ricotta and figs (or figs and ricotta?)
Is there a more perfect fruit than the fig? Their Biblical origins, that mysterious skin cloaking vibrant colored flesh, their sweet, yet green, taste. In a world where we can get virtually anything on demand, I love that figs still have a season, and a fleeting one at that. They appear silently on my grocery store shelves sometime in September, and then disappear a few weeks later.
During those fleeting fall days, I eat as many as I can get my hands on, often doing nothing more than pinching the stems off between my fingers before devouring them in two or three bites. I’m rarely tempted to do anything fancier; they’re too good on their own.
Recently though, I found myself with almost a half-gallon of milk that was about to expire. Not wanting to waste it, I decided to make ricotta. One of my favorite desserts is a recipe for “Grilled stone fruits with sweetened ricotta” that I cut out of a newspaper years ago. While I don’t often grill stone fruits, I adore making sweetened ricotta, either to pair with fruit compote or to eat on it’s own, like a warm dish of ice cream. If the idea of sweetened cheese sounds revolting to you, think of cheesecake or cannoli. Not gross at all, is it?
Homemade ricotta is about a thousand times better than the store-bought stuff, and ridiculously easy to make (See my guide to five-minute ricotta, here). That said if you simply don’t want to play little Miss Muffett and separate curds and whey, you can of course use store-bought. I won’t tell.
After making the sweetened ricotta, it was just a matter of making a fig and ricotta parfait, with a bit of honey drizzled for good measure. If this doesn’t make you happy, nothing will.
Ricotta and figs
2 cups fresh ricotta cheese (homemade or otherwise)
2-4 Tablespoons milk or cream (use more if your ricotta is dry. You want a smooth consistency.)
4 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 pint figs, quartered
2-3 Tablespoons honey (whatever you love/have)
In a medium-sized bowl combine ricotta and 2 Tablespoons milk. If consistency is still dry add more milk. Stir until smooth and then add sugar and vanilla. Portion into four glasses or bowls and then top with figs. Drizzle with honey and serve.
Oats in a jar
Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but I’m rubbish about eating it. Pretty much the only thing I crave first thing in the morning is a cup of coffee; hunger doesn’t kick in until 10 o’clock or so. I might have a yogurt, or a piece of fruit, but more often than not, lunch is my first meal of the day.
That said, I’m trying to change that. Often, I’m so ravenous by lunch that I make poor choices. Also, I feel like breakfast sets the tone for the rest of your day, and I’d like that tone to be a good one. For me, the key to success is having something quick and easy on hand that I don’t even have to think about. Trust me, I have a hard enough time finding my keys and making sure that my teeth are brushed before I go catch the train (I keep a spare toothbrush in my desk at work, just in case).
Lately, my answer has been simple: oats in a jar.
Also called overnight oats, this is basically a dumbed-down version of muesli. I thought that everyone knew about them, as every healthy food blogger I can think of has written about them at some point (case in point here, here and here), but recently I tweeted about my own oats in a jar and got a tweet back asking for a recipe. So I decided that maybe it would be worth a blog post.
The beautiful thing about oats in a jar (OIAJ) is that you can completely customize them. You can make them in a bowl, or an almost empty peanut butter jar, or (in my case) a mason jar. And you can add/subtract/substitute ingredients depending on your preferences. Lactose intolerant? Use soy or almond milk. Gluten free? Vegan? No problem.And if you’re super lazy/busy you can make a few jars at a time, and then just grab and go in the morning.
In my case, I like to follow a prescribed formula and then add a bit of what I have on-hand. My standard is 1/2 cup of oats and 1/2 cup of milk. Usually I also add a Tablespoon of wheat bran, a Tablespoon of flax seeds, a touch of maple syrup and some raisins. Combine them in a jar (or bowl), give it a stir/shake, and set in the fridge overnight. Grab and go in the morning.
Peanut butter, or other nut butter is also good, and honey, sugar, or agave can be used to sweeten. If raisins aren’t your deal, other dried (or fresh) fruit or nuts would be tasty… the key here is to have a ready, portable, and healthy breakfast to start the day off right.
Any other suggestions for oats in a jar?
Ferran Adria visits Boston
What’s next for a chef who’s already got three Michelin stars and worldwide fame? “The important thing is to work,” said Ferran Adria, who closed his famed El Bulli restaurant last summer. “You’ve got to keep working.”
While many have lamented the end of El Bulli, a hotbed of molecular gastronomy, Adria is looking ahead, and breathing a sigh of relief.
“I was so fed up with people asking me for a table,” he said of the restaurant, which had more than a million reservation requests every year. “It was horrible.”
Adria was in Boston today to publicize his next venture: the el Bulli Foundation Global Ideas Challenge Competition that he’s launching in partnership with Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica.
“A cook representing a telecommunications company sounds crazy,” he said. “But think about it. You work nine or ten hours a day, you sleep eight hours. That leaves six hours free. During that time, what are you doing? You’re either eating, or on the computer, or the phone. So, you see, they complement each other well.”
Adria will spend the next two years establishing the el Bulli Foundation, a center of creativity and innovation for chefs, philosophers, artists, and researchers. Situated not far from the original El Bulli in Cap de Creus National Park on Spain’s Costa Brava, the Foundation’s goal is simple: the generation and diffusion of ideas. To help accomplish this, Adria is reaching out to students at five top business schools, and challenging them to come up with a plan to more fully conceptualize the Foundation from the ground up. Student teams will compete to define everything from its business identity to fundraising strategy to communication channels to organizational structure to attracting talent to measuring success. The winners get an all expense paid trip to the Foundation, and 10,000 euros.
“This is a creativity center,” he said during his visit to Harvard Business School. “Not just gastronomy.”
Registration for the competition opens Sunday. In addition to HBS, Adria will be reaching out to students at Columbia Business School, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, London Business School, and ESADE Business School in Barcelona.
“These are the best,” Adria said.
In a time when actresses are becoming chefs, chefs are becoming social activists and everyone is a critic, it was sort of refreshing to hear Adria speak. He wants nothing more than to foster creativity in an environment where “the language is cooking.”
The el Bulli Foundation won’t have a social mission per se. “I can’t end hunger,” he said. “If there is hunger it’s because politicians let there be hunger. In life, you must know your limitations. I am a chef.”
And while the el Bulli Foundation seeks to spread creativity and ideas across the globe, Adria says he personally won’t be embracing social media like his friend Chef Jose Andres.
“In social media, you have to be honest,” he said. “You can’t have someone else doing it, writing your tweets. I can’t do it. Jose Andres is crazy, he can do everything. I can’t. It would be impossible. For people like me, they have to invent something else.”
In a Foundation run partly by a telecommunications company and populated with some of the world’s most creative minds, its hard to believe they won’t.
dinner fail
Dinner fail of the week: purple carrot = purple soup. From a taste standpoint, it wasn’t bad. But the carrots turned everything purple, and eating purple chicken is just weird. Counter intuitive, you know?
Purple happens to also be my least favorite color. Its makes me think of Barney and Dimetapp. When I see it in my food, I expect uber-sweet fake grape flavors (exception: black raspberry ice cream). Anyway, it was a weird soup. And unfortunately, I made a big pot of it. Anyone want to come over for soup? Hah.
That said, we don’t talk about failure nearly enough in the blogger world. So tell me, what’s your latest dinner fail?
Six tips for better cakes
When it comes to dessert, it’s hard to beat a good layer cake. All that frosting and deliciousness can make even a ho-hum meal seem special.
I also happen to adore making them. Perhaps that’s the Type-A in me, but I love that with baking there’s a set of rules that one can follow to create something extraordinary. I love the ritual of sifting flour, and cutting parchment, mixing the dry ingredients separate from the wet ones and then mixing them together in batches. I love the whirl of my Kitchen Aid, and that magic moment when ingredients meld to become frosting. And I love the end result, sharing with friends and family, and sneaking a slice for breakfast (it’s just milk, eggs and flour).
I recently had the opportunity to talk to Flour Bakery Chef Joanne Chang about the cake she’s baking for Harvard’s 375th celebration next week. She was so nonchalant about baking a cake to feed 5,000 that it got me thinking about how practice really does make perfect.
Many of my friends seem befuddled over why one would take the time to bake a cake from scratch, given the proliferation of cheap boxed mixes at the market. For starters, it’s healthier- ever look at the list of ingredients, or the amount of sodium, on a boxed cake? But here’s the real reason: once you get it down, making a cake from scratch isn’t much harder than making a cake from a box. And the results are 100 percent more impressive.
To prove this, I’ve put together a few tips to help make your cake baking a success.
This is key to making sure your cake actually comes out of the pan in one piece. Yes, its a slight pain, but it’s the most foolproof method I’ve found. Can’t say that about PAM.
To do this, you need parchment paper (yes, this is different from wax paper). You’ll find it in the aluminum foil section of the grocery store. Trace the shape of your pan onto the paper with a pencil, and then cut out the shape INSIDE your outline. Set them aside, and then grease your pan using a bit of paper towel and butter. You want to make sure you have a thin, even layer of butter. Add your parchment paper to the pan (trim the parchment if needed), butter the parchment paper and then add a bit of flour to the pan and shake it vigorously to coat the inside of the pan evenly with flour. Need more guidance? Check out this post at Kitchen Generation.
Sifting adds air to your ingredients, making your cake lighter. It also helps your leaveners (the stuff, like baking soda, that makes your cake get all nice and fluffy) mix with the flour. Do it.
Eggs get the most volume when they’re beaten at room temperature. More volume= a lighter, fluffier cake.
Want even layers in your cake? Weigh the pans when you put the batter in. This ensures you have the same volume of batter in each pan.
This is step two in ensuring even layers. It also will help your cake bake evenly.
This helps your cake cool faster. You want cool layers before frosting, otherwise you’ll likely end up with a gloopy mess.
Ready to try your hand at cake baking? This is one of my all-time favorites to bake.
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Chocolate Ganache Cake Recipe at Epicurious.com
For a fancifully tall cake, we used 3 (7-inch) round pans. It can also be baked in 3 (8-inch) pans, though the cake will be slightly lower. We tested this recipe with several different brands of chocolate, and found Lindt and Ghirardelli had the best flavor for this particular cake. |
Have a cake baking tip I’ve overlooked? Leave it below.
changing seasons
It never ceases to amaze me how the air changes like clockwork the first week of each September. Like someone flicked a switch and suddenly it’s autumn.
With the change in seasons, hopefully I’ll be blogging a bit more. It’s always too hard for me to stay inside at a computer when it’s so beautiful out. But with a change in seasons comes a change in habit as well. In the meantime, here’s what’s been keeping me away from the computer:
- Buying a house. Ok, it’s a condo. But it’s mine. In addition to the logistics of packing and moving, owning a home is simply a lot of work. I had to find an electrician to fix my foyer light, have the dishwasher adjusted and repair a leaky pipe. I also painted the guest bedroom and the dining room.
Up next: the foyer and my bedroom. Eventually, I’d like to repaint the bathroom and install a new vanity too. All this home improvement means cooking is taking something of a backseat. I’ve largely subsisted on toasted cheese sandwiches this summer. Sad.
- Fishing. I had a great season, catching cod, shark and even a bluefin tuna. The tuna was really the catch of a lifetime, just a beautiful fish. It was also likely the freshest sashimi I’ll ever eat. (To read more on my approach to shark fishing, go here.)
My freezer is now full of cod, shark and tuna. I don’t think I’ll be buying meat for a while. Plan on some fish recipes this fall!
- Working. Though I love cooking and blogging, I have a pretty great day job that keeps me busy. When things get crazy the work I get paid for takes priority.
- Running. I signed up for a half marathon next week, and I’ve spent the last couple months trying to get ready for it. More time running means less time cooking.
That said, with the house under control and the boating season winding down, I’m planning to spend more time in the kitchen.
Here’s a few recipes I’ve got my eye on this season.
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Pumpkin Soup with Red Pepper Mousse: 2000s Recipes + Menus : gourmet.com
Purée peppers, oil, vinegar, paprika, and salt in a blender or food processor until very smooth. Sprinkle gelatin over water in a 1-quart heavy saucepan and let stand 2 minutes to soften. Heat mixture over low heat, stirring, just until gelatin is dissolved. Remove from heat and whisk in pepper purée 1 tablespoon at a time.
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Recipe – Roasted Cauliflower With Lemon Brown Butter and Sage Salt – NYTimes.com
Evan Sung for The New York Times 1/4 cup sage leaves, loosely packed 1 tablespoon coarse salt, more for tossing 3 heads cauliflower, cut into florets 1. Heat oil in a small pan until rippling. Add sage and cook, stirring, just until crisped, about 2 minutes.
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Butternut Squash and Parmesan Bread Pudding
A side of sautéed kale or mustard greens would provide a nice counterpoint to the sweet butternut squash. Marie Simmons, Cooking Light OCTOBER 2004 Only you will be able to view, print, and edit this note. Get our Free Weekly Specials Newsletter filled with our favorite recipes, seasonal menus, and special features.
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Recipe: Ginger Ice Cream Oatmeal Cookie Sandwiches | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn
I was getting all excited for fall, and then, BAM! Someone cranked the heat back up. So I turned wistfully from butternut squash back to, well, ice cream. Here’s one more ice cream treat for the end of summer – but its flavors will transition you right into fall.
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not gazpacho
Times like these I wish I had a vegetable garden. I can’t help but envy my neighbor’s tomato plants or my colleague who comes to work with fresh-picked lettuces. However, in my heart of hearts I know, I’m just not a plant person. I like to eat them well enough, but when it comes to coaxing things out of the soil, my thumb is more brown than green.
Fortunately, there are grocery stores and farmer’s markets bursting with nice produce. Tomatoes are a favorite this time of year. Isn’t it funny how a great tomato can just burst with flavor while a bad tomato can be a mealy anemic mess? There’s no in-between with tomatoes. They’re like that girl with the curl in her forehead. When they’re good they’re really, really good, and when they’re bad, they’re horrid.
Between the heat and my recent move, cooking hasn’t exactly been a priority. But a gazpacho post caught my eye the other day, and I knew something cold and vegetable based was just what I needed.
Technically, this is not gazpacho. People always think that gazpacho is tomato-based, but in fact what makes gazpacho gazpacho is the inclusion of bread, usually stale bread. This recipe has none of that because there isn’t a single crumb of bread in my house at the moment.
I’m not really sure what to call this though. “Tomato-based vichyssoise” seemed too complicated for such a simple dish. “Liquid salad” was too cliche. What about calling it what it is- not gazpacho? Hmmm… OK. Regardless of what you call it, I think you’ll agree that this refreshing and bold concoction is just the thing for a sultry summer night.
Not Gazpacho
(inspired by Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook)
8 top-notch tomatoes
1 medium-sized onion
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1 large cucumber, peeled
3 celery stalks
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
juice of 2 limes
1/2 cup vinegar of your choice (I did half white and half cider)
1 Tablespoon sherry (optional)
drizzle of best-quality olive oil
Chop all your veggies into large chunks and put into a food processor. Give it a whirl and transfer contents to a large bowl. Add stock, salt, vinegar, lime juice and sherry and stir well. Serve in individual cups with a drizzle of olive oil.
