Edible Therapy

Homemade Corn Tortillas

Why would anyone go to the trouble to make their own tortillas, you ask? Because they are infinitely better than any you can buy at the store, for one, and because you just got a new toy from the Viking Store! I cannot resist a kitchen store- I enter a Williams Sonoma or a Sur la Table the way most women enter Anthropologie. It is physically impossible for me to leave empty-handed. On my last visit to one of these hallowed places, I found a tortilla press. I have always wanted one, but have just never picked one up from the mexican market while shopping for cajeta or some such other mexican delicieux. Finally, I came to my senses and made the purchase, not a big one at all, by the way. About $25 for a new toy? Much cheaper than a pair of jeans at Anthropologie. So, on to the next step: use of the toy. I confess, it was not instant success. I had many throw-aways, but the good news about throw-aways here is that you can just ball the mess up and start over with the same dough! And, ever since I discovered how easy it is to make the dough (just add water to your Maseca), I have wanted to make homemade tortillas. Here's how simple it is:

Prepare your dough according to the instructions on the package of Maseca (the corn flour required to make the dough). Divide the dough into balls just smaller than a golf ball. Do this before you start pressing, trust me, it will be easier that way. You don't want your hands all sticky with dough when you are trying to press out these little buggers. Once you have your dough all rolled up into balls, cover them with a clean damp towel so they don't dry out. Then, put a piece of plastic wrap on each inside plate of your tortilla press. Plastic wrap works better than wax paper, as the dough tends to stick to the wax paper. Pop one of those dough balls onto the center of the bottom plate and press down, briefly closing the latch on the top of the press. Then lift the top plate up, and there you have it! A nice little round tortilla ready for the skillet! Now comes the tricky part, peeling the tortilla off of the press. Just do it carefully, and if it rips, ball it up and do it again. When you are finished pressing your tortilla, put it in the middle of an ungreased hot cast-iron skillet for about a minute per side. Then continue on with the rest in the same fashion. As they come off of the skillet, they can be stacked and covered with a clean kitchen towel. Now you can make enchiladas, tostadas, tortilla soup, or a simple taco like I did, with avocado, thinly sliced radish, a little cotija cheese and some chipotle tabasco. Yummy.

Spiced Maple Pecans

Just in time for the holidays...these smoky, sweet, and spicy nuts are great to have around this time of year for when folks drop in. Make a great big batch, and you can have them to use as hostess gifts, or just as munchies for you and yours. I have also given these pecans as food gifts at Christmas, and they are great for parties: set out a bowl at your bar and folks will gather around them. Last year the cooking bee made them for our Christmas party with pecans from Leah's mom's trees! The recipe is from one of my favorites: Back to the Table by Art Smith . Enjoy!

Spiced Maple Pecans
from Art Smith's Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family
makes about 4 cups

1 pound pecan halves
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
3 T sugar
2 t ground cumin
2 t sweet paprika
2 t chile powder (I use Mexene, but you can use your favorite brand)
1 t salt
1/8 t cayenne

Preheat the oven to 350. Spread the pecans in a large roasting pan and bake until lightly toasted, about 8 minutes.

Combine the corn and maple syrups. Pour over the nuts and toss to coat well. Bake, stirring occasionally, until the nuts have absorbed most of the syrup, about ten minutes.

Mix together the sugar, cumin, paprika, chile powder, salt, and cayenne. Pour the nuts into a large bowl and toss with a spoon, gradually adding the sugar mixture, until the nuts are coated with the sugar. Cool slightly and break apart any that have stuck together. Pour onto a baking sheet and cool completely.*

*I just allow the nuts to cool in the bowl to avoid dirtying up another pan. Just break them up again once they are cooled.

Mexican Chocolate and Almond Cakes

I am a stress baker. Perhaps you already know this if you know me, or if you have read some of my other blogs. A bad day at work frequently ends in a trip to the grocery store and a stint in the kitchen. On Wednesday, I decided I needed to bake, but could not tolerate a trip to the grocery during food rush-hour (4:30-5:30 PM), especially considering the day I had, which lead to the need for baking in the first place. So, at home I had slivered almonds and all of the basic tools to bake with: flour, eggs, sugar, etc. Almonds....hmmm...financiers! Little french pastries that are supposed to be in the shape of a brick of gold, hence the name. I usually make these in mini-mufin tins, but when I reached for them I spied my madeleine pans. The madeleine pans are so pretty, they just cry out to be used whenever you see them! So I decided to go ahead and use them. To hell with traditional french pastry! My mood swinging away from my day at work already, I began to examine the contents of my pantry. An entire shelf of nutri-system meals (yep. the food is just not good. I did lose 26 pounds on the plan, however, so it does actually work!), various bottled condiments, pomegranate molasses meadeleines? No...aha! Mexican hot chocolate! So, financiers made in a madeleine pan with a disk of mexican hot chocolate aded to the batter...these little cakes are so delicious- buttery and chocolatey, with just a hint of cinnamon flavor from the mexican hot chocolate while somehow still managing to seem light, although believe me, they are not. They were a hit with my co-workers, which is good because I might have eaten them all myself otherwise!

Mexican Chocolate and Almond Cakes
makes about eighteen cakes

1 cup slivered almonds, processed in a food processor until they resemble crumbs
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
6 egg whites
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and still hot
1 disk Ibarra or other mexican hot chocolate, processed until finely ground

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter or spray with Pam two madeleine pans (or mini-muffin pans). Put the almonds, powdered sugar, and flour into the bowl of an electric mixer with the whisk attachment. Add the granulated sugar and whisk on low speed until combined. Add the egg whites a little at a time and once they are all added, scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Turn the mixer back on low speed, and add the butter in a slow, thin stream. Mix until combined. Use a spoon or pour the batter into a measuring cup to fill the madeleine tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack, or devour them immediately!

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Be afraid. Be very afraid. This dip is addictive and, although not quite as scary as Jeff Goldblum turning into a fly, it is definitely not for the faint of heart. Why, you ask? Just scroll down and take a look at the ingredients list. Ranch dressing? Cream cheese? Chicken, hot sauce, cheddar... it is absolutely evil. And be warned: once you have a taste, there is no stopping. I would recommend making this dip only when you are expecting a large group. It is a cinch to make, and a definite crowd-pleaser. I think it would be fantastic for a football party, or any other gathering where hot wings might fit into the menu. The original recipe called for canned chicken, but I just could not bear that on top of all of the other evil ingredients, so I picked a rotisserie chicken clean instead. (and made stock with the carcass! yum!) However, the first time I had buffalo chicken dip, it was made with canned chicken and it was very very tasty. (Thank you, Dawn!) I also used light cream cheese instead of the full-fat version. I did choose to use full-fat, off the shelf Hidden Valley for the ranch component of the dip, as I have yet to taste a lowfat or fat-free ranch that is edible. I served my dip with tortilla chips and celery sticks, and both were good. I think it would also be good with slices of sourdough baguette. Enjoy, and consider yourself warned. Consult the photo at the end of the blog if you don't believe me- there were only about twelve people present to kill the above-pictured bowl of dip.

Buffalo Chicken Dip
adapted from Dawn F.'s recipe

2 1/2 cups finely chopped chicken
3/4 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce
2 packages (16 oz) light cream cheese
1 cup ranch dressing
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
celery sticks and tortilla chips to serve

Mix the chicken and hot sauce together in a sauce pan and stir until well-combined and heated through. Add the cream cheese and stir until combined. Add the ranch dressing and half the cheddar cheese and stir to combine. Transfer the mixture to an oven-proof bowl and top with the remaining cheese. Heat at 350 degrees until the dip is bubbly and the cheese is melted, about 30 minutes.

Beef and Sweet Italian Sausage Ragu

Chad and I had our friends Amy, Donovan, Chris, and Christy for dinner last night, and we had not seen these folks for a long time. So that we could maximize QT with our friends, we decided to make something that would be completed before the first guest arrived. We wanted to avoid having to do too much cooking while our friends were over.

Although it is October, it is still 86 degrees in Memphis! Despite the heat, I am convinced that it is Fall, and therefore it is time for warm plates of comfort food. Wishful thinking, I know. Maybe if I start cooking up butternut squash soups and pots of gumbo, the cold weather will arrive? Anyway, we finally decided on this delicious ragu, perfect for fall and winter. The sauce takes a few hours to cook, so it is definitely not a weeknight dish. That said, it is even better the day after you make it, and it freezes beautifully.

We originally had planned to serve this ragu over homemade pappardelle, but decided on the much easier polenta, again, to maximize QT. The pappardelle would have needed to be rolled and cut at the last minute and thrown into the pot just before we were ready to eat. Fun, but not for this occasion. We used stone-ground polenta cooked according to the directions on the package, and we added a little olive oil, black pepper, and freshly grated parmigianno. The polenta did have to be cooked at the last minute, but it is a cinch to make, so it didn't cut into our socializing. Buon Appetito!

Beef and Sweet Italian Sausage Ragu
serves ten

3 pounds sirloin top round steak, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 bay leaf
1 bottle red wine (we used a 2004 Cotes du Ventoux Rouge), for marinating and also for the sauce
2 pounds sweet italian sausage, removed from its casings
6 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
5 ribs celery, cut to a small dice
2 white onions, diced small
3 carrots, peeled and diced small
5 T butter
3 T olive oil
2 t salt
1 t crushed red pepper flakes
3 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes

Marinate the beef in the bay leaf and red wine just to cover for one hour.

Saute the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and sausage in olive oil and butter in a large pot over medium heat until the vegetables are soft, about fifteen minutes. Use a wooden spoon to break up the sausage while it is cooking. Season with the salt and crushed red pepper.

Remove the beef from the red wine and discard the wine. Add the beef and bay leaf to the pot and cook over medium-high heat until all of the natural juices have evaporated from the pan. Add the rest of the wine, and cook until the liquid has evaporated, stirring occasionally to ensure that the mixture is not burning to the bottom of the pan.

Add the tomatoes, turn the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 2.5 hours, stirring occasionally, until all of the flavors have concentrated and melded together. Taste for seasoning and add salt if necessary. Serve over polenta or thick pasta, such as pappardelle.

Cheddar-Thyme Gougeres with Bacon, Arugula, and Tomato

The first time I had gougeres, the cooking bee (our monthly cooking group made up of five friends) made them for a party a couple of years ago. They were traditional gougeres: little cheese puffs with gruyere and parmgiano, and we served them with a tomato-basil sauce at the suggestion of my friend Marion, who is french and knows all about french food. They were the first item gone at the party. Hmmm... maybe that was because we did not make quite enough of them for such a big group, and we all hovered over the bowl until they disappeared.? Since we served them at our party, I have seen them in all shapes and forms. At Tartine in San Francisco, the gougere was a huge round of thyme-studded cheesy goodness. The Zuni Cafe cookbook, one of my favorite cookbooks and where you will find the most delicious roast chicken recipe, offers a recipe for BLT's served on gougeres, and Mollie Fontaine Lounge serves up its own version of gougere BLT's with avocado and pickled red onion.

My grandmother had a little family gathering this weekend, and she asked me to take care of the food. The gathering was at 4PM, so I did not want to make anything too heavy. I decided on eggplant dip with pita chips, spiced pecans, and these gougere BLT's, as my grandmother loves BLT's. I took a cue from Mollie Fontaine and spread the gougeres with a sesame mayo, and, had I been more prepared, I would have added pickled red onions for a nice, tart contrast to the rich bacon.

Gougeres are made the same way as cream puffs, eclairs, and even those little pastry swans you used to see at bakeries. The dough is caled pate a choux (choux pastry). To make sweet instead of savory puffs, omit the pepper and thyme and cheese and proceed as above. You may need to cook the sweet puffs for about five extra minutes. For profiteroles, split them open and stuff with ice cream and top with chocolate sauce!

Cheddar-thyme gougeres with bacon, arugula, and tomato
makes about 30 gougeres

For the gougeres:

1 c milk
1 stick unsalted butter
1 t salt
1/8 t pepper
1 t thyme
1 c flour
4 eggs
1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/4 c parmigiano, grated
1 egg beaten with a little water, about 1 T

Preheat the oven to 425. Grease two baking sheets, or line with parchment. In a saucepan, melt the butter, milk, salt, thyme, and pepper. Heat over medium until scalded, or almost boiling. Add all of the flour and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is combined. Cook the mixture for about two more minutes, until the flour starts to coat the pan. Turn the mixture into the food processor and add the eggs and cheese, and then mix until the dough is smooth.

Put the dough into a ziplock bag and cut a tiny little hole in a bottom corner, without sealing the bag. If you have a pastry bag, you can use that just as well. Don't put too much pressure on the bag when you are squeezing it, as it will burst if you do and then you will have to spoon out the gougeres onto the pan. Fine, but a lot messier than the bag. Pipe out little mounds of dough onto the prepared pans as big or small as you want them to be. I piped mine out at about 1 inch round and just short of that in height. Dip your finger into water and press down the little pointy tips and reshape any that look like they have strayed from their desired shape. Brush the top of the gougeres with the egg wash (the egg mixed with the water) and sprinkle with a little extra parm and cheddar. Bake for about 15 minutes at 425, until they are golden brown.

For the BLT's:

2 c arugula
2 tomatoes, sliced and each slice quartered
about 8 pieces of bacon, cooked
1/2 c mayonnaise
1 t sesame oil
1/4 t chili powder

Mix together the mayo, chili powder, and sesame oil. Split open the cooled gougeres and spread with the sesame mayo. Break up the bacon and stuff each gougere with bacon, a little arugula, and a little piece of tomato. Add avocado if you like!

Manners and Dieting

What is the etiquette when dining out or with friends when you are on a diet? I have been to dinner parties where I completely cheated on my diet and then had shame following me around all day the next day, and I have been out to dinner when I have ordered well, stuck with the diet, and have felt uncomfortable around everyone else commenting on my "good" behavior. If I order what I really want to eat at the restaurant, I will eat way too much of it because it will be so good. If I don't eat when my friend has prepared a delicious meal for me, I am ungrateful and putting my diet before my friend's feelings. Thoughts? Any ideas on self-control at parties where delicious food that is not on my diet is being served?

Total weight loss to date, despite insane cheating over the weekend: 17 pounds

S'mores! and Diet Update, Vol. VI

When is the last time you had s'mores? Around a campfire when you were a kid? Well, don't forget about them!  We served them for dessert after a recent dinner party for a friend who was moving out of town. Just use wooden skewers to roast your marshmellows over a gas burner, and sandwich them with a few squares of a hershey's chocolate bar between two graham crackers...super easy, and everyone loves a little trip back to childhood via dessert.

Diet update: I must stop cheating. Labor Day weekend was very bad for my diet. We went to a football party on Saturday where I ate rotel and meatballs, then to Chad's parents' house for dinner Sunday night, where I had ribs and peach cobbler, then we had my cousins for dinner Monday night and ate chicken saltimbocca, spaghetti with pesto, and chocolate butter cake for dessert. Very, very bad. It's one thing to cheat and not feel guilty because it is worth the cheat (Chad's mom's homemade peach cobbler was the best I have ever had), but it is quite another thing to cheat for rotel and fritos. The thing about cheating is that it really has to be worth it. So, no more! Unless it's something really good...

Another diet update: I have become a connossieur of fat-free salad dressings. Before I began this diet, I never would have purchased a dressing in a bottle, much less a fat-free dressing! Gross! Now, I eat fat-free dressing with lunch and dinner every day, so I have tried a ton of them. My personal favorites are Kraft Fat Free Caesar Italian and Wish Bone Fat Free Red Wine Vinaigrette. When it comes to fat-free dressings, one should steer clear of anything creamy and go for the "oil"-based varities. I tried Marzetti's fat-free honey mustard, which was terrible. It did not remind me of honey or mustard, and it had a terrible aftertase. I'll make my own, thank you. Honey and mustard are both fat-free, anyway! Also on the not-so-good list are Girard's Fat Free Caesar and Hidden Valley's Fat Free Ranch. Again, creamy and fat-free do not mix.

Total weight Loss: 16 pounds!

The Best Homemade Pimiento Cheese

Saturday was cooking bee, which is my monthly cooking group. Five of us good friends get together to cook a big menu of delicious food. We rotate who does the menu planning and we each get a shopping list. The menu this time included pimiento cheese as an appetizer, cold curried pea soup, watermelon and feta salad, flounder with pink-eyed pea succotash, and blackberry cobbler. Several of the recipes came from Frank Stitt's Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill. I have never been to Stitt's restaurant in Birmingham, AL, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this book! I have made the pimiento cheese twice, and am looking forward to trying out the seafood pirlau, the lemon buttermilk chess tart, and the asparagus with crawfish meuniere, among many others. My sister-in-law, Jane, gave me Stitt's book for Christmas, and, although I read it cover to cover on receiving it, it did take me some time to begin cooking from it. Now that I have started, I have not only discovered a wealth of fantastic southern recipes, but I may have also convinced the cooking bee to take a field trip to Birmingham! (Ladies?) The pimiento cheese is made with homemade mayonnaise and red bell peppers that you roast yourself. You could certainly take the shortcut of using roasted red peppers from the grocery and store-bought mayonnaise, but I think doing it yourself makes all the difference. The only thing we did not use in Stitt's recipe was his homemade mayonnaise, as we did our own version. Get your food processor out for this one, people!

Note of caution: we loved this so much that we all gorged ourselves on it and almost could not eat the rest of the meal. Be careful!

Pimiento cheese
adapted from Frank Stitt's Southern Table

1 lb sharp yellow cheddar
1/4 lb cream cheese, softened
1 t freshly ground white pepper*
3 large bell peppers, roasted, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/2 cup homemade mayonnaise
1 t sugar
splash of hot sauce, such as tabasco or cholula
1/8 t cayenne pepper

*I used black pepper, as I despise the flavor of white pepper, and I really don't mind seeing the little flecks of pepper in the cheese.

Make the mayonnaise:
1 clove garlic
1 t dijon mustard
2 T champagne vinegar
1 large egg
1/4 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
olive oil

Into the food processor, put the garlic, mustard, and vinegar. Pulse until the garlic is chopped. Add the egg, salt, and pepper, and whizz away. While the food processor is running, add extra-virgin olive oil in the thinnest stream, just above dripping out of the bottle, until the mixture looks like mayonnaise (about 1/3-2/3 c).

Make the pimiento cheese: Grate the cheddar in the food processor with the grating disk, or grate it by hand on a box grater. Transfer to a bowland add the cream cheese, pepper, bell peppers, mayonnaise, sugar, hot sauce, and cayenne, and blend thoroughly. Refrigerate and serve chilled with saltines and celery sticks.

By the way, I went to Holiday Ham (newly opened on Union Ave. at Florence) yesterday after work to pick up some potato salad for a going away party for a friend last night, and Papa himself asked me if I wasn't going to also get some of his famous pimiento cheese. I didn't have the heart to tell him what I had in my refrigerator!

Deep Chocolate Cake and Diet, Vol. V

I have slowed slightly in my weight loss since my last post, but despite all of my cheating (mostly pinot grigio), I have still lost three more pounds! Amazing. I have a long way to go, though, and that is why I have decided to go back to the gym. I do about thirty minutes on the stationary bike while reading Jane Austen whenever I can. So far, I have completed Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Friends have recommended that Emma be next on my list, so I intend to head to Burke's today to procure it. What is it about Jane Austen? I am absolutely greedy for more. Why has it taken me until now to realize how much I love these books? I digress. Saturday was the worst cheat day of all. I co-hosted a baby shower for a friend, and I ate with abandon. We had ham biscuits with mustard chutney, roasted veggies, quiche, fruit salad, and of course, dessert. I made a deep chocolate cake from my favorite pastry book: Simply Sensational Desserts by Francois Payard. MAKE THIS CAKE! If you like chocolate, you will love this. Payard's recipe calls for a chocolate glaze, but I decided to simply dust the top with powdered sugar, as the cake is already very rich. The edges of the cake are just slightly crunchy and almost like a brownie, while the inside is creamy, dense, chocolatey goodness. So easy, and so not on the nutri-system diet plan. Back on the wagon now, though.
Total weight loss: 12 pounds

Deep Chocolate Cake:
adapted from Francois Payard's Simply Sensational Desserts

17 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 lbs plus 1 T unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 c flour

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan.* Dust the pan with flour and tap out the excess. In a microwave safe bowl, heat the butter and chocolate together just until melted, about 1.5 - 2 minutes. Stir to combine. Let cool for ten minutes. Whisk eggs and sugar in a large bowl until combined. Whisk in the chocolate mixture and stir until combined. Whisk in the flour just until blended. Scrape the batter into the preared pan.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean but with a few crumbs. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes. Unmold the cake and let it continue to cool on a rack until completely cooled. The chill the cake in the fridge for 2-24 hours. Dust with powdered sugar before sevring, or glaze with chocolate ganache. Or just leave it be and eat it alone- it is delicious!

*I used a springform pan.
Please excuse the poor quality picture: I failed to photograph the whole cake, and this is the piece I brought home for Chad. He was urging me to hurry as I attempted to get the picture, and I did as I was asked!