Actual Cooking: Actual Cookies!

In my last post, I mentioned the Quiet Corner Democrats' holiday party, where I had the most delicious chocolate martinis, and I promised to post about the Chinese 5-Spice Brownie Cookies I made as my contribution to the potluck dessert reception.

I've talked here often enough about how much I love making ice cream, and I first thought I might take homemade ice cream... but the party was an hour's drive from home, and the logistics of keeping ice cream cold for the trip, and then for the several hours of the party, and making it easy to self-serve on an unattended buffet line all seemed a bit daunting. Just as I was scratching my chin about this dilemma, the local paper's Thanksgiving week food supplement came out, and on its last page was an Associated Press article headlined "Grown-up holiday cookies with fennel and anise," and my eye fell on this recipe:¹

Chinese 5-Spice Brownie Cookies

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 10-oz. packages bittersweet chocolate bits
• 6 eggs
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp 5-spice powder
• 2 cups AP flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Combine the butter and oil in a pan and heat over medium-high heat until the butter is all melted. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until all the chocolate is melted and smooth (return the pan to low heat if necessary). Set aside.
2. Whisk together (I actually used my stand mixer) all the other ingredients until smooth, then add in the chocolate, continuing to beat until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
3. Preheat the oven to 350.
4. Line 2 large baking sheets (or 4 half-sheet pans) with parchment paper and scoop out the dough by the table spoon, leaving about 2 in. space between scoops.
5. Bake until puffed and crackly on top (10 to 12 minutes per the published recipe; more like 14 minutes in my oven). Cool on racks.

I was delighted with the result: rich, fudgy, brownie-like texture, just as the recipe promised; very chocolaty and with a delicious hint of spice.

Truthfully, I was surprised it was only a hint of spice; I had expected the flavor to be a bit more exotic. I suspect the explanation may be the 5-spice powder: The traditional version (as referenced in the article) includes Sichuan peppercorns, but what I got from my local Penzeys spice store included ginger instead. In any case, the final flavor was delicious, tasting mostly like a chocolate brownie, but reminding one of my friends vaguely of gingerbread, as well.

The recipe promises a yield of 4 dozen, but I actually got 5 dozen cookies out of it, plus a couple samples for in-process quality control testing! As it happens, 5 dozen is exactly what the Rockville Public Library needs for its annual Holiday Cookie Sale, so I'll be making another batch soon.

You should try them, too!
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¹ Note that my local paper is actually the Journal Inquirer, but since its content is behind a paywall, I found the same recipe somewhere else, and linked to that. That'll show 'em, eh?

Have a Cocktail: The Old-School Chocolate Martini

Today I attended a the annual holiday party for the Quiet Corner Democrats, a service organization that helps facilitate coordination between local Democratic party groups, activists, and candidates here in Eastern Connecticut.

Before you wonder why I'm not writing about this at my other blog, let me just say that we Democrats worked hard this year, and had a pretty good November, and were ready to party with some good food and drink. The event was a pot-luck dessert reception, and soon enough I'll blog about the chocolate brownie cookies with Chinese 5-spice that I made, but the occasion for this (brief) post is the featured drink at the open bar (yes, liberal parties are better).

My friend Chris Pitts, one of the QCD founders, was serving a a chocolate martini... and no, this was not one of those "martinis" that shares virtually nothing with the classic martini other than the shape of the glass; this was old school: A generous serving of premium vodka mixed with a much smaller amount of secondary liquor — in this case, white creme de cacao — and served up in a classic cocktail glass.

I don't have a proper recipe, but from watching the bartender build more than one of them, I'd say it was about...

• 3 to 4 parts Pearl vodka
• 1 part white creme de cacao
• Shake with ice
• Strain into cocktail glass rimmed with cocoa powder.

What a delicious way to begin the Christmas holiday season; enjoy!

Dining Out: Thirty5

Friday evening, my wife and I had our second dinner at Thirty5 in West Hartford Center. In reinventing the former Reuben's Deli, owner Brian Hersh is largely carrying over the existing breakfast and lunch menus (which I haven't had an opportunity to sample yet), but under Thirty5's new chef, dinner and late-night offerings are entirely new.

On our first visit, just days after the early-October reopening, there were some obvious growing pains, as the kitchen seemed a bit backed up, but the staff couldn't have been more gracious, and the delays were quickly forgotten. My wife chose the skirt steak frites with garlicky spinach, Moroccan glaze, and chimichurri, while I selected the crispy buttermilk fried chicken with red bliss potato salad,  grilled corn salad, and roasted tomato salsa. Both were excellent: Straightforward food elevated and really well prepared.

My wife liked the steak frites so well that she ordered it again, this time requesting the red bliss potato salad as a substitute for the fries that normally come with it. I could happily have eaten the fried chicken again -- it was crispy, moist, and deeply flavorful -- but I'm addicted to variety, so on this second visit I chose the daily special soup, a delicious truffled mushroom, and the kung pao shrimp and beef from the Bites portion of the menu, along with a side of the house hand-cut fries.

The kung pao dish was great, with just the right amount of bite from the ancho chili and acid from the lime. Be advised that the Bites dishes are proper appetizer-sized portions (which I mean as a compliment, by the way), rather than the massive, everybody-share plates that are so common these days.

Having not gorged ourselves, we were able to sample dessert: an excellent creme brulee, served with a single piece of house-made rugalach.

 

 

The atmosphere at Thirty5 is cozy and friendly, if a bit loud. I can't wait to go back to sample the rest of the menu (the grilled Stonington scallops look good, as does the Reuben's chicken rollatini) and check out some of their special events, including Happy Hour, Sunday brunch (with endless mimosas), and local beer tastings.

Actual Cooking: Phallic Vegetable Ice Cream

Well, pumpkin ice cream, really, but since I decided to substitute butternut squash (from the organic home garden stand right down the street) for real, honest-to-FSM pumpkin, my daughter won't let me call it that. Telling her that I saw Alton Brown recommend butternut for making pumpkin pie on Good Eats¹ didn't get me anywhere with her, and got Alton called an idiot (sorry, AB; kids, you know...).

Now that the election is over and I can breathe again, I plan to get back to cooking, and to blogging about it. Naturally, I've been thinking about what to make for Thanksgiving. We're a pretty traditional family -- there's no messing with the turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, even the cranberry "sauce" with the can ribs still pressed into its sides -- but there's a little maneuvering room around the edges, with side dishes and dessert. I have an alternative sweet potato side in mind, but for now, I've been focused on pumpkin ice cream.

I searched the web and my ice cream cookbooks for recipes, but the first one I found (adapted by David Lebovitz from The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox). Interestingly, Lebovitz, who lives in Paris and can't easily get whole pumpkins, also substituted butternut for pumpkin, but I had already decided on that before I found this recipe.

Once I found it, I followed it pretty closely, with two exceptions: I didn't use any liquor, and I replaced half of the specified dark brown sugar with Connecticut pure maple syrup (just 'cuz). I washed and split the butternut (don't forget to reserve the seeds; they're great toasted, just like mini pumpkin seeds) and roasted in at 375°F for 45 minutes; while it was in the oven, I worked on the ice cream base. The spiced cream custard base cooked up thicker than I'm used to: With 5 egg yolks, it's a bit eggier than some other recipes I've worked with. Once it's done, it gets strained into an ice-bath-chilled bowl and the brown sugar (and, in my variation, maple syrup) gets whisked in. As soon as the mixture was cool enough, I transferred it to the fridge to chill. By this time, the "pumpkin" was done, so I scooped out the cooked flesh and turned to the blender to puree it. Next time, I think I'll use my stick blender in a bowl, because the standing blender's blades tended to just hollow out a space in the mass of squash flesh, and I kept having to stop and fiddle with it.

Once the puree is done and cooled, and the ice cream base is chilled², it all gets whisked together (with a skosh of vanilla extract) and goes into the ice cream machine. Probably because the base was thicker, it froze quickly, and the "lick the beater" test suggests it will be creamy and delicious. As usual, I packed it into two 1-pint coated paper buckets (purchased at my local restaurant supply store as soup containers, but they look like ice cream pints to me)  and stashed it in my chest freezer to await Thanksgiving dinner. I'll let you know in an after-action post how it comes out.

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¹ Actually, his recipe uses actual pumpkin, it turns out, but I remembered the suggestion.

² The recipes always say to refrigerate overnight, but I generally cheat and chill the base in my chest freezer, with no noticeable trouble so far.

Actual Cooking: The Ghost of Thanksgiving Past

I'm working on getting this blog restarted, now that I'm done saving the flippin' worldworking on the election, and Thanksgiving week is an obvious time to talk about cooking. I have a couple things in mind, which I will duly report here if/when they come to fruition, but first I went looking for some pics from last Thanksgiving. Honestly, I was sure I'd already blogged about this, but it turns out I only posted pictures to Facebook.

So here's a ghost from Thanksgiving (recently) past: last year, while considering what interesting ways there might be to serve the leftovers from a traditional turkey dinner (more interesting than turkey and stuffing sandwiches on white bread, I mean), I was seized by the Imp of the Perverse© and produced this:

Why yes, that is nigiri with turkey breast and cranberry sauce wasabi; maki with dark meat turkey, stuffing, and leftover green beans; and a dipping sauce of turkey jus with scallions and soy sauce. I hope it doesn't haunt your dreams too badly. (I also hope I'm not killed in the night by a squad of outraged sushi-chef ninjas!)

TV Takes: The Great Food Truck Race (Spoiler)

Recently I mentioned that I was enjoying Season 3 of the retooled Great Food Truck Race, which pits teams of aspiring food truck entrepreneurs — rather than established trucks, as in the first two seasons — against each other, with the truck itself and startup funding as the prize. The new format retains the best elements of the existing show and adds the element of starting a new career/business that's common in other occupational reality competition shows, including such non-food shows as America's Next Top Model and Project Runway, as well as NBC's one-season America's Next Great Restaurant.

Unlike the latter, Food Truck doesn't attempt to mentor or develop the trucks' concepts: While the precise menu varies from city to city and challenge to challenge, each team came into the competition with its branding, concept, and truck in place... but, of course, they only got to keep the truck as long as they avoided elimination.

Tonight I watched the last episode before the finale, and I'm pleased with the way the competition has progressed. Of the three trucks that made it to this penultimate challenge, two of them — Pop-A-Waffle and Seoul Sausage — have seemed like the most distinctive and sharply defined concepts from Day One, and, along with the early-eliminated Under the Crust, the ones whose food I was most intrigued to try.

Seoul Sausage, in particular, is a favorite of mine for a variety of reasons: First, I just love Korean food, and while their menu doesn't include any strictly traditional Korean dishes, the flavors and techniques are all there. I would travel nontrivial distances to try their deep fried kimchi rice balls, to name just one example. Second, the Seoul Sausage crew strike me as the having the best combination of passion and focus of all the teams. And finally, their success is compensating for the disappointment of last season's Korean team, the similarly impressive Korilla BBQ truck, being disqualified under allegations of stuffing their till.

Pop-A-Waffle is slightly less appealing to me: Despite being a child of the South, I've never quite "gotten" the chicken-and-waffles thing (which was, interestingly, the original concept of what eventually became Soul Daddy, the winning [albeit ultimately unsuccessful] Next Great Restaurant concept). Even so, though, the idea of building a truck around waffles, both savory and sweet, seems appealing.

As it turned out, Pop-A-Waffle was eliminated tonight in third place, with Nonna's Kitchenette advancing to the finale instead. Nonna's has not been one of my favorites, but I confess that's probably just a result of my own personal prejudices: The homestyle Italian comfort food that forms the heart of their menu and concept isn't especially enticing to me, and neither are the team members' self-described Jersey girl (not to say Jersey Shore) personas.

All that said, it looks like they'll be tough competition for the Seoul Sausage guys, and I can't wait to see how the finale comes out. You can count on me commenting here.

TV Quick Takes: Top Chef Masters (Spoilers)

Tonight I watched what the cable guide blurb hypereloquently called the penultimate episode of Top Chef Masters Season 4, featuring an elimination challenge in which the final 3 chefs mentored teams of high school culinary students through the preparation of dishes they themselves couldn't even touch. I've been enjoying this season of Masters, which has finally come into its own and no longer strikes me as a knockoff placeholder for the Top Chef mothership, but since I haven't been blogging here much until recently, I haven't had a chance to express myself about it. Just a few quick observations, as we await the finale:

• I've liked Chris Cosentino since I first saw him on the first season of The Next Iron Chef, but I have loved him on this show. Tonight's Critics' Table was edited to lead us to believe he was going home, so I was intensely relieved to see him advance to the final. Not only has he consistently put out food I wanted to eat all season, but it was clear he was by far the best, most committed, most caring teacher of the three... which observation matches the judgment of the viewing audience, according to the viewers' poll.
• The fact that Cosentino obviously liked her was the only reason I was sorry to see Patricia Yeo go last week. Early on, I liked her feistiness and thought her food looked interesting, but in the later episodes, her behavior toward fellow competitor Lorena Garcia increasingly turned me off. I hate the sexist term catty, but it's hard to avoid the word when Yeo actually made aggressive meowing noises at Garcia more than once. These are all high-level professional chefs, and one of the nice things about Masters is that they usually treat each other with respect. Yeo, not so much.
• Speaking of Garcia... Taco Bell? Seriously?

Well, I'll be looking forward to next week's finale... and to the upcoming new seasons of Top Chef and Next Iron Chef... and to Life After Top Chef... and to  Chef Race: UK vs U.S. ... and to... argh! So much food TV; so little time!