Cottage Cheese-- Blech, Cottage Cheese Pancakes-- Mmm!

There are certain foods that I never eat prepared in a certain way, but truly enjoy when prepared in another. Tomatoes for instance-- I avoid them sliced in a sandwich, but savor them roasted as a side dish. I am certainly particular about eggs-- never scrambled or fried, but poached or soft-boiled is quite alright with me. And cottage cheese I cannot do served plain, or worse yet, garnished with a pineapple ring-- but blended into batter for morning flapjacks, sounds perfect to me.

Saturday morning I was watching cooking shows on PBS, when Everyday Food came on. A cheery, dark haired woman in a solid-colored, red t-shirt (because each member of the cast always wears, coordinating, solid-colors shirts-- no patterns here!) was frying up a batch of these Cottage Cheese Pancakes, as a healthy alternative to the typical, dense buttermilk sort. And the pancakes actually looked good to me, light, yet crisp around the edges, drizzled with pure maple syrup, and served with fresh, ripe strawberries, I knew that this would be on the menu for Sunday brunch.

I changed the recipe a tad, making the pancakes a little less dietetic by using whole eggs rather than egg whites, and using a cottage cheese that was slightly higher in fat content. The pancakes were superb, spongy and airy, not too heavy and dense like I find in the traditional buttermilk varieties. Subtly sweet, kissed with both a modicum of sugar, and some pure vanilla extract, these flapjacks were quickly gobbled up in no time.

And the cottage cheese was a welcome addition, adding body to the dish. Now you won't catch me inhaling those milky curds by themselves, but mix up a batch of Cottage Cheese Pancakes, and I will gladly partake.

Have a Button on Your Birthday

Almost all of my hand-selected Brit care package is gone. The Kit-Kats have all been munched upon (including the cloyingly sweet, strawberry-white chocolate ones by my husband), the prawn cocktail crisps have all been marveled at, and the Cadbury Crunchie bars eaten quickly, the honeycomb centers crackling away. But a few choice morsels still remained, among them a box of cake mix, waiting for the right moment to be baked, or the right person for whom to bake.

It was my sister's birthday, and per usual I was in charge of the celebratory cake. My sister is a woman of simple tastes, nothing too rich, no feats of dark chocolate ganache and spun sugar to ooh and aah over. In December, on our trip to England, we visited Tesco, a truly enormous supermarket chain, and we became enthralled by a Cadbury Buttons Cake mix. So much so, we bought a box. And just what was it that made me drag a box of cake mix home, thousands of miles with me? It was the fact that this was not simply a cake mix, but rather a mix for an entire cake, buttercream filling, a milk chocolate ganache, and the decorations-- white and milk chocolate Cadbury Buttons.

I was holding on to the mix, waiting for the correct company to serve it to-- people who would not find it gauche, but rather whimsical to make a cake from a mix and, also, to have it decorated with candies. The company of my family in quiet celebration of my sister's birthday, proved to be the ideal partakers.

And the cake was good. Milky, and rich, and overflowing with that Cadbury chocolate flavor-- the precise mix of creaminess and sweetness. Filled with a light chocolate buttercream, and covered with melted milk chocolate, that cooled and hardened to a smooth shell, the cake was definitely festive with its polka-dotted vestment. A perfect birthday cake for a girl with sweetly simple tastes.

A Pollock, or a Sweet Treat?

Well, obviously these Iced Ginger Cookies that sweetly came rolling out of my kitchen are not in fact a painting, Pollock or otherwise. They are a simply a baked good-- but they are in some senses, a work of art. For me, eating and preparing food is a multi-modal activity.

Of course there is the act of tasting when one eats. A person detects the feelings of hot or cool, spicy or sweet, mellow or tart, and derives a certain amount of pleasure from these sensations. But for me food is just as much about the visual and the tactile, as it is about the taste. I do not want the food that I am about to consume to be continually toyed with, garnished just so, sauce artfully dribbled about, but I do want a certain level of care to be established.

Take an amorphous dish like beef stew. While the stew could be slopped into a trough, drips and chunks in abundance, isn't it so much nicer, more civilized, when the stew is placed in a bowl, calmly resting against the smooth surface of porcelain or pottery? This little bit extra, a tiny touch here or there, is what I am talking about when I mention that a food is bourgie. It makes no difference if what I am preparing is Asian and refined, or comforting and American. All of these foods can still be bourgie.

As I was removing these cookies from the oven, the spiciness of the ginger mingling with the warm smell of cinnamon, I was already thinking about what could be done to these morsels to make them a bit bourgie. I remember the Oatmeal Iced Cookies, from Mother's. The brittle shards of icing stuck in perfect waves to the too-crunchy-to-be-comforting oatmeal cookies, but even with all of the imperfections, I loved those cookies dearly. So why not harken back to my childhood, icing this new, warm and spicy cookie in much the same way.

Dripping, dropping, and swirling smidgens of icing like an action painter on the surface of these cooled cookies was an amusement, and a temptation. Gazing at each intricate design, I could hardly wait to bite into these chewy marvels. They were chewy, bursting with ginger and molasses, and the small doses of white icing (just powdered sugar, water, and a bit of shortening for body) was the ideal sweet foil for the spiciness of the cookie. And, they were a bit bourgie to boot.

Marmalade...Sort Of

With all of the lovely citrus fruit in abundance right now at the market, I purchased a bevy with the intention of making some sort of citrus marmalade. When I arrived home, bags of blood oranges, and Seville sour oranges in tow, I began doing a bit of research on marmalade jam recipes on the internet, only to have my hopes of wintertime jam smashed to a pulp. Do you have any idea just how much sugar is required in making marmalade? A lot. Quite a lot. Some recipes called for a pounds worth of sugar when making simply a few measly jars worth of marmalade.

Now there is nothing wrong with sugar. In fact I love the stuff, some would even say I love it too much, with cakes and cookies (homemade or otherwise) tumbling out of my kitchen on a regular basis. But there is something too sweetly intimidating about pouring not cups, but pounds of the sweet stuff to make a condiment for one household. Properly scared off by multi-stepped, rot-your-teeth-out-of-your-head recipes, I cast all of my roly-poly oranges aside until I could decide what to do with them.

So I made jam-- a marmalade of sorts. Crisp and pure, tinged with a subtle bitterness from the juice of many Seville oranges co-mingling with the gorgeous, crimson glow of blood orange juice, this jelly is sublime. It seemed a shame to let all of the oranges go to waste, they simply had to made into something fabulous. But it also seemed a shame to let all of the wonderful sweet-bitterness be drowned out by pounds of sweetener. I compromised.

I juiced all of the oranges, my fingertips dyed a rosy hue from the sanguine pulp of the blood oranges. I zested some of the Seville oranges, carefully tasting the puckery flavor of the skin. I added some water, and a healthy though unremarkable dose of sugar, a bit of pectin (the home canner's best friend), and vigorously boiled away. With the aid of a candy thermometer, I turned the heat off when the mixture reached 224 degrees (the gelling point). This took about 30 minutes.

Making your own jam always remains somewhat of a mystery to me. As I mindfully poured the jam mixture into the prepared, sterilized jars, I really wasn't even sure how, or if it would turn out all. After all of the juicing, zesting, and boiling, what I appeared to have was just glorified juice, slightly thickened by the addition of pectin. But I poured away, crossing my fingers as I let the jam cool.

By the next morning I was left with a sunny, honeyed, gelatinous, almost-mass, waiting to be slathered on my morning toast. Now I only wish that I made more.

Lazy Man's Morning Pastries

Frozen Puff Pastry is a wonderful thing. Many a time it has bailed me out of culinary dilemmas, helping to create fabulous tarts, interesting accoutrements, or sublime nests on which to rest entrees. Well this weekend puff pastry did it again, in a simple yet delicious manner I was able to make fresh morning pastries.

On a beautiful Sunday morning, the full day laying before me with errands to run and work to get jump-started on, I still wanted a bit of something special. Scouring the refrigerator and freezer for something to make, eggs were too heavy, waffles weren't doing it for me, but maybe that lone box of frozen puff pastry would do the trick. Why can't this box hold the key to my morning time delights?

I set to work assembling my pastries. I tucked in shards of dark chocolate, making a sort of pain au chococolat. Dried peaches were simmered and reconstituted, then rolled neatly in triangular pieces of dough, croissant style. Egg-washed, then dusted lightly with cinnamon-sugar, and baked for 20 minutes, the pastries were golden brown, and puffed to a glorious finish.

The pastries were light and buttery. The croissants were crisp, the pain au chocolat, decadent. It is true these pastries did not have the heft or substantiality of your traditional morning buns, but eaten still-warm from the oven, and enjoyed with a cup of dark, rich coffee, the pastries proved to be just the food for the lazy man's weekend breakfast.

It's Summer!

Okay, so I know that we are months away from those warm summer nights, but what is a girl to do when flipping through her latest cookbook, spotting a recipe just so deliciously bourgie that she can't not make it?Brimming with plump cherry tomatoes (hothouse grown of course) and loosley torn bits of fresh basil, this Cherry Tomato and Basil Clafoutis was the perfect solution to those winter blahs.

Everyone loves a good clafoutis, that delicately sweetened fruit and egg custard. They are the perfect thing to eat on a Sunday morning, still warm from the oven, and bursting with ripe fruit flavor. But how are they when made as a savory lunchtime meal, and not neccesarily bursting with juiciness but rather sighing with almost-sweetness? Well, despite being out-of-season, I must say this clafoutis was still a wonderful treat.

The heat from the baking process caused the cherry tomatoes to swell and burst, emitting an intense juiciness. The skin of the fruit bubbled and blistered, making the clafoutis look as if it were simply overflowing with flavor. And then there was the custard, that was really more like a quiche filling, flavored with yogurt, then seasoned with fresh basil and parmesan cheese, softly set, which made the entire house smell of a summer holiday.

If you would like this taste of summer any time of year, the recipe for Cherry Tomato and Basil Clafoutis is on the Daily Specials page.

Bash and Sprinkle

If you have a mortar and pestle, then you have a versatile kitchen tool. With it you can make a slew of different rubs for meat, spice mixtures for the grill, and marinades to both tenderize and give flavor to otherwise monotonous chicken breasts. Or you can make flavored salts, adding a freshness and an interest to dishes that are already great, and to those that need a little something more.

Blissfully simple to make, calling upon a variety of different aromatics to flavor, the core of this seasoning is, of course, salt. Now don't get too frantic about the mere mention of, gasp-- sodium. This is simply a seasoning, available to sprinkle on food, to perk up the flavor, not drown in that high-blood-pressure-inducing kick of salt. Made in abundance yet used judiciously, flavored salt is a delightful accoutrement to any dish.

This batch of salt I made had a Mediterranean bent to it. With fresh lemon zest, carefully scraped off the fruit with a microplane; branches of green, herbaceous rosemary; a clove of garlic, paper and all, bashed around in the mortar and pestle; and with a 1/4 cup of Kosher salt; this salt was fresh, and bright. It is important to make flavored salts with a larger crystaled salt like sea, or Kosher-- a salt that will stand up well to all of the bashing about. The mortar and pestle is crucial. Not only will you give yourself a workout, but also it gives the salt the opportunity to muddle well with the aromatics.

Virtually any flavor salt can be made: chili and lemon grass for a Thai bent, basil and lime zest for a summery flavor, or a blending with cumin and tumeric for an Indian version. Once the salt is made, it lasts for weeks closed tightly in a jar, waiting to be used any way you choose, sprinkled on a grilled skirt steak, or lightly flavoring a soft-boiled egg. So go bash about, and salt with abandon!

Overkill?

Absolutely not! Rich? Sure. Decadent? Maybe. But overkill? I would have to say not. These Banana Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins are a bit of a mouthful to say, but they are homey and delicious to eat in the morning with a good, strong cup of coffee, or even in the afternoon as a not-so-lite snack, with a cup of tea.

These muffins had a little bit of everything contained in the crinkly foil wrapper. Who doesn't like a banana muffin? Even me, who doesn't love a plain, ol' banana thinks they impart a starchy sweetness when baked. And the mocha, really just a bit of a cooled, strong coffee, did not actually make a coffee muffin, but simply lent a richness to this already rich morning treat. Eating these muffins in the morning, accompanied by my usual strong cup of morning brew, was not redundant, it was complementary...very bourgie.

Dense, with a sturdy crumb, and even with the addition of one cup of chocolate chips, not overly sweet, these muffins had it all. In a tasting race, Banana Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins would beat the pants off of an ordinary Blueberry Muffin (struesel top or not), and would flatten the competition of those sturdy Bran Muffins (fiber and all)! If you would like the recipe for this morningtime treat, check out the Daily Specials page.