mexican hot chocolate chip cookies

as a great lover of chocolate and cinnamon, the idea of that combination in a cookie certainly grabbed my attention.

i’ve also been reading about the new trend in chocolate chip cookie making, which is to chill your dough for hours and hours and hours before baking it.

so let’s kill two birds with one stone, shall we?

i started with this recipe.

beat 1 cup of unsalted butter with 1 cup of light brown sugar until fluffy. according to a baking expert i know, “until fluffy” means on high for three minutes. that seems long, but go with it.

slow the mixer and add 2 eggs – one at a time – and a teaspoon of vanilla, beating until well combined. (don’t forget it’s more responsible to crack each egg into a smaller bowl, not into the dough directly, in case you get a bad egg or bits of shell.)

sift in 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. if you are very brave, add a little more. but not too much!

once the dry ingredients are just combined, stir in your chocolate.

the recipe called for 12 ounces and specifies good chocolate chunks. well, i ended up using only about 10 ounces – which i thought was plenty (and that’s saying a lot coming from me…). in total, about 4 ounces of chocolate chips and 8 ounces of dark chocolate bars chopped.

i love putting chopped chocolate in cookies instead of chips. since it comes out all different sizes, it spreads throughout the cookie better.

do i even need to encourage you to take a taste? i didn’t think so.

next, the recipe says to wrap the dough in plastic and chill it for “1 hour to 1 day.” well, that’s a big difference, so we decided to test whether time in the fridge significantly affects final cookie product.

here’s the 1-hour dough ready for its baking. (preheat oven to 350 degrees)

it’s important to note that while you bake traditional (unchilled) chocolate chip cookies for 8-10 minutes, when you’re starting with 1-hour chilled dough, baking time extends to about 12 minutes.

oh my gosh! so. incredibly. tasty.

we chilled the rest of the dough for about 17 hours, and for this batch, the baking time stretched to 14 minutes.

in my humble opinion, there wasn’t so much of a difference between the two cookies that i would wait an extra 16 hours.

but no matter what, i am definitely making mexican hot chocolate chip cookies again just as soon as i can.

hot toddy

before bed? check.

cold weather? check.

sniffles? check.

i had to do it. wiki told me to.

“hot toddies are traditionally drunk before going to bed, or in wet and/or cold weather. they were believed to help cure the cold and flu.”

you see?

start by boiling a mug-ful of water in your kettle. (or two, if you’re being generous and letting a friend join you.)

next, pick your poison,

and add three tablespoons to each mug.

one tablespoon agave sweetener or honey,

and one teaspoon of lemon juice.

top with hot water… and feel better!

blue duck tavern

today’s guest blogger brings his english sensibilities to french food. this is a restaurant i’ve been meaning to try, and after his review, i can’t wait!

blue duck tavern
park hyatt hotel, washington

one star: fowl; two stars: blue dog tavern; three stars: daffy duck; four stars: quack! quack! five stars: mighty duck

verdict: four stars: quack! quack!

if you arrive at the blue duck tavern, haunt of politicos from potus down, expecting something rustic and tavern-like, a surprise lies in store. the layout is modern beneath high ceilings; the bar area a gleaming labyrinth of glass and polished steel; the restaurant a minimalist configuration of wooden chairs surrounding four setting square tables. in between, an array of meticulous chefs buzzes around the open kitchen and pantry. an outside patio looks like it would be pleasant in warmer months.

service was alternately intense and absent. i say the latter only because we were left without a drinks’ menu for a few minutes. however, power-suited women were on hand to take coats, to accompany us to the bar, to the table, to the bathrooms, to anywhere we wished to alight. in the dining room itself the main waiter reminded me of peter serafinowicz’s character sctanley from the movie couples retreat: full of preening pomp. aside from strutting sctanley, however, a number of supporting cast ducked around the table cheerfully refilling water glasses, providing bread, and servicing requests.

the cocktail menu was superb; the wine list large. we enjoyed a frozen bourbon concoction, much tastier than it sounds, champagne cocktails, and a signature vesper that was everything that should be in a martini glass and nothing that should not. the only regret is that we lacked the livers to try the several sampler drinks menus on offer. a pinot noir from carmel, california was an adequate addition to the main event, the food.

“ve are known for our bone marrow.” solemnly intoned sctanley. indeed they must be, because all surrounding tables seemed to be sampling this unusual dish. we followed suit and ordered.

all the food in the blue duck tavern is sourced openly, and our split cow bones arrived all the way from marcho farms, pennsylvania. although i find this notion of terroir a little overblown in 21^st century dining, it does add interest to the menu to know your meal’s antecedents. using a small spoon to extract the marrow and spread it on the accompanying country bread slices put me in mind of the movie dead poets society with its exhortation to ‘live deep and suck out all the marrow of life!’ thankfully sctanley did not request to be called o captain, my captain. novelty, however, did trump taste. the dish is rare for a reason. together with the somewhat anticlimactic accompanying crumple of sprouts, mushrooms and squash, i prepared to be disappointed. i should have kept faith.

the tavern steak, ordered medium rare, arrived looking as though it had been walked out of the kitchen still mooing. in fact, much of the apparent bloodiness was due to the accompanying cherry marmalade. it was one of the more delicious steaks i have tried in the capital. my dining partner’s organic chicken was gamey, the flavour of the meat drowning out the accompanying buttermilk and herbs. it is in places like the blue duck tavern that chefs brian mcbride and michael santoro remind us how chicken used to taste before modern farming techniques put it in every pot.

for dessert, the simply described ‘chocolate cake’ arrived at the table flaring in blue flame. it was rich. it was delicious. yes, i thought. i would return.

savory noodle kugel

according our old friend wikipedia, kugel is “is any one of a wide variety of traditional baked jewish side dishes consisting of ground or processed vegetables, fruit, or other starches combined with a thickening agent (such as oil, egg, or flour). it is sometimes translated as ‘pudding’ or ‘casserole’.”

this definition surprised me, because i thought kugel was always sweet with nutmeg and raisins. but then, i’m a good episcopalian girl, so what do i know?!

anyway, since i’m always looking for good (and healthy and quick) non-meat entrees, i decided to make a mushroom and onion version of kugel. served with blanched green beans, i figured it made a nice balanced comfort-foody meal.

i started by sauteing one medium onion and one small container roughly chopped mushrooms. this ended up actually not being enough veggie, i think, given the amount of noodles i used, so either start with more veggies (and honestly, throw in whatever you have, just make sure it’s about halfway cooked at this stage) or use a smaller dish and less noodles.

next, mix up your eggs, a splash of milk and salt and pepper. i used four eggs for this ratio, but you want enough to just reach the top of the noodles in the dish.

(full disclosure, i started with only three eggs, but once i assembled it, i realized i needed a little more, so i beat up another egg with another small splash of milk. you see? this is not rocket science nor brain surgery. thank god.)

while all this is happening, you should be cooking your noodles. i used one bag of yolk-free egg noodles, but again, judge by the size of your dish and the size of your crowd.

only boil them until they are half way done. this is less done than al dente. seriously. or else they’ll fall apart when you bake it.

mix veggies and noodles, and butter your baking dish well.

okay, you can’t really see the butter. just take my word for it that it’s there.

the next step is to add the noodles, veggies and egg mixture to the buttered dish, and sprinkle liberally with bread crumbs for a crunchy topping.

bake at 350 degrees until a knife stuck in the middle comes out almost clean, about 45 minutes.

yum, right?! mazel tov and happy hanukkah.

can’t get enough kugel? help yourself to more.

chicken marbella

chicken marbella used to be one of my mom’s go-to fancy, yet comfort-foody dishes for company and i have great memories of it. (generally eaten upstairs on a tray with rare tv privileges and the sound of conversation and glasses clicking wafting up from downstairs.)

although we didn’t call it marbella then. we called it “chicken with prunes and olives.”

seems this legendary dish rings some bells for tom sietsema, too.

anyway, before it made too much of a come back and showed up on all the blogs, i decided to see if it really was as good as i remembered.

most recipes called for chicken pieces, but i chose to use a whole chicken and spatchcock* it. this involves using a great pair of kitchen shears to cut out the backbone, allowing you to lay the chicken down flat – truly the most violent thing i’ve ever done to a chicken.

a day before you plan to serve your marbella, start marinating the chicken.

the marinade is olive oil, red wine vinegar, dried oregano, salt, pepper, bay leaves and garlic, halved green olives, prunes (i halved these as well, partly to make sure they didn’t have pits in them) and capers. [full recipe below]

i used a microplane on the garlic instead of mincing it so i could guarantee no one bit down on a chunk of it. the microplane literally turns garlic into a cloud. in a good way.

i flipped the chicken once during marinating, and made sure to rub plenty on the top.

at some point i realized that i should have removed the skin on the chicken, since that’s where all the marinade flavors were going to end up and most people don’t want to eat skin. but then, when i pulled off the skin (also rather violent of me), i realized i lost a lot of marinade. so then i proceeded to add an extra tablespoon of vinegar, olive oil and oregano, and some additional salt and pepper. don’t make the same mistake with the skin. however, if you feel a little low on marinade, i wouldn’t hesitate in adding a touch more.

also, make sure you take the chicken out of the fridge one hour before putting it in the oven so it has time to come up to room temp.

right before putting it in the oven, add half a cup of white wine and top everything with half a cup of brown sugar.

the chicken is supposed to bake at 350 for about an hour or until done. we were really pleased with how moist it turned out, and i think this is because i turned the oven down to between 300 and 325 (we kept fiddling with it…), covered the chicken in foil for most of the baking, and left it in for almost two hours.

either way you bake it, make sure to spoon marinade from the dish over the bird often.

since i was so tickled with the new baking dish i bought specifically for the occasion, i served the chicken directly from the oven in the middle of the table with a knife and spoon for juices. (i wish this picture showed the dish better. it’s really lovely.)

i think “family style” works best for this dish because people always want more and this way they don’t have to be jumping up and running into the kitchen every two seconds!

and please serve with crusty bread for soaking up the sauce, which is arguably the best part.

i am so pleased to report that chicken marbella lived up to my (high) expectations and was a big hit with my guests. i absolutely recommend it as a high-impact entree for dinner parties since it takes relatively little work, leaving you free to hang out with (and then impress!) your guests.

[complete original recipe here.]

* i originally said here that i butterflied the chicken, but we learn something new everyday at icf, don’t we? according to my mother, “one doesn’t butterfly poultry–that’s for legs o’ lamb–one ‘spatchcocks’ chickens, game hens, and even turkeys if you’re brave enough.” got that?

jambalaya

i bet you were wondering just this morning what exactly goes into jambalaya, right?

lucky for you, i got to be the sous chef in a great jambalaya-making operation recently.

and for those who don’t speak french, “sous chef” translates roughly into “knife bitch.”

i have mad skillz.

jambalaya
[he’s a bit of a dump-and-guesser, so although he started with this recipe from epicurious, i bet there was some negotiating along the way. he also made it in the pressure cooker, so that changed things, as well. i was removed from the kitchen after my knife work was done, so the secrets remain secret for now…]

1/2 cup butter
2 red onions, chopped
5 green onions, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1 jalapeño chili, finely chopped with seeds
1 tablespoon creole seasoning
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 pound andouille sausage or hot italian sausage, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 14 1/2-ounce cans chicken broth
1 16-ounce can plum tomatoes, diced, with liquid
3 cups long-grain rice

melt butter in heavy large dutch oven over medium-high heat. add red onions, 4 green onion, bell pepper, garlic, bay leaves, jalapeño, creole seasoning, cayenne pepper and oregano. cover and cook until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. mix in tomato paste. add sausage, broth, tomatoes and rice. bring mixture to simmer. reduce heat to low, cover and cook until rice is very tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour. garnish with remaining green onion and serve.

gifts for cooks!

check out this great list of 21 stocking stuffers for cooks over at macheesmo.

i’m lucky enough to have many of these already, but i gotta say, a silpat would change my life and save a lot of trees because of how much parchment paper i use instead…! * hint hint *

easy chicken noodle soup

or more accurately: “one-serving cream of ice box chicken noodle soup”

i started with about a cup and a half of leftover chicken broth.

i added one cup water (since i knew it was going to boil down a bit anyway), a bay leaf, some chopped onion, a few leftover carrots, freshly ground pepper, a few splashes of worshestershire (when do i not?) and some random dried herbs.

(don’t add salt until you’ve tasted it at the very end. store-bought chicken broth tends to be super salty already, and that flavor will only become more concentrated when you boil it.)

i brought this to a boil and added mini pesto tortellini.

have a shown you these before? they are supremely adorable.

i let it boil until the pasta was done, about 15 minutes. in this amount of time, my carrots and onions cooked appropriately, too, but if your pasta takes a shorter time, make sure your veggies get done.

if you had leftover cooked chicken breast hanging around, i’d cube it, turn the heat down to a simmer and throw it in just long enough to warm it, too.

serve with some grated parm on top – tastes just like mom made!

(okay, not exactly like mom made… but still yummy and warm and a great quick lunch for a grey saturday afternoon!)

pecan tassies

you may recall this curious post about mystery mini pecan pies from the archives. i had lots of helpful suggestions as to what they were, and this friend and coworker even decided to break open the vault and share a family recipe for them! you all are the best readers ever.

so, as i was browsing through icf one day, i happened upon a post about miniature pecan pies – and i realized that they were remarkably similar to the ‘pecan tassies’ that i always would have when i visited my grandmother.

since there was no recipe listed, i got a hold of my family and tracked it down and figured i’d try my hand at them.

the dough is relatively easy – combine 1 1/4 cups flour with 3oz cream cheese and 8oz butter (1 stick). a pastry blender is very useful, but if your kitchen is not fully equipped with baking tools, you can combine it using two knives – essentially, you cut in opposite directions for a few minutes with the knives until the butter and cream cheese has incorporated evenly into the flour.

at the end of the process, add a few drops of chilled water, just enough so that the dough really forms, and roll into a ball. then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. next, either roll the dough out between pieces of wax paper (i used the 3 buck chuck bottle as a makeshift rolling pin) or just pinch off pieces of the dough and shape into a muffin tray or metal tart tins if you have them (this approach won out in the end). i used a non-stick mini-muffin tray and it worked great.

the filling is made of one beaten egg, 1/3 cup white sugar (or half white and half brown), 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/3 cup corn syrup, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1 tbsp. melted butter, and 1/3 cup chopped pecans.

but first, chop up a bunch of pecans roughly, and add about half of a pecan’s worth in each tin, enough to cover the bottom.

then, combine all the aforementioned ingredients into a sugary and viscous concoction.

using a medium spoon, carefully fill each tassie almost to the top with the mixture.

throw into a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes, and viola, you’re done. makes around 30 pecan tassies depending on the size of your trays, and they’re an excellent wintertime treat to snack on or give out as gifts. enjoy!

[this post got me wondering what “tassie” meant. the word does not appear in webster’s universal college dictionary. when i googled it, i mostly got recipes. however, i did learn from wikipedia that tassie is a colloquial term for tasmainia, as well as the last name of a scottish gem engraver and modeller. glad to know that. there is also a silver tassie hotel in letterkenny, ireland. perhaps these were first made there? any other guesses, oh brilliant readers?]

coconut curry squash soup

this is the kind of cooking i enjoy – snooping around blogs and cookbooks for cool-sounding recipes, then making them easier in my own way. i mean, in this case, thai curry and butternut squash soup sounds lovely, but who has thai red curry paste and kaffir lime leaves on hand?! certainly not me. and let me tell you, my safeway doesn’t sell them, either.

so we make do without.

i started by roasting a small butternut squash and a small acorn squash, because that’s what i had on hand (thanks, ekw!).

in a 400-degree oven until they are super soft.

when they are cool enough to handle, scoop out the insides.

then in a soup pot, i started cooking down half a small yellow onion, four cloves of minced garlic and about an inch and a half of minced fresh ginger root. honestly, i had it lying around. if you don’t, add a sprinkle of powdered ginger. i also added two teaspoons of regular curry powder, salt and pepper.

don’t let this brown, but cook until soft.

then i added 32 ounces of chicken stock, a can of coconut milk (surprisingly available at my safeway), all the squash mush and the juice of one lime.

since i don’t have an immersion blender nor a food processor large enough to handle this soup, i just simmered it for about 30 minutes and used the leek and potato soup method of squishing down any remaining large chunks of squash.

taste for salt and pepper and serve with plenty of rice and toasted coconut!

(if you have a toaster oven, that’s a good way to toast coconut, but since i don’t, a dry pan on the stove works fine, too.)