I’m very reticent to call myself a food blogger, but I do sometimes keep a blog and I mostly blog about what I’ve cooked or baked, so I suppose in some slackery universe I am a food blogger.

Today I checked in on a blog (here) I read regularly of someone who is a real world food blogger and I discovered she had suddenly lost her husband.  Her beautiful words to us in this worst of all times, was encouraging us to make a peanut butter pie (her husband’s favorite) and share it with those we love.

Life is fleeting, it flies by before we know it.  So often we put off the things we most love and cherish for another day.  I think “I’ll paint tomorrow, or I’ll see him next week”, I’m too busy with work and school, there isn’t time for the extras.  The possibilities are always there unraveling into the future like an intangible savings bond that we hope to cash one day.

Only sometimes that day doesn’t come.  You delay and delay so often that fate, or God or the universe intervenes and it is gone- forever out of grasp.

Time is precious, and so often we squander it caught up in the minutia of daily life. I know that’s “living life”, but I think we should do a better job of jam-packing our lives with what’s vital, cherishing the people we love and enjoying the things that fill us with joy.  Maybe that means a missed deadline or a messy kitchen, but I somehow doubt we’ll regret filling our lives with substance.

And so while I can’t comfort Jenny personally I can do what I love and share it with people who are important to me, like she asked.  And as I see my twitter feed fill up other food bloggers, cooks and just plain good folks are baking pies today, I see I’m not alone.  You see we can’t always fix everything, sometimes we can’t fix anything , but we can cook.

It’s what we do.

I made mini peanut butter pies, more love to spread around.

I did use the crust he has there and it was very easy to work with (mine was a bit damp with our humidity, but it ended up fine).  I also felt mine needed a chill in the freezer after it came together or it would have been too soft.  Also, I added some cracked black pepper to the crust, but really there’s no reason you couldn’t do readymade for the crust, but I’m just a freak, gotta make my own.

One other bit of prep I did before I assembled.  I sliced the tomatoes and put them on some paper towels and gently pressed, changing the towels once or twice.  Nothing’s worse than a soggy crust, and while it didn’t completely get eliminate the sog, it was good enough for me.  I left them on towels for about  half hour while the dough chilled off.

I rolled out the dough and spread some Dijon on the bottom in a thin layer.  I had a bit of dry ricotta I got from Prairie Fruits Farm, but I’d skip this or use some other dry-ish cheese.  Regular ricotta is too wet and then again we are dealing with soggy crust.  I arranged the sliced tomatoes in a pretty pattern and topped with some minced garlic, salt and pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. I also sprinkled some fresh chèvre again from Prairie Fruits on top with some torn up basil.

I folded the crust up along the edges to make a little free form tart or galette.

My crust was pretty thin and I think I baked it at 425 for 25-28 minutes.  I’d check on it, you want it golden brown and feeling pie crusty on the sides and the tomatoes baked and soft inside.

It was pretty darn good, tasted summery.

By the way David Leibovitz has both awesome recipes and great food bloggy information, and he lives in Paris so you hear the inside track from a smart, funny ex-pat.

1.  I’m much more comfortable with angst than with victory and joy.

2.  This leaves room for time traveling 1985 Bears to come back and whup both the Packers and the Steelers in the Super Bowl…What? It could happen.

3.   Makes the Cubs feel better, misery loves company.

4. Um… losing builds character?

5. Now I don’t have to throw an expensive, fun filled Super bowl party, and have more time for work/studying, YAH!

6.  I can put away my Bears gear and make more room in the closet for sweaters.

7. That “Wait ‘till next year” tattoo I got makes a lot more sense.

8.  I forget what 8 was for…

9.  Green Bay and Pittsburg have so little going for them as cities, we’ll throw them this bone.

10. No danger of watching the game with high hopes of my team winning only to be cruelly dashed by complete suckage.  Yes, ’07 Bears, I’m lookin’ at you.

I’ll be back when my exam’s over.  See you on the other side, brother

I’ll hit the highlights, but it’s a little ironic because while I made this a while ago, I’m making beef stew again tomorrow to serve for Homecoming which is tomorrow.  Now don’t be afraid of this recipe from its fancy pants name, it’s really just a shepherd’s pie.

Now I don’t know about you, but my shepherd’s pie doesn’t call for sausage.  This one does, and while I think it added nice fat, I’m not sure I’d add it again.  I think for me it made it a little rich, but try it once and then use your discretion.

I also used some stew meat I had from a local purveyor, Stan Schutte of Triple S Farm at the Urbana Farmers’ Market.  The sausage was his too and both meats were delicious.  He has organic meat and sells at the market, try him out if you’re local.  He has chicken (the best eggs I’ve ever eaten), pork and beef.  You can get the staples, but the lesser known stuff too.  I have a tub of lard in my freezer as proof.

You put the veg and the beef and simmer like for a stew until the meat is tender.  It took me a bit longer than the recipe called for, but I wondered if this was because I used Stan’s stew meat and not cut Dorie used.

A revision I happily made was to use local cheese in lieu of the Gruyere the recipe calls for.  I used a wonderful cheese from Prairie Fruit Farm, a local goat cheese farm that is a true gem, not only for the Midwest, but really anywhere.  World class farmstead cheese, yum!  I used Kaskaskia, a dry parmseany type of goat cheese that was hard and grated up nice.  It didn’t get overly melty, but had a great distinctive nutty flavor and worked great.

You add it to the potato topping, she says on top, but I mixed a little right in with the potato mixture. Look at how golden and crusty it is.  It was both nutty and creamy and delicious.

This is the finished product.  You can actually see the steam rising off of it.  I tried to wait until it stopped steaming, but couldn’t.  It was good, like I said, a little rich, but a small serving with a salad makes a great fall meal.

Thanks Dorie!

So as I was making this soup and beginning to take my pictures, it occurred to me that “man, this soup is white”.  Let’s just say it was a theme, and for a cooking post that mainly relies on pictures, well, that wasn’t a very good portend of what was to come.  I made a white broth, cooked in it white meat (chicken) and added white noodles.  Hmmm, that sounds interesting…So there aren’t many pictures this week, just a couple of highlights and hopefully with my green on green garnish it jazzed up the final picture enough to let you get a glimmer of how delicious it was, and it was delicious!

My takeaway thoughts this week were if you’ve never made soup before, this is your soup.  It came together “Rachel Ray” fast, but actually tasted fancy and complicated.  This easily could be made on a busy weeknight and finished in under an hour.  Usually when a soup comes together fast it isn’t tasty, but Dorie layers the flavors and the coconut milk, chilies, lime juice and ginger all work together and create a wonderful harmony of flavors.  I will make this again.  You can find the book and the recipe here.

First I made the broth.

Ok, it doesn’t look white yet, but just wait.   It uses chicken stock (I had some homemade, lucky me), and coconut milk cilantro, star anise, coriander, onion, garlic ginger, red chilies, a touch of fish sauce (it scared me and I used very little), and a bit of brown sugar.  This is your soup base and you let it come together simmering the chicken in it.  I used boneless breasts and I’d use bone in breasts if I did it again.  I think they have more flavor and I think it keeps the chicken softer and more moist.

Now behold the whiteness.  There are charming little flecks of red from the chilies, but all in all pretty monochromatic.  A couple of hints here, simmer very gently and your chicken which is really poaching in the broth will be even more tender.

One thing I didn’t love was cooking the noodles in a separate pot, but I think it was necessary don’t want too much starch in the broth, but I hate dirtying another pot.  Anyhoo, I did what I was told and then added the noodles and shredded chicken back to the pot.  And, oh, YOUR DONE.

Isn’t this the perfect soup for a cold fall day?  I think it turned out perfectly, the heat of the ginger and the chilies was cut by the lime and the coconut milk and the noodles and chicken added enough presence to make it a real meal.  And it does look kinda pretty.   She suggests a host of condiments you can put on, but I only went with the lime and the cilantro, but it did break up and also called back to the flavors in the dish.  I served it with a salad and some crusty bread, I mean the broth was kind of begging for dunking.
Make this now, it’ll make you happy.

I was reviewing the recipe and noticed the tart dough needs a 3 hour chill, and I needed to get going after all this tart isn’t going to cook itself.  I put the dough ingredients into the world’s oldest and most banged up food processor, note the large chunks of cold butter. 

I gave it a few whirls and then added an egg and a tiny bit of water.  Dorie cautions against over-mixing like with any good pie-type dough, you don’t want to over work and get too much gluten established.  We want tender flaky dough, people!

I usually like to leave rather large bits of butter in my crusts, and this is maybe a bit too fine for me, but it didn’t impact the taste or the flakiness.  It doesn’t come together in the mixer, but I put it on some cling film and it held together nicely when squeezed.  I made a little disk and put it in the fridge.  After about a half hour I moved it to the freezer, being that I am the Queen of Impatience and I don’t want to wait 3 hours to get the party started.

So I don’t think my, let’s call it eagerness, really impacted the crust at all.  It rolled out rather easily and I used her suggestion to roll it between 2 sheets of cling film.  I gently eased it into the pan and blind baked it.  I didn’t notice until after I’d baked it that she suggests doubling the sides to make it a little more formidable.   While I didn’t have any trouble with a crumbling crust, I think next time I’ll double it, even just for looks.

While I was waiting for the crust to cool, I chopped the veg, leeks and carrots and steamed them up.  I was pretty careful to gently squeeze as much moisture out of them without crushing the carrots, which were delightfully soft ( I hates me a crunchy veg).

Then I whisked up the filling, which is one thing that made it different from the other tomato tarts I’d made before.  They just had cheese and mustard on a bare crust.   This filling was luscious.  It was made with crème fraiche and two types of mustard, a grainy hearty mustard and a Dijon.  The combination was both tangy and creamy and added just the right amount of binding to the leeks and carrots.

In other veg tarts or quiches I’ve made you add the veggies to the crust and top it with filling.  This is the opposite, you add the creamy filling and then top it with the veg, almost like a garnish.  I’d initially tried to do some fancy arranging with the veg, some crazy basket weave design, but my carrots weren’t up to the task and began to fall apart.  Seeing the writing on the wall, I let that go and did a “full on Dorie” with the spoke pattern.

It baked up easy too, no water baths, just pop it in the oven and when a knife comes out clean it’s done.  Mine puffed a little and got nicely golden.  Oh and it was delicious.  I think it was the crème fraiche in lieu of heavy cream, which can be a little cloying to me, but regardless, it was very, very tasty and I would make this again in a heartbeat.  Might even have to try tomatoes…

The recipe can be found in the book Around my French Table, by Dorie Greenspan.

What’s that you say, I’ve said that before and then proceeded to drop off the planet yet again?  Well, fear not my enmeshed friend I swear it’s different this time.  This time I’m trying out the new French Friday’s with Dorie.  This is an online cooking group that “cooks the book”, this time with Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table.  I purchased the tomb, and it looks fabulous!  I can’t be more excited and in fact today is my first entry in this new venture.  I also promise to share the good, the bad and the ugly.  I’m sure the recipes will all be awesome because that’s the kind of cookbook author she is, but my cooking mostly is good, but I can have spectacular epic fails as well.  C’est la vie, on with the show-Gougeres!

Gougeres are basically a cream puff with cheese.  What is a cream puff, you might ask, well it’s mainly just flour, egg, water and butter.  What makes them “puff” isn’t magic, it’s in the technique you use to assemble them.  You start by putting your butter and flour into a pan and bringing it to a boil.  When it’s boiling, you dump in all your flour and mix like mad.

Pretty quickly your dough begins to form a ball and you will see a film gathering on the bottom of your pan.  That is fine, in fact it’s what you want.  This drys out the dough and um, begins the puffily magic (I don’t know what it does, but I do what I’m told).  While you can do the next step by hand and possibly get carpel tunnel, I then dump the dough into my mixer and beat in the eggs.  When all your eggs are beat in, then with Gougeres, you add cheese.  In mine I added a nice English Cheddar.  I’m usually a total Wisconsin cheese junkie, but didn’t have any Hook’s 12 year on hand.

Dorie says she just spoons out the dough onto the cookie sheet, and I followed suit, being a dutiful recipe follower this time.  Okay, this isn’t especially pretty looking, but it did the trick.  The chunks you see are the cheddar which didn’t melt and I thought that added a nice cheezily bits to the puffs.  I then baked them starting at a higher heat and then lowering it, and got these…

Wow, they puffed and everything, they melted in your mouth and went down really nice with a sparkling rose that was just a little tart.  Interestingly I made two sizes smaller, like the recipe calls for and larger more heaped up ones, like one of my favorite restaurant in Madison, L’Etoile used to make.  The large puffed better and I wonder if it wasn’t because they were heaped up higher.  I will have to do more research to determine the cause.  Mmmm, delicious research.

Now I love the cheese and the crispy cheesey crust is awesome, but for me like with a popover it’s all about the fleshy innards.  When gougeres puff they leave a hollow, but moist center and I love that webby middle.  Some people cut a little hole in the tops of their puffs to dry them out, maybe more for cream puffs, so they don’t get soggy, but resist this, don’t mar the middle.  Trust me.

Well, thanks for stopping by and if you’re new to my crazy little world, take a step back and get caught up.  I’m going to try and catch as many of these along the way as I can, and I also am going to try and include some other things along the way too.  I have food journals from New Orleans and beyond to add (I know, promises promises).  With this cooking club we don’t include the recipes because seriously you should buy the book.  You won’t regret it.

To see others go to the FFWD site

Grits Gal

Well, there went another summer and I’m back looking at fall in the eyes. As of yet, neither of us has blinked. I’m also going to try the occasional blog entry. Not over-promising like I always do, but hope to put a little bit out there. I’m looking forward to the fall in the same way I’ve done each year in my doc study with both excitement and dread. That’s something I really like about academia, always new challenges and opportunities. I’m also getting to the point where I’m ready to start checking things off the list. First up, quals in October (hopefully as late as possible). Once I’m past that I think it’ll be smooth sailing (pause for laughter). Um, maybe not smooth, but this is the only thing that makes me a bit nervous.

Not going to “over post”, got a lot to do before the terms starts in less than 24 hours. Leave you with this pretty sunflower. Took this picture out at Prairie Fruit Farm during one of their dinners.

Easter Fruit tart, originally uploaded by lclea.

I took the holiday as an opportunity to cook since I haven’t been cooking complicated stuff lately. Had a nice Mango/Ginger glazed ham, cheesy potatoes and fresh fruit tarts.  Yummm.

Actually, this is a really easy recipe from Cooks Illustrated. The crust is a sort of sugar cookie and rolled out like a dream. The pastry cream didn’t even need to be strained. I have four more I’ll assemble and deliver tomorrow. Some lucky doc students/staff at UIUC will be on the receiving end of these lovely little goodies. They won’t know what hit ‘em.

I will definitely make these again when there’s a better selection of fruit so the colors are prettier. Don’t know the rules about posting the tart recipe since it’s from a site that I pay to access, so I’ll err on the side of caution. If you want it let me know.  However, I can link to the delicious Mango-Ginger Ham at  http://steamykitchen.com/7897-easter-ham-with-mango-ginger-glaze-6-ingredients.html

Regardless, Happy Easter.