Summer kitchen

Well, hello there!

I've been enjoying my summer so much that I've neglected the blog for two months! To be honest, I'm not knitting or sewing much lately. It might be time to reinvent this space a little, though I haven't quite figured that out yet.

I've been completely buried in vegetables lately--from my own garden, and from the farm CSA. It's great, and overwhelming. Here are a few things I happened to photograph:


Homemade pizza on my new pizza peel. This peel is great--I had been using my largest cutting board, which was not nearly large enough. This is a fresh, organic spinach pizza.



Tahini smashed english peas. Soooo good, I wish I was eating this right now.



Almond cake with strawberry rhubarb compote, via Smitten Kitchen. This was really tasty, though I preferred the cake without the compote. The compote was wonderful with plain yogurt.



Spinach and zucchini lasagne, back when the farm sent me two gargantuan bunches of spinach, and I was not yet at war with my over-productive zucchini plants.



This was either round two or three of zucchini bread fest 2010. There's much much more to come! I think I used this recipe, and it was good.



My first zucchini plant attack involved plucking some of the male flowers to make these great homemade zucchini blossom quesadillas. I used yogurt instead of crema, and threw in some green onion. Quite nice!

This week, in the new kitchen.

I had been dreaming about making Alfajores since my Chilean friend described these chocolate-covered dulce de leche-filled sandwich cookies. I cut out a recipe from Fine Cooking Magazine (also found here) and finally found the right occasion to make them this week. It all seemed to be going quite well at first. The dulce de leche was thick and tasted divine. The cookies seemed to come out alright, despite this being my first attempt at high-altitude baking.


Filling the cookies was fun, until I looked down at the completed ones to see all of the dulce de leche squeezing out of the sides! What a crying shame! I tried to remedy this by quickly dipping them into the chocolate, but disaster struck again--the chocolate wouldn't set, and ended up running all over the pan (I had thoughtfully placed underneath the wire racks!)


They ended up looking like a mess, but I was still hopeful that they would taste good.


But sadly, without much dulce de leche, I was just left with a fairly bland cookie and a too-rich layer of messy chocolate. Sigh. If only I had found the recipe reviews online before I started! Has anyone else made these successfully before?

Much more successful was my attempt to use up a surplus of potatoes and feta, by making some very yummy potato, artichoke and feta latkes.


I really liked the addition of fresh mint, which I picked from my garden.


Highs and lows, but all in the name of learning.

Oh my my

This just came out of the oven:

And I promptly ate three slices. It's my variation on the soft cheese bread from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. I added sauteed swiss chard and green garlic. It has a lovely soft texture and a very decadent flavor. So good!

Rutabaga and carrot puree.

Brown butter and scallion mashed potatoes.

Quinoa with black beans and cilantro.

New favorite cookbook

For Christmas, my Mom got me a copy of Peter Reinhart's new book Artisan Breads Every Day. It's like a perfect meld of his award winning The Bread Baker's Apprentice, mixed with the newly popular Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This book teaches you to make all kinds of beautiful gourmet breads with minimal effort. What can be better?

I made the cinnamon rolls from The Bread Baker's Apprentice several years ago, and they were amazing--just like the one's from Ann Sather in Chicago. So naturally, I had to see how the easy version of this recipe would go. And let me tell you, they turned out beautifully and couldn't have been easier. If you're looking for a good book to start bread baking, I highly recommend Artisan Breads Every Day!

Sorry folks, these beauties are long gone.

A belated birthday brunch

There were flowers from my garden,

Vegan tofu scramble with a heart-shaped mushroom,

Cinnamon swirl buns,

Breakfast strata with potatoes, rosemary, and swiss,

A vegan ice cream cake,

And my lovely new butterfly pin from Chile, made with dyed horse hair.

This week in food

Well, actually the past two weeks. I'm going through a brief spell where I don't really want to think about food. Or rather, where nothing in particular sounds appealing. Despite that, I did manage to cook and eat some tasty things.

Chinese scallion pancakes
These were easy, fun to make, and I'm already making a second batch. I made six and stuck the dough in the fridge to cook them as needed throughout the week. I also whipped up an easy sauce of low-sodium soy sauce, Sri Ratcha chili garlic sauce, and tahini.

Rosemary potato bread
Historically, this has been my favorite type of bread. I must say that I was slightly disappointed by the outcome--perhaps I need to buy better flour? However, three friends who tasted it thought it was very good. Perhaps I just had very high expectations. This recipe appears in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which is a really excellent book. A few years ago I made the most amazing cinnamon rolls using his recipe. They tasted just like Ann Sather's in Chicago.

Roasted cauliflower in lemon-tahini sauce
Don't let the less-than-appetizing photo fool you, this is an amazing recipe. It won the reader's recipe contest from Vegetarian Times a couple years ago. I make it often because it is easy and delicious. Sometimes I add carrots and/or whole chickpeas to the roasting pan.

Trader Joe's Canelés de Bordeaux!
I saw these magical looking creatures on some foodie blog [perhaps this one?] a few months ago, but figured that I'd never get to try them since I didn't want to invest in a special pan. Then last week as I perused the frozen food selection at Trader Joe's I found these! They are really really tasty. I did not bother looking at the nutritional facts, as I don't want to know. They go quite well with black tea.

Baked and unbaked

Cherry Chocolate Mousse Mini Pies
Vegan tested, and wholeheartedly approved. This was extremely easy to whip up in the Cuisinart, and was very rich and chocolatey. I used honey instead of agave nectar, and it came out a bit too sweet for my taste. Next time I will taste it before I add sweetener and adjust accordingly.

Corn Jalapeno Lava Bread
This is my second bread recipe from this website, and I must say that I am thoroughly impressed. They are by no means quick breads, but they come out lovely, and the directions are very clear. This is a white bread speckled with corn and jalapeno, with a cheese-corn-jalapeno swirl running through and erupting out of the top. Very nice!

Check out that swirl!

This week in the kitchen

Crispy polenta and quinoa fries with tomato sauce and zucchini
I very loosely followed the recipe highlighted above, only the microwave directions failed miserably. I ended up adding a southwestern flavor to my polenta with a can of diced roasted green chilies, and the leftover feta and cheddar jack cheeses in my fridge. I also added my new favorite ingredient: nutritional yeast, except I didn't add quite enough to taste it. The tomato sauce involved throwing some crushed tomatoes, onion, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper in a pot and cooking for a bit. This dish was really yummy, and especially yummy as leftovers with a bit of fried egg thrown in.

Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tart
For many people, dinner parties are a great excuse to get together with friends. For me, they are a great excuse to try out a new recipe. The tart above is my second recipe from Dorie Greenspan's celebrated Baking from My Home to Yours. This was actually quite simple to make, and was a very rich, velvety chocolate experience. I chopped up the raspberries rather than leaving them whole, so that they would make a layer at the bottom of the tart. They really helped to cut the richness of the chocolate. This was almost as good as the chocolate mousse strawberry tarts at the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney. Next time I might try to make a lighter chocolate mousse for something similar.

Detail of the chocolate and raspberry layers.

This week in food

Perhaps you've figured out by now that I'm a bit obsessed with food and creating things. This week I tried out three new recipes, listed below in order of preference:

Chile Relleno Casserole

This was seriously good. I've never made real chile rellenos, and only started to eat them about a year ago. This recipe captures the essence of the dish, but modifies it so that rather than battering and frying the stuffed chiles, you instead bake them in yummy fluffy eggy goodness. I omitted the chorizo, and instead stuffed the chiles with a combination of cheddar jack and feta cheese. The feta added a really nice flavor and a less melty texture to the stuffing. This will be made again many times over.

Quinoa Vegetable Paella
If you aren't yet familiar with quinoa, I would recommend checking it out. It is similar to cous cous, only it contains quite a lot of protein. Plus it's really fun to eat. This recipe would be a great way to try quinoa for the first time. It's chock full of veggies, very healthy and tasty. If I were to make this again, I would probably kick up the spices a bit, since I tend to like flavorful food. This dish keeps with the traditional flavor of Spanish paella, which tends to be more subtle in taste.

Orange Berry Muffins
I happened to notice a copy of Dorie Greenspan's celebrated cookbook Baking: From My Home to Yours while visiting my mom the other day. Having read a lot of blog entries from Tuesdays with Dorie, I've been coveting this book for a while, and so borrowed it for the time being. It is chock full of some great recipes, many of which I can hardly wait to try out. Since I was expecting a couple house guests this weekend, I thought it would be great to make some muffins that could be munched on at any time. The orange blueberry muffins caught my eye, and so I whipped these up late Thursday. The muffins have a mild orange flavor, and are subtly sweet. I would rate these as a solidly good muffin. They don't bowl me over, and I don't find myself eating ten at a time, but they are certainly a pleasant thing to eat in the morning.

North African flavors

I've been intrigued and inspired by the flavors of North Africa since I visited Paris' Quartier Latin as a teenager. Since then, I've had the pleasure of traveling to Morocco for a couple months, and always seek out North African restaurants wherever I live and travel. This weekend I tried out a couple new recipes that were both simple and delicious. Above is a Moroccan-style potato and egg sandwich, mid-preparation. When I saw this recipe, it made me think of going on a late night sandwich run with my travel-mate to this place where you could get egg sandwiches stuffed with french fries. The perfect late night guilty pleasure. I seasoned the potato-onion-pepper mixture with a liberal amount of cumin, salt and pepper, and a good dash of cayenne. It was perfect, easy to prepare, inexpensive, and something I am sure to return to when I'm seeking comfort food.


Last night, in the interest of making more of my own bread, I prepared Flatbread with Dukka. Dukka is an Egyptian spice and nut blend that I came across in Australia--apparently it is pretty popular there--I had never heard of it in the US. I bought a small pouch of dukka at Herbie's in Sydney, but had yet to open it. This recipe seemed like the perfect way to sample the dukka and make some simple homemade bread. It turned out delicious, crunchy in some areas, softer in others, and the warm nutty spice blend sprinkled over the top. Also very good for breakfast!

Weekend productivity

I finally broke out the sewing machine. I celebrated the occasion by using some stash fabric to make my second version of the ever popular built by wendy simplicity dress. I made a combination of the long dress (sleeves and length) and the top (elastic neckline, lack of darts and pockets). It couldn't have been easier--I didn't even have to mark anything! I'm moderately pleased with the results, though I think I'm much more into fitted garments these days--or at least volume and shapelessness in an artful way. This dress doesn't quite fit that bill, but for what it is, it's not bad. I ended up inserting a side zipper to insure that it would fit over my head. Despite the fact that I have inserted quite a few zippers, I find that mine still look like train wrecks. Has anyone come across a fool-proof zipper tutorial?


I also [finally] finished my basket from Australia! This started out as a mat, then became a shallow bowl, and now turned out to be a deeper bowl. I'm pretty happy with it--it's a bit wonky, but I think that just adds a lot more personality. The colors are slightly more vibrant in person. Very earthy.



And finally, my most delicious creations this week: arancini and pumpkin cookies. I loosely followed the recipe on Shawnee's blog, but instead of stuffing these yummy rice balls with fresh mozzarella, I mixed up some shredded spinach, chives, feta, and egg for the stuffing mixture. To make the arancini, I used an ice cream scoop to shape half the rice mixture, put in the stuffing, then formed the other side of the rice. They turned out really crispy and yummy. I ate them with a simple homemade herbed tomato sauce.


For a potluck I made these great pumpkin cookies from a friend's recipe. The pumpkin puree makes these cookies nicely moist and almost cake-like. They're really addictive!

Pumpkin Cookies

1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
1 c pumpkin
1 egg, beaten
2 c. flour
1 t cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t vanilla

Cream butter, sugar, and pumpkin. Add egg, then dry ingredients and vanilla. Drop by spoonful onto ungrease cookie sheet (though I prefer using a silicone mat). Bake at 375 F for 10 minutes. Frost with powdered sugar icing, if desired.

Bon appetit!

Tarte aux Poires and an almost wearable muslin

To celebrate my return to my own place, I spent yesterday doing some activities I had been missing while away for the summer. I baked my very first tart! It's a pear tart with almond cream. Pears aren't exactly in season, so it could have been more flavorful, but I've been dying to try this recipe, so I decided not to wait. I think my favorite part of tarts is arranging the fruit. Next time I'm going to cut them very very thin and fan them more finely.


During breaks from tart making, I was sewing an almost-wearable muslin for Simplicity pattern 3835, a cute Built by Wendy dress. I used a cheap woven polyester fabric that I picked up at a sale in the spring. I'm at a stage where I'm trying to figure out what types of fabric I like to work with, and how fabrics drape. This fabric seemed to have a nice drape, which I thought might work for a dress, plus I liked the color. And it was really cheap, so why not give it a try?

I ran into a few problems. First, the polyester unravels like crazy! I could have guessed as much, but man, does it go quickly. I solved this problem for the most part by making false french seams (also a first for me--they make the inside of the garment look much more professional. I might try real french seams next--I have a feeling they might save me a little time.

I also learned that fabrics that don't wrinkle, like this woven poly, don't make soft gathers--this makes the highly gathered neckline look a little funny. On the bright side, though, it gave a really interesting look to the ties at the sleeves. They puff out, and really hold their shape as three-dimensional objects. I like it.


In my excitement to start sewing again, I neglected to notice that my sewing needle was 1/8th inch left of center--so I was sewing 6/8th inch seams rather than 5/8th! Consequently, everything ended up smaller than I imagined it would. Until I realized my mistake, I had been cursing Wendy for drafting such tiny sleeve openings--I have pretty skinny arms, but wow! Now that I know, I'm fairly certain that this size will work for me the next time around without adjustments--as long as my needle is where it should be, and I choose a less ravelly, more breathable fabric! Overall I'm pleased with this pattern. It was easy to cut out, and fairly quick to sew. I'm half tempted to try to salvage this muslin and make it wearable, but I think I'll be less attached to it once I make another one in nicer fabric.