Pignoli Biscotti: June Cookbook Challenge

For all the food innovations out there, sometimes you just have to stick with a classic. Thumbing through Biscotti, I had my choice from an array of biscotti options as well as Swedish cinnamon sticks and Mandelbrot. But what drew me in was a tried and true pignoli – biscotti made with toasted pine nuts. Combined with a shot of sweet tart from the lemon zest, this nutty, crunchy cookie is a light, happy treat for a Saturday afternoon.

Pignoli Biscotti

2/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
½ cup of butter
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB lemon zest
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon of salt

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, lemon juice and zest. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and nuts. Divide dough in half. On a greased and floured baking sheet pat out into two logs about ½ inch high, 1 ½ inches wide and 14 inches long. Space logs at least 2 inches apart. Bake in the middle of a preheated 325F oven for 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer from the baking sheet to a rack. Let knife slice diagonally at a 45 degree angle about ½ inch thick. Lay the slices flat on the baking sheet and return to the oven for 10 minutes longer, turning them over once, to dry slightly. Let cool on a rack.

 

Chocolate Strawberry Pavolva: June Cookbook Challenge

Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer was the first cookbook I purchased when I decided I was ready to take on more challenging recipes. I was in love with her television show, Nigella, which first showed up on the Style Network. It was the first cooking show I saw that took television cooking away from the live action studio audience and into a beautifully shot, sensually described world. Although the book has fallen out of heavy rotation in favor of seasonal cookbooks (and Mike’s man-crush on Colicchio), it’s still a handy one to kick around. Plus the amazing mint julep peaches alone are worth the purchase price. Seriously. Those are a no-fail summer dessert.

For the June Cookbook Challenge, I grabbed Forever Summer and fell upon the chocolate raspberry pavolova recipe. Perfect! I’d saved the egg whites from the ginger chili creme brulee recipe (which called for 8 egg yolks) which formed the chocolate meringue base of the pavlova. Rather than buy raspberries, I took the opportunity to use up some of our gorgeous, ruby red strawberries from the market. Waste not, want not.

This is a triple threat of a dessert: The chocolate pavolva is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, a layered chocolatey bomb that only gets better if you use high quality chocolate. Fresh whipped cream is dolloped on top and sprinkled with fresh berries and grated chocolate. Taken together, a bit of the dessert delivers bittersweet, creamy, and tart flavors all at once. It is a lick-your-fingers and clean-your-plate kind of dessert. It also serves about 6, so I recommend making this for a party. Otherwise you’ll find yourself polishing off the entire pavlova on your own. Which might not be the worst thing in the world.

One tip though: the directions indicate that the meringue base should cool in the oven after its cooking time is complete. Be sure to follow this. If taken out of the oven immediately after baking, the meringue will fall into a chocolate pancake. Still delicious, sure, but not as big and fluffy as its meant to be.  

Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova, from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer

For the chocolate meringue base:

6 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3 Tb unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 Ts balsalmic or red wine vinegar
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

For the topping
2 ¼ cups heavy cream
1 very full pint of raspberries (or strawberries)
2-3 Tb coarsely grated, bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Beat egg whites until peaks form. Beat in sugar a spoonful at a time until peaks are stiff and shiny. Sprinkle over the cocoa and vinegar and then the chopped chocolate. Gently fold everything until the cocoa is thoroughly mixed in. Mound onto a baking sheet in a fat circle, approximately 9 inches in diameter, smoothing the sides and the top. Place in the oven, then immediately turn the temperature down to 300 F. Cook for about 60 to 75 minutes. When it’s ready it should look crisp around the edges and be dry on top but still have some give to it in the middle. Turn off the oven and open the door slightly, let the meringue disk cool completely.

When you’re ready to serve, invert into a big, flat-bottomed plate. Whisk the cream until thick but still soft and pile it on top of the meringue, then scatter over the raspberries. Coarsely grate the chocolate so that you get curls and sprinkle over the top.

 

Watermelon Agua Fresca: June Cookbook Challenge

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend, there are few flavors that come to mind as vividly as watermelon.  Sure, you might think of hamburgers and hotdogs first, but just the mention of the word ‘watermelon’ is enough to trigger sense-memories of sugary sweet fruit, juices running down your face (and arms), and that light, fresh scent.

For some of us, though, it’s not enough to just enjoy the watermelon in its natural, unadulterated state.  We need to get creative, coming up with recipes that pair chunks of watermelon with radishes, pears…and blue cheese!  (NOTE: Oops! Colleen pointed out that this is actually a recipe for watermelon radishes, not watermelon and radishes.  Sorry about that!)  Or tomatoes, basil and feta.  Or any number of other sweet-savory combinations.

But there’s a middle ground, as well, and we found it in Summer Cocktails, another one of our liquid-focused recipe collections.  As we worked our way through the June Cookbook Challenge, we occasionally sought ‘refresher’ dishes – lighter fare so we weren’t making 30 weighty entrees over the course of the month.  When we saw a recipe for a watermelon agua fresca in the book, we knew we had a winner.

Generally speaking, aguas frescas are basically drinkable fruit.  Like a smoothie, without the yogurt.  And this recipe didn’t mess with that.

Cut 1/4 large watermelon (about 1 3/4 pounds) from the rind and put the flesh – seeds and all – into a blender.  Add 1 cup sparkling or still water and a pinch of salt.  You can also add 1/2 ounce lime juice, but we didn’t want to compromise the watermelon flavor so we left it out.  Blend until smooth.  Strain into a pitcher.  Chill for at least 30 minutes.  Serve.

It’s just that easy.  And the results were about as delicious as you might expect – drinking the very essence of watermelon.  The recipe warns that you should taste the melon first, to make sure the sweetness is sufficient…a bitter agua fresca could be a real disappointment.  And don’t stop with watermelon, either.  Feel free to try this same recipe with other summer fruits and melons – we’ve seen strawberry, raspberry, honeydew, canteloupe and others worked into aguas frescas at places like Taqueria Nacional and others around town that serve them.

We did notice that the heavier solids within the drink tended to settle out the longer we left it in the refrigerator, but a quick stir with a wooden spoon immediately reincorporated everything into a sweet suspension.

My suggestion?  Pick up a watermelon today and make up a quadruple batch of this stuff for your holiday weekend.  As you can see from the picture, a single batch just won’t last you very long so you’ll want the reinforcements on hand.  And if you’re feeling particularly festive, think back to your college days – if you can put vodka into a watermelon, why can’t you do the same to a watermelon agua fresca?

 

Pecan-Bourbon Pralines: June Cookbook Challenge FAIL

Last Tuesday our friend Aaron celebrated his final day in the Navy at Handsome Francis’ rooftop deck in Adams Morgan. We were thrilled to help celebrate Aaron’s official arrival to DC to work on some fancy pants nuclear stuff and, most importantly, live in the District full time. To mark the occasion, Handsome Francis asked everyone to bring a little something over for the party. I quickly volunteered to bring a dessert and selected a pecan-bourbon praline recipe from our Tartine cookbook, thinking it was a great modern update to the Cracker Jack – favorite snack of cartoon sailors everywhere! 

Tartine is a magical little bakery in the Mission district of San Francisco and we made the most of a rainy morning there on our most recent visit. I’d already had a good experience making gougeres from the Tartine cookbook and, candy thermometer in hand, felt confident about tackling the pralines. 

There are few ingredients included in the recipe, further bolstering my confidence that this would be a snap. Plus, it meant I got to cook with bourbon. Which of course meant I got to drink bourbon while cooking. Is there no happier synchronicity? 

The gist of this recipe is pretty basic. Mix sugar, cream, butter, salt, molasses and bourbon in a heavy saucepan until it hits 240 degrees for 7 to 10 minutes. Let it cool to 210 degrees, add the pecans, stir and pour onto a baking pan. In theory, this should harden into golden candies. Somewhere here, something went awry. Instead of hardening, the candy mixture just stayed sugary and grainy. Even after cooling overnight, the mixture was too soft to be “broken” per the directions and served. Granted, it was a delicious screw up. I mean, with those ingredients how could it not be? I had several spoonfuls with a glass of milk that night while hoping it would harden up. No such luck. Looking back on the directions, I wonder if I didn’t let the mixture boil at 240 for long enough, which kept the sugar from dissolving? When I read the directions the first time, I thought it said it would take 7 to 10 minutes for the mixture to get to the right temperature. Maybe I should have kept it at that temperature for 7 to 10 minutes? I wrote out the directions on this point just as they are in the book. You be the judge.

I’m open to trying the recipe again. In the meantime, the dessert fail gave us the silver lining of getting to try Sticky Fingers Bakery for the first time as an emergency dessert replacement. 

Pecan-Bourbon Pralines, from Tartine

2 cups pecan halves, toasted
3 cups of sugar
1 cup of heavy cream
4 tb unsalted butter
1/4 tb salt
1 tb molasses
2 tb bourbon (plus more for sipping at your leisure)

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a deep, heavy saucepan, combine all ingredients except the pecans. Place over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up any lumps. Bring to a boil and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture registeres 240 F on a thermometer, 7 to 10 minutes, depending on how vigorously the mixture is boiling. Remove from heat and let cool to 210F.

Add the pecans to the sugar mixture and stir quickly.  According to the book, the mixture will thicken quickly. This didn’t happen for me. I guess it should have been a sign. Pour the sugar mixture onto the prepared sheet and lete cool. Once cool, break into pieces.

 

Sticky Fingers Bakery: Sweet Vegan Treats in Columbia Heights

I have long lamented the lack of a really great French-style bakery in DC.  Luckily, we have no shortage of shops completely dedicated to sweet indulgences, which softens the blow somewhat.

After a failed attempt at pecan-bourbon pralines (more on that later today), I was in a pinch for a dessert to bring to our friend Aaron’s terminal Navy leave party in Adams Morgan. This was the perfect time to try out Sticky Fingers Bakery, a neighborhood favorite revered for  its all-vegan bakery, with gluten-free options. 

The space is very cute and unassuming… and very, very pink.  Shelves are stocked with additional vegan and vegetarian products including sandwiches, drinks, and vegan jerky and the menu includes sandwiches you can eat in a small dining room. There was only one person in line ahead of us when we arrived, but the guy behind the counter seemed a touch overwhelmed running around to fill his order. I got the feeling they were either understaffed or someone had stepped out momentarily.

The gluten-free cookie options were picked over by the time we arrived, so we loaded up on an assortment of cookies from the bakery including chocolate chip, raisin oatmeal, lemon coconut and pecan cookies.  I made the fatal error of not trying one before we arrived, so I was a little nervous about bringing vegan cookies to a party. I mean, a vegan cookie? What is a cookie without egg and butter? Most guests were health-minded but I doubt anyone shows up to a party crossing their fingers for a sawdust-flavored dessert. Would they notice the difference? Would my party offering be silently scorned and politely ignored?

 

Spoiler Alert: Follow-Up Interview with the Next Food Network Star’s Newest Casualty

Consider yourself warned by the title, but hopefully we haven’t ruined this week’s episode for anyone!

For Washingtonians tuning in to the Next Food Network Star in the hope of cheering on local chef Teddy Folkman, it has been a rough couple of weeks.  For some reason, we never really got to see the camera-friendly Teddy who earned his way onto NFNS with a great performance in his Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  Instead, we cringed as viewers across the country were introduced to a caricature whose over-the-top antics marked him for an early exit.

I guess we should count our blessings.  If Teddy had found his groove and won it all, who knows how often we’d see him in DC as he made his way from New York to Aspen to Los Angeles like so many other celebrity chefs?  Even so, it felt like the ride ended too soon to show what Folkman was really made of, both in the kitchen and in front of the camera.

Here at Capital Spice, we were fortunate enough to catch up with Teddy for another interview (like we did before the premiere).  This time, he called in from Disney World (not just for Super Bowl winners anymore!), where he was in the middle of a week-long family reunion.  We talked to him about his experiences with NFNS, some future plans brought about by the show, and – yes - his performance on last week’s episode.

Check out our Q&A after the jump.

 

Suffering Bastard: June Cookbook Challenge

Some of our endeavors during the June Cookbook Challenge have had the added benefit of giving us an excuse to use gadgets and serving implements that have been sitting around our apartment for years just waiting for their moments to shine.  The creme brulee torch is a great example; so are Elizabeth’s tiki glasses.

We found the Suffering Bastard in The Great Tiki Drink Book, a  terrific resource for all things tiki.  Though the name was originally attributed to a 19th-century misunderstanding in Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, it seemed all the more appropriate after watching last night’s episode of the Next Food Network Star.  And the fact that it doesn’t contain any rum made it a good choice for us as we sought out a recipe to make from the book.

Now we could have easily gone with one of the many tiki-related recipes for appetizers and other food items that are located at the back of the book, but we felt that it was important to share a drink recipe instead.  So we broke out the tiki glasses and – having remembered just how awesome these bad boys really are – immediately promised ourselves that we would have friends over for tiki drinks on the deck sometime very soon.

To make the Suffering Bastard, we combined 1 1/2 ounces gin (Tanqueray here), 1 ounce Bourbon (we went with Maker’s Mark, our favorite), 3 ounces of ginger ale and the juice of 1/2 lime in a cocktail shaker filled with ice.  Giving the contents five or six good, hard shakes, we poured the liquid into one of the fierce tiki glasses and then garnished it with a sprig of our Shenandoah Growers mint.

The drink was surprisingly refreshing, with the astringency of the gin balancing nicely with the round sweetness of the ginger ale.  The effervescence of the drink was also a pleasant surprise: instead of the big, heavy bubbles you usually get in soda, the Suffering Bastard had a lighter, fizzier feel to it.

Now to try some of these other recipes so we’ve got even more reasons to put our tiki glasses to use this year…

 

Watching the Next Food Network Star with Teddy Folkman: Episode Four Recap

If we had any question about the ‘narrative effect’ that goes into the editing of a show like The Next Food Network Star, this episode helped to put them to bed once and for all.

As you may recall, we left our aspiring TV personalities on something of a sour note, with just about everyone mad at Teddy for his actions and Teddy fighting tears.  Naturally, you might assume that such powerful emotions would carry over into the very next challenge that would be thrown at the group…right?

Not so much.  The distrust and (frankly) dislike of Teddy seems to have melted away as we head into the fourth episode of the series.  The remaining seven contestants (”the last seven people in the world” to have this opportunity, as Bobby Flay reminds them later in the episode) are going about their business as if none of the oh-so-dramatic events of last Sunday’s episode ever happened.

With Teddy Folkman out of town for a family reunion, we watched this week’s episode from the comfort of our own couch.  No commentary from fellow fans and well-wishers to accompany this one…but at least it was a quicker trip home at the end of the show!

The episode begins in earnest when the competitors assemble in the test kitchen to face Bobby Flay and another challenge: design a gourmet burger to appear on the menu at Bobby’s Burger Palace – a chain that Flay has been opening throughout the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT).  We’ve actually had burgers at the Eatontown, NJ branch, so we can say from experience that most of the dishes that the contestants turned out would have been right at home alongside the Miami, the Philadelphia, the Dallas and the Napa Valley Burgers that already appear on the menu. 

Michael channelled Little Italy with a Mulberry Street Burger that included chunks of mozarella tucked inside the patty itself and a garlic bread bun.  Melissa’s Burlington Burger recalled her college days with melted Vermont cheddar and turkey chili atop the burger.  Teddy drew inspiration from the fresh Amish-grown produce that he works with in his restaurants, paying tribute to those farmers with a Pennsylvania Burger topped with heirloom tomatoes, peppery arugula, and other fresh flavors.  Jamika thought of New Orleans as she whipped up a spicy cayenne burger atop a flayed sausage link.  Debbie and Jeffrey stuck with their California comfort zones – a bulgogi burger for Debbie and a sweet-heat offering from Jeffrey.  Katie stuck to her green guns as she put together a San Francisco Farmers’ Market turkey burger…a risky move, as turkey burgers generally need to cook at lower temperatures for longer periods of time to avoid drying out.

So who ended up going home at the end of the show (SPOILER ALERT)?  And whose burger will be making its way to Connecticut?  Find out after the jump.

 

Bikinitini: June Cookbook Challenge

Not all of the recipe compilations we’re working through for the June Cookbook Challenge are food-focused.  We’ve also got our share of cocktail recipe books, and we committed to working our way through all of those during the month, as well.

One of those books, Highballs High Heels, describes itself as “a girl’s guide to the art of cocktails.”  Good news – these are definitely not gender-specific drinks (though the names and descriptions are definitely geared toward young women who like to entertain).  They pack a decent punch, and they run the gamut from the sweet and fruity to the strong and bracing.

Looking to enjoy a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, we opted to try something called the “Bikinitini.”  It’s got cucumber sticks for garnish – talk about refreshing!  This frozen beverage makes a great alternative to a margarita, and it goes down way too easily.  Enjoy them by the blender-full!

Bikinitini

4 ounces vodka
2 ounces triple sec
2 ounces fresh lemon juice
1 cup peeled, seeded and cubed cucumber
4 fresh mint leaves (optional)
2 cups cracked ice

1 small cucumber, cut into long,thin sticks for garnish

In a blender, combine all of the ingredients except the cucumber sticks.  Blend until thick and slushy, with no ice chips remaining.  Divide the mixture among four 6-ounce cocktail glasses.  Garnish each drink with a cucumber stick or two.

 

Turkish Poached Eggs in Yogurt Sauce: June Cookbook Challenge

About a week into the June Cookbook Challenge, Elizabeth took a look at my nightstand and noticed Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Anne Mendelson.  Specifically, she noticed the tagline indicating ‘120 adventurous recipes that explore the riches of our first food.’  She pointed it out to me with a grimace: “Another cookbook?”

“No way,” I said, realizing we already had 29 books to work through over the course of the month.  “It’s food writing.  A history book.”  She wasn’t buying it, so I asked her to pick a page number at random.  Naturally, her choice took us right to a recipe…so much for relying on chance. 

And thank goodness!  After resigning myself to the fact that I had inadvertently brought one more cookbook into our house, I set about finding a recipe to make.  In a section of the book focusing on cultured milk products (primarily yogurt), I found a recipe for çilbir and I figured I struck gold.

Details on çilbir – what it is, how you make it, and why you should – after the jump.