Let the holiday baking begin!

Here is the list of cookies my daughter and I will be baking up this holiday season:  Chocolate-filled Walnut Cookies (they look like walnuts!), raspberry Linzers, checkerboard cookies, iced sugar cookies, biscotti, Spritz cookies, Thumbprints, and Russian Tea Cakes (sometimes known as Mexican Wedding Cakes).  Photos to follow!

On another note, the cooler weather has prompted me to get out the soup pot:  Cream of White Asparagus, Chicken Tortilla, Leek and Potato (just in the last 3 days!).  All three of these started with some leftover ingredient(s), and the Asparagus was a first course.  If you have leftover odds and ends in the fridge--think soup!

Frosted pumpkin roll

I make  plenty of leaves for this pumpkin roll--everyone will want one or two with their slice.  The frosting is actually whipped ganache.

Acorns and leaves to adorn a frosted pumpkin roll...

These are made from marzipan...sweetened almond paste.  They're delicious and will look  terrific on my frosted pumpkin roll for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.  Completed pic to follow!

How cute are these? I did a holiday appetizer idea party on Wednesday evening. The menu included ham and pesto cheese pastries, honey-apple Brie bites in phyllo cups, and a roasted pepper tapenade on toasted baguette rounds, along with these personal-size "crudite" cups. I blanched and chilled the broccoli, asparagus, and fresh green beans, and added carrot and celery sticks and grape tomatoes. In the bottom of the cup is about 2 tablespoons of peppercorn Ranch dressing. I had extra veggies on a platter so if my guests wanted more, they could just refill their cups. And double-dipping? Who cares?!!

More hidden leftovers

Here's a great thing to do with leftover sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, or winter squash.

You'll need about 2 cups of leftover vegetables to make 4 nice side-dish size rosettes.

Put your leftover potatoes in a food processor and process until smooth. Add about 4 ounces mascarpone cheese, salt and pepper to taste, and any other seasonings you like. (I used freshly grated nutmeg with these sweet potatoes.) Add one egg yolk and mix well. Put into a decorator with a large star tip (or a pastry bag with a large star tip, or even with no tip at all). Pipe out rosettes about 3-4 inches in diameter onto a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake in a 350 F oven for about 20 minutes. If they aren't as brown as you'd like, you can run them under the broiler for a few minutes. Watch closely so they don't over-brown.

Slide a spatula under rosettes and place on plates!

Wine

I can't imagine cooking without wine (yes, IN the food, as well as in my glass while I'm cooking!) There are only a couple of rules for cooking with wine:

1. Don't buy "cooking wine." It's very poor quality wine, and has added salt.

2. If you wouldn't drink it, don't add it to a dish.* While wines you cook with don't have to be expensive (I didn't cook with the bottle pictured here!) they do have to be decent. The wine's flavors intensify in cooking, so if it's bad, it will only get worse with cooking. Avoid heavily oaked wines for the same reason--the oakiness will be intensified.

3. Dry wines are best for cooking (unless you're adding wine to a dessert, and then sweet wines, fortified wines, and liqueurs are OK).

*Exception to the "don't use it if you won't drink it" rule: Dry vermouth is a great white wine substitute. I'm not tempted to drink it, it keeps forever without refrigeration and it's cheap!

Tapenades

I'm finding myself putting tapenade on all kinds of things--toasted baguette slices, cooked chicken, sandwiches (turkey, havarti, good bread, panini press....mmm). So simple: good olives, roasted peppers, tomatoes (some fresh, some sun-dried), garlic, lots of fresh parsley, a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar....chop it all up and you're good to go. It keeps quite a while, given that just about everything in it is already somewhat preserved.

Over-the-top appetizer: baguette slice, round of chevre goat cheese, nice dollop of tapenade, and bake for 5-7 minutes.

Gougeres - Burgundy cheese puffs

Only three cheese puffs left!
I had several requests for the recipe for these cheese puffs, so I thought I'd snap a picture from the book, and post them to my blog, along with the recipe. It is from Dorie Greenspan's wonderful book "Around my French Table."

(These are found all over France, but particularly in Burgundy!)

Cheese Puffs (Gougeres)

1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup water

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup all purpose flour

5 large eggs, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups coarsely grated cheese (such as Gruyere or cheddar) (about 6 ounces)

Bring the milk, water, butter, and salt to a rapid boil in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan over high heat. Add the flour all at once, lower the heat to medium-low, and immediately start stirring energetically with a wooden spoon. The dough will come together and a light crust will form on the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring--with vigor!--for another minute or two to dry the dough. The dough should now be very smooth.

Turn the dough into the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Let the dough sit for a minute and then add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until dough is very smooth. Make sure each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next one. (If the dough separates a bit, don't worry. By the time the last egg goes in, it will be smooth.) Beat in the cheese. Once the dough is made, it should be spooned out immediately, onto parchment-lined baking sheets. (The puffs can be frozen at this point and baked directly from the freezer. Just add a minute or two to the baking time.)

Using about a tablespoon of dough for each gougere, drop the dough onto lined baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches of puff space between each mound.

Slide into a preheated 425 degree oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 375. Bake for 12 minutes, the rotate the pans from front to back and top to bottom. Continue baking another 12-15 minutes until the puffs are golden, firm, and yes, puffed. Serve warm or transfer to racks to cool.

Wines of Burgundy--tasting party Chez Nadeau April 2011

Well here are the remains of our tasting party! Our trip to Burgundy included three whites and three reds, along with a typically Burgundian meal of cheese puffs, chilled asparagus, boeuf bourguignon and mashed potatoes, salad, a lovely cheese course with walnut bread, and a chocolate and raspberry trifle for dessert, as well as some chocolate-covered strawberries that everyone was too stuffed to try!

A good time was had by all, and although we all were totally confused by the Burgundy classification system, at least we learned that there are only two grape varieties grown in the region: Chardonnay and Pinot Noir!

Asparagus...and blackberries?

We had our bi-monthly wine club get-together this evening, and we hosted. Our wines were from Burgundy and I wanted the menu to be as well. During our visit to Burgundy, we had asparagus with a sauce that was clearly mayonnaise based but fruity as well--raspberry maybe? I had fresh blackberries that I had cooked earlier this morning with a bit of sugar, and then pressed through a sieve to remove the seeds. Basically I had a blackberry coulis. I combined it with homemade mayonnaise--2 parts mayo to 1 part blackberry. With peeled, cooked, and cooled asparagus spears, it was a lovely starter to our meal.

More on the rest of the meal later!

An idea for leftover white sauce...

This is kind of a take on Croque Monsieur, the French "ham and cheese." (I have to put that in quotation marks because it is so much more.)

If you have a bit of leftover white sauce, try spreading it on a piece of sandwich bread, fairly thickly. Top that with a thin slice of ham, then a slice of good quality cheese. If your oven has a toasting feature (or in a toaster oven), toast your open-faced sandwich for about 3 minutes. This got the bread nicely toasted on the bottom and the cheese was melted on the top. But I wanted a bit more on the top--I wanted the cheese to be golden, like a pizza. So I just switched to the broiler for about a minute.

Mmm, comfort food.