To the East side

Since I started blogging in May 2008, I’ve written 170 posts for In Good Taste. I’ve visited thousands of blogs, attended two BlogHer conferences and even met some bloggers who became real life friends.

So now, over 1,000 tweets later, In Good Taste has moved to a new home in a new neighborhood.

Please update your bookmarks, your feeds, your subscriptions, etc. to reflect the new blog. I certainly hope you’ll continue reading along and leaving your treasured comments and feedback. I am looking forward to some great new features, a snazzy makeover and even more great recipes and content than ever.

So please come and visit the NEW In Good Taste! What are you waiting for?

 

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: Casatiello (Week 5) What Did I Get Myself Into?

When I signed on with Nicole to do the Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought, I’ll bake some ciabatta, I’ll do a little Twittering and maybe make a bloggy bread baker friend or two.

Fast forward to five – is it really only five??? – weeks later and you might find me where I was on Tuesday night: up to my elbows in bread flour with stray remnants of coarse cornmeal underfoot. If I had known how much proofing, rising and fermenting would be ahead of me when I joined the challenge I might have second guessed my decision.

For those who are new here, I am baking my way through Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice of with about 200 other bloggers around the globe. We started with Anadama Bread and though we aren’t posting each recipe, we’re baking each bread in the book, in order. I’ve been baking roughly once per week, which might not sound like a lot until you factor in a few other things. Like, OH I DON’T KNOW, a full-time job, a forty-minute commute, SLEEP, this blog, a social life….you know, all expendable.

The first thing I’ve learned about baking bread is that it’s a delicate process. The mixing, kneading and shaping are all painstakingly worth the hours each step might take to complete. Many of the breads in Reinhart’s book take more than a day from start to finish and when you’re away from home for twelve hours on the average day, well, that makes it tricky to time each step perfectly.

This past week, we baked a specialty Italian bread called Casatiello that was, if nothing else, a pleasant change from the previous four breads. With no overnight step, you can bake this in a day and have a wonderful, rich bread to serve with dinner.

Casatiello is often referred to as Italian Brioche, a rich dough made with eggs and milk, peppered with cured meat and sharp cheese. The recipe calls for salami or crisp bacon but I had neither on hand so I made do with roasted red peppers and a block of sharp provolone.

The “vegetarian” version of this bread might not have tasted quite the same as the prescribed recipe, but it was moist and flavorful – everything a bread should be. This bread was fairly simple to complete – fast rising and had a great consistency. With some of the breads I’ve baked, I’ve found myself spending more time than I care to admit peering into the bowl of my Kitchen Aid and manipulating the dough into a ball on the dough hook.

I’m thinking that by the time I get to Cinnamon Sticky Buns, I’ll forget about all of these hard times.

Tell me about a kitchen challenge you’ve faced lately. Is it bread baking? Grilling? What is something you didn’t think you could master but now execute with elegance?

 

The Cranberry Bait and Switch: Citrus Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Orange. Cranberry. Two flavors reminiscent of holiday desserts. Christmas in June? Just bear with me for a minute, and you won’t be disappointed.

When browsing a new-to-me food blog , I stumbled across these orange cranberry cookies. It seemed like a good idea to make a cookie that isn’t chocolate chip, since we know I can’t trust myself around those.

Typically, I like chocolate pure and unadultered, one exception being when the chocolate in question is covered by an artificially colored-and-dyed candy shell. To be more specific, I don’t like chocolate/peanut butter, I can live without chocolate/caramel and chocolate/citrus is as good to me as no chocolate at all.

I thought the orange and cranberry combination would be a nice change from the chocolate chip cookies that, if I do say so myself, I’m quite good at making. But no sooner had I chopped a cup of dried, sweetened cranberries did it occur to me that they would be better served in buttermilk cranberry scones. Within moments, my eyes fell on an orange dark chocolate bar that I’d gotten in a gift set and was waiting to be turned into brownies to bake for a friend’s birthday. Well, I sacrificed the brownies for these cookies and wouldn’t you know, it was well worth the risk: citrus chocolate chunk cookies were born.

Citrus Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened
1/4 c. brown sugar, packed
1 c. granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp grated orange zest
Juice of 1/2 orange
1 tsp vanilla
6 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet dark chocolate, chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment, silipat or non-stick cooking spray. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking soda, salt, and whisk; set aside.

2. In bowl of stand mixer (or a bowl…with a hand mixer), combine butter and sugars and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add yolk and beat until fully incorporated. Add orange juice, then zest and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated.

3. Turn mixer to low speed, add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated. Remove bowl from mixer, stir in cranberries, and place 1 Tbsp rounds of dough onto cookie sheets.

4. Place cookies in the oven and bake, switching baking sheet positions half way through baking time, for 12-14 minutes (they should not brown). Remove from oven and let cool on pans completely, about 10-15 minutes.

Note: I made my cookies a little bit larger than the recipe calls for and wound up with about a dozen. Since they were fatter, they had to cook longer and wound up a little crispier than I care for. I wound up giving most of the cookies away, but if you like a crispy cookie, these are for you. If you like something a little chewier, you can make them smaller and you’ll have more success than I did.

 

Worknight Dinners: Simple Summer Pasta Salad

Whenever I eat at someone else’s home, I usually ask an inevitable question will often arise. It’s not, “where did you get those fabulous shoes?” or “where did you get that beautiful tablecloth?” It’s “can I have this recipe?”

Some recipes, like memories are passed down from generation to generation but others are adopted along the way, pulled from the sides of boxes, jar and cans. Last weekend, I was staying with my cousin and she made a simple pasta salad for a family barbecue. After dinner, I asked my cousin the million-dollar question: “can I have this recipe?”

It turned out that I already had it.

It couldn’t be easier to throw together on a lazy summer afternoon and was so tasty that you might forget that you’re eating something that isn’t exorbitantly fattening.

Simple Summer Pasta Salad

1-12 oz. package of tri-color rotini pasta
1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 cucumber, chopped
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup chopped carrots
1 small bottle reduced-fat Italian salad dressing (I like Annie’s Organic but use your favorite)

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain and cool. Add cherry tomatoes, cucumber, celery, red pepper and carrots and toss with Italian dressing. Chill and serve.

Because I was born without the gene “to leave well enough alone” I decided to adapt what was a delicious side dish into a worknight dinner.

By adding some cubed cooked chicken that had been marinated in Italian dressing, and swapping the tri-color pasta for whole-wheat rotini, I wound up with a nice cold pasta dish to eat outside on a warm evening. With a mixture of carbohydrates and protein, this is a great post-gym one-bowl meal.

For a little extra flavor, I topped the whole thing off with some crumbled goat cheese and a little bit of fresh basil. If make the full recipe you’ll have plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day and to carry you through the week.

Here is that recipe, too:

Simple Summer Pasta Salad, with chicken

1-12 oz. package of whole-wheat rotini pasta
1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 cucumber, chopped
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup chopped carrots
1 small bottle reduced-fat Italian salad dressing (I like Annie’s Organic but use your favorite)
Fresh semi-soft goat cheese, crumbled (optional)
Fresh herbs (optional)

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain and cool. Add chicken, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, celery, red pepper and carrots and toss with Italian dressing. Chill and top with goat cheese and basil, if desired.

 

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: Brioche (Week 4) Poor Man’s Ham, Egg & Cheddar

Whenever I have the opportunity to go out for brunch on a weekend, I take it. I love that you can eat traditional lunch fare like salads, burgers and sandwiches or you can pick a meal reminiscent of breakfast and order omelets, French toast and home fries.

Though I often make these things at home, I find that there are a few advantages that a mid-day meal at home lacks that many restaurants offer – table service for instance. Another thing that restaurant brunches have going for them is all you can drink mimosas or sangria. And finally, I’ve learned that a bread basket is a highly underrated element in the restaurant world.

There are plenty of restaurants that offer quasi-stale crusty Italian bread along with an entrée but that isn’t necessarily a good bread basket. It’s vanilla, there is nothing remarkable about stale dinner rolls made with white flour and warmed under a heating lamp seconds prior to serving.

A good bread basket has a nice variety of breads – white and wheat, rolls and slices, sweet and savory, salty and buttery. The best brunch-table bread basket might have some soft, fresh rolls and thick slices of crusty multigrain nestled between blueberry or bran mini-muffins and brioche. Soft, thick brioche that practically melts in your mouth with each bite and a savory, buttery crust.

Brioche is great on its own in a bread basket, when turned into indulgences like French toast or bread pudding or when sliced and eaten as a sandwich. Since brioche is sweeter than most yeast breads, I like to top or stuff it with savory fillings like ham, egg and sharp cheese.

I made Poor Man’s Brioche last week for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge and came up with a tasty sandwich creation that could easily moonlight as breakfast, lunch or dinner. In the book, author Peter Reinhart offers three adaptations of the recipe: rich, middle class and poor. Richer = more eggs, more butter. I’m paying off college loans so I opted for the latter.

Poor Man’s Ham, Egg & Cheddar

Makes 1 sandwich

Ingredients:

2 slices Poor Man’s Brioche (from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Alliance) or your favorite brioche
2 slices deli-style ham (I used Applegate Farm’s Organic, cured without nitrates or additives)
1 egg, fried over easy
1 slice sharp cheddar cheese
Handful arugula or other mixed greens
Dijon mustard

1. Slice brioche into two even pieces and spread one side of each slice with dijon mustard.

2. In a small skillet or frying pan, cook egg as desired (I prefer over easy) until cooked through.

3. Top bottom half of brioche with a small handful of arugula – use as much or as little as you like. Top with 2 slices of ham, egg and a slice of sharp cheddar cheese. Season with freshly ground pepper, as desired. Serve with garden salad or mixed greens.

To see what some other bloggers have been cooking up with brioche you can visit these blogs:

A Chef’s Daughter – BBA Challenge #4
Eating Out Loud – Braided Almond Brioche Bread
Confessions of a Penguin Chef – Chocolate Almond Brioche Bread Pudding
Engineer Baker – Middle Class Baker
Bread Baker’s Challenge: Brioche Day 4

 

Alton Brown’s Onion Dip From Scratch

I’m not a shy person when it comes to public declaration of love. I don’t mean that in a Tom-Cruise-couch-jumping-on-Oprah kind of way, but maybe the better way to phrase this is that I’m not afraid to like what I like. In high school, I had a serious crush on Pacey from Dawson’s Creek and made it quite clear to each of my girlfriends that I would not pick up the phone on Wednesday nights between 8-9p.m.

In college, I had an affinity for grilled cheese sandwiches and telling people they “rule,” my sincerest form of compliment, after a couple of drinks. I was proud of both behaviors, in case you were wondering. More recently, I’ve also been pretty transparent about the fact that I do intend to get married some day, if for not for “true love” and “finding the one” and whatever it is those crazy kids do these days, then for all of the fun kitchen gadgets I plan to register for.

And today, I want to profess my love for caramelized onions. I first tried them on pizza last Fall and if I don’t say, it was love at first sight. Ever since, I’ve experimented with putting them in a few recipes – mashed sweet potatoes, pasta and even on top of skillet cornbread.

If you want to eat caramelized onions in their purest form, eat caramelized onions, straight up with no chaser. But if you want to enjoy the flavor in their next best outfit, make Alton Brown’s Onion Dip From Scratch.

Alton Brown’s Onion Dip From Scratch

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups diced onions
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cups sour cream
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions
In a saute pan over medium heat add oil, heat and add onions and salt. Cook the onions until they are caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. Mix the rest of the ingredients, and then add the cooled onions. Refrigerate and stir again before serving.

Serve with kettle-cooked potato chips or fresh vegetables. Best when served alongside a crisp Riesling at a summer cookout

 

Worknight Dinners: Friday Night, Pizza Night

I think it’s disheartening that when I googled “pizza” to see if I could come up with a few pieces of fun trivia for this post, the first two links that populated my screen were for Domino’s & Pizza Hut. Between the commercials for Domino’s Bread Bowl Pasta and Pizza Hut’s “P’Zone Eating Chow-lenge” it’s no wonder why pizza has a bad rap for being nutritionally inadequate.

It’s also hard to accept such commercialized adaptations of pizza, a dish traced back to Italian origins as far back as 997, though it is said to have become mainstream in Naples in the 18th century. Back then, pizza was made from yeast bread dough and tomatoes, later to be topped with mozzarella cheese, basil and extra-virgin olive oil. Today, Domino’s Deep Dish crust is made from:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin Folic Acid), Water, Malt, Sugar, Whey, Malted Barley Flour, Yeast, Soybean Oil. Zzesty Blend: Butter Flavored Oil (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Soy Lecithin, Artificial And Natural Butter Flavoring, Vitamin A Palmitate And Beta-Carotene for Color), Imitation Parmesan Cheese (Water, Modified Food Starch, Casein And Or Caseinate, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Cellulose Powder, Salt, Sodium Phosphates, Stabilizers [Mono And Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Carrageenan], Natural Flavor, Lactic Acid, Sorbic Acid [As A Preservative]), Onion And Garlic, Spices, Salt, Lactic Acid, Butter Flavor, Tomato Powder, Bell Pepper. Dextrose, Citric Acid, Extractive Of Paprika And Lemon And Orange Oil With No Greater Than 2% Calcium Silicate And/Or Soybean Oil Added to Prevent Caking, Corn Meal (used in preparation).

Now, I won’t pretend I didn’t have the number for the Domino’s Pizza in my town memorized when I was a freshman in college (come on, it was 374-5665, it doesn’t get much easier than that). There was a time when crust and cheese and sauce meant pizza. Now, however, now, I think of pizza as somewhat of an indulegence and if you’re going to indulge, my theory is, “go big or go home.”

I make pizza dough using only six simple ingredients. Granted, not everyone has the time (or desire) to create their own pizza dough but it probably isn’t hard to find one without “butter flavor” and imitation parmesan cheese. If you do feel like whipping up your own crust, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day has an amazing dough recipe that can be replicated for focaccia, flatbread and other variations.

PIzza generally has a bad rap for being nutritionally not-that-great-for-you, but there are ways to alter pizza so that you can enjoy it without eating three days worth of calories in one sitting. I mean, you certainly can if you eat the entire pie, but if you’re like me and you just don’t have the bandwidth for eight slices, a slice or two of this pizza won’t set you back too much if you pair it with a big, green salad.

Spinach Ricotta Pizza with Olive Oil Dough

Ingredients:

1/3 recipe Olive Oil Pizza Dough (or your favorite refrigerated pizza dough)
3/4 cup chunky marinara sauce (if you like a lot of sauce on your pizza, you can be liberal but more than 1 cup will leave your dough soggy)
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
8 oz. (or 1/2 lb). part-skim mozzarella cheese, grated or torn into small pieces
2 cups uncooked spinach, sauteed until just barely wilted

Directions:

1. Use your hands or dust a rolling pin with flour and gently shape dough into desired shape on a floured surface. Use flour as needed to shape dough so that it does not stick to surface.

2. Dust a pizza peel (you can attempt at using an oiled cookie sheet but I tried that and it was an EPIC FAIL. I highly recommend a pizza peel) with cornmeal, to prevent dough from sticking.

3. Use a spatula and slide the dough onto the pizza peel. Preheat oven (with baking stone) to 500F. Assemble the pizza with desired toppings – in this case, sauce, cheeses and spinach.

4. Use the peel to place the pizza on the pre-heated pizza stone. If you’re using an upside-down cookie sheet, the dough may be sticky and will require more than one par of hands to transfer to the hot baking stone.

5. Bake at 500F for approximately 15-20 minutes or until cheese begins to bubble and crust turns golden brown.

Tell me your favorite kind of pizza!

 

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: Bagels (Week 3)

Some say that the first known bagel was baked in Austria in 1683 when a baker from Vienna, thankful to the King of Poland for saving Austria from Turkish invaders, reshaped the local bread so that it resembled the King’s stirrup. Others say that the bagel was invented much earlier in Krakow, Poland, as a competitor to the obwarzanek, a lean bread of wheat flour designed for Lent. It was originally called a “beugel,” derived from the German word stirrup, “bugel.”

Living near New York, I know how much people like their bagels. I know that many New Yorkers are even fiercely protective of the idea that New York makes the best bagel. And I won’t pretend that I’ve never had fantasies about the whole-wheat everything bagels from Murray’s on Sixth Avenue.

People like bagels so much that in 2008, Canadian-born astronaut Gregory Chamitoff brought the first known batch of bagels into space on a mission to the International Space Station. Don’t quote me on it, but that is the word on the street.

Even though you can’t bake a bagel in space, most people don’t realize that they don’t need to travel far and wide to get their hands on a delicious bagel. You can make authentic, New York-style bagels in your own kitchen. And before you start laughing I’m going to tell you that it’s EASY. Time consuming, yes, but also simple and worth the effort

For the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, this week we’ve been charged with making water-boiled bagels from a simple recipe that calls for little more than white or whole grain bread flour, salt and malt syrup. Since I didn’t have the latter ingredient I successfully substituted honey.

For toppings, I used coarse salt and sesame seeds, but let it be said that i never expected them to turn out good. I didn’t think I’d blow them up or anything but I didn’t expect bagels that looked and tasted like they’d come from a bakery. I like bagels best when they’re slightly chewy and warm – but not so warm that it melts the butter or cream cheese. These bagels delivered on all counts with an unexpected bonus – a great aroma that filled my apartment on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning.

As usual, we’re not posting the recipes to every kind of bread that we bake but similar recipes are available around the internet and if you have any questions about the recipes I’ve used feel free to email me with questions. For more resources on baking bagels, feel free to visit these sites:

Sugarlaws – Bagels
Tammy’s Recipes – Homemade Bagels
Under the High Chair – DIY: Bagel Tutorial & More History
Wild Yeast – Sourdough Bagels

 

An Unlikely Favorite: Almond Butter Blondies

One of the most thrilling parts of life is also the scariest. Each day, we wake up not knowing what’s going to happen next. While most people have a fairly good idea if their immediate future includes working nine to five or backpacking through Europe, it seems frequent that the best laid plans have a tendency to fall through.

No matter how much you do or don’t plan your life, chances are things won’t turn out the way you expected. When I was growing up, throughout elementary school I used to picture what my new classroom would look like at the end of each summer. When I entered school on the first Wednesday after Labor Day, I was repeatedly shocked that the setting in my mind didn’t look like the room I was standing in.

Life is a lot like that. Blind dates are what you least expect them to be, your first apartment is never what you imagined and sometimes the friends you’d thought you’d know forever become distant, a part of the past instead of the present. Sometimes you form an opinion of a person before you meet them – and find that your predictions were completely and totally off base. And other times, you hear of a recipe that just makes you think, oh gross.

This recipe is far from gross, but I’ll admit that I was skeptical when I first found it over at One For The Table. I had noticed almond butter in my cabinet and had the urge to bake, so I gave it a go and was glad I did.

Almond Butter Blondies

Ingredients:

½ cup butter (I used unsalted)
¼ cup almond butter,
1 cup light or dark brown sugar (I prefer light; dark will give you a stronger flavor)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup quick cooking oats
½ cup sliced almonds, roasted, plus ¼ cup
½ cup finely diced dried California apricots
¼ cup golden raisins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Line an 8×8 inch baking pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper. If you use foil, coat with non-tick cooking spray.

Cream butter and almond butter until fluffy, using a mixer. Add brown sugar, egg and almond extract and beat until light. If you don’t have almond extract, vanilla extract substitutes nicely.

Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Stir dry ingredients into
butter mixture until just blended. Stir in oatmeal, ½ cup almonds, apricots and raisins.

Spoon batter into prepared pan and smooth with table knife or small metal spatula. Sprinkle with remaining ¼ cup almonds. Bake 30-35 minutes or until firm and a toothpick comes out nearly clean. Let cool to room temperature before lifting foil out of the pan. Peel foil off blondies and cut into 16 squares.

 

Worknight Dinners: Dining Al Fresco, Creamy Penne with Asparagus & Artichoke

In the summer, one of my favorite activities is dining and drinking outdoors. Whether it’s a rooftop lounge, a sidewalk cafe or a balcony overlooking a parking lot, there is something that just feels good about the warm summer breeze that makes the city air seem less polluted, fresher, hopeful.

There is also something that feels even better about eating and drinking in the above warm summer breeze. As much as I like the great outdoors, I wouldn’t call myself outdoors-ey. I’ve never been camping, I would rather get a massage than go for a hike and I would probably need to be bribed with large sums of cash in order to spend a significant amount of time in an environment where I’d have limited access to running water and indoor plumbing.

It’s not that I don’t have a sense for adventure. I have a spontaneous streak and know that it’s healthy to push outside of my comfort zone once in awhile. Even so, I don’t find most outdoor activities relaxing so in my spare time, I’d rather stick close to home and go for a run in the park rather than a hike the Appalachian.

Running is nice, but on some nights, there is nothing more soothing than sitting outside in the peace and quiet with a glass of something sparkling and a big bowl of pasta.

In the spring and summer, I tend to avoid heavy, cheese-laden, baked pasta dishes that can weigh you down. Sure, I eat them when they’re put in front of me, but let’s think about it. Not too many people sit poolside eating lasagna. I do think pasta is a good summertime dinner, when paired with a simple sauce and fresh vegetables. You don’t need to turn on the oven or dirty multiple dishes. For this dish, I used one pot and one pan and felt little guilt eating it as I thumbed through the J. Crew catalogue checking out bathing suits.

Creamy Penne with Asparagus & Artichoke (recipe serves two)

Ingredients:

4 oz. uncooked whole wheat penne pasta
1 large bunch asparagus, rinsed, stalks trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
6 large artichoke hearts (no added oil), chopped
1/4 tsp. minced garlic
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 – 1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup part skim ricotta cheese
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
Shaved parmesan cheese, as desired

Directions:

1. Prepare pasta according to directions on package. Cook until al dente and drain. Set aside.

2. Heat garlic and olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add asparagus and saute until bright green and firm. Add artichokes. Reduce heat to low, add milk and ricotta cheese and stir continuously until a thick sauce begins to form.

3. Continue to cook for about 3-4 minutes, coating asparagus evenly. Add 1/4 cup parmesan cheese; stir until incorporated. Add pasta and stir to coat pasta with sauce. Cook for 2-3 minutes to heat thoroughly and combine. Serve with grated parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper, if desired.

What’s your favorite way to eat pasta in the summertime?