by the earthiness of the thyme and shallot. It was very easy to make, and can me made up to 2 days in advance.

BUTTERMILK-PEPPERCORN DIP
Makes 1 1/2 cups
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 teaspoon coarsely ground mixed peppercorns(black, pink, and green)
2 teaspoons minced chives
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
1 large shallot, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Place the ingredients in a medium bowl and stir well to combine. Serve immediately or store, covered, in the refrigeratro, for up to 48 hours.

For years now, I have seen the photos of the various savory ice box crackers in Martha Stewart's Hors d'oeuvres Handbook. But for some reason, I had never made them. When looking for a new appetizer to make for Thankgiving, I thought these would be the perfect thing. You can make the dough ahead of time, and either keep it in the refrigerator(up to 2 weeks) or in the freezer(up to 4 weeks) before you thaw, slice, and make them. Then they may be baked the day before. If you need to recrisp them(which I did), just pop them into a 250 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Both crackers were good. I used a strong blue chees in my Blue Cheese Pecan Crackers, so the flavor was very strong. Next time I'll try a gorgonzola. I like the texture of these better, as they were more sandy-textured. The Parmesan-Rosemary Crackers had a very nice flavor and I liked their rosemary sprig garnish. The texture was different on these, not as "mealy".

This week's theme for PhotoHunter is breakfast. I didn't have any unique breakfast photos, and so I decided to take a photo of what I eat most days-oatmeal. Today mine was made special by the addition of a persimmon and sliced almonds. I also made myself a capuccino. A warm and healthy way to start the day.

I was looking forward to this month's soup, as I love butternut squash. The recipe looked very simple, and was different than what I am used to making, as mine usually contains apple juice. I didn't have any butternut squash on hand, but had 3 other winter squashes - an acorn, a delicata, and a carnival. The Delicata came in my CSA box, and the other two were purchased to decorate my Thanksgiving table. So I decided to use the 3 of these, and I roasted them the evening before making the soup. Here's the photo:

After the squash had roasted, I let it cool and then scraped the flesh out into a covered container, and put it in the fridge for the night. The next evening I made the soup, and it was extremely quick. I sauteed the onion until soft, added the squash, broth, and seasonings, and simmered until hot. I used my immersion blender to smooth, and in less than 30 minutes I had a great soup. I love the kick that the hot pepper added. For so few ingredients, this soup has lots of flavor, and this soup will be made many times in the future. I served my garnished with fat free yogurt, and served a salad of greens, sliced oranges, and a balsamic vinegrette and a thick piece of sliced bread. Perfect for a winter evening.

What's better for a fall dessert than a pear tart? Here's a pear tart whose crust is flavored with toasty pecans and butter, the pear filling has the additional flavor of a vanilla bean, and it's topped with a whipped cream flavored with honey and toasted pecans.

This photo was taken on Dec. 6th. Bella is just over 11 weeks old. She is settling nicely into her new home. She is still a very curious puppy who likes to chew on things she shouldn't, and isn't completely keen on the idea of "housetraining". But she already has learned the commands sit and down (although she still has to have a food treat to do the down). And most nights, she quietly goes into her crate for the evening. Unfortunately for us, we still have to set the alarm for around 3am to take her out, then she wakes back up around 6:30am and wants up. I gave her a bath this week, which didn't go too bad, and she was so sleepy afterwards she let me brush every part of her, including her face. She is a very sweet girl, who I know is going to be a great addition to our family (she already is).

This week's theme for photohunter is "favorite". I decided to show some photos we took last year on our trip to Harbour Island in the Bahamas. This was a beautiful island, with a pink sand beach that ran for longer than 3 miles. Not your typical beach-the most people we ever saw on the beach was maybe 10. You can't rent a car on the island, and so you rent a golf cart to get around. We started our vacation on Paradise Island at Atlantis (lucky me, I won a trip through my work there!). It was a very nice resort, but lots of people. We like quiet, and big resorts just really aren't our thing. After the trip ended at Atlantis, we extended our vacation by taking a ferry to Harbour Island for a few extra day. Peaceful, nothing to do but lay on the beach, lay in a hammock at our lodging, enjoy a nice glass of wine while enjoying the view, etc. etc.

This first photo is me standing in the beautiful clear waters. This was the opposite side of the island as the beach, but during this tide you could walk for what seemed like forever in shallow water.

This next photo is of my husband and I having dinner at a great Italian restaurant on the island, called Aqua Pazza. We ate there 3 nights. The food was excellent, and look at the view...

This last photo is taken at the Bed & Breakfast we stayed at. The area shown is the patio where we had breakfast each morning.

I can't believe we are already on week 4 of the Sunday Slow Soupers. This week's soup was chosen by teaberry, and what a good choice it was. If you are looking for a very flavorful, filling soup, then try this Italian Wedding Soup. It contains small meatballs that are made from ground turkey and flavored with many things, including parmesan cheese, allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon. The broth is a flavorful mixture of onions, celery, and onions, enriched with chicken stock, balsmic vinegar and Marsala wine. It makes a nice large pot with plenty of leftovers. My suggestion would be to make a double batch of the meatballs, and freeze one half so that you'll have them on hand when you get a craving for the soup again (and believe me, you will).

I made a batch of biscotti today to add to my Christmas food gifts. The recipe is based on a recipe from the Tra Vigne Cookbook. I love the biscotti. It is made with turbinado sugar, which gives it a great texture. I changed the recipe by using a lot less aniseed, adding the zest of an orange, adding dried cranberries, and using slivered almonds instead of whole almonds. The results were excellent. The process does take quite a bit of time, but during the long cooking time, you can be doing other things.

CRANBERRY ALMOND BISCOTTI
Makes about 40 cookies

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup turbinado sugar, plus more to roll logs in
1/3 cup light brown sugar
5 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon aniseed
Zest of 1 orange
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup slivered almonds, toaste

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, crystal sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, orange zest, vanilla, aniseed an dmix to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat on low just until the dough begins to come together. Add the almonds and cranberries and mix until distributed. Do not overwork. On a floured board, shape the dough into a ball, flatten, put in a bowl, cover with wrap, and chill for 2 hours to allow dough to relax.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions on a lightly floured work surface. Using your hands, roll each portion into a log about 3 inches in diameter. Roll the logs into crystal sugar to coat well. Place the logs on the prepared baking sheet and press down lightly to flatten slightly. Logs should be several inches apart.

Bake until firm and light brown, about 1 hour. When poked with a finger, the dough should feel firm to the touch and not collapse or cave in. Remove from the oven, then lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees.

Let the logs cool completely. Carefully move them, still on the parchment, to a cutting board, then peel off the parchment. Cut the logs with a sharp serrated knife into 1/2" thick slices. Lay the slices down on a baking sheet and return to the oven. Bake until toasted to a golden brown on both sides, about 50 minutes. Turn the cookies during toasting, as needed, to brown evenly on both sides. Let cool completely, then store in an airtight container

I almost forgot to post a photo today. The theme this week for PhotoHunter was "wide". This is a photo of my husband (I know, not the most flattering picture) with a LingCod he caught-you can see how wide their mouth is. The second photo shows the fish while it's still in the water, and again shows its wide mouth.

This week's soup came from Nancy. She had never made the soup before, but thought it sounded like a good soup for Christmas week. The recipe came from an old Bon Appetite issue.

I had never had pumpkin soup before-lots of butternut squash, etc. This recipe uses canned pumpkin. While the recipe was good, it wasn't my favorite. Could have been the canned chicken broth I used. I added some Sherry Rum Pepper Sauce to it, and that really helped brighten up the flavor. I think you could instead add regular sherry, or a type of vinegar.

This year I participated in the Second Annual Season's Eating's Secret Gift Exchange, hosted by Kate of Thyme for Cooking. Season's Eating's is a 'secret' spicy/foodie gift exchange to celebrate the Holiday Season. Each person sends a small gift of a local herb, spice, or other food that is unique to or characteristic of where they live, along with a recipe using it, to a fellow foodie.
When you receive your parcel, you can either use your 'gift' in the recipe included, another of your choosing or just snap a photo of your new treasure. Then you do a post about it...
To participate, we sent Kate our address. She then drew names and sent e-mails to each of us and let us know who they were to send a gift to.

Provencal Onion Tart (unfortunately, not the best photo)

I have always wanted to make an onion tart, but like many other things I've wanted to make, I've just never gotten around to it. Last week I my husband and I were invited to a neighborhood gathering. I was still recovering from cooking Thanksgiving dinner, so I wanted to bring something tasty, but easy. As I was looking through recipes I've collected over the years, I came across one for Provencal Onion Tart. This recipe was adapted from Cakebread Cellars, from their website.

The tart was wonderful! The onions are cooked to a consistency where they just melt in your mouth. I followed the recipe as written, except before baking I topped it with finely grated parmesan cheese, and put the olives on before baking. Delicious!!!

Last year I made the matzo toffee, and it was great. I decided to try a different one this year, and it's another keeper. Very easy to make, as long as you have a candy thermometer. I messed up, and put all of the nuts on the bottom, and since there were too many, when I lifted up the toffe when cooled, half the nuts were still on the sheetpan. Darn, I had to make another batch. And this one wouldn't be given away. I actually like that there aren't as many nuts.

One of the cookies I made for my holiday gifts were Gingersnaps. I love this recipe-it's easy, and the cookies turn out good every time. If you want soft cookies, cook for a little less, and if you want crunchy cookies, cook a little longer. These cookies stay fresh for a long while. I use a small scoop to make evenly sized cookies, and they are very easy and much quicker than rolling all of the small balls.

The theme for this week's Photo Hunter is "squeaky". The squeakiest thing in my life right now is Bella, our Westie puppy. She is a sweetheart, but has her moments. Her "squeaky" times are when she crawls under the coffee table, and does a nice high-pitched bark at nothing.
Here she is on Christmas day with one of her new toys Santa brought her.

As you all might know by now, I am a participating member of Daring Bakers. Each month we are given a baking challenge, and sometime during the month we complete the challenge, then post about it on the specified date at the end of the month. Before this month, I had participated in 4 challenges (I think that's right, unless I am forgetting about one) and some have been much more challenging than the others. This month's challenge rates up there with the most challenging. Before I tell you about the challenge, I'll say that when I printed off all of the instructions and recipes to begin with, it was 18 pages long! Okay, the Challenge this month is…

A French Yule Log!!!

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

A little background about Yule logs: In France you can buy two kinds of Yule log, either the Genoise and Buttercream type that the Daring Bakers made last December, or what is more commonly purchased which is a frozen Yule Log very reminiscent of an ice cream cake, only often it’s not made of ice cream but rather frozen mousse of some sort. In French this is called an entremets which is sometimes loosely translated in English as simply a cream dessert. This also means that this recipe is not holiday-specific, it is also just a scrumptious dessert recipe.

The French Yule Log recipe contained 6 elements, all of which had to be included in our logs:
1) Dacquoise Biscuit
2) Mousse
3) Ganache Insert
4) Praline (Crisp) Insert
5) Creme Brulee Insert
6) Icing

Recipes were given for each element, along with a few variations. But you were allowed to make changes to the recipes and flavor the elements as you chose.

This is the inside of my Yule Log. My elements were an Almond Dacquoise, a Dark Chocolate Mousse flavored with raspberry puree, a Dark Chocolate Ganache Insert, a Praline Feuillete (Crisp) Insert, a Vanilla Creme Brulee Insert flavored with Chambord, and a Dark Chocolate Icing.

I was having friends over for dinner the Sunday after Christmas, and was cooking a beef tenderloin as the main course. I wanted to make a fairly simple dinner, and decided that instead of making appetizers first, then having a salad next, I would fix something that would be both an appetizer/first course and a salad. I remembered a recipe that Jerry from Jerry's Thoughts, Musings and Rants had given me. This fall, I purchased a bottle of Ver Jus from Terra Sonoma Food Company. I was looking for recipes that contained Ver Jus, and Jerry gave me the following recipe. He got the recipe from Malivoire Winery, where I believe he took a cooking class there and they made the Galatte.

I was so pleased with this Galette. The dough was perfect-tender and flaky. The onions and fennel mixture were soft and sweet, and the Brie cheese was a great choice of cheese for this. The Galette is topped off with a simple arugula salad dressed with a light vinegrette (the recipe just calls for olive oil, but I also added a little Champagne Vinegar). I garnished it with toasted pine nuts and pomegranate seeds, which was very colorful for the holidays.

Well, I'm late posting my Sunday Slow Soupers soup. I made it last week, but forgot to take photos, and froze half of it, and so I had to wait until I thawed it out to take a photo. Shannon chose this soup because it contains black eyed peas, a food that is eaten by many on New Years Day. She got the recipe from Kalyn's Kitchen blog. The soup is wonderful-very flavorful with the ham, quite salty, and healthier with the addition of greens. You can use any type of green-I used kale. I loved the soup the first few days I ate it, and as I mentioned, I froze the other half to be eaten at a later time. Today, I was so thankful to have that soup in the freezer. It has been about -10F for the past few days, and today it never got above that at our house. When we went to bed last night, it was nice and toasty. When I got up this morning, it was 54 in the house, and went down to 50. Our heater wasn't working!!! We have one bedroom/bath downstairs which is on a separate thermostat. Thank goodness that heater worked. What happened is that we had a valve that didn't work, and didn't allow hot water to flow through the pipes to the baseboard heat, and a pipe froze. Usually when we don't have heat it's because the electricity went out. At least we had that. We called the plumber and he came and replaced the valve, but said we'd have to try to get the pipe thawed. We could either build a fire, turn on all space heaters we had, etc. and see if they thawed. No luck. We called a guy who thaws pipes, but he couldn't make it out until tonight. We had to stay in the unheated portion of the house a good part of the day, because we needed to keep an eye on the fireplace, propane heaters, electric heaters, etc. to make sure we didn't start a fire. Around 7pm tonight, he came and thawed out the pipes (luckily, they didn't burst), and we now have heat.
Back to the soup-I thawed it out for lunch, and not only did the soup still taste great, it was very warming to have while in the cold house. I did make sure I saved enough to have a small bowl on New Years Day for good luck and prosperity.