Happy holidays, everyone!
For me, the holiday season is all about OD-ing on baking. There’s really nothing like the smell of goodies baking in the oven to make your house feel Christmas-y.
Lucky for us, this holiday season is also about serious cleaning, since there are little dust bunnies hanging out in the corners of the rooms. Thus I’ll get straight to the point (so Nathan doesn’t end up cleaning the whole house before I get off the computer) and give you the recipe for a festive, yet super-easy, German apple and cranberry cake. Because it’s German, you can sound all snooty and call it a kuchen, if you wish. Sadly, there is no umlaut over that ‘u’.
This recipe is adapted from the one on Amatuer Gourmet, which itself was taken from the French Laundry cookbook. Coincidentally, if you want the bragging rights for actually cooking something out of that crazy book, this is probably one of your best options.
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Yay! Kale is here!
I’ve been awaiting the arrival of a big bunch of kale in our CSA box, just so I can make this soup. I first had caldo verde in Lisbon (’ooo look at the world traveller…how globe-trotty are we’), where it was literally on the menu of every restaurant we went to. Finally, the last night at dinner, I wanted to see what the big deal was and ordered a bowl of caldo verde along with bacalhau, another Portuguese standard. Ever since then, this soup has been one of my favorites to make at home.
Caldo verde is really a very simple soup, where the creaminess comes from pureed potatoes. Actually, I find that I always prefer a potato-derived (or bread-derived) creaminess in soup rather than a cream-derived one. It may sound moronic to use something other than cream to achieve ‘creaminess’, but I like drinking a lot of soup and honestly, I’m not too fond of the idea of drinking a lot of cream. So I’m all for faux ‘creaminess’.
If you want to go vegetarian, you can of course omit the chorizo and compensate by adding more salt to season the soup. The final drizzle of olive oil when serving, however, is essential.
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Happy Hanukkah, everyone!
Ok, ok, so I didn’t actually know that Hanukkah has already started until my friend Noah told me about it yesterday. Being non-Jewish, I feel like maybe it’s ok. But then again, I do have a lot of Jewish friends, so you would think I would pay attention to stuff like that. I guess I’m just a terrible friend.
To make up for my ignorance, I tried my hands at making latkes. I have to preface this by admitting that I wasn’t too hopeful since I’ve attempted latkes twice before and both times, they ended up as soggy messes that failed to hold together. But I refuse to let latkes defeat me! So in Battle of Latkes III: The Reckoning, I decided to cheat just a little and use sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes.
Not only did a semi-sweet latke sounded lovely to me, but sweet potatoes are also much drier than regular potatoes, so I might be saved from the cursed sogginess. Since they are drier than regular potatoes, though, I actually had to throw an extra egg into the mix to get the latkes to bind. I also threw in a little bit of cornstarch as extra binding insurance in addition to the flour that’s usually in latke recipes. Finally, I up-ed the cooking time since sweet potatoes require slightly longer to cook through.
The result, as you can see above, was not too bad and definitely my best and proudest attempt to date. I might even go so far as to say I’ve defeated the latke this time around: Angi 1/Latkes 2. The latkes held up relatively well and tasted quite yummy, especially with a horseradish yogurt I whipped up last minute. Basically, we had some yogurt in the fridge and some horseradish leftover from a Bloody-Marys morning long ago. Also, I was too cheap to splurge on creme fraiche or even a tub of sour cream that I’m only going to use a little bit of (welcome to the life of a grad student!). I still think I have some playing around to do in order to get the latkes to be crispy without being too burnt, but perhaps that battle can be saved for next Hanukkah.
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Have I told you that I heart dumplings? Wait, I got that wrong — It’s more like I heart heart heart dumplings!
After reading about Brian and Michelle’s dumpling party a few weeks ago, I’ve been craving a dumpling party of my own. Unfortunately, I really have no excuse for making more potstickers because I still have a huge batch sitting in the freezer, from a dumpling party not too long ago. (And yes, I can still call it a dumpling party, even if it was a dumpling party of one. It’s like an army of one, only less violent and more delicious.)
Thankfully, Saveur comes to the rescue! My favorite foodie magazine also happens to have one of my favorite, non-Chinese dumpling recipes - Manti or Turkish dumplings. These are tiny dumplings made with homemade dough and filled with little bits of lamb, onions, and parsley. They’re first baked in the oven to make them chewy before being boiled in stock (also in the oven). Fresh out of the oven, they’re then tossed with a garlicky yogurt sauce, topped with mint and chili powder, and finished with a drizzle of olive oil. The only bad (?) thing about them is that they’re really really addictive. So don’t blame me if you end up eating the whole pan!
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