Eggplant with yogurt sauce and pomegranate

Friends are a huge part of my life, something that becomes more obvious as time goes by. I have friends I went to kindergarden and elementary school with; other I met through college or mutual friends. Now, I have discovered I can be friends with someone I have never met in person but feel I have common ground with because of this site.

And then there are my extended friends. I spent the last week or so with some of them. I was in Washington DC, taking care of family business, and ended up being the recipient of huge hospitality and care. These extended sets of friends are a part of my life by way of my brother F. They were his good friends. Now we became, in different ways and degrees, friends with each other. We are scattered all over the world, but have a bond that will always be there. 

Navarin Printanier: Lamb and Vegetable Stew

I´m excited about this recipe because the cold weather has started to arrive to this latitude, so a lamb and vegetable stew is a very good idea.

Today´s recipe from Around My French Table, for our FFWD group, is Navarin Printanier. A very hard to retain couple of words for a tasty braised lamb stew. Full of veggies and melt-in-your-mouth pieces of lamb.

I got back last night from a fairly long trip, a twenty hour flight from the United States. I had left a lot of posts ready but hadn´t had time to do this dish. I figured I had a few days, you know, since I just got back from a long trip, but then I read this post and my guilty twin surfaced. So I dashed across the street to the supermarket and even found a piece of lamb. The rest was a bit of a trade-off. Red onions instead of small white ones, no turnips and green beans instead of peas.

Rosemary and Olive Oil Bread

I believe myself to be quite capable in the bread baking department. I love baking with yeast. Love it. Can spend three days or three weeks nurturing a starter. Don´t mind planning my day around a certain two-day bread. So I set out to make beautiful bread from an even more beautiful book. I complain about books without pictures. This one has amazing photography; a perfectly good reason to buy books I might add. So with such enticing breads calling my name and fresh rosemary in my grocery bag I decided to bake the ever-magical-combination of that pungent herb and olive oil. The recipe calls for a few steps, something I particularly like when it comes to bread baking. Better flavor and all of that.

Toasted Hazelnut Cake

Hazelnuts are like the prodigal son. When they make an appearance they get noticed. And are very welcome. Particularly when they are toasted, which is almost always as it´s a needed step to skin them.

Nuts in the oven is a comforting smell that silently speaks of good baking things to come. I don´t think I ever came across a recipe that wasn´t enhanced if the nuts were toasted. And let´s not go into the salad department. That´s a whole other ball game where the nuts can make a dish go up a few notches.

And the oils, the liqueurs, the butters, the creams that can be made with different nuts make me dizzy with anticipation. It´s a whole nutty world that makes me very happy.

This specific cake was a request from one of my best friends for her birthday. She remembered it after many years. So I happily obliged. Don´t worry, it wasn´t the birthday cake. Thank goodness right? A loaf as a b-day cake? This was for her personal delight, far away from her kids who wouldn´t know a hazelnut from a cocoa puff. But I digress.

I bought Frangelico because the bottle was so nice. It has the shape of a monk and even comes with a rope belt. Through the years I came to realize how precious this liqueur is. This was certainly a cake worth splurging on. This is a dense pound cake, full of flavor, perfect for an afternoon tea. Or a cup of good coffee.

The smell of the batter alone is intoxicating, with the toasted nuts and the booze. Definitely, nuts and alcohol are a match that are part of an elite, a combination that has few rivals. At least in my baking world.

This recipe is from a book that not only has pages of recipes that will get you into the kitchen as fast as you can, but it has an enormous amount of information on ingredients and techniques. A one-of-a-kind cookbook. Worth every dime.

I made a slight change and didn´t use hazelnut oil even though the recipe especially recommends it. The idea of hunting for this particular oil went out the window when I found I still had some frangelico. It works so well for me that I don´t really know when, and if, I will try the hazelnut oil variation. But I have a feeling it will add greatly to depth of flavor.

TOASTED HAZELNUT POUND CAKE

from In the Sweet Kitchen, by Regan Daley

Note: The original recipe uses 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and 1 Tbs. hazelnut oil. It also states that the oil is very perishable, so I exchanged it for Frangelico and decreased the vanilla

Ingredients

1 ½ cups hazelnuts, toasted and skinned (see below)

1 cup (200g) granulated sugar

1 cup (225g) butter, at room tº

½ cup (100g) light brown sugar, tightly packed

4 eggs, at room tº

½ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups (300g) all-purpose flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup heavy cream

2 Tbs Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350º. Butter and lightly grease a 9-inch (24cm) springform pan. I used a loaf pan.

In a food processor, pulse the toasted hazelnuts with 2 Tbs of the granulated sugar until finely ground. Take care not to overgrind the hazelnuts to the point where they become a nut butter, or the cake will be oily and heavy. Set the nut mixture aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, or a large bowl with a wooden spoon, cream the butter until light, then add the remaining white and light brown sugars and cream the mixture until it is light, pale and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, and scraping the sides of the bowl periodically. Don´t worry if the mixture looks separated and broken; it will come together when you add the flour.

Beat in the vanilla.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the nuts and mix well to combine. Add this to the butter in three additions, alternating with the cream in two additions, beginning and ending with flour. Mix only until incorporated. Do not overmix. Add the hazelnut liqueur or the oil and mix well with a spatula.

Scrape the butter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched and a tester inserted in center comes out clean.

Transfer to a wire rack and cool 20 to 30 minutes. Run a thin bladed knife around the edge of the pan, remove the sides if using a springform or unmold if using a loaf pan.

Cool on a rack completely before serving or wrapping or storing.

This cake tastes better the second day and lasts up to 5 days.

To skin hazelnuts: Spread hazelnuts in a shallow baking pan, single layer, and bake in a 350º oven, for about 7 to 10 minutes or until fragrant. Watch closely, as they burn easily, and shake pan several times. The skins will begin to crackle. Transfer the toasted nuts to a bowl lined with a clean kitchen towel, bundle the nuts in the towel and set aside just until they are cool enough to handle. Rub the nuts briskly, then open the bundle and use your fingers to rub the papery skins from the nuts. Don´t worry if some of the nuts refuse to be totally skinned. Store in an airtight container.

Salted Peanuts and Dark Chocolate Blondies

I wonder how these bars came to be. Someone probably put a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough in a pan by mistake. And never looked back.

I´m not a big cookie fan. Like to make them, hardly ever eat them, but understand it´s not the average feeling. Most people love cookies. I would rather have a bar or cake, without frosting if possible.

But the taste of chocolate chip cookies is so great, that this recipe went on my to-do list as soon as I saw it. That was ages ago. A real discovery. 

I have a recipe from a very old magazine for cookie `pizza´. It´s nothing more than a batch of blondies cooked in a pizza pan, then topped with ice cream, fudge sauce and cherries. It never ceases to amaze me how the same batter varies so much depending on the pan or the shape.

I started making this variation a while back. Quite by accident. I had bought an enormous amount of peanuts, nothing new here, and had run out of regular chocolate chips. Why did I insist on making blondies then? I have no idea. I could´ve made so many other things instead.

Coconut Friands

It's friday again, time for another recipe from FFWD, from Around my French Table.
I missed the last two posts, since they had fishy things as their main ingredients. I can't stand anything that has lived in the water, to the point where I say I'm allergic, so people don't insist I try it one more time. Nobody messes with seafood allergies.
So I'm glad to be back with a baking recipe. Today is all about friands. They first time I saw them they looked like very moist muffins bakes as little round cakes. They had blueberries and tasted great.
This recipe is for mini coconut friands, where shredded coconut replaces the traditional almond flour.
Our master bakes suggests adding fresh fruit or jam on top before they go into the oven. So I resorted to my very versatile, go-with-almost-anything old friend, dulce de leche. Coconut and ddl are a heavenly combination. The bars are a best seller at the cafe simply because they taste incredible.

The batter for this little cakes is a breeze to put together. Just mix egg whites, coconut, sugar, flour, melted butter and flavorings. It ends up being heavy and satiny.

Buckwheat Bread with Cinnamon and Walnuts

The beginning of autumn and spring can be similar. I find myself walking and feeling pretty much the same at both times. The food I cook and bake these days reflect that. From a pasta salad to a chicken curry, anything goes. There´s no definitive feel to the days. Though I´m looking forward to those cold mornings, when it´s barely daylight and the kitchen feels like a refuge, silent and cozy, before the day begins. What I refer to as `cold´ can feel like a joke to those who endure real cold many months a year. Our cold is a little bit below zero, and only a few weeks (at the most) during the winter. The rest is above zero weather. But, since habit makes the person, we wrap ourselves in scarves and coats and complain. Then you see northern hemisphere tourists walking around town in a light sweater, happy that the fall lasts all winter long.

Lemon Loaf Cake

I´m a happy person every other tuesday, when we get a chance to post our TWD recipe. I like exploring new recipes, and this book, Baking with Julia, is a real find if you like baking. Of course not all recipes turn out like they should (at least the first time) and some I might not repeat anytime soon. But I always like taking the time to read them, buy the ingredients, have the post ready.
Today is all about lemons. Lemon Loaf Cake, by contributing baker Norman Love. A name I hadn´t heard of before, to be honest.
This recipe is hosted by Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life .

I was intrigued upon reading this recipe for the first time. I had nominated it, because the name didn´t match the instructions. I imagined a standard loaf or pound cake and this was not the usual way to make it.

Chocolate Kahlua Mini Bundt Cakes

I came back from a trip last year, carrying all sorts of cake molds and utensils.

I used to travel with a lot of luggage because I packed a ridiculous amount of clothes and accesories. After a few trips, where half the suitcases came back untouched, I started packing with a color theme. I would take clothes that all matched the same two pairs of shoes and one handbag that I had decided to take. Now, I pack as few clothes as I can, so I can come back with books, magazines, baking supplies, things for my house. On the other hand, I hardly buy any clothes or bags or shoes. Not anymore.

Turmeric Ginger Cauliflower

The fall is amongst us, with shorter days, sigh, and the weather changing for good. I enjoy taking a walk in this perfect weather, sitting at a bench in the park; which I seem to be doing a lot lately. A good book, a crisp day, and I´m happy as a dog with two tails, reading or mentally arranging my next trip. We´ve been having absolutely stunning (as Gordon Ramsay would say) days here. Very low humidity, which I´ll never tire to explain, is like a monster that gets everybody cranky.

Exploring new dishes, I decided to cook myself some cauliflower, which is a vegetable that never really caught my attention. But the idea of those white florets colored by the rich yellowness of the turmeric kept appearing in my mind. And the rest of the ingredients I already had. Which is something that makes me proud since I always seem to be missing one or two key ingredients of a recipe. I never make lists. I have such good memory that few things escape my mental list, especially food related. But, let´s face it, I´m not getting any younger, or mentally sharper, so my always reliable memory sometimes decides to take a nap. So I buy this, but forget that. And when I get home I´m back to square one, unable to complete the recipe.

Plum Tart

When you realize there are plums in your fridge, again, and remember you bookmarked a one bowl recipe like this one, you simply go to the kitchen and start measuring.

Plums and I have a strange relationship, similar to the peachy one I told you before. I remember being a kid and eating soft, juicy plums from the trees. My parents weren´t so happy about the proliferous trees; the mashed plums all over the ground were definitely a messy thing, not to mention having to pick them up before the birds arrived for a feast.  I hardly find those anymore. Same thing with peaches and nectarines. Sad.

Inevitably, it always reminds me of a great chef that said something like `How do you make the perfect peach tart? With the perfect peaches. ´ I agree wholeheartedly. Ripe, perfect fruit, the kind you eat with your hands is one of life´s food pleasures.

Open-face Pork Panini with Pickled Eggplants

My (former) mother-in-law passed me down a killer recipe for pickled eggplants. They still are my favorite, but are made the old fashioned way. That means a rather time consuming process. Worth every second, since they keep for a long time.

Eggplants are a favorite food. They transform themselves completely when cooked. I can never get over that mind-blowing smoky flavor when they are roasted. My second favorite way to eat them is pickled. Simply extraordinary. Perfect when your taste buds just need something vinegar-y. Not just salty. It happens to me a lot. Maybe it´s a family thing, since my brother had the same cravings. We used to laugh about it while eating a tomato salad with lots of vinegar just to sop bread in the left-over juices and satisfy our ridiculous cravings. I´m probably not alone here as vinegar potato chips are so popular. Not in this country, mind you.

The Versatile Blogger Award

I woke up today to an award! How cool is that?

Mireia, from Baking in Spain, selected me to be one of the recipients of the Versatile Blogger Award!

Chocolate Chip Date Cake Squares

Remember the chocolate cake I told you about on this post? Well, this is not it. Ha.

It turned out too big, too dry, too dense. The idea was great: apricots and chocolate. But it wasn´t a post-worthy recipe. And I won´t be trying it again. So, as promised, a chocolate cake. This one has dates in it. It´s simply amazing, soft, tender, moist, different. Let me tell you it´s a better trade-off. Lucky you.

An ordinary looking square of chocolate cake with some nuts and chips on top. Oh no. Nothing ordinary about this humble piece of cake. A bit messy looking, but that´s on me, not the cake.
The dates are chopped, and then covered with boiling water and some baking soda. Something happens there. I kinda know it. A chemical thing. Something to do with the baking soda neutralizing something in the dates. Stuff like that. I considered studying chemistry at one point during my teenage years, but as you can see those days are gone.

Zucchini with Bits of Bacon

I had to improvise. This week´s French Fridays with Dorie challenge was asparagus with bits of bacon. Guess what? Those green stalks are nowhere to be found. Season´s over and that´s the end of it. Not even a sorry excuse for a stalk can be bought in the market, not even if the vegetable guy is your friend.

I could´ve bought canned asparagus (horrific I know). My next best idea was green beans or zucchini. Since the former is kind of an obvious choice with bacon I decided to use zucchini, cut it in strips without some of the inner seeds, sear it in hot oil and use is as `asparagus´. Roasting them was my other alternative.

And since this was not the original dish, obviously, I decided to take some liberties and used olive oil and red onion. This is a really good, simple side dish. I cooked the bacon, turned off the heat and just put the sliced onion in the pan to cook with the residual heat. It was perfect. Then I added the lemon juice directly to the zucchini, since they already had oil.

Zucchini Pineapple Bread

Why is it that, when I write or read a word many times, it starts to look weird on paper? It happens to me all the time. It´s happening right now with the word zucchini. I´ve been staring at this recipe´s name for a while now, thinking how to relate my wish to bake this bread for the first time, with a story, or a witty observation, or something at all.
Since I baked a gorgeous bread but I´m stuck with words I´ll just make this a short, concise post.

I had never made zucchini bread before. And this recipe has crushed pineapple. But it had too many `white´ ingredients and I wanted to make a healthier bread. I substituted some whole wheat flour and organic brown sugar. And the amount of grated green vegetable was quite a lot, so in the end, at least sounds a bit healthy.

Chicken with Apples and Curry

This was my grandmother´s signature dish. Along with her signature dessert. Growing up in this country, Indian food was unheard of. By the time I was a grown-up I discovered real curries. Real because they don´t rely on curry powder; they develop their flavor by way of many ingredients coming together wonderfully. This one is not that kind of curry, because back in the old days it was the store-bought powder or nothing. And she didn´t use coconut milk because, let´s face it, it was even more unheard of.

I got hold of my grandmother´s handwritten recipe books a few years ago. To my surprise, the last few pages have a handwritten index and It´s my writing. I didn´t remember it but I wrote those indexes for her when I was a teenager, so she wouldn´t have to go through all the notebooks every time she wanted a recipe.

Pizza Rustica

This group, TWD: Tuesdays with Dorie, got me wondering, out loud, why is it that I spend years, literally years, from the moment I bookmark a recipe to the time I actually do it.

The third recipe I´m making is by contributing baker, Nick Malgieri, and it´s Pizza Rustica. I should write it in capital, neon letters. Why? I´ve had this page marked for at least ten years. And I finally made it because it was assigned. I guess when it comes to food procrastination or piling up insane amounts of cookbooks and magazines, I´m your girl.
Back to the food issue here, this recipe has nothing to do with what we know as a traditional pizza. It´s really a pie. A lattice pie. But savory. The filling basically consists of cheeses (ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan, all very Italian mind you), and cured meats, prosciutto in this case, binded together with eggs.

I cringe at the thought of cooking prosciutto. I feel it´s supposed to be eaten raw. Here it´s called raw ham, so you get the idea. A delicacy completely different from cooked ham. But, since I´m trying to follow recipes exactly, prosciutto it was. Ricotta is a favorite ingredient for me. I sometimes make my own. You can´t go wrong using it as part of a filling in a tart. This is an excellent combination of sweet dough and salty filling. I added extra salt to the filling, and am glad I did. Will make this pie again. With different fillings which will require, at times, a less sugary dough. Besides, I have to make up for at least ten years of not eating it.

Hot Cross Buns

I don´t care much for celebrations. 

No, not even Christmas. It´s not that I don´t like to celebrate, I just think there´s an mandatory nature that doesn´t agree with me. 

What if, for example, I´m mad at my spouse and it so happens to be our anniversary? Or if I want to give gifts to my friends during the year, and I just don´t feel like shopping in December? 

So let me re-phrase. I don´t care much for appointed celebrations. That said, it´s strange how I managed to get two recipes posted around Saint Patrick´s and now one around Easter. I just wanted to bake and they were perfect occasions. 

So you see, I´m celebrating because I choose to. See my point? Don´t you agree? Not many do.

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