A Cake You Can Always Depend On

We all have them in our kitchens...those classic cookbooks that have been there for what seems like 100 years held together by some combination of tape and rubber bands because of a long storied history.  40 years ago there wasn't a million different cookbooks that you could reference at any given time or websites that with a touch of a button you had 1000's of recipes at your fingertips.  There were the classics: "The Joy of Cooking", "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", "The Silver Palate", and "The Good Housekeeping Cookbook" to name a few and those were what people cooked out of.  I look at the shelves now where my cookbooks are housed in the kitchen and among the many cookbooks on a gamete of topics that I have collected over the years,  there some of my mother's classics mixed into the group.  I don't know what it is but every time I open up one of those old books I become somewhat warm and nostalgic thinking about the meals we would eat growing up.  It's like every time I open up one of the Marcella Hazan's Italian Cookbooks I can't help but run through the sticky-note pages that denoted my mother's favorites recipes whether it be bolognese sauce, the tomato cream "summer" sauce or the veal stew with tomatoes and peas that we've ate for years and I know that we will continue to enjoy for so many years to come. The other cookbook that has come out so many times in our house that it's pretty much a miracle that it still has it pages is "The Good Housekeeping Cookbook" in particularly for the sour-cream coffeecake which page is stained with dried up flour and what looks like vanilla that probably spilled on it at some point during the numerous times we made the recipe over the years.   By no means is the recipe flashy or a show stopper but it's dependable and solid...something you always want when you're looking for a dessert to drop off at someone's house or just a simple sweet to enjoy over coffee.  Well the opportunity presented itself this week for the sour-cream coffeecake to make another appearance and as follows is the recipe for you to enjoy yourselves.

Sour-Cream Coffeecake
(from "The Good Housekeeping Cookbook")

In a small bowl, mix together:
-1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
-1/2 cup sugar 
-1 teaspoon cinnamon 
Set bowl aside for later use.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9-inch tube pan (I like to use a tube pan with a removable bottom because I find that it is easier to get the cake out after it's finished).

In a large bowl, mix together on medium speed until light and fluffy:
-1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
-1 cup sugar 

On low speed mix in the following ingredients until bended, constantly scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula:
-2 cups all -purpose flour
-1 cup sour cream
-2 eggs
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Once combined, beat at medium speed for 3 minutes.  

Spread half of the batter into the prepared pan.  Sprinkle half of the nut mixture and then repeat with the remaining batter and nut mixture.  Bake for 55-60 minutes until cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and the knife comes out clean from the center.  Let cool for 10 minutes and then remove from pan by running knife slowly around the sides. 

A Healthy Southern Weeknight Meal

One of the perks of being home regularly is that I now have an opportunity to catch a news cast program more often then not and it's been kind of nice being able to actually know what's going on in the world.  And you sometimes learn when it's a really slow news day because something will take over the news that isn't all that substantial or important...case in point, the big uproar of Paula Deen announcing she is diabetic.  Let me throw the disclaimer out there right now before anything else can be said: diabetes and obesity are serious diseases that affect millions of Americans each year and should not be taken lightly but she cooked up quite the media ploy to announce this news while it very well could have been something that was handled quietly and privately .  I was never a fan of Paula Deen to begin with and I wish her the best but this isn't going to change anything now.  I think she has given southern cooking a bad name (I therefore will not be throwing out my February issue of BA dedicated to all things Southern when it arrives this week) and while I think Anthony Bourdain has gone a little far in his media war with her, I do think he has a good point and of course a few good entertaining lines to come out of it. 

So you are probably wondering, "where am I going with all of this,  is she just going to ramble through an entire post"  but I promise I have a point or a link to tie it all together.  Here's our dinner last night - a healthy Southern supper of Tilapia with Spinach-Pecan Pesto, a couscous medley and some glazed carrots.  The pesto takes all of 5 minutes to make and the great part about it is that you are going to have some leftover for another meal.  It's great as a sandwich spread, on a pizza or tossed with your favorite pasta and it's an easy way for people to eat spinach if they are skeptics.  The recipe for the fish is really adaptable and does well with pantry substitutions.  We ended up having it with flounder last night because it looked better at the supermarket and I used walnuts instead of pecans since that's what I had at home.  I always hear people try to say how hard it is to cook healthy, simple meals at home but don't sell yourself or your health short.  It's the little changes that make the big difference and you don't have to cook with 3 pounds of butter to represent the south. 

the fish about to go into the oven

By the way:  I'm a sucker for inspirational quotes and mantras and I fell very hard for this one.  Check out "Sweet Sugar Spice Candy"  for great lines whenever you might need a little positive pick me up.   My favorite for the day... "Keep your head, heels and standards high".

A New Year, 20 degrees and the sniffles...

The page has been turned and here we are...well hello 2012 and thanks for bringing this wonderful,  nagging sinus cold with you (can't you just sense my sincere sarcasm here)!  I think like many people I was so ready to leave 2011 behind and welcome 2012 with all the newness and promise that it held.  At the second annual New Year's Day "Waffle and Bacon Brunch", we had a meal heavy in the pork department because as we learned, it will signify a year ahead rich in happiness and hey if that's one more easy excuse to eat bacon then we were more then all for it.  Since I was all for any additional element that would bring us luck this year I also read somewhere about the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes on New Years where each grape signifies 1 month of the year and as silly as it sounds "if the grape is sweet then you'll have a good month".  So here we were on Sunday morning, eating our 12 grapes each off of the skewers and going through each grape and trying to predict how every month might turn out.  It was fun to recap the different events that we experienced in 2011 and what is ahead of us for the new year and this is going to sound so cheesy but it felt really nice to have this new tradition that I had created with my friends last year.  In the most perfect world, I probably would have wanted us all to go around the table and talk about our goals for the New Year but another bottle of champagne got opened and consumed and the goal talk will have to wait until another day or maybe when the birthdays are celebrated in a few weeks. 

So yes a very nice kickoff to the New Year and then reality set in.  Maybe we've become overly spoiled with good weather so far this winter but it just felt extra cold on Tuesday with the extreme drop in temperature.  Throw in the fact that everyone in my house has been battling the infamous winter cold and it hasn't made for a good week.  I was going to make chili for dinner that night but then with a little urging from my mother, I knew what we really needed to have...a big bowl of pasta ceci soup.    There is something oddly comforting about making soup, where not a whole lot of time and effort goes into the prep work and then letting the pot simmer away on the stove where every so often you get a whiff of this faint classic smell of what you have to look forward to that night.   The soup might not have kicked out our colds, and for that matter the cold pills aren't exactly working fast enough either but I think I convinced myself that it might just be the winter of the soup because it really was a perfect weeknight dinner.  And there is always next week to kick off the new year in the energy it calls for.

Pasta Ceci Soup (adapted from Chef Silvio)

In a large pot over medium heat, saute until tender (about 8-10 minutes):
-2 ribs of chopped up celery
-1 cup of halved grape tomatoes
-4 cloves of chopped garlic
-1/4 cup of chopped fresh parsley

Add about about a tablespoon of tomato paste (I'm a huge fan of tomato paste in a tube so I just usually give it a generous squirt) and season with salt and pepper.  Add in 1 can of drained and rinsed chickpeas and stir to combine. 

Add 1.5 - 2 quarts of chicken stock (I used some of my supply of frozen homemade stock from the fall but a good quality store bought stock will do the job as well) and stir to combine.  Check seasonings and once soup comes to a steady boil, turn it down and let simmer away for about an hour until the chickpeas are tender.   

Finish the soup off with 2 cups of cooked ditalini pasta (the small tube shapes) and a generous handful of grated cheese. 

Box it up

Here's to...

-Leaving 2011 in the past where it belongs.  We have a few more hours left to self-reflect on the year and everything it brought or what it didn't bring.  For everything that was accomplished and for the things that are still on the "to-do" list of life.  For the fabulous people you surround yourself with everyday, for the people you can do without and the people you just want to hold onto in whatever way you can.  For every great moment that you knew was unfolding right in front of you and for every lesson that it took awhile longer to learn the significance and strength of.  Spend however much time reflecting that you need but then put the year and all it's elements in a box and label it what is it...history. 

-Welcoming 2012 with all the pomp and circumstance that it deserves.  To throwing away the resolutions and the plans and just letting life unfold how it should.  To pushing the boundaries of your life too far everyday so you can know what they actually are supposed to be.  To firing your "representative", freeing your mind and just being your one true self.  To stop caring what everyone else thinks and start focusing on what you believe in and what you know is true.  I can think of 1000 different things to toast to and hope for that are all well and good but the most important thing is to face forward, don't look back and be ready to run as soon as the clock strikes midnight and the new year unfolds. 

Bring it on 2012.  I'm more then ready for you and all that you've got in store for me this year!

Christmas Wrap Up and the Buche Off

It has taken a few days to recover from all the events and meals of Christmas but here we are and I have to say that I really enjoyed the holidays this year.  I'm sure that it helped that I wasn't a slave to all of the fun, retail holiday madness but I got to spend quality time enjoying activities such as wrapping presents, baking and most importantly planning my Christmas Eve dinner.  We have always hosted Christmas Eve dinner at our home throughout my entire life and it has always been a combination of Polish and Italian classics that were shared amongst family and friends.  Through the years certain elements have always held true such as having Pierogi, the Polish Mushroom Soup and some sort of seafood dishes to celebrate "La Vigilia" which is feast of the seven fishes, a traditional Southern Italian event.  We've never had quite seven and this year we tapped out the menu at 6 different fish dishes but I knew that this year would be the time to go all out with a menu.  It was like I was getting an opportunity to dig deep into my fantasy Christmas playbook and make things that either I believed always belonged on our Christmas Eve table or recipes that I wanted to tackle that would just take the meal to the next level (considering I feel like now that we throw all of these dinner parties that you just can't skimp out when it comes to really special dinners like Christmas Eve).  Here is our menu rundown for Christmas Eve:
-Cold Lobster Spread (for guests to pick on as they arrived)
-Crab Stuffed Mushrooms
-Fried Calamari
-Roasted Shrimp Cocktail (Thank you Ina Garten for revolutionizing the way I make Shrimp)
-Traditional Polish Mushroom Soup aka Barszcz
-Baccala (Salted Cod in Red Sauce) based on my Grandmother's recipe with a few added additions to give it my own touch.  I have to tell you that I was really nervous about making this dish...I kept dwelling on all of these doubts as I was making it of "would the fish be to salty, would it taste anything like my Grandmother's, or would I miss the mark completely on this one like the infamous meat sauce incident of 2009?"  But once I served the dish that night, got the baccala seal of approval from Ray and continued to watch as they scraped the dutch oven clean I knew that I has mastered the art of the baccala).

-Potato and Sauerkraut Pierogi
-Scallop Gratin
-Clementine Granita (you knew that there would have to be a Martha touch in there somehow.

-Buche de Noel (the French Chocolate Log)

One could say that I was borderline obsessed with making the Buche.  I have seen them in magazines for years and always loved the way it looked and thought how it would be this amazing culmination of a holiday dinner.  One day in talking about Christmas dinners, I made mention of making a buche to my fellow "fabulously domesticated" friend Carmina who got just as excited as I did about making one and then I knew there was no backing out.  There are always 3 elements to making the buche - The chocolate sponge cake that needs to be baked to a perfect consistency for rolling, the mousse that acts as the filling and then the ganache frosting.  I used a recipe from The Canal House for my cake and frosting but wanted a little bit of a lighter element for the mousse so I used Denise's wonderful white chocolate frangelico mousse instead and it was perfect.  I'm still picking at the leftovers 4 days later but it was a huge hit and once you were in the thick of it rolling the cake and piping the chocolate frosting on, it wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be.  Carmina's came out just as nice and was as big as a hit at her family's Christmas Dinner as well.  We did realize though...that next year we are going to make them together along with half of the other elements of our Christmas Dinner recipes that we traded off. 

the buche after a successful role

after the icing

  

about to be devoured.



I Love Pierogi...

This past Sunday we celebrated what is probably my most favorite day of the year...Pierogi Night.  For those of you that don't know, I'm half Polish and therefore eat pierogi on Christmas Eve every year as part of our traditional half-Polish, half-Italian dinner.  Probably one of my most earliest cooking memories as a kid was every year making pierogi with my Mom and grandmother MeMe.  MeMe would mix the dough by hand using a wooden board that would come out once a year for this purpose only and would be able to just feel the dough and know if it was the right texture and consistency.  She would then roll out the dough by hand using a rolling pin and then my brother and I would have the job of cutting out the circles using a special metal cutter that was crafted by my grandfather probably 50 years ago.  Then my mother would fill them and pinch their edges together since she has always had the magic touch or fingers to do the job.  With what I believe was over 15 years ago when we moved into our new house, our friend Marc wanted to come over to learn the art of pierogi and with him he brought some modern day cooking techniques to the process.  We now mix the dough in a KitchenAid mixer and the dough gets rolled out using a pasta machine which gives you perfect long strips for cutting out the circles.  MeMe still always gave her final approval on the feel of the dough before it went into the rollers and my mother continued to take up her roll as the filler/pincher.  That first year there was a small amount of dough left over and Marc suggested that we make some homemade pasta with it and from there the "Pierogi Party" was born.  This tradition has continued every year and has grown in size and caliber because as you all know by now, we do nothing small in our house and  embody Jane Austen's quote when it comes to entertaining that "one can never have too large a party".  Some years we have broke out the accordion and sang rousing renditions of Christmas carols, usually the bottle of limoncello comes out, people have come and gone but the same things hold true that its so many of my favorite people, great food, lots to drink and what always feels like is the kickoff to Christmas week.  Some people refer to it as a scam party because we don't actually eat pierogi but instead loads of homemade pasta and meatballs.  And while MeMe is no longer with us, it kind of acts as this wonderful memorial to her every year because you can always remember her standing over the stove and the pots of pierogi, handing them out to whoever endeared themselves to her (Greg you were always the chosen one!) and she would just take in all the hoopla well into her eighties. 

Aaron showing off our new aprons while rolling dough

I couldn't wait for this year's  Pierogi Party to come along because I knew that I would no longer have to be running from New York to get here on time and that I would really be able to celebrate and enjoy it.  And now that another year's party is behind us and pretty much all of the flour has been cleaned up I can truly say that it was truly an amazing evening!!!  We started in the afternoon with our core group of pierogi workers that includes my Mom, Aunts Monica and Sandy, my cousin Aaron and Greg and Cathy Russo and this year we even had the added surprise of these FABULOUS aprons that Aaron had made up that stated "I love Pierogi" with the Polish eagle and all.  From there the pasta making continued with the pasta team who by that point totally took over which was great so I could run around playing host making sure everyone was having a good of a time as I was.  I wish I could tell you how much pasta we actually made but as you can see from the pictures it was a lot and at 44 guests strong we went through a sleuth of wine, 50-60 homemade meatballs made courtesy of the Soda's, porchetta from Marc and many bowls of pasta.  And all I could keep thinking to myself through the entire night was "how lucky am I" that I get to be surrounded by all of my favorite people, get to help prepare this amazing meal and host this phenomenal party that everyone looks forward to every year.  You realize all of the things that are so important to you, that you get to carry on this tradition in your family that continues to grow and evolve every year and I know MeMe would be so proud of what great pierogi makers we have all become. 

the infamous falconette cookbook that gets referenced every year

the dough recipe hand written in

 tossing the pasta

ready to hit the pot

June Cleaver would be proud

Last night we had what you can call a "throwback" kind of dinner.  I was looking for something quick and easy to make for dinner with what we already had in our fridge and freezer and actually surprised myself with how good it ended up coming out.  When I was still at WS, I had a customer that would order mass quantities of this special Parmesan grater at a time where I would always happily place the order and finally I inquired how all of these graters were going to use.  After a little hemming and hawing, the customer explained that she was a PR rep for Hellman's Mayonnaise  and that she was setting up cooking demos on national talk shows like "The View".  They were going to demonstrate making Hellman's Parmesan Chicken which had become this pretty popular recipe for them and therefore were giving the Parmesan graters away in the swag bags to go along with the segment.  At first thought even though I'm a girl who is a big fan of mayonnaise I was somewhat on the fence of actually cooking chicken with mayo on it so I never thought to make it at home.  Well fast forward to a few months later where I now have some free time on my hands to expand my weeknight dinner rotation and I had a bag of frozen chicken legs leftover from the CSA chicken freezer special.  The legs could have good slathered in barbecue sauce cooked on the grill but I was somewhat intrigued and mystified by the whole breaded chicken leg "shake and bake" concept considering we never ate meals like that when I was younger.  I also didn't know how my family would react to this new foreign concept but I figured if I could make it my own then I would have happy eaters at home. 

Call it Hellman's, call it "Shake and Bake" or a combination of both but June Cleaver would have been quite proud of the chicken I made last night.  Here is my riff on the concept:
-Preheat your oven to 425 degrees and line a cookie sheet with foil (this will help keep your cookie sheets clean for all of the baking you'll be doing in the next few weeks).
-In a small bowl, mix together 2-3 tbs of mayonnaise and 2 tbs of mustard (I had honey mustard open at home so that's what I used but any variety will do).  Using a pastry brush, give each chicken leg a good coating of the mayo/mustard combo that is going to act as your glue for the crumbs.
-In a shallow bowl or plate, mix together 3/4 of a cup of seasoned bread crumbs with 1/4 of a cup of Parmesan cheese along with salt and pepper to taste.  Roll each of the chicken legs in the coating so they are covered all around and then arrange on the foiled cookie sheet.
-Bake for 35-40 minutes until the juices run clear when you cut into your chicken and the bread crumbs are a nice golden brown color.  (I'm still one of those people that can't eyeball when chicken is done so there will always be a piece of chicken with a cut down the middle).

I served our chicken with farm stand carrots and glazed white turnips and then a simple orzo tossed with butter, fresh herbs I had leftover, and the zest from one lemon.