Guess what everyone got for Xmas this year...

Why, selections from the jam wagon-train, that's what!

Snowman cakes

Making snowman cakes takes a lot of concentration. Mom and I decorated them on Xmas eve.

It was a basic box cake mix, but they were damn cute. I covered one in coconut...he had an unfortunate face and the pretzels turned soggy as hell, but it tasted good.

Cookie and candies aplenty!

So for the second year running we made an assortment of cookies and candies for people, in addition to the jams and occasional bottles of liqueuer we foist upon indulgent friends and relatives, in our Homemade Xmas Parade™. This gives us the excuse to try a bunch of new recipes and people seem to enjoy it.

So here, for the record is this year's Cookie Album (double ™ed).

Pinstripes (almond poppy- seed, cherry and chocolate)

Chocolate crinkles

Russian tea cakes

Chocolate thumbprints

Dark chocolate coveredpeanut butter balls

Chocolate gingerbread with white chocolate drizzle

Bourbon balls

Amaretto truffles

Brandy balls

Lemon cranberry sandwiches

Coconut macaroons

Dark chocolate rum truffles

Chocolate caramels

Smorbakelser (Swedish cardamom cookies)

Pie Ball

For Thanksgiving this year, Jeremy and I went to his mom's house to help with Thanksgiving dinner. Each time it's a careful negotiation between the meat eaters (everyone but us) and the vegetarians (us). At his mom's, we normally have lasagna (meat and veggie), a few sides, and dessert.
We recently bought a used copy of The Essence of Chocolate by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. After drooling over its pages for months now, we finally settled on the Chocolate Pecan Pie for our Thanksgiving contribution.
I woke up early Thanksgiving morning to work on the crust, which needed to sit in the frig for three hours. At Jeremy's mom's we made the filling and baked the pie. As Jeremy removed it, the pie slipped off the cookie sheet and smashed on the floor. He ran out of the kitchen in horror, while I tried to scoop the napalm hot chunks off the floor, trying to pick out any kibble or dog hair. (I was trying to meet that five-second rule of removing dropped food from the floor.) I salvaged as much as I can and, knowing we couldnt serve it to anyone else, we started another version. The former pie sat in the bowl, and we munched on it during the day.
Since there was no time for the original crust, I used the Betty Crocker recipe with a few additions, and Jeremy remade the filling. It turned out well--rich and chocolately (god I love that cookbook), and everyone raved about its flavor.
At the end of the night, I separated the pie in the bowl into 2 sections of saran wrap--one for Jeremy's mom and one for us. Because of the corn syrup, I could squish the remnants into a dense ball, crust intermingling with chocolate and pecans.
The next day, I cut off a slice. When I bit into the pieball, I nearly fell over. It was soooooo good!!! Better than the regular pie! The way that all of the tastes mixed together, the way that the corn syrup had become almost like caramel. My god, pie ball was like heaven on a plate. I'm convinced we should do this every time we make a pecan-based pie. We should collapse it onto a cookie sheet and squish it into a ball.

Crust:
4 T unsalted butter at room temperature
3 oz. cream cheese at room temperature
pinch of salt
1 t cinnamon
2 T sugar
1/2 cu flour
Filling:
1 1/2 c toasted pecans, whole or chopped
4 oz. 70% bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 T unsalted butter
5 oz. 70% bittersweet chocolate, coarsley chopped
1/4 c packed brown sugar
1 c light corn syrup
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 t pure vanilla extract
In a stand mixer with a paddle, cream butter and cream cheese. Add salt, cinnamon and sugar and beat until uniform in color. Add flour and mix just until combined.
Turn the dough out and shape into a 6 inch disk on plastic wrap. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours.
On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into 12 inch circle and place in a 9 inch pie pan. Trim edges and refrigerate 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 1 hour and place rack on the lowest shelf.
Place pie plate on a baking sheet (we found this more trouble than it was worth--a deep dish will not overflow). Sprinkle the pecans and 4 oz. chocolate over the bottom of the piecrust.
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and 5 oz chocolate over low heat. When smooth, remove from heat and stir in brown sugar, corn syrup, eggs and vanilla. Pour over pecans and chocolate.
Bake 45 to 50 minutes (ours took a bit longer) or until golden brown and the center of the pie is set. Cool completely before cutting.

Black sesame ice cream

While in NYC, we fell in love with this ice cream shop in Chinatown. One of their regular flavors was black sesame ice cream. It was truly a revelation, possessing both a nutty sweetness and a lingering toasty almost smokiness. So delicious and haunting...we went back there the following night, only to find that they were sold out of it. Jeremy's mission: to find a recipe that we could make at home.

This version is pretty good, but it's slightly grainy in texture and not quite as good as the original. We'll get there yet!

Recipe to be found here.

Don't be concerned by the "glucose" business. I decided that just meant corn syrup. Use your taste and judgement with the egg yolks. It all depends on how custardy you want the final ice cream.

This is how I eat when Jeremy's not here

Yes, those are frozen eggrolls and yes, that's a giant plate of brussel sprouts, but they're delicious!
We found this simple recipe for brussel sprouts (another vegetable that needs a good marketing campaign. People--they don't have to be frozen, nasty, bitter things! They're nutty and delicious!)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scatter about 2 T butter around a 9 x 13 pan. Trim root end off fresh brussel sprouts (not frozen!) and discard any dark or wilty outer leaves. If sprouts are large, cut in half lengthwise. Create a single layer of sprouts on the pan and sprinkle with pepper and a little bit of salt. Place in the oven and stir every 10 minutes for about 40-45 minutes, or until sprouts are tender all the way through. The combination of the nutty sprouts with the butter and salt....oh my god. We must have eaten our body weight in brussel sprouts this year---and I've never eaten them before this summer!!

From meals past...

I am a proud user-upper. Especially in the summer, when our frig was bursting with veggies, I felt compelled to find recipes to use up as much as possible. I periodically clean out the pantry too, and find aging lentils or rice that need to be used up, too.

Just as fall was starting to turn crisp, and the last of the heirloom tomatoes were in full bloom, we made this meal: Moroccan Lentil Soup, from our well-worn Fields of Greens cookbook.

It was really tasty, but what really strikes me is how freaking gorgeous those tomatoes were. I'm writing this post in late November, when the Heirloom have long since died, and it makes me nostalgic for tasty, sweet tomatoes. Sigh...

Moroccan Lentil Soup:

Sort and rinse one cup of lentils and bring them to boil in your soup pot with six cups cold water. Reduce to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes, until tender.

While the simmering is happening heat olive oil in a medium saute pan and add a diced medium onion, 1/2 tsp salt and a pinch or two chile powder (we used a combination of cayenne and ancho). Cook until soft, then add one carrot and one red bell pepper, diced, one tsp cumin and 1/2 tsp corriander (toasted and ground) and 1/4 tsp tumeric. Cook five minutes and then stir in four cloves chopped garlic and one Tbsp grated ginger. Cook a couple more minutes and then stir in 1/2 pound tomatoes (canned or fresh, peeled and seeded or not), and add the whole thing to the tender lentils. Cover and cook for thirty minutes and then as salt to taste.

You can top this with cilantro or, as we did, with minted yogurt.

Jerusalem Artichoke Salad w/ Mint and Lime Vinagrette

You know, I've seen Jerusalem artichokes a bunch of times, but I never had any idea what to do with them. In fact, I would stare at them and wonder, "What the hell would I do with THAT?" They look a bit like ginger root, with less fingery things growing off the sides.



Also called the sunchoke or sunroot, Jerusalem artichokes are a type of sunflower. Used to create fructose in processed foods, Jerusalem artichokes are also edible just the way they are. Eaten raw, they taste a bit like potatoes or rutabegas. We've also seen recipes for them roasted, where they are supposed to be like a nuttier turnip, but have yet to try those.



Jeremy checked out Vegetable Harvest by Patricia Wells from the library, and she included a recipe for Jerusalm artichokes. The salad was delicious--the crispness of the Jerusalem artichokes went well with the lettuce, and the vinaigrette had just enough tang.

Minted Jerusalem Artichoke Salad with [Field Lettuces]


Peel 1/2 pound Jerusalem artichokes and slice them thinly with (the beloved) mandolin slicer or a sharp knife.

As you slice them, add them to your prepared dressing: one Tbsp lime juice (half a lime), whisked together with 1/2 tsp sea salt (less kosher or table salt) and 1/4 cup ev olive oil, then combined with about 40 mint leaves minced. Toss to combine and marinate ten minutes.

Remove the marinated jerusalem artichoke slices with a slotted spoon and lay them out in a circle around the outside of your two plates. Then take your prepared lettuce (the recipe called for mache, so you could use that, watercress or baby spinach if you wanted, but we used the last field lettuces of the season) and toss them with the remaining dressing. Mound the greens on top on the slice circles and, viola.

The finished salad!

Winter Is Here, in Its Death of All Growing Things Form

So we stopped by the Farmer's Market this morning and our fears were confirmed: it's over. When we went last week, we pretty much knew it was the last hurrah. This week they were down to one aisle of produce, with at least three big tables of that was the wholesale grocery-store type produce. Sigh. And the egg people were gone, so no eggs for us and the cartons we brought went unreturned. We didn't need that much this week, anyway, but we did manage to pick up two pints of brussel sprouts (woohoo! a post on those to follow shortly), some apple cider for Angie's art sale, and some baby spinach.

The next day in NYC was a whirlwind. Me and the Subway were good buddies now. I successfully navigated all of my trains and visited every single place on my list like a pro. After my morning bagel and egg, I hopped to the Staten Island Ferry to see the lovely Statue of Liberty. All my life, whenever I've dreamed of NYC, I pictured the Statue of Liberty. Seeing her in real life made me want to cry and hug strangers and sing the "Star Spangled Banner." Seriously. It made my month. Sadly, I'm an idiot, and my morning brain did not comprehend that I had actually traveled across the river instead of just circling around, and I was indeed on Staten Island. Thirty minutes later, I caught the ferry back to Manhattan. From there I walked to the WTC site (a giant, weirdly-vibed muddy hole in the ground which also made me want to cry, but for different reasons), to El Laboratorio del Gelato.
After devouring dark chocolate, green tea and Black Mission fig gelato ($5), I bounced over to Rockefeller Center (so tiny!), and then back to the hotel to see a friend's presentation.
That night for dinner, Jeremy and I returned to China Town for veggie dim sum. For years I have always wanted to eat dim sum, but most of the choices are meaty and mysterious. In my pre-trip internet searching, I found the highly rated Vegetarian Dim Sum House.
We sampled three dumplings ($12), then raced back over to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. (Priorities, people!)

I love this place! Their menu is divided into two main sections: regular flavors and exotic flavors. Regular flavors include almond cookie, avocado, black sesame, coconut, durian, green tea, lychee, mango, red bean, taro, Zen butter and wasabi. Exotic flavors include banana, cherry pistachio, cherry vanilla, chocolate, chocolate chip, coffee, mint chip, oreo cookie, pumpkin pie, strawberry and vanilla. We decided to be boring and chose the "regular" flavors of green tea (very good), Zen butter (so so delicious) and black sesame (one of the most delicious, haunting, rich flavors I have ever encountered.)

We ended the evening at Cinema Classics, home of Rififi, my new favorite place in NYC. On Saturday night we enjoyed wacky comedians and a free 60's funk dance night (where the DJs handed us free CDs.) Plus they have the cheapest beer we found in NYC. ($5 a glass and $5 cover for the show.)
Sunday we sadly left the lovely conference hotel and trekked across town (damn subway repairs) to a hostel on 101st Street. Overtaken by hunger, we paused in a Turkish place about a block away. At first I thought we might have to leave because the main eating area reeked so strongly of musty basement and 100% bleach that I thought my head was going to explode. We shifted to the bar, right by the open doors. Ten minutes later someone took our order (a gingerale, a Turkish coffee and hummus.) Ten minutes later we got our drinks. Thirty minutes later we got our hummus. Thirty minutes later we got the check ($20). Ugh. I'm just not a patient person, especially in restaurants. I don't think I'll ever be one of those souls who spends four hours at dinner, just hanging out and talking, oblivious to the time. Sorry. I want a greeting and drink order within five minutes of my arrival, I want food that shows up in less than 45 minutes and I don't ever want to have to hunt down the server for my bill.
That night, after walking for hours in Central Park, we returned to our familiar stomping grounds (Chinatown) for Tofu House 86 (or something like that) for a really decent meal ($18). We again ate delicious ice cream ($5), followed by strange and colorful desserts from Chinatown's many bakeries ($0.80 to $1.25 each). The treats, though cheap and beautiful, are always disappointing to me. However, I'll keep getting suckered in with their day-glo colors, coconut shavings and creamy frostings. Total creatures of habit, we also returned to Rififi. We paid our $5 cover to see the Sweet and Nasty Burlesque, a super silly and highly entertaining burlesque show. I purchased a $1 lottery ticket and thanks to the real winner (the boyfriend of one of the burlesque hosts), I won a giant bag of gifts (including a book, shot glasses, a coupon to the burlesque and a Peaches cd.) Whoooo hoooo, I love Rififi!!!
Monday morning arrived, and we ate breakfast at a Greek diner two blocks from the hostel. I felt grumpy from an uncomfortable bed and snoring dorm-mates, so we packed up, took the train to the New Jersey airport and headed home. All in all, I had a fabulous time. NYC ain't cheap, and even being frugal as hell, we still burned through the money. Four days is perfect, especially being centrally located like we were near Times Square. I already have a long list of things I missed, things I want to see again, and new restaurants to explore.
Weeks later, reflecting on the trip, I'm struck by one thing in particular. First of all, we are not "regulars." We've lived in the Twin Cities for ages, and I can only name a handful of places that we've eaten at more than four times in our lives. I love trying new things and it's very hard for me to choose a familiar place over an exciting place we haven't tried before. I think because of the sheer volume of NYC, we kept returning to things we liked.
I highly recommend NYC as a long-weekend vacation spot. New York City is awesome!!!

Start spreading the news! Part 1

Oh, New York, I love you. The food! The food! We ate our way through the Big Apple and with few exceptions (one soggy by-the-slice pizza and the occasional treat that was good but not great) we had marvelous food meal after meal.

Most days started with a quick and cheap bagel with a fried egg ($2.50) from the street vendor kitty-corner from the hotel. After the third day he recognized me and we chatted like I was a regular.

When we first got in, Jeremy and I grabbed a quick slice (spinach for Jeremy, brocolli and tomato for me) from Famiglia's ($3-4 a slice), then hopped over to the Majestic Deli for a Greek honey cookie and a cannoli ($5 for both) plus an espresso ($2). Now, the thing I didn't know about the section of NYC where we stayed (53rd and 7th Ave.) was that every three blocks we found a bakery. No lie. I've never seen so many freaking bakeries in my life. HEAVEN! And this cookie--so tender and sweet, paired with perfect ricotta and chocolate chips in the cannoli... Ugh! To die for!

After a long day of conferencing, Jeremy, our friend Jon and I scoped out the dinner scene. Not cheap, but we eventually settled on Kyma, a Greek restaurant on 8th Avenue. Jeremy and I split the spanakopita, skordalia and baba ganoush appetizers, (about $8 each) while Jon ordered moussaka ($18). Jon's mom is Greek, and he thought it was nearly as good as hers. We liked eveything we had, although we probably could have knocked it down to two appetizers instead of all three. Full and sleepy, we mustered the energy for a few beers ($6.50 each) at The Snug before crashing into bed.

The next day I was on my own. I pretended I lived in NYC and deluded myself that I would instantly figure out the subway. Sadly, no. While getting lost a zillion times and eventually finding Judy Chicago's brilliant Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Art Museum, I also found some great grub. While the sky was raining to beat hell, I found refuge in Healthy Nibbles. Despite the unfortunate name, their veggie burger ($5) tasted great. Yes, that's an entire edamame in there!

I continued in the rain to Chinatown, my favorite place in all of New York. The lights, the restaurants, the wondrousness of it all. Love it! I shopped for a few cute bowls, sucked down a passion fruit bubble tea ($3), and made mental notes of where to take Jeremy when we returned the next night for dinner.

Friday night Jeremy, myself, Alicia and Andrea (two friends from Atlanta) walked to Bayleaf, the most affordable Indian place I could find near our hotel. Yum! Veggie samosas, palak dal, tandoori panner tikka, rice and mint paratha ($63 for all, including a giant $10 Taj Mahal beer, tax and tip).....so delicious. No photos of the food, but here's one of us:

Full as hell, Jeremy and I walked through Times Square and took in the brightly light consumer extravagance of it all. We even stopped at the three-story M & M store to soak in the weird.

I'll finish the story tomorrow....until then, Viva New York!!

Apple leek and butternut squash gratin with Luzon Red

This was a dish that both gave us the chance to use some seasonal vegetables and our fancy mandolin slicer. One of the best things about getting legally married is that people will buy you all the wonderful kitchen tools that seemed too frivolous or occasional-use for you to buy for yourself before, and the mandoline was one of those. OK, I still manage to cut myself on it from time to time, but for making clean even slices its amazing.

So the dish requires a certain amount of prep, but it was actually very easy to assemble. The use of apples in a savory dish was a little disorienting, but ultimately tasty, very Celebration of Fall. We decided that next time we would do some caramelized onions along with the leeks, and possibly add another layer of squash. It's a very good side dish, but a little thin for a main dish on its own.

The Luzon we'd had once before when my dad's old friend Kevin and Bette brought it to our house for dinner. It's a really nice rich but light bodied Spanish red, somewhere between zinfandel and pinot noir in flavor. This picture really doesn't do justice to the gorgeous color of the wine: a dark, almost purple burgundy. Perfect for this sort of autumnal meal.

Black bean and sweet corn chili

The problem with the abundance of summer produce, is that you have to use it up quickly and thoroughly. Each week at the farmers' market there are things that are gorgeous and ripe that we pass by because we already have enough produce and can't figure out how we'd use it before it spoils. Also, each week there are things that we (ok, I) take home because I can't resist them, even though they're not part of a recipe that we've (ok, mostly Julie) selected. So, by way of compromise, we try and come up with dishes for the week that will use up some of the crazy amount of produce that we have before it goes bad.

So, in the interest of using up some of our many heirloom tomatoes from the garden at my Mom's house, the sweet corn in our freezer (we weren't eating that fast enough either), the first of the red bell peppers and habeneros we picked up that week, and in the general interests of deliciousness, we decided to make black bean and corn chili with cornbread.

It's a really basic dish. The spicing, in addition to the things I've mentioned and the standard onions and garlic, was mostly cumin with a little coriander seed and some ancho powder. The flavor was really good, even if the corn was almost overpoweringly sweet (making it almost candy like) and the skins of the beans turned tough for some reason.

Still a simple and hearty meal.

Peaches and Their Offspring

Remember when we got all those peaches from Colorado? They were sweet and delicious and dripping with peachy goodness. The problem with such seasonal bounty is that it goes quickly and once it's gone you can't do anything but mourn its loss, but if you try and draw things out too much you be left with rotten produce, and that makes no one happy. So...



















We had to find ways of preserving that seasonal peachy goodness, and, much as you might suspect, in addition to trying a couple of new desserts, we went with our old stand-bys: liqueur and tasty preserves.
























After a month of steeping, I strained, filtered and bottled the liqueur. It smells lovely and tastes promising. This left me with the question of what to do with the booze-soaked fruit (We couldn't possible just throw it away! That's precious fruit and even more precious alcohol!), and I went with the ever popular option of boozyfruit bundt cake.

The peaches don't come through super strongly in the cake above, but the taste was quite good. We're eating it here with a side of rose petal ice cream. My mom got a beautiful and productive rose bush this year and I was looking for a culinary use for rose petals. I modified the recipe slightly by cutting the number of egg yolks to two and adding one tsp of rose water and a couple drops of red food coloring. Julie hated the ice cream, saying that it tasted like eating perfume, and quickly pushed it off onto my plate. I quite liked it, though it was really too sweet. I'd cut the sugar to at least 2/3 of a cup (1/2 cup is standard for ice cream recipes this size). You have to embrace the idea of flowers for dessert, though, for it to work.

Miso soup

Miso is a wonder ingredient. I'm sure that it has health benefits of some kind (back when I was vegan I remember there being some notion that if you ate it by the spoonful there was a chance that it would help to stave off vitamin B-12 deficiancy). The real wonder of it, though, is that a couple of tablespoons of it can transform a normal tasty-but-watery vegetable soup into a rich savory experience. That it can do this without resorting to some sort of cream based trickery (and certainly without flesh/bone derived collagens) and thus being pretty much fat free, just makes it that much more impressive. I suspect this power is part of its awesome umaminess, or special powers of rich/savoryness. Yes, OK, it is high in sodium. What do you want? Complete virtue and complete pleasure?

Anyway, it's the perfect sort of meal for when you're feeling a bit under the weather (as both Julie and I were last week) and need something both calming and sustaining -- like chicken soup for the global cuisine vegetarian. Miso paste comes in a variety of different preparations, differentiated by color (white, red, and apparently black, though I don't think we get that last one in this country, and, less traditionally, yellow or brown) and sometimes by the grains that they are prepared from in combination with the soy beans, such as barley or rye. We used a mellow brown rice miso paste here. Just add two tablespoons miso to two quarts liquid (we used half water and half vegetable stock) and add three or four dried shiitakes. Bring the stock to a boil and then continue to simmer, stirring occaisionally as the miso is incoporated into the liquid. When the shiitakes are fully hydrated, remove them from the soup, cool them briefly in the freezer, remove any attached woody bits of stem and then slice them about 1/8" thick before returning them to the soup. Prepare your vegetables as you see fit, browning those that need browning first and adding others directly to the soup (here we browned the mushrooms, zucchini and eggplant, and added onion, green onion, garlic, chili, carrot, edamame and tofu directly). And thus, hooray! Delicious and nourishing soup!

Tragic accidents and unfortunate substitutions

[Julie]
Alas! What horrors have begotten this pizza stone?
It had been a night of unsettling appliance noises...dripping refrigerator, huffing gas stove, when we heard a strange cracking noise. "What was that?" I didn't see anything broken or out of place until I opened the oven to check on the pizza. What the hell?! The pizza stone, without any known cracks or chips, snapped in half while baking at 400 degrees. We've used this stone bunches of times before. Has anyone heard of this happening? I'm trying to track down a local Pampered Chef rep here in the cities, but if anyone knows one in either WI or MN, please let me know. Aren't these things supposed to have a lifetime warranty??

[Jeremy]
So it turn out PChef goods, whether inherited from ex-roommates or bought outright, have only a three year warranty. Which means we'll have to stick with the more efficient baking stone that we got as a wedding present and find some other way to bake extra fourth of the pizza. As with the rest of this home-made business, it's hard to go back to the disappointing finish you get from a regular baking sheet after you experience the happy crisp of a baking stone. Sigh

Tonight's pizza was disappointing on three counts even before you got to the cracking of the stone: first, the TJ pasta sauce we used (being out of Muir Glen pizza sauce) was decidedly bland; second, the faux-meatballs Julie requested in the interests of apparent protein were squishy and not nice in this context; third, the roasted garlic-jack cheese that we bought on impulse while camping and thought we might use up here tasted almost exactly like roasted garlic flavored plastic. Sigh, again. As usual the crust was tasty though.

Wheat Pizza Crust

I arrived at this recipe by combining and adapting the pizza dough recipes from Field of Greens and Alton Brown to produce a soft, light and chewy part-whole wheat crust. We also use our stand mixer for this one, so if you don't have one just substitute the phrase "stand there and stir/knead it yourself" for "let the mixer run for a while."

1.5 tsp active dry yeast
.75 C (filtered) water and or (soy) milk
1.5 T olive oil
.5 tsp salt (we use sea salt)
1 tsp sugar
.5 C whole wheat flour
1.5 C (unbleached) all-purpose flour

Heat the water/milk for 45 seconds in the microwave or until warm on the stove top and add the yeast. Once the yeast has proofed (shown you that it has life in it, ie gotten bubbly, usually 2-3 minutes; you can skip this step if you trust your yeast) add the whole thing to your work bowl along with the oil, salt and sugar. Add the whole wheat flour and mix until well Incorporated. Add the first half cup of AP flour and allow to mix for five minutes or so (this helps the flour to develop gluten and get good and stretchy), then add the second half cup of AP flour and work this in (in each case you'll want to start the mixer on low so as not to send the flour flying and switch to medium). At this point you might want to switch to your dough hook or knead on the table top. How much of the last half cup of flour you'll need to use will depend on your flour and what the weather's like that day (seriously), so add it a bit at a time while you're working the dough as needed. What you want is to be able to take a piece of the dough and stretch it out with your fingers so that you can see sun light through it without it pulling apart, so keep kneading until you get that.
Roll the dough into a ball and place it in a bowl with a little oil. Roll the dough in the oil to coat, cover with a towel and allow to rise on the counter about three hours.
Turn the out onto a work surface (you don't need to punch it down, it will deflate on its own) and divide it as you see fit. We usually divide into four pieces, which will each produce a nine inch pizza. Stretch the dough into friendly rounds (thumbs are better than a rolling pin here) and place on your baking stone/sheet to be covered by sauce, toppings and cheese. Bake in a 425 oven until bubbly and as brown as you like (12-15 mins).
Takes some time but is very worth it.

Orange Marmelade

Our friends Tae and Dan are leaving for Korea right about now (Dan's on a post-doc and Tae found a pretty sweet job there), so, having missed their wedding reception (being out of town), we met them and our friend Piper for drinks at the Muddy Pig, a fabulous place for Belgian ales and conversation. Anyway, since they were in the same, we're-leaving-the-country-so-we-have-to-get-rid-of-everything-we're-not-bringing-with scramble (that we ourselves still remember quite vividly from almost five years ago now) they brought along a trunk's full of produce, beer and wine to give us. Now, normal people (and I mean that in an admiring kind of way), would, in response to being given a bag of oranges as part of this bounty, say to themselves, "Wow, oranges. Let's eat some of those." or possibly "Wow, oranges. I guess we could juice these." or even "Wow, oranges. Let's use the zest in some recipes and then eat the fruit, or whatever." But we had been talking about making marmalade in the general "We should maybe try that sometime" kind of way for some time now, and if we were actually going to do it, well this was as good a time as any.

We used the zest including version of this recipe, more or less, and, yes, it is as messy and labor intensive as it looks. Oranges don't zest as easily as lemons or limes do, but we knew that it is in fact the pith (the spongey white part) not the zest (the colorful peel part) that causes bitternes, so we knew that we wanted to include the zest. Luckily our friend peeler monkey was there to help and made the job go by much faster. Two or three hours later we had produced this fine jam, that we have since pronounced tasty on pancakes, scones and toast.

Dinner with Monique

You know how there are people you've been friends with forever, and you don't see each other enough, and that's dumb and unfortunate, but it's somehow OK, because when you do see eachother it's all happy and good (or not always happy, because life isn't always happy, but, you know, good anyway)? Yes, well, Monique is just such a friend. And because Julie knows that both Monique and I like cheese, she will purchase a variety of kinds for us to try, and even melt some on toast so that she can try some herself, even though her non-melted cheese block remains firmly in place. The two mold-ripened soft cheeses were the stand outs, though there names have now been lost to time and memory.

First wine

Second wine





The chenin blanc was wnoderful: fruity and crisp and tart-sweet and went great with the cheeses and the salad you see in the background. The tempranillo rose (it wasn't labeled as such, but it was lighter bodied than any of the tempranillos I've had in the past) was light and tart, though this was moderated by the dinner course:




This was essentially a kind of crustless artichoke quiche, but it was not so nice. Julie and I talked some about how we could have fixed this dish, and sort of circled back to the shoulder-shrugging "a different recipe" answer. However, the magic power of even bland artichokes will sweeten up any wine, which in this case worked out quite nicely.