The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Food 2.0 - Another Cookbook to Give Away!

DK Publishing sent me an advance copy of this book several weeks ago, and I've been reading and re-reading the recipes ever since.

I've got about 20 pages marked with mini post-it note things, and I think I put off writing about it because I couldn't narrow down the recipes to one or two to focus on.

The official background of the book is here, on the DK Publishing website.  To be honest, I had vaguely heard of Charlie Ayers, but didn't know anything about him.  Turns out he cooked for The Greatful Dead before he was hired to feed the growing number of Google employees. 

I know now that food-wise, we'd get along pretty well.  His emphasis is on locally produced, organic ingredients and lively, intense flavors from a wide variety of cuisines.

The one and only recipe that I was actually puzzled by was his recipe for fish tacos.  He calls for fish sticks.    Now, I have used fish sticks in fish tacos, but it just seemed really odd, in a book espousing the virtues of local, fresh foods, that rather than suggesting some possible kinds of fish to use, depending on what part of the country you're in, he suggests fish sticks.  Maybe it's because not everyone has access to fresh caught local fish...but still. 

I've decided, since I couldn't narrow the recipes down, I figure over the next week, while the giveaway is running, I'll try out a variety of recipes and post about them, so you can sort of peek at the food before entering the contest, if you want.

Oh - and I should also mention - in addition to a copy of the book (hardcover and in color, not a paperback advance copy in black and white), the publisher is also giving the winner a handy dandy lunch bag, so you can tote your healthy, locally grown lunch with you to work every day.

So, to get things started, and to give you an idea of the sort of thing Food 2.0 has to offer, I'll be posting (separately) the recipe for "Google Hot Sauce."  It's got heat, and layers and layers of flavor.  It packs a punch, but does so with style.

In the meantime, to enter this giveaway, here are the rules:

First, to enter, I'd like to hear from you in the comments section of THIS post, do you shop at farm stands or farmers markets on a regular basis?  What's available in your part of the world?

Second, the contest will end in one week - Wednesday, May 28th, at midnight, eastern standard time.  Any entries posted after that time - or anywhere other than in the comments section of THIS post - will not be considered.

Third, this will be a random drawing - I'll have the old faithful Random Integer thingy pick the lucky winner.

Any questions?  Okay, then - let the contest begin!  Oh - and I'll be posting the "Google Hot Sauce" in a bit later this evening.

Please, Sir, I want S'more

I've been wanting to make some kind of cookie with stuff in it.  Like chocolate chip with nuts...or oatmeal with coconut and golden raisins and nuts and chocolate chips and candied ginger and all the other scraps in my pantry.  You know, a cookie like that.

So I went foraging.  And I found, among other things, mini marshmallows (which I don't remember buying, but I must have made something with them because it wasn't a full package.  Or I just ate a huge handful of them and guiltily hid the bag behind instant oatmeal and packages of raisins.)...and some partially-gnawed chocolate Easter bunnies (with crispy rice mixed into the chocolate!)...and that led to me looking on the very top shelf - and sure enough, there were some graham crackers.  Oh, that's right - because I'd made the crust for that Florida Pie a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, as you could tell from the title, I made S'more Cookies.  Never made them before, so I just followed a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and made some alterations and, voila! - cookies that the whole family could enjoy! 

And here's what I did...

S'more Cookies

Ingredients:

2  1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup shortening (I was entirely out of butter, thanks to Dorie and all her wonderfully butter-laden concoctions that I've made recently)

3/4 cup light brown sugar

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1   1/2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

about 1 cup mini marshmallows

1  1/3 large low-end quality chocolate Easter bunnies (with crispy rice bits in them), roughly chopped

6 whole graham crackers, broken up

~~~~~

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F., and get some cookie sheets ready and line them with parchment paper.  I made 48 cookies exactly, just so you have an idea of how much you're making.

Cream the butter and sugars together til sort of light and fluffy.  I really, really don't like using shortening, but I just was too stubborn not to go ahead with the cookies, so I tried not to cringe at the sugar/shortening blend, but really, it just looks odd to me.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and combine thoroughly. 

Add in the vanilla too, and combine.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt, and add that to the batter, and mix until just combined - don't overbeat.

By hand, (well, with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula), mix in the marshmallows, bunny bits, and graham crackers.

With your hands, scoop up portions of dough about the size of a golf ball and place on the baking sheet, leaving space between them, because they will spread.  If your hands get too sticky, run them under water and leave your hands a bit wet - the dough won't stick.

Bake about 15 minutes (depending on your oven), rotating pans once mid-way through.

Allow to cool a bit on the pan before you try to take them off, because the marshmallow will cling to the parchment paper, to other cookies, to your arm, to the phone - pretty much to anything it can grab.

Hand them out to your family and see how they like them.  Or hoard them for yourself.

Flavor-wise, they've got a dark, molassasy flavor, which comes from using two dark sugars instead of white and light. 

Also, the taste and texture of the melted-and-cooled mini marshmallows reminded me of rice crispie treats. 

The chocolate?  Terrible.  Well - acceptable, but it's just hacked up Nestle Easter Bunny chocolate, so it's not going to blow anyone away.  But still, it suited my purpose, which was to clean out some stuff from the cupboards and turn that into cookies.

Mission accomplished.

Tuesdays With Dorie (and Sunday With Julia - no, not THAT Julia, MY Julia): Perfection Pound Cake as Birthday Cake

Long enough post title for you?

 

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie challenge was to make the Traditional Madeleines found on pages 166-168 of "Baking, From My Home to Yours," and was chosen by Tara of Smells Like Home.   We were also given the option of choosing one of the past TWD recipes if we didn't have the correct pan to make the madeleines. 

And so for two reasons, I didn't make the madeleines.  First off, I don't have the right pan, and though I could pretty easily get one, there was reason number two - my daughter's birthday party and the requisite cake for that.  So, in my merry two-birds-with-one-stone killer way, I picked the Perfection Pound Cake, which was chosen back in January, long before I was a member.

Pound Cake, as Dorie mentions in the "Playing Around" section of the recipe, "lends itself to variations minor and major."  And that's exactly what happened with mine.  I had asked the soon-to-be Birthday Girl what kind of cake she wanted.  Asked her several times, in fact, because I know how often her mind can change.  Ultimately it boiled down to these three requests:  Strawberry cake, Purple on the outside, with Pink flowers on it.

Purple on the outside was simple enough - just color some fondant and that would be that.

Pink flowers - nothing I couldn't accomplish with some pink royal icing.

And the strawberry cake?

I used Dorie's Perfection Pound Cake recipe - tripled, because there would be at least 14 people, if not more, and I generally make about twice what I realistically need because I'm insecure that way.

To the cake, I added some orange zest, because, well, I've been using lemon (and lime) a lot lately, and I needed a change in citrus. 

And I sliced about 3 pounds of strawberries or so and macerated them briefly in some sugar.

And so here's how it all went down....

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour or 2  1/4 cups cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Getting Ready:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Butter a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan or an 8  1/2 x 4  1/2 inch loaf pan.  Put the pan on an insulated baking sheet or on two regular baking sheets stacked one on top of the other. 

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar on high speed until pale and fluffy, a full 5 minutes.   

(Add in the orange zest.)  Scrape down the bowl and beater and reduce the mixer speed to medium.  Add the eggs one at a time,

beating for 1 to 2 minutes after each egg goes in.  As you're working, scrape down the bowl and beater often.  Mix in the vanilla extract.  Reduce the mixer speeed to low and add the flour, mixing only until it is incorporated--don't overmix.  In fact, you might want to fold in the last of the flour, or even all fo it, by hand with a rubber spatula. 

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top.

(And scatter the strawberries on top and press lightly into the batter

Put the cake into the oven to bake, and check on it after about 45 minutes.  If it's browning too quickly, cover it loosely with a foil tent.  If you're using a 9x5 pan, you'll need to bake the cake for 70-75 minutes; the smaller pan needs about 90 minutes.  The cake is properly baked when a thin knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean. 

(The heart-shaped pans ranged in bake time from about an hour to an hour and a half.)

Remove the cake from the oven, transfer the pan to a rack and let rest for 30 minutes.

Run a blunt knjife betwene the cake and the sides of the pan and turn the cake out, then turn it right side up on the rack and cool to room temperature.

So those are my Perfection Pound Cakes - with strawberries pressed into the tops.  They smelled phenomenal, and I had to fight my family off in order to keep the cakes safe for Julia's party.

Once the cakes were cool, it was time for the construction.  I couldn't exactly level the surfaces of the cakes, because I'd end up slicing away a lot of the all-important strawberries.  And I could have put the strawberries in the bottom of the pan...and I had thought about it...but I forgot until I'd filled the first pan, so I just pressed them on top.

I also didn't want to cover the whole thing with fondant because - again - the strawberries.  They looked so yummy...I couldn't hide them.

First, I sliced each cake in half, so I'd have two layers per cake...and I slathered seedless strawberry jam in between the layers.

I also wanted to enhance the appearance of the strawberries, so I melted down some apricot preserves and glazed them with that.  Nice and moist and shiny.

Then I wrapped ribbons of fondant I'd colored with "aster mauve" and "delphinium blue" around the edges of each layer.

And to all that, I added some fondant ribbons and royal icing leaves and flowers, and this was how it looked:

Later on, after we'd sung "Happy Birthday" and Julia had blown out the candles, I started to cut the cake.

And in that momentary silence, my little Birthday Princess said,

"I don't want any cake.  I just want ice cream...I don't really like cake."

~~~~~

Everyone else seemed to like it.  And of course I'd made way too much, but I gave everyone a chunk of it to bring home, and this was all that was left:

So Happy 4th Birthday, Julia! 

Next year you get pie.

Typing in my Tiara

We had Julia's birthday party yesterday.  Family and some friends, food, cake and ice cream, and - best of all - nice weather, so people could spend some of their time outside.

Today...the cleanup.  I didn't do much more than pack up the leftover food and stick it in the fridge (not that there was much of it) last night. 

And that tiara I mentioned?  Yes, I've been sitting here checking email and other peoples' blogs this morning wearing one of the tiaras I'd bought as favors for the other little princesses that were invited to the party.  Julia told me to.  So I did.  Not much fight in me this morning.  Thing is, none of the invitees from her daycare came, so I'm left with a lovely selection of sequined tiaras in assorted colors.  And bags of assorted necklaces and rings and bracelets, too. 

Right at this very moment, Julia is traipsing through the house in her underwear, adorned with a necklace, three rings, and a bejewelled barrette in her hair.  She is stunning.

The party was fun - really, a nice number of people.  I'm actually glad the daycare chicks didn't come, though it would have been nice if their parents had RSVP'd so I wouldn't have planned for their attendance, just in case they showed.

But anyway...Julia had fun, and that was the main thing.

The birthday cake I made is going to be the focus of my Tuesdays With Dorie post tomorrow, so I'm afraid I won't be sharing pictures of it today.  I can share this with you, however:  I had asked Julia several times (just to make sure she didn't change her mind) what she wanted for a cake.  She wanted a "strawberry cake" with purple on the outside and pink flowers.  So that's what she got, with a bit of artistic license on my part.

(Update:  Julia now has 4 necklaces, 2 barrettes, one hair clip, and no rings.  I think the rings were a bit cumbersome.  She can only handle so much bling.

Sigh.

I'm just looking around.  You know, I had the house looking so nice...but whatever.  The debris is proof of a good party, I guess.

Gotta go get Alex moving along for school...and then it's time to tackle the kitchen.

Talk to you later...

Happy Birthday, Beth!

My daughter was born close to but not on the same date as Beth's birthday.

Beth and my sister, Meredith, have been friends since the first grade, and Beth has also become my friend, too.

Of course, the fact that Julia was NOT born on Beth's birthday had caused a bit of friction between us, but I think Julia's antics over the years have softened that somewhat.

That, and the fact that in personality, Julia is very much a mini-Beth. 

Not 100% though - there is that whole eyeball eating thing....

Anyway, in honor of Beth, here are a few Julia anecdotes.

~~~~~

Last week, when we had Bill's guitar students over after their juries, and we served them lots of food, part of the spread included cheese, and one of the cheeses was brie.

Julia loves brie.  She doesn't always remember the name, but when she refers to "The Squishy Cheese,"  brie is what she means.

Well, we had some brie left over.  As well as the three other cheeses served that night.

Alex doesn't like brie.  He likes cheddar.  So one afternoon Alex was hungry and wanted some cheese and crackers.  Cheddar and crackers.  I cut up some slices of cheddar and put them on crackers, and he was happy. 

Julia wanted cheese and crackers, too, but not cheddar.  She wanted the squishy cheese.  So I got that out, sliced some up, put it on some crackers, and gave it to her.  And she was happy.

I went upstairs to put laundry away or something...and a bit later, I heard some sort of scraping noise coming from below.  I went downstairs, because, having known my daughter for a while now, I had a feeling I knew what she was doing.

And sure enough, when I got downstairs and rounded the corner on the way to the kitchen, there she was:  standing on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, surveying the counters.  She was looking for the brie.  The scraping sound I'd heard was Julia bringing that chair from the dining room to the kitchen. 

Unfortunately for her, I'd put the cheeses back in the fridge.  But she probably would have figured that out, given enough time.

~~~~~

Another brie story...

(And yes, in case you were wondering, we DO live on brie.  It goes so well with the caviar and champagne.)

Anyway, this may have been the same wedge of brie...we only had a little of it left, and I'd put it out on the counter one evening, before dinner, for us to pick at while the meal was cooking.

At some point, Julia and Alex had gone downstairs, Bill was in the music/computer room practicing, and I had gone in to look up something on the computer.  I had a great view of the hall, and the doorway to the basement, and part of the kitchen.

Julia came upstairs and wanted another piece of brie, so I cut her a little bit and off she went.

That sentence I just wrote?  Repeat it.

Then she decided she didn't need me, so she managed, probably on tippy-toes, to cut herself a little more cheese.  Fine.  I'm all for self-sufficiency.

And she did that once or twice more. 

And then I saw her edging from the kitchen toward the stairs...hands behind her back, smiley "nothing to see here" face shining at me.

"Julia, did you take the rest of the cheese?"

Still smiling, she nodded...and held out her left hand, which was clutching the last hunk of brie.

~~~~~

Last week, before the dinner for Bill's students, (well, his and the other guitar teacher's students, really), Bill had been fighting off a case of bronchitis.  He stayed home from work a couple of days, and his only comfort came from watching the original three Star Wars movies.  Julia would join him sometimes, but Alex didn't like the movies at all.  He is my Ferdinand the Bull, preferring peace and beauty to light sabres and blasters.

Anyway, Julia loved the movies.  I don't know if it was because she got to hang out with Daddy all by herself and that made it special, or if it's just her nature.  I think a bit of both.

She's seen bits and pieces of the movies a few times now, especially Empire Strikes Back.  I think that's her favorite.  (She's also her mother's daughter.) 

Got all that background stuff?  Good.

Last night at dinner, out of the blue, Julia said "I love Star Wars."

Alex, who doesn't, asked "Which is your favorite part?"

And Julia didn't even have to think.  "When the tauntaun dies."  She ate some more spaghetti.

Alex asked "What's a tauntaun?"

Julia, laughing:  "It's a big animal with FUNNY HORNS!"  And she made twirly motions with her hands at the sides of her head.  She could also have been referring to Leia's coif in the first movie.

We ate in silence for a moment, and then Julia got a dreamy look on her face.  She was still thinking about Empire Strikes Back.

"I love Yoga," she sighed.

~~~~~

And so,

A very Happy Birthday to you, Beth!

Love,

Jayne, Bill, Alex...

and especially,

Julia

Okra and Tempeh, Indian Style

I was reading through all the Tuesdays With Dorie blogs these last several days, and I found a recipe on one that sounded perfect for dinner. 

It's Madhur Jaffrey's Sweet and Sour Okra, and it was posted by Shirlie of Stop and Smell the Basil (which, by the way, is good advice).

Anyway, it sounded good, I love Indian food, and, amazingly, I happened to have a package of okra in the freezer.  It was meant to be.

To get the recipe, please click on the link for it above. 

I added a package of tempeh to the recipe, because I didn't have the full amount of okra the recipe called for, but I did have a package of tempeh in the freezer, too, and I figured it would work nicely.

Tempeh, by the way, is fermented, cooked soybeans combined with the Rhizopus mold to form a whitish, chewy cake.  You can use it as a meat substitute if you wish - I've used it for tacos or fajitas, for example - or you can slice it up and fry it in some oil and make french fries out of it.  My kids like it that way.

Anyway, in addition to the okra and the tempeh, the recipe is full of plenty of intense flavor, including garlic, red pepper flakes, coriander and cumin, and turmeric, which mainly adds color, and has a faintly metalic taste (at least to me), and lemon juice. 

The dish came together really quickly, and while I was getting that ready, I cooked up some rice to serve with the okra/tempeh mixture.

Here's a small bowl of the final product:

I halved the amount of red pepper flakes called for, only because sometimes the kids don't like the heat.  Next time, I'll use the full amount.

Bill and I loved it.  The okra and the tempeh soaked in all the flavor of the spices, and the "sour" of the lemon juice was not overpowering.  It had a nice balance of warmth and faint tartness. 

Julia liked it, though she didn't eat a lot of it and mostly just ate her rice.

Alex...well, Alex took one look and didn't think he was going to like it.  The thing is, he does this with a lot of new things now, and once he tries them, he doesn't always dislike them.  So the rule is, he has to TRY it.  Just one piece, and if he doesn't like it, okay.  Just eat the rest of the food on the plate.

But he really, really didn't want to try it.  And we really, really (nicely) told him it wasn't going to hurt him, and he really really didn't know if he didn't like it because he'd never had it (okra) before.

So we found the smallest piece of okra on his plate, checked it to make sure no red pepper bits were hiding on it anywhere, and told him to just try it.

And, finally, he did. 

New Neighbors...and Pictures of My Kids

I was getting dinner ready last night and Bill was outside when the new neighbors started to move into their house.

Bill called to me from outside, quietly, so as not to be rude.

And behind our house, we could see the Mister surveying the neighborhood from his front window.

A bit later, the Missus came back from curtain-shopping...

Alex, in particular, was very excited about this.  I think I wrote about getting these birdhouses a month or so ago (Julia's is the smaller abode to the left).  To be honest, I thought it was too late in the season; that all the birds had already built their nests and were waiting for their offspring to hatch.

But I was wrong.  So hopefully in the near future we will get to see little baby sparrows poke their heads out that front door/window and learn to fly across our back yard.

~~~~~

While I sat outside snapping distant pictures of birds, Alex looked for bugs and worms and things,

and Julia flung dirt with a shovel for no particular reason other than she is Julia.

 

And while I'm at it, here are more pictures of my kids from last evening.  Just because.

You can just tell where the picture above is going...and you're right.

Below, Alex is telling me the difference between butterfly antennae and moth antennae...

 

 

And here are some of Julia...being Julia.

She's nearly four.  My baby girl.  And nearly ready to rule the world.  She just needs to fix the tag on her shirt, and I think she'll be all set.

First Harvest, Two Ways

All of our gardens this year seem, at this point, to be more lush and productive than they were at this time last year.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the super awesome compost we put down.  Maybe my husband's green thumb grew THREE SIZES that day.  I don't know.  But we've got a lot of green stuff out there.

We've been picking asparagus for several weeks now, and here and there a leaf of something, but yesterday, we actually harvested some things.  In a collander (so you know we mean business).

Here's the take:

Four pak choi, two more asparagus, and about 6 broccoli rabe plants.  Part of the reason we pulled these (except the asparagus) was because they had grown so tall they were blocking light from some smaller plants behind them.  The broccoli rabe can really go a bit longer, but, again, they were blocking light, and I was hungry.

My initial plan was to cook all the greens together, probably in some kind of pasta dish.  But something in me resisted that plan and so I figured, okay, I'll make two dishes.  I thought it would be fun to make these two dishes kind of similar, but with different ethnic influences.

No real recipe - I didn't measure things - but here's what I did:

Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe and Asparagus

I poured some olive oil in a pan, added two crushed, sliced cloves of garlic, and about two tablespoons of tomato paste.

To that I added a good slug of Blueberry Wine (yes, blueberry) from Cellardoor Vineyard in Lincolnville, ME (not far from Camden).  Why Blueberry Wine?  The bottle was already uncorked.  And it's red.

I whisked all that together and let it simmer for a bit, and sprinkled some oregano in there, too.  While all that was going on, I also had a big pot of water on the stove, coming to a boil, for the spaghetti.

I rinsed the rabe (and trimmed off the roots) and the asparagus...

I also thawed some shrimp and sliced them in half, lengthwise.

Once the spaghetti was cooking, I sliced the rabe, broke the asparagus into pieces, and added them to the tomato paste and garlic mixture.  When that had cooked down, I added the shrimp pieces, and then, when the spaghetti was cooked, I combined the spaghetti with the sauce/shrimp/greens mixture and served.

A little freshly grated parmesan on top, and my kids were both quite happy to eat this for dinner.

While I was doing all that, I was also concocting this:

Thai Style Rice Noodles with Baby Pac Choi

 

First up, I trimmed the roots from the pak choi leaves.

And then I rinsed the dirt off...

And sliced the leaves cross-wise, about an inch wide, and set them aside while I assembled some other ingredients...