breakfast salad

This is what I want to eat all the time lately — and have, in fact, been eating practically daily for the past week. It's called a "breakfast salad," but I've made it for dinner, too.

Here's the deal: Soft-boiled eggs and buttered toast meet leafy greens. (The original recipes calls for arugula, but I've been using spinach because I have a lot on hand.) I love to douse this with a good amount of lemon juice, too. You've got the eggs and toast to sustain you, but the end result is light and fresh. The mix of textures — soft eggs, crunchy bread — is great, too.

Breakfast (or anytime) Salad
adapted from Yummy Supper
serves 1

one or two eggs, at room temperature
one or two slices of your favorite bread for toasting (I like sourdough)
unsalted butter
handful of leafy greens (arugula, spinach, etc.)
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
juice and zest of half a lemon

Bring your eggs to room temperature by submerging them in a bowl of really warm, but not boiling hot, tap water.

Fill a small sauce pan with 3 to 4 inches of water. Bring to a boil.

Put the bread in the toaster.

When the water is boiling, reduce to a nice, even simmer. Using a slotted spoon, gently lower the eggs into the pan and set a timer to 5 minutes and 15 seconds. As the eggs cook, dump out the bowl of water used to warm the uncooked eggs. Refill this bowl with cold water and a few ice cubes. When the timer goes off, use a slotted spoon to transfer the eggs immediately into the ice water bath. Let them cool slightly as you make the rest of the salad.

When the toast is ready, butter it and tear into small pieces. Nestle the pieces into a bowl with the leafy greens. Toss with salt and pepper to taste, as well as the lemon juice and zest.

Use a serrated knife to cut off the top of the egg(s). Scoop the egg(s) out of the shell and place on top of the toast and greens. (I've also simply rolled the eggs gently to remove the shell, and then sliced in half). EAT.

gooey butter cookies

How is it mid-January already??

As usual, I've come out on the other side of my long, amazing, thank-you-independently-owned-newspapers 12-day winter vacation by way of a reluctant crawl. Rather than hitting the new year in full stride, it always takes me about two weeks of returning to regular work hours to resume a guise of normalcy in my life — you know, the one where I don't watch two episodes of "Gossip Girl" a day and spend the rest of the time eyeing my new, 1056-page copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything with a mix of longing and fear.

Really.

So, in the spirit of easing back into real life, I offer you gooey butter cookies. They are pillowy soft just out of the oven, and remain so in the following days. (Normally, it would not take days to polish off a batch of cookies, but take note: This recipe yielded something like 60-plus cookies. And, no, you don't want to halve it. I promise.) The best word I can use to describe the cookies is comforting. Subtly laced with vanilla, just slightly tangy from the cream cheese ... This recipe is really special.


Gooey Butter Cookies


recipe very slightly adapted from Lottie + Doof, via Mathew Rice of Nightwood restaurant


4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 pound cream cheese
2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
3 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
confectioner's sugar for rolling

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a very large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla bean seeds and sugar until fluffy. Mix in the eggs and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and stir in by hand. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

Scoop dough into roughly 1-inch balls and roll in the confectioner's sugar until thickly covered. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, a couple of inches apart. Bake at 325 degrees until they are cracked and puff slightly, about 12-16 minutes — they will be really soft in the center, but they should not brown. (These consistently took 16 minutes in my oven.) Cool to room temperature.

Because they're so soft, it's best to refrigerate the cookies while on the baking sheet; that makes them easier to pick up. (I left the trays out in our freezing-cold mudroom for a half hour or so.) It's recommended to serve these cookies straight from the fridge, and I agree that they're really great cold (but I also liked them at room temp).

Store in the fridge for up to a week.

merry and bright

I'm signing off for the holidays — woohoo! Today begins my much-anticipated 12-day work break. If all goes according to plan, it will be filled with holiday parties, visits with two of my long-distance besties, family time and lots of cookies.

Wishing you a fun and festive couple of weeks ... see you in 2012!!

holiday roundup

My blog archives resemble the Land of Sweets. While the amount of dessert that comes out of my kitchen is somewhat troubling — I promise, I do eat tons of vegetables and sometimes even meat! —it does come in handy for the holidays.

With no further ado, I bring to you 12 recipes worth revisiting for the holiday season — and one DIY cocktail kit.

1. Dark chocolate cookies. Uber chocolatey and soft. Ready to be dipped into a glass of milk. Perfect for mailing to a long-distance friend.

2. White Russian soufflés. Kahlúa meets white chocolate ... and cream cheese. Excuse me while I freak out a little.

3. Double-chocolate banana bread squares. Some would call these "banana brownies," but that would be wrong. They are studded with chocolate chips and mashed bananas. It sounds weird, but somehow it all works out.

4. Russian tea cakes. I make these every Christmas. So simple, yet satisfyingly addictive.

5. Chocolate crinkle cookies. Another Christmas staple. Super fudgy and totally pretty!

6. Cocoa brownies. Fantastically fudgy... but kind of flaky on the outside. Texture is a good thing.

7. Chocolate chunk cookies. Everyone needs a failsafe chocolate-chip cookie recipe. If you don't have one yet ... try this.

8. Salted margarita cookies. Sparkly and unusual. Plus, there's tequila in there! I won't judge if you pour yourself a mixed drink while whipping these up.

9. Lime cake. I die over this frosting every time. Bright, zesty and amazingly fragrant. Excellent for celebrating something special.

10. Striped mint meringues. Fancy and delightfully crunchy.

11. Vanilla sugar cookies. Dusting cookies with extra sugar is always a good idea.

12. Caramel sauce. Dark, full-bodied, buttery. I'm of the persuasion that you don't have to have something to dip into caramel sauce. Just eat it by the spoonful.

13. Cranberry cocktail mixer. Make two. Give one away. Keep the other for yourself. Cheers!

salted margarita cookies

Remember these from last year? I don't know what it is about Thanksgiving week, but I apparently just crave margaritas in cookie form. Luckily, there's a Smitten Kitchen for that.

 Haven't tried these yet? They make awesome Christmas cookies. They're basically shortbread cookies, but both salty and sweet. They're packed with orange and lime zest, which flecks them with pretty colors. And the edges? Sparkly! It doesn't get much more festive than that, especially when tequila is involved.

Here's the recipe one more time, with some updates.

Salted Margarita Cookies
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 egg yolk, at room temperature
3 teaspoons tequila
pinch of salt
zest of 2 limes
zest of 1/2 orange
2 cups flour

Coating:
1 egg yolk, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated or coarse sugar
1 and 1/2 tablespoons coarse sea salt

Beat the butter with a mixer until smooth. Add the confectioner's sugar and beat until mixture appears silky. Beat in the egg yolk, followed by the tequila, salt, and lime and orange zest. Add the flour and mix in with a spoon. Gather the dough into a ball and divide it in half. Wrap each half in wax paper and refrigerate 30 minutes

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll each ball into a log about an inch thick. Wrap again in wax paper and chill in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

To make the coating: Whisk the egg yolk in a small bowl. Mix the sugar and sea salt well in a separate bowl and spread the mixture out on a piece of wax paper. Remove the dough logs from the fridge and use a pastry brush to lightly coat each with the egg, like a glaze.  Roll each log in the sugar and salt coating until evenly covered. Use a thin knife to slice the logs into quarter-inch-thick cookies. Place the cookies on the baking sheet; bake about 10 minutes. The cookies should still be pale, but the coated edges may brown slightly.

let's dish

I recently filled in for the Seven Days food section again and this time, it's all about Thanksgiving. 

As I mention in the story, my family has very few go-to recipes for the holiday. I doubted the same would be true of people who cook for a living and, it turns out, I was right. Four local cooks were kind of enough to share some well-loved recipes and the family traditions behind them. I had a blast chatting with each one of them — in fact, I may have a little crush on chef Patrick and his charming French accent — and I can't wait to try their drool-worthy recipes.

In the story:

Vanilla-mashed sweet potatoes with pecan-streusel topping

Maple-syrup-roasted root vegetables

Chestnut-and-sausage stuffing

Maple-walnut Brussels sprouts

Hop on over to check it out!

Previous Seven Days food stories, in case you're curious ;)

Slice of Life: Is foraying into fondant really a piece of cake?

Liquid Diet: Cocktail-inspired cooking to try at home

Digital Dishes: Someone's in the kitchen with YouTube...

broccoli-cheddar-cauliflower soup

It took four years for me to learn that when Dave wants to watch a guy movie like Fast Five, I need to just go in the kitchen and make soup.

(Also, happy four-year anniversary week, Dave! I heart you.)

Soup takes a while to make. There's a lot of chopping involved. And shredding cheese. And stirring every so often while things simmer for long periods of time. It's fairly mindless, but it's just enough to distract you from the epic car chases and crashes going on, very loudly, in the next room.

If you're smart, you'll choose to make a really involved soup, one where you have to roast some vegetables first. That increases the length of time you'll spend in the kitchen, avoiding said epic car chases. This soup, sadly, doesn't involve roasting. But it is so delicious that you'll be able to totally tune out the man movie going on and just kind of revel in its subtle cheesiness and amazingly thick, chunky texture.

Soup, preserving relationships and sanity one bowl at a time.

Seriously, though, this is the soup I've been trying to make since I started making soups. It's basically Panera's broccoli-cheddar soup. Burlington now has a Panera, but, given Vermonters' intense dislike of restaurant chains and the fact that I seem to have become a Vermonter, I could never be seen at it. Panera is only allowed on visits to my parents in New York, where the lunch spot is the least chain-y dining option. However, with this recipe, I'm not sure I need to ever go back.

I added cauliflower, because it's my favorite vegetable and I put it in absolutely everything. And I reduced the amount of cheese from the original recipe, because though I love cheddar, this soup is so thick and creamy already that you only need to add a little of it for just the right sharpness.

Happy soup season.

Broccoli-cheddar-cauliflower soup
(serves 4)

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 onion, diced
salt
pepper
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk (I used skim)
2 cups soup stock (I used low-sodium vegetable stock)
1 small head of broccoli, chopped into bite-size pieces
1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped into bite-size pieces
4 ounces extra-sharp cheddar, grated

Add 1 tablespoon unsalted butter to a large saucepan on medium-low heat. Once melted, add the onion, a dash of salt and pepper, and sauté until tender and slightly transparent. Scrape onion into a bowl and set aside.

Melt 1/4 cup unsalted butter in the saucepan, still on medium-low heat. Add the flour and stir vigorously for 3 to 4 minutes until it's formed a thick paste. Add the milk and soup stock, increasing the heat and stirring constantly until it's reached a gentle simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes. The liquids will be starting to visibly thicken.

Add the broccoli, cauliflower and sautéed onion, and stir. Continue to simmer 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Add the grated cheese and stir. Taste and season with salt and pepper if needed. Serve hot.