Category Archives: Baking

December 11, 2012 · 7:36 pm

Drunken Fig and Pear Pockets

Is this not the perfect name for a holiday appetizer?

In addition to the parties lined up over the coming weeks, I’m happily anticipating the conclusion of my final semester of graduate school. In the middle of all the chaos of finals, prepping for the clinical rotations, and holiday travel, I also just ran my first 5k race. There’s plenty to celebrate.

Screen shot 2012-12-11 at 6.08.27 PMMy first 5K was the Winter Classic in Cambridge, MA, and it was a blast. Although I run consistently for fun, I’d never tackled a road race, so I was a little nervous going in to it. At a little over 3.1 miles, I was confident I’d be able to handle the distance, but it was the mass start and the drive to constantly push myself. I finished in just over 23 minutes, which I was excited about. I’m already looking forward to signing up for more. You definitely get bitten by the bug after your first one.

So, back to the drunken pears. As someone whose name starts at the beginning of the alphabet, I always get assigned to the appetizer group for potlucks, and I sometimes struggle figuring out what to bring. I came up with this recipe a few weeks ago when I thought the November Recipe Redux challenge was for holiday appetizers. It ended up that the real challenge was for vintage appetizers (or remakes of childhood favorites), but oh well. I’m glad I made this, and I’m looking forward to the next chance to make this again.

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Filed under Appetizer, Baking, Fall, Healthy, Holiday, Quick & Easy, Snacks & Party Food, Vegetarian, Winter

November 21, 2012 · 8:04 pm

Lighter Potato Gratin

I make two potato dishes every year for Thanksgiving: some kind of white potato (usually mashed) and sweet potatoes (often, also mashed). Potatoes are one of (if not my all-time favorite) foods, and back home, my mother used to make scalloped potatoes for us when we were little. So, for this month’s Recipe Redux challenge (vintage side dishes), I thought I would present you with a pairing of potato sides: a potato gratin to mirror the layered dish of my childhood and the other, a potato galette, an experiment I made for my family last year at Christmas.

The first dish, the gratin pictured above (and recipe below) came on the heels of a delicious filet Mignon David cooked for me awhile back. The steak was a special treat, and it was bathed in a luscious cream and peppercorn sauce based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. But at the end of the night, with the steak all gone, we were left with a hefty portion of the cream sauce leftover. So I took the extra and poured it over thinly sliced potato layers and turned it into a baked gratin.

Doesn’t that also embody the spirit of healthy home cooking? I know this has a bit of heavy cream in the ingredients list, but making the most of leftovers is something that I think helps home cooks keep cooking at home, rather than picking up some quick and easy take-out.

Then I have this potato galette with onions and caraway, which adorned our Christmas table last year. It was such a fun idea and translated well into a composed, elegant holiday dish (in case you’re still hunting for ideas for tomorrow… if not, it’s fabulous at Christmas, too).

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Filed under Baking, Fall, Holiday, Winter

June 21, 2012 · 8:56 am

Mint-infused Ricotta Cheesecake Bites with Macerated Strawberries

Today marks Recipe Redux’s first birthday, and to celebrate, we’re all making small bite desserts. Recipe Redux was started by a group of dietitians, and each month a group of healthy food bloggers post the recipes they’ve created, all stemming from a single monthly challenge.

Those of you who know me in real life likely know that dessert isn’t my favorite course, and I’m much more likely to spend my time in the kitchen on something savory and satisfying instead of sweet and luxurious. So coming up with a tasty dessert bite was a bit of a challenge. Given my culinary proclivities, it’s no surprise that what I ended up with is a small bite leaning heavily on cheese and fruit. The idea here is pretty simple, and it’s a good party appetizer because so many of the elements can be made individually and made ahead of time. A classic shortbread dough is shaped into a tiny tart shell, then filled with ricotta cheese and macerated strawberries (though practically any fruit would do just as well).

But the absolute genius part of this recipe is what I came up with for the ricotta cheese: it’s homemade and infused with mint. It’s delicious, and I’m so excited to share it here! I’ve been making homemade ricotta for a few years, and it isn’t all that challenging. The only special equipment you need is cheesecloth, which can be bought at a grocery store or hardware store for around $2-3. One purchase will get you through several rounds of cheese making. After that, it’s as easy as boiling water (or milk, in this case), and draining. The brilliance of this particular recipe is that I added a good handful of mint leaves to the milk before I brought it to a boil, and the flavors and scent of the mint leaves perfume the final product. Strawberries and mint go so well together; this one simple addition helps elevate the entire dessert.

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June 10, 2012 · 5:53 pm

Cheddar & Green Onion Drop Biscuits

Last week I mentioned a new nutrition project at BMC, for which I developed a recipe for buttermilk-marinated oven-fried chicken.  Not only did a end up with a surfeit of chicken drumsticks (which I turned into harissa Buffalo chicken), I also had a half quart of buttermilk leftover. When I have buttermilk around the house, I never think pancakes, which I realize might be the go-to use for leftover buttermilk. Luckily (in this case), I decided to make biscuits, and these came out amazing.

This is kind of a workhorse recipe. We used the biscuits throughout the whole weekend; fresh biscuits hot out of the oven with butter for breakfast, toasted and sliced sandwiching some chicken with mayo and mustard for a quick and easy dinner, and then again the next morning, we made a scrambled egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. And not once did we feel like we’d overdosed on these flavorful, savory biscuits. Although they are best warm right out of the oven, I found that heating the oven to 200-degrees and re-warming the biscuits right before using them also seemed to do the trick. I’d just pop them in the oven for about 10 or 15 minutes, let them get a little toasty and crispy, then smear them with butter, mayo, mustard, or top with eggs.

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Filed under Baking, Breakfast, Healthy, Vegetarian

February 21, 2012 · 8:33 am

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I developed these chewy oatmeal cookies for February’s Recipe Redux, the monthly cooking challenge I joined last year. The challenge this month was to develop a recipe that highlights chocolate, and sweets, I have to say, aren’t my strong suit. When it comes to sweet versus salty, I’d pick salty every day. Baking is typically less forgiving than cooking, so it was a bit challenging to come up with a chocolate-focused dessert. Instead, I thought about what kinds of sweets I actually like to eat, which lead me to oatmeal cookies. Rather than experiment with the chemistry behind cakes and batters, I went with adapting a plain and simple oatmeal cookie recipe and spicing it up.

I incorporated chocolate chips into the recipe, which was a pretty obvious adaptation, and I’m certainly not the first to pair chocolate and oatmeal in a cookie. So, to take the whole thing a step up from obvious, I wanted to incorporate something more complex in place of cinnamon. I went for a Chinese 5 spice, a blend of cinnamon, star anise, fennel, cloves, ginger, and peppercorn. It works because the cinnamon element hints at the traditional flavor profile of an oatmeal cookie, but the peppercorn and ginger lend a subtle, almost smoky spiciness. Chocolate and spices go very well together, so if you don’t have a super sweet tooth, this is a fantastic cookie. It’s chewy and tender and incredibly flavorful.

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Filed under Baking, Healthy, Quick & Easy, Snacks & Party Food, Vegetarian

January 28, 2012 · 2:36 pm

Individual Cheddar, Apple, and Pickled Beet Tarts

After last month’s successful foray into pickling shrimp, I recently tried my hand at pickling beets. When I was in middle school, I’d eat store-bought sliced pickled beets straight out of the jar, so it seemed like a logical next step.  And beets bring some much-needed color to contrast with the browns and yellows of the hearty winter dishes I’ve been making lately. These 5-inch tarts have apple slices, pickled beets, and shredded cheese layered on top of flaky puff pastry.

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December 21, 2011 · 7:28 am

Mini Tarts filled with Butternut Squash, Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese, and Lentils

This month’s Recipe Redux challenge incorporates some form of legume into a holiday party or potluck fare. The recipe below went through menu iterations before I landed on the right filling and presentation, but when I found out what the theme for December was, I had a pretty good idea what direction I’d want to take it. A few months ago, I made this salad, which is itself a good option to take to a potluck, but I wanted to try it with butternut squash.  From there I made a large galette, and then mini galettes, which proved far too cumbersome to be useful for bringing to a party. The mini tarts seemed like the perfect combination of rustic and whimsical, while still being practical enough to prepare and transport to a party. I used mini muffin tins to get the size created above, but I suspect larger sizes will work well, too, because this filling combination tasted great in whichever pastry shell I baked it. Continue reading →

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Filed under Baking, Healthy, Holiday, Snacks & Party Food, Vegetarian

November 26, 2011 · 8:57 pm

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Clearly Thanksgiving was the big event this week, but I was also really looking forward to the Packers-Lions game, too. Since the game started at 12:30, David and I didn’t start our Thanksgiving cooking until late that afternoon. Since we had a small gathering to feed, we opted for a tiny 8-pound turkey, which roasted in about two and a half hours. We loaded up our table with sides of veggies: mashed potatoes, twice-baked sweet potatoes with goat cheese, cauliflower gratin, and roasted Brussels sprouts. I also made a cornbread stuffing (coming later next week). All these dishes had minimal prep time and simple cooking methods, which allowed for plenty of time to make game day snacks. Continue reading →

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November 21, 2011 · 10:40 am

Sweet Potato Muffins

Once I started my Master’s program in nutrition, I started following several dietitians’ blogs to help me stay in touch with what’s going on in the field: they blog about food, research, trends, and often include vignettes from their experiences with patients. The Nutrition Blog Network is where I first came across several of the Recipe Reduxers blogs. Each month the bloggers  share their recipe interpretations of a common theme on their individual blogs. This month is my first post with the group, and our subject is “new” whole grains — in other words, incorporating less familiar whole grains in new or inventive ways. I wanted to branch out into something new, but still use readily-available ingredients in my kitchen. Whole wheat flour and oatmeal are two of the most common options for cooking with whole grains, but I also usually have quinoa on hand in my pantry. Quinoa is technically a seed, but it is still often considered a whole grain. Instead of making a salad, I decided to grind the quinoa into a flour and go from there. Continue reading →

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Filed under Baking, Breakfast, Healthy, Vegetarian

October 5, 2011 · 6:11 pm

Gruyere & Apple Pear Strata

It’s four weeks in to the start of the semester, and things are starting to ramp up at school. In some ways, it’s really interesting and rewarding: I really like my Medical Nutrition Therapy class (the nitty gritty science) and Nutritional Epidemiology. But in other ways (exams, projects, presentations), it’s exhausting. Which is why I so wish I could label this recipe in the “Quick & Easy” category… but I can’t. It’s a really good recipe (David gave it rave reviews), but the 8+ hours of chilling time required means that this falls squarely in the thinking-ahead category.

This dish is a nice combo of savory and sweet flavors. It’s almost like a brunch/dinner savory french toast. And after the ingredients are assembled and chilled, the pre-meal prep time is very minimal. The original recipe, from Cooking Light magazine, called for a cinnamon-raisin bread, but wanting to cut out some of the sweetness, I substituted whole white wheat bread instead. I also used the beautiful “apple pears” pictured above, and they held their shape very well throughout the soaking and cooking process.

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