I wasn’t planning to host a cookie gathering, but I stumbled upon a comment by Jackie of La Casa de Sweets on Twitter about a virtual bake sale she was hosting to benefit Share Our Strength and I decided to get in on the project by hosting a cookie party.

Dorie Greenspan's famous World Peace Cookies

I invited friends over to enjoy a buffet of sweet treats and convivial socializing and asked them to bring a few dollars to drop in a collection basket for Share Our Strength. Through the end of the year donations to Share Our Strength are being matched by their corporate partners, giving every dollar collected twice the impact.

Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove

It’s always good to have multiple motivators, so I took this cookie baking opportunity as a chance to dig further into Maida Heatter’s Cookies cookbook that I’d received as a review copy from Andrews McMeel Publishing earlier in the year.

Maida Heatter's Cookies and Maida Heatter's Cakes cookbooks

These beautifully simple paperbacks are newly published collections of Heatter’s classic recipes gathered from earlier works without glossy photos or a hefty price tag. Maida Heatter is a master when it comes to desserts with nine classic dessert books to her credit and an endless list of accolades. I find myself reaching for these books first when I’m thinking about doing some baking largely due to her reputation for recipes that work, but also because of the enormous variety of classic recipes in each book accompanied by descriptive head notes with helpful tips and valuable words of warning like, “They are very fragile and not suitable for picnics.” I highly recommend both of these books if you are looking for a go-to cookie or cake book. They’d also make an excellent gift for anyone starting to build their cookbook collection.

Maida Heatter's My Mother's Gingersnaps

Wintery weather and holiday festivities must include gingery spice cookies so I selected Heatter’s recipe called My Mother’s Gingersnaps. A recipe she grew up making year around with her mother and after tasting them, I won’t limit them to holiday baking either. Crystallized ginger, ginger powder and freshly ground black pepper give these crisp little “throwing stars,” as David called them, their spicy kick.

Maida Heatter's Swedish Rye Wafers

The fantastic use of spices throughout the book instantly caught my attention when I first flipped from cover to cover. Many are classics that have been passed down for generations and have roots in cultures all around the world. There are five recipes in the book that use caraway seeds for example. How many cookie books give you five ways to put your caraway seeds to sugary, buttery, good use? I can tell you first-hand that both the Swedish Rye Wafers and the Caraway Sour-Cream Cookies are excellent. Clearly I need to make the other three recipes just to be sure they measure up. Cardamom, sesame seeds, anise seed, poppy seeds, ginger, and black pepper all get play in various recipes. Spice flavor is very much a use-it-or-lose-it situation, so why let your spices languish in the back of the cupboard until they are lifeless and unidentifiable when you can put them to good use in cookies?

Maida Heatter's Blind Date Cookies

I was participating in a Twitter chat a few weeks ago and someone posed the question of what to do with all the dates she had on hand. I flipped open Maida Heatter’s Cookies that happened to be sitting on my desk and noted eight recipes using dates. The Blind Date Cookies immediately went on my “must make” list. A walnut stuffed date is dropped in batter to coat and then dressed with a simple glaze after baking. Apparently this recipe originated over 100 years ago at a famous Milwaukee pastry shop. These cookies are sweet and delicious with a soft cakey dough surrounding the chewy, crunchy surprise hiding in the center. They’re a great make-ahead cookie too because they were even tastier on the second day.

I deeply appreciate the generosity of everyone able to stop by for a sugar rush and donate to Share Our Strength. Your donations will connect 150 kids with up to 10 meals each. Here are some of Share Our Strength’s accomplishments for 2011 and your donations will help them achieve even more in the New Year. Thank you!

• No Kid Hungry campaigns up and running in 17 states, expanding reach and increasing participation in key programs like school breakfast, summer meals and afterschool snacks.
• Increased the number of summer meals served by nearly 1 million over last summer in six “No Kid Hungry” states alone.
• Provided $6.9 million in grants to more than 400 community organizations working to ensure that kids receive healthy, regular meals.
• Cooking Matters classes, teaching how to make healthy meals on a budget, reached 100,000 individuals at risk for hunger in 37 states.

With one out of every five American kids facing hunger — more than 16 million children — there’s still a lot of work to do before the goal of ending child hunger in America is achieved. If you’d like to help, please make a donation, and remember all donations made before the end of the year will be matched making double the impact.

A special thank you goes to Jackie for inspiring me to pull together this last minute cookies-for-a-cause party. And to think some people say Twitter is just a waste of time!

Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels always round out a cookie party.

Recipe Links

• Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels
• Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove
• Swedish Rye Wafers by Maida Heatter
• World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

by Slow Food USA

Slow Food USA believes that slow food, as in cooked from scratch, shouldn’t have to cost more than fast food. They decided to put their philosophy to the test with The $5 challenge. September 17th was the day to take back the “value meal” by cooking a meal from scratch that costs no more than $5 per person. My twist on the challenge was to use one chicken as the basis for three meals that each feed four people, with each meal costing no more than $5. That gives me $1.25 per serving to work with.

Herb Roasted Chicken Legs & Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta

Starting with a Washington-grown free range chicken from Trader Joe’s costing $6.95, which breaks down to $2.32 per meal, I had $2.68 of creative wiggle room per meal to work with. Here’s my menu:

• Day 1: Herb Roasted Chicken Legs & Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta.
• Day 2: Chicken Soft Tacos on Homemade Tortillas served with Brown Rice & Black Beans
• Day 3: White Bean & Vegetable Soup

This 4.11 pound chicken is the basis for three meals.

First things first, Chicken butchery. Not a difficult thing at all as long as you think finesse rather than brute force. With a little practice, it’s a task that can be knocked out in nothing flat. The key is learning to slip your knife between the joints rather than trying to cut through bones. Take on a whole bird and you’ll be rewarded for your DIY prowess at the register because the cost per pound of a chicken you cut up yourself is significantly less than buying pieces-parts.

The rewards for DIY butchery don’t end at the cash register. Just like a box of Cracker Jacks or the coveted secret decoder ring hiding in the dark depths of a cereal box, there are surprises in your chicken if you’re lucky. Plunge your hand into the bird’s cavity and see what you pull out. A neck? Score! Liver? Score! Heart? Score! There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the bonus parts, but it’s exciting when you do because it’s more good stuff to work with.

The third big reward for going with a whole bird, is the carcass. You have the bones to simmer for stock…don’t click away at the first mention of stock making, hear me out. The reason you always hear that homemade stock is far better than anything you can buy is because it is, but as I recently learned it doesn’t need to be the big production that it usually is. I’ll explain shortly.

Whole chicken portioned into three meals.

Here’s how I decided to parse out my chicken, the thighs and drumsticks will be roasted with veggies for meal one. The breast meat, separated from the bone, will become shredded chicken filling for tacos on day two. The bones and remaining parts will be gently simmered in water to form the basis for soup on day three. (Gently simmering the bones in water is actually all there is to stock. No big production, I promise.) I was lucky and found good bonus-parts surprises hiding in my bird. The neck goes in the soup pot and the liver in the roasting pan.

Chicken bones in water is a flavorful start on a pot of soup.

I’ve been reading Michael Ruhlman’s new book, Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto. In it he presents twenty core cooking skills that once learned set you up to be able to make just about anything, recipe or not. I especially like his treatment of stock as a sub-technique in the chapter, Water: The Unrecognized Miracle in the Kitchen. He rightly points out that most people are intimidated by the perceived effort of making stock. I make stock enough that it’s become a routine process, but when I find myself short admittedly my first thought is to head to the store for a can. Ruhlman has effectively removed that thought from my mind for good.

“Pour water over meat and bones and vegetables, heat the mixture and eventually all the flavor from the meat and vegetables and all the protein from the bones and cartilage will wind up in the water. It’s simple and easy, and is probably the single most important difference between restaurant cooking and home cooking.” – Michael Ruhlman in Ruhlman’s Twenty

The simplest Stock, done.

“Where did we get the notion that stock making requires giant pots and huge amounts of time?…The carcass of a roasted chicken makes about 4 cups of an amazing stock. You don’t even have to use a whole carcass, just parts. Let the water do it’s magic on a single piece of chicken if you want. It’s beautiful.”  – Michael Ruhlman in Ruhlman’s Twenty

With my $5 budget I didn’t have the money to buy an onion or carrots or celery for the stock. I trusted Michael Ruhlman’s argument that a homemade stock of just chicken bones without all the areomatics would still be better than than stock from a can. I simply covered the bones and miscellaneous chicken parts with about two inches of cold water, tossed in a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, and the ends of the carrot I’d cut up to be roasted. I set the pot on a low heat and let it come up to the barest simmer. Not letting it boil or even fully simmer keeps the liquid clear and beautiful. You know what? That Ruhlman fella is right. I started my stock right after cutting up the chicken  and let it simmer while I went about making, eating and cleaning up from dinner. About 3 ½ hours later I had just over four cups of clean fresh tasting beautiful stock. No big pots. No need to set up rows of storage containers to be filled, labeled, and wrestled into the freezer. No fuss. My soup for day three’s recipe is already well underway.

Homemade chicken stock, the minimalist way.

The Herb Roasted Chicken and veggies require nothing more than tossing the veggies and chicken with a bit of oil, vinegar, and seasoning and letting it roast in the oven for 45-50 minutes. Making polenta is just as easy involving only boiling, stirring, and simmering. This meal requires very little tending to during the cooking process. For this minimal effort a dinner so satisfying with great flavor, texture, color and nutrition is your reward. 

Chicken and veggies ready for the oven.

As easy as these recipes are, it did make me realize that there is one important element to the success of slow food over fast food, and that’s cooking skills. Would someone who has never cooked before know the difference between simmer and boil? Or ever consider buying a whole chicken with no idea how to cut it up? Cooking skills matter and it’s the reason I’m so passionate about volunteering for Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program. It’s a free six week cooking and nutrition class for low income families. All the recipes we use in the classes are targeted to cost about $1.68 per serving so families receiving SNAP benefits can afford to make them. With low cost recipes and cooking skills, slow food can win out over fast food even for families living below the poverty line. I’ll grant you that it takes time and effort to shop and plan meals, but the return of taste, nutrition, and quality family time spent preparing and sharing a meal together is, as the saying goes, priceless.

Herb Roasted Chicken and Vegetables with Garlic Polenta. $5 total and serves four.

If you have the means and are interested in further developing your core cooking skills I highly recommend the Rouxbe Online Cooking School. Like Ruhlman’s Twenty (which I also reccomend), Rouxbe focuses on technique and uses recipes as a way to practice core skills. TableFare is an affiliate site for Rouxbe and we are thrilled to be able to offer a free 14-day membership to their site so you can test drive their cooking school. If you do buy a month or year membership 100% of our affiliate commission is donated to Share Our Strength to help end child hunger and fund great programs like Cooking Matters. Here’s a little taste of a partial lesson from Rouxbe’s online cooking school. Of course you can also always donate to Share Our Strength directly too!

My Herb Roasted Chicken and Vegetables served over Garlic Polenta was delicious and turned out to be enough to actually feed four people. If you aren’t limited to $1.25 per serving, adding a few more veggies and a nice green salad would round out the meal nicely. A little cheese or butter stirred into the polenta before serving would be a nice decadent touch, but certainly not necessary. Though this recipe is about as stripped down as can be, the flavor is there and I wouldn’t hesitate to serve it to dinner guests just the way it is. 

Here’s how my budget broke down. I made the decision to consider pantry staples like oil and seasonings freebies and not break out the cost per bay leaf or teaspoon of salt; that  just seemed like too much minutia. I did, however, leave a little spare change in the budget as a good faith effort toward the cost of these unaccounted for staples.

1/3 whole chicken   $2.32
1 yellow onion         $0.69
1 medium carrot      $0.25
½ lb. broccoli          $1.13
2 cloves garlic         $0.08
¾ cup polenta         $0.40
Total cost              $4.88
(Spare for staples $0.12)

I hope Slow Food’s $5 challenge will inspire you to embrace the joy and satisfaction that  comes with creating meals for yourself and people you care about. The only thing fast food really has going for it is that it’s fast. With some planning, I contend the food you cook can be just as fast when necessary, but there is something deeply satisfying about letting food happen in its own time and just enjoying the process. The meals for day two and three will be separate posts that I will link to once they are up.  

I’d love to hear what kinds of low-cost meals you like to make, please share in the comments.

Recipe Links:

• The $5 Challenge Herb Roasted Chicken Legs and Vegetables
• The $5 Challenge Garlic Polenta

The subtitle of this book could easily have been the main title; “Real Food for Everyone” is what I found in the pages of Ann Gentry’s latest cookbook.

I received a complementary review copy from the publisher, Andrews McMeel, a few months ago and I’ll admit the title didn’t entice me to pull my attention from the many tasks at hand to flip through it right then and there. I set it on a bookshelf with good intentions but those good intentions dissolved into out-of-sight-out-of-mind abandonment.

After chatting with a friend (who happens to be vegan) about recipes and cooking, a little bell went off in my head about this book. There it was on the bookshelf where I’d left it, patiently waiting to be cracked open.

I began flipping through the book from page one to see what looked enticing. My initial pass through a new book is always done with a stack of sticky note tabs in hand to flag every recipe of interest. Then I sort through my selections and decide which recipes I’ll make first, which moves the tap from the top of the page to the side. There’s a process for everything.

I flip a page and see a recipe for Umeboshi Rice Balls. Really? My heart raced just a little bit because I have a container of umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums) in my refrigerator, also teetering on the brink of out-of-sight-out-of-mind abandonment. Purchased for a specific recipe, the remaining puckery-tart, pungent, salty little plums have been languishing ever since. Reading on, the recipe included toasted sesame seeds, nori, and sushi rice made from short-grain brown rice and sweet brown rice, rice vinegar and mirin. With the reveal of each ingredient I became more excited as I realized I had all of these items in my kitchen.

Umeboshi, brown sushi rice, and nori - ready to roll

What are the odds? I’d only just discovered sweet brown rice weeks ago. I purchased it simply because it looked cool and I wanted to know what it was like (it’s really good, incidentally). Without turning another page I stood up, headed to the kitchen, got the rice cooking and was eating Umeboshi Rice Rolls within the hour. I proudly discarded the empty umaboshi container chalking up a point for me in the endless game of use-it-up-before-it-goes-bad. Though I lost a point today when I noticed mold on a lemon. Drats.

Umeboshi Rice Balls

Umeboshi sushi was not what I was expecting to find when I flipped this book open. Had I known, it would’t have gone untouched for so long. Ann Gentry explains in the introduction that she’s explored all kinds of plant-based diets over the course of her adult life. Clearly the time she spent eating a macrobiotic diet informs the way she cooks today. Not only through her use of Asian flavor-powerhouse ingredients like umeboshi, rice vinegar, miso, and fresh ginger, but also through her talent for playing ingredients off one another to capture the elusive balance of sweet, salty, bitter, tangy and hot that is so much a part of Asian cuisine.

Curious to see if the other recipes would be as pleasing, I made the Ginger-Apple Smoothie and Blueberry Corn Pancakes the next morning. The Ginger-Apple smoothie called for 1 (6-inch) piece of ginger. That’s a lot of ginger! With my first sip a cartoon image of steam blasting out of my ears flashed through my mind. Behind the heat and bite of the ginger was a nice combination of banana, apple juice, almonds and green tea powder. Next time, I’ll use less ginger. A six inch piece of ginger is somewhat ambiguous. Given that the ginger is grated and the juice squeezed from the pulp, a specific measurement of ginger juice seems like a more accurately replicable quantity, and is what I’ll use next time.

Blueberry Corn Pancakes

Skeptical of vegan bready goods, I was really surprised at how good these pancakes were. Rolled oats, corn meal and buckwheat flour give them great texture and flavor. Not being a vegan, the only reason I have for making these again is that they are good, and I’ll be making them again. Yes, that’s real butter I slathered over my vegan pancakes, which makes the point that these are just good pancakes that happen to be vegan.

Edamame and Spinach Hummus

There’s hummus and then there’s this beautiful bright green Edamame Spinach Hummus. Everything goes in the food processor and in about two minutes a spectacular spread is ready to serve. The recipe suggests serving this on endive spears, but I went the casual chip and dip route and toasted up some whole wheat pita chips. Edamame and spinach not only make the hummus pretty, but also add a sweet fresh flavor. I did back off a bit on the eight cloves of garlic that were called for because I didn’t want to be breathing fire the rest of the day. This is the nice thing about cooking your own food, you get to cater to your own taste.

Jicama-Carrot Slaw

This Jicama-Carrot Slaw is a happy bowl of sunny refreshment. The vibrant colors and juicy crunch of the vegetables gets you halfway there, but it’s the clever balance of sweet maple syrup, tangy apple cider vinegar and tart lime juice that brings it home. I’m not a big fan of raw onion and the one I had was particularly pungent, so I only added half of what was called for. This salad hit home on all levels and is a great example of Ann Gentry’s skill at keeping it simple and letting the ingredients do their thing.

Creamy Herbed Zucchini Soup

Thrilled with everything I’d made so far, I moved on to one of the three soups I had flagged; a lovely and simple zucchini herb soup that took less than an hour to make from start to finish. The smooth creamy texture is in part due to rolled oats of all things.

I nervously flipped through the dessert section a number of times trying to decide if I wanted to risk breaking my recipe winning streak. I’ve had some incredibly lackluster and downright awful vegan desserts in my eating history. I selected the Chocolate Cupcakes figuring if anything was going to be dreadful it would be these. I was encouraged, however, by the fact that there was no applesauce in the recipe, an ingredient I blame for most of the odd texture issues that plague so many low-fat and vegan baked goods. A hefty amount of cocoa powder promised good flavor and no skimping on the oil or sugar gave me even more hope.

Chocolate Cupcakes that happen to be vegan, but that's beside the point because they're good.

These are fantastic rich chocolaty cupcakes that taste like cake should taste. The icing I used is not a vegan recipe from the book. I didn’t want to run out and buy vegan butter, so I improvised and made a simple chocolate glaze. I baked them at 375 degrees F rather than the suggested 350. Partly because I always bake cupcakes at 375, but mostly because I had something already baking in the oven at 375 degrees and I wanted to get double duty out of the oven. The recipe says to bake them for about 32 minutes, which seems like a long time even with a lower oven temperature. I took mine out at 22 minutes and probably could have taken them out a minute or two earlier. My advice anytime you’re cooking anything is to base cooking times on what your food is doing rather than solely on what the recipe states.

The success with these cupcakes is because they were allowed to be a true sweet indulgence. Sugar, fat, cocoa, white flour, it’s all in there with no apologies. Bravo Ann Gentry for steering clear of the “healthy” whole-wheat, fruit-sweetened “cake” trap.

Ingredient highlights are sprinkled throughout the book along with cooking tips.

I look forward to continuing to explore this book and discover new ingredients. I’ll likely never get around to trying the Maple Tempeh Bacon or Tofu Frittata because quite frankly I’d rather have actual bacon and an egg frittata. That’s of little concern though because I’ll be plenty busy with recipes like Adzuki Bean Soup, South American Stew stuffed in a whole kabocha squash, Sesame-Hiziki Croquettes, and Oven-Roasted Sweet Potato Fries, along with revisiting many of the recipes I’ve already made. This is a great book if you’re looking for some new inspiration, but still want to keep things simple. It also never hurts to have a collection of great vegan recipes on hand.

Ann Gentry owns the popular Vegan restaurant, Real Food Daily, in Los Angeles. She is also the executive chef to Vegetarian Times magazine.

With permission from the publisher, I’m happy to be able to share a couple of recipes from Vegan Family Meals. Give them a try, I’d love to know how you like them.

Recipe Links

• Edamame Spinach Hummus
• Jicama-Carrot Slaw

 I pulled my copy of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, by Mollie Katzen, off the shelf for the first time in years. It’s a treasure trove of healthy vegetarian comfort food recipes each accented with the author’s whimsical illustrations.  Published in 1982 well before lust-inducing food photography became the norm for cookbooks, it’s a refreshing retreat.

My mind has been puzzling over what to teach a group of kids at the Boys and Girls Club to cook in an upcoming nutrition and cooking class I am involved with. About 16 kids will be cooking a meal for 40 people in about 2 hours. Kind of a head scratcher. While flipping through The Enchanted Broccoli Forest I came across Vegetable Upside Down Cake. It looks like it might be the perfect side dish for the kids to make. David is convinced no kid would want to eat this, but I have high hopes.

It’s a great teaching recipe because there is lots of chopping to practice knife skills. They will also learn how to sweat an onion and make a simple dough.  The veggies are briefly sautéed, but the oven time really brings their sweetness out and gives the broccoli and cauliflower a slightly roasted quality. The biscuit-like topping is hearty with a nice nutty flavor from whole wheat flour and wheat germ. It’s also sturdy enough to make cutting and serving easy.  I absolutely loved the finished result and really hope the kids will go for it. I’ll report back at the end of April with the outcome.

Veggie Cheesy Torte

Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s Vegetable Upside Down Cake, published in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

For the veggie layer
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons wheat germ
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups broccoli, cut into small florets
1 ½ cups cauliflower, cut into small florets
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup corn kernels (fresh or frozen)
½ teaspoon coriander (freshly ground if possible)
¼ teaspoon Aleppo pepper or red chile flakes
generous amount of freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste (probably ¼ – ½ teaspoon)
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated

For the top/bottom
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1/ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried basil
½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon dried chives (or oregano)
¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated
½ cup wheat germ
2 large eggs, beaten
¾ cup buttermilk
¼ cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Spread 1 tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom of a 9×13 baking pan and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of wheat germ. (Note: the torte is turned out of the pan onto a serving dish. Be sure you have something large enough to invert a 9×13 pan onto. A large baking sheet works well, and then the torte can be cut and placed on a pretty serving platter. Otherwise bake in two smaller pans.)

Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to a large sauté pan along with the chopped onion and a pinch of salt. Over a medium to medium-low heat, sweat the onion by cooking for about 5 minutes until translucent, but not taking on any color. Stir frequently.

Increase the heat and add the broccoli, cauliflower, and carrot and sauté for 2 -3 minutes. Add the bell pepper, corn, garlic, coriander, Aleppo pepper, black pepper and another pinch of salt. Sauté 1-2 more minutes until the aroma of the garlic and spices is noticeable.  Taste the veggies and adjust the seasoning as needed.  Spread the sautéed vegetables in the prepared 9×13 pan and then sprinkle the cheese over the vegetables. Set aside while preparing the topping.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, salt, and spices. Whisk well to thoroughly combine. Add the parmesan and wheat germ and stir to incorporate.

 In a separate bowl, beat the eggs to combine, and then add the buttermilk and olive oil.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the liquid into the well. Mix to combine working quickly and only stirring enough to bring everything together. Place small dollops of dough on the vegetables and then gently spread the dollops to create a solid covering. Bake uncovered for about 25 minutes. The topping should be a deep golden brown.

Place a large platter or sheet pan over the 9×13 dish and carefully, but quickly, flip them over to invert so the 9×13 pan is now on top. The torte should drop out of the baking dish onto the platter. Give the pan a little shake if the torte seems to need some encouragement to let go. Don’t panic if a few veggies remain in the pan, they can always be retrieved and placed on the torte by hand, or just nibbled on as a treat for the cook.

I’ve been on a nice run of baking successes lately, but had a doozie of a failure last night. I made rye bread that is better suited as a doorstop rather than as a consumable.

I expected creating the rye starter to be the tricky part, but that worked like a charm, sort of. I tried two different starter methods. The one from the recipe I was interested in trying seemed so unconventional that I decided it would be wise to create a back-up starter, which turned out to be a good plan. The recipe called for a starter made from rye flour, buttermilk and salt, which was then to be left for four days to do it’s starter thing. The use of buttermilk in starter is unusual though not unheard of, but I have never heard of salt being added so early in the game as it’s a yeast inhibitor, and I was very suspicious that the starter didn’t need to be fed daily. 

For my back up starter I turned to a new book I have been exploring. I received a review copy of Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley from the publisher, Andrews McMeel. The book gives a great overview of rye starter and bread and instructions for a simple starter of rye flour and water that was bubbly and active after the first day. After four days of feeding it was ready to go, unlike the buttermilk starter which I tossed out on day two when I discovered a thick coating of fuzzy mold growing across the top.

As Whitley describes in Bread Matters, rye bread dough is supposed to be very wet and loose like the consistency of mashed potatoes. The recipe I made created dough more like cake batter. I think it was just too wet to be able to rise. Now that I at least have a healthy rye starter I look forward to trying the rye bread recipes from Bread Matters and I expect they will be winners. The only thing I have made so far from the book besides the rye starter is the English muffin recipe, which I make almost weekly. This recipe alone is enough to put this book on my “buy” list, but once I do a bit more baking from the book I will share a full review.  I have to say I find myself reaching for this book over the other bread books I own when I want information, like how to make a rye starter, for example.

Whenever I need a good hearty laugh, I just click over to see the latest from Jen Yates at Cake Wrecks. Her world famous blog documenting “when professional cakes go hilariously wrong” is endlessly entertaining. Cake Wrecks is now available unplugged in the form of a good old fashioned book. Jen and her husband John stopped in Seattle to spread cheer, share cake and sign books.

Of course they added a fun cakey twist to the event by hosting a cupcake Wreckplica contest; fans were challenged to replicate a favorite Cake Wreck on a cupcake. Though I had put this event on my calendar months ago and was looking forward to it, I managed to completely forget about it until the day of. Thankfully they sent out reminder email that I saw 2 hours before the event started, so I raced to the kitchen to make cupcakes determined to participate in the cupcake Wreckpilca competition. Having only 2 hours, I selected a very simple Wreck to replicate, though it wasn’t a winner, it was fun.  The original Wreck is part of a collection of Father’s Day celebration cakes, scroll down to the last one of the bunch to see the origional of my Wreckpilca.

My Wreckplica

Jen and John carefully judge the many entries

The winning Werckplica -My Lap’s On Fire

The evil genious behind Cake Wrecks, Jen Yates with her husband John

Cake Wrecks – the book, is every bit as enjoyable as the blog and is primarily new material not published on line including stories about the bakers, reporters, and recipients of Wrecks.  We are set for entertainment should we lose power or our Internet connection! It’s a fun book worth having on your shelf.

This 2009 James Beard Award-winning book is the ultimate culinary idea generator. Have you ever wondered what foods are good match with fennel, or been stumped over what to do to take tonight’s pork tenderloin in a new flavor direction?

The Flavor Bible lists hundreds of ingredients in alphabetical order, offering dozens of flavor matches for each ingredient as inspiration.  Karen Page and Andrew Dorneberg interviewed highly regarded chefs and culinary experts across the US and Canada compiling data on natural flavor affinities for all kinds of foods, spices, cuisines, and beverages to create this encyclopedia for your palate. If you’re a free spirit in the kitchen, creating your own culinary masterpieces, or you would like to be, this book is a fantastic resource. Chef commentaries and tips on various ingredients are sprinkled throughout the book giving insight into how they pair foods and layer flavors.

This is a book of concepts and ideas, not recipes. It’s pure inspiration. My copy has found a permanent home on the counter in my kitchen where it’s within easy reach. Anytime I’m pondering what to do with a dish or ingredient I draw on the flavor pairing expertise of dozens of culinary professionals that this book puts at my fingertips.  The Flavor Bible is celebrating its one year anniversary this week, and of all the books I own, I have probably referenced it more times in this one year than many books I have had for decades.  It’s one of the books I’ve included in our Essential Spice References section because it’s become such a valuable tool in my kitchen. Happy anniversary Flavor Bible!

If The Cornbread Gospels missed your radar when it was released two years ago, you need to circle back around and catch this book. I picked up a copy because I flat-out love cornbread. Well actually, I love corn in all forms, including candy. You might question the value of an entire book devoted to this simple, comforting food; I was skeptical too, at first.

The Cornbread Gospels by Crescent Dragonwagon is deeper than a collection of recipes; it’s also a collection of stories reflecting our American culture and cultures the world over. The recipes are great, but it’s the stories that grabbed me, they feel important. How could they not, when the story of cornmeal in this country begins with providing desperately needed sustenance to the first settlers, slaves, and Civil War soldiers?

Thirded Colonial Cornbread with wheat and rye flours and molassas

It’s the deep-rooted, passionate, regional differences in cornbread that make it so interesting. Crescent Dragonwagon dives into all of it sharing interesting lore and history to anchor the recipes in context. She also nails down the often confusing lexicon of cornbread, for example, what’s a babycake vs. a muffin, or a johnnycake vs. a jonnycake. Rhode Island actually has a state regulation defining what exactly qualifies as a “jonnycake” without an “h” compared to one with. Talk about deep-rooted and passionate!  Along with her personal cornbread stories she shares an entertaining collection of cornbread related quotes and stories from a numerous characters she met during her six year cornbread odyssey.

New Spain-Style Corn Pudding with corn kernels, goat cheese, pablano chiles, scallions and a hint of cinnamon

Recipes in The Cornbread Gospels travel the globe illustrating just how worldly this humble grain is. There are Mexican, Colombian, Portuguese, Greek, and even South African recipes in the book. In addition to numerous regional cornbreads there are recipes for pancakes, waffles, yeasted breads, spoonbreads, steamed breads, and desserts. There is also a chapter dedicated to using leftover cornbread that starts with the wise advice to always make a double batch of cornbread so you have some leftovers.  If you’re like me and happy to serve cornbread as the main event, you will appreciate the “go-withs” chapter, filled with side dishes that compliment the star of the table.

Yankee "Spider" Cornbread with a Custard Layer

I have made oodles of recipes from this book and they have all been good, but the Yankee “Spider” Cornbread was thrilling. It self-generates a creamy custard layer that rests on top of the cornbread, but just below a crispy top crust. It’s remarkable and incredibly addictive. I have a difficult time not tucking flavor infusions into cream and milk, so I played around with this one a bit and infused the milk with a few sprigs of fresh sage to create a sage custard layer that was spectacular.

Blue, Blue, Blueberry Blue Corn Muffins

A few other favorites from the book are the Blue, Blue, Blueberry Corn Muffins which are light and tender with a delicate blue hue from the blue cornmeal. The “Thirded” Colonial Cornbread was a completely new and delightful experience. Thirding is apparently a technique the colonists used to stretch their precious wheat supplies, so this recipe uses cornmeal, rye flour, and wheat flour. The texture is soft and delicate and the addition of molasses gives it an irresistible flavor reminiscent of Boston Brown Bread. Miss Kay’s Dark Secret Cornmeal Cake is a perfect snack cake for any occasion and just as easy to make as a batch of cornbread. The addition of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice give it a warm deep flavor that blends nicely with the dark secret – a touch of cocoa.  The Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange loaf is a balance of sweet, tart, crunchy and tender. The cornmeal adds a layer of flavor and texture making it more satisfying than most quick-breads without being the least bit oily, a downfall of so many quick-breads. Crescent Dragonwagon was kind enough to share three recipes with us from The Cornbread Gospels so you can have a little taste of what awaits you in this gem of a book.

Blue, Blue, Blueberry Corn Muffins
Yankee “Spider” Cornbread with a Custard Layer
Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf

Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf

Besides the fact that The Cornbread Gospels is a wonderful book, how could you not want to read and cook from a book written by someone with such an intriguing name? Crescent Dragonwagon is also the author of Passionate Vegetarian, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, and Dairy Hollow House Cookbook, nine children’s books, and two novels. She teaches writing workshops, and blogs about cooking, eating, and writing at Nothing is Wasted on the Writer, where you can also read the story behind her unique name.

Rosemary Corn Crackers

You should also check out I Love Cornbread. It’s the international network for all things cornbread!

The 2009 James Beard Awards were just announced and I wanted to highlight the book awards. I own or have read many of these books and the rest will no doubt end up on my list. I am thrilled to see Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes win Cookbook of the Year, and it won Best Single Subject too. I have flipped through it at the store and will most likely buy a copy once I test drive it from the library, though there are still 16 people ahead of me in the queue. I may just break down and buy a copy.

Cookbook of the Year

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes
Author: Jennifer McLagan

American Cooking

Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook
by Martha Hall Foose

Baking

Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking
by Shirley O. Corriher
This is a fantastic book. I have her first book written up in Essential References, and need to add this one.

Beverage

WineWise: Your Complete Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Enjoying Wine
by Steven Kolpan, Brian H. Smith, and Michael A. Weiss, The Culinary Institute of America

Cooking From a Professional Point of View

Alinea
by Grant Achatz
A beautiful book with some of the most complicated recipes I have ever seen. Really interesting read and great for inspiring ideas.

General Cooking

How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised Tenth Anniversary Edition)
by Mark Bittman

Healthy Focus

The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life
by Ellie Krieger

International

Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China
by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
This is one of my favorite books. It is stunningly beautiful and takes you on a journey. I have a review in Essential References.

Photography

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook
Photographer: Dominic Davies

Reference and Scholarship

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs
by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
One of my most referenced books. I keep this out on my kitchen counter and turn to it all the time for inspiration. Read my review in Essential References.

Single Subject

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes
by Jennifer McLagan

Writing and Literature

In Defense of Food
by Michael Pollan

This isn’t a book award, but I have to highlight a local Seattle journalist, Rebekah Denn of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She won for Newspaper Feature with Recipes for her article, “High on the Hairy Hogs: Super-Succulent Imports are Everything U.S. Pork Isn’t.”

Happy reading! Check out the rest of the 2009 winners of James Beard Foundation Awards.

I have a bit of a cookbook fetish. For some people discretionary income is directed at shoes, manicures, or jewelry, for me, it’s cookbooks. Though I have some of my favorites listed in Essential References they are primarily spice-focused, so with the creation of a new blog category for books, I will occasionally share additional books that have captured my attention and appetite.

Gale Gand’s newest book, Gale Gand’s Brunch!: 100 Fantastic Recipes for the Weekend’s Best Meal, was just released this month perfectly timed for Brunch season, which seems to kick off with Easter and run through summer in my mind. Immediately taken with the cover photo, I started craving brunch and dove right in and got cooking. I have books that I have owned for years and though I love the book, have only made 2-3 recipes from them. Brunch! has been in my hands for just a few weeks and I’ve already made 12 of the recipes and fully intend to keep up the pace because I have so many pages flagged as “must-make.” Part of what makes the recipes in this book appealing to me is they aren’t complicated, and though I love a good complicated cooking challenge, for the first meal of the day I generally just want to eat and the sooner the better. Brunch! offers the best of both worlds with simple recipes that have a flair of elegance for special occasions, along with casual basics for everyday. Though Gale Gand is the Pastry Chef at the fine dining restaurant, Tru, this book comes from her perspective as a busy mom who enjoys relaxed weekend brunch gatherings with friends.

The menu for our delicious Easter breakfast came right from the pages of this book. Rhubarb just started showing up at the market recently and I immediately added the Roasted Pears and Rhubarb with Orange recipe to our menu. I topped the roasted fruit with the Cranberry-Almond Granola, also from the book, and a dollop of Greek yogurt. It was a perfect breakfast dessert! I do believe this granola recipe has sparked a new obsession and I will be making endless variations of this recipe. The granola is easy to make, delicious, and a beautiful gift when packaged in cellophane bag and tied with a ribbon.

The cover recipe of Baked Eggs in Ham Cups, has been enticing me from the moment I saw it. I have actually made it twice and it’s a great example of the types of simple yet elegant recipes in the collection. I wasn’t able to get particularly large slices of ham and found it worked better to just cook one egg in each cup and roasted red peppers were a fine stand-in for the cherry tomatoes.

The Strata with chicken, broccoli, corn, chiles, and cheese is one of the best recipes for entertaining because it can be assembled the night before and just popped in the oven to bake in the morning. What is more comforting and delicious than a savory bread pudding? It’s creamy and custardy, but hearty and satisfying with a nice little kick from the addition of chile peppers. There are five variations included to illustrate the flexibility of the dish and creativity is encouraged. This is a great example of the types of practical recipes Gand includes that make it possible to entertain despite an overly busy schedule.  Beyond a wide variety of savory breakfast foods Brunch! includes a wonderful collection of recipes that would make a delicious lunch like Apricot Chicken Salad, Farro with Tomatoes and Parsley, and Heirloom Tomato Bisque, all of which are on my “must-make” list. The only dish I didn’t have great success with was the Goat Cheese and Chive Hash Browns, but it was due to a cooking error on my part for trying to cook them on a griddle rather than in a pan that would afford the necessary oil for frying. The flavor was good; I just didn’t get them as crisp and delicious as they should have been.

Gale’s pastry background comes through with a delicious collection of recipes for scones, waffles, muffins, turnovers and coffee cake. I have been drawn to the savory baked goods such as the Bacon-Scallion Scones, yes, bacon scones! I did find that when making only half of the recipe, it is best to divide all of the ingredients in half! The first time I made these I forgot to cut the milk in half and amazingly they still turned out, but I have since made them again and they are better when all the ingredients are scaled back equally.  My favorite way to eat these scones is with a scrambled egg and cheese sandwiched in the middle. It’s a full breakfast in one delicious little package. The Gougères with hints of mustard and cayenne pepper are absolutely addictive!  Each little dough puff is dressed with garlic parsley butter and a sprinkled of parmesan cheese just after they come out of the oven.  After feasting on them at breakfast, that evening I popped the leftovers in the oven to crisp up and served them as hors d’oeuvre for dinner.

There is a nice chapter of festive beverage recipes in the book as well. I love to make a special drink to serve when entertaining and for breakfast my favorite is to serve a smoothie to guests when they first arrive. I think of it as a breakfast appetizer. It gives guests something delicious to enjoy and keeps them from starving while the last bit of cooking is taking place. Brunch! has a Blueberry Pineapple with Mint and a Raspberry Banana Orange smoothie that are both delicious and as simple as pushing the button on the blender. I found them both to be a little thick for my taste and just added a bit of milk to thin them out.

Gale Gand’s Brunch! 100 Fantastic Recipes for the Weekend’s Best Meal, has been a fun book to cook from and has ignited my enthusiasm for inviting friends over for breakfast. In addition to great recipes, it is beautifully photographed and printed making it a great gift for anyone that likes to cook especially if it came with an invitation to brunch!

Tomorrow morning maybe it will be Baked Cinnamon-Apple French Toast and this summer it will definitely be Watermelon Gazpacho with cucumber, apple, bell pepper and pomegranate seeds!

Update: We have been given permission to share the recipe for Asparagus with Poached Eggs and Parmesan. Delicious!

Update: Gale Gand will be cooking two dishes from this new book on NBC’s Today Show, Wednesday April 15th.

Further update: Now it looks like she will be on Thursday April 16th.