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April 11, 2012February 2, 2017

Haroset!

Continuing along the Passover theme here: When we returned from Tucson, I was craving some haroset. It’s one of my favorite passover foods, and a great snack to have throughout the week. So much better than chips and salsa (in my opinion). For those of you who don’t know, Haroset is simply a combination of the following: apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and wine. I’ve also seen it with raisins, pears, other spices, and sugar. But today we’ll just keep it simple. Here’s what you’ll need:

Haroset

Ingredients

4 granny smith apples
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup (more or less) sweet red wine (this is where Manischewitz comes in handy)
1 Tbl brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

Peel, core, and finely dice the apples. I peeled them and cut them into chunks, then threw them in the food processor and pulsed them a few times. It worked really quite well and got the pieces smaller than I would have been willing to go if I had been chopping them by hand. Put the apples in a medium mixing bowl. Chop your walnuts too (I did these in the food processor too), and add them to the apples. Now pour in the wine, mixing so that the apples become a light pink. Feel free to add more wine if you want. Just don’t add too much; You don’t want a bunch of liquid sitting at the bottom of the bowl. Stir in the cinnamon and the sugar, and you’re done! Eat it on top of some matzoh with a bit of horseradish (not too much!) and enjoy!

March 19, 2012February 2, 2017

Another Easy Bread Recipe

It has been so long since I’ve posted. I’m so sorry. It’s been a little busy around here! Here’s what I’ve been up to: applying for a new job, getting a new job (doing social media for a local nutritionist), going to a big scary audition (and a big scary callback, with another one tomorrow night), and having Jonah’s mom and sister in town!

I know, excuses excuses! But hopefully this post is me getting back in the saddle. So this is another venture into the world of bread. I promised myself that I would finally make a starter, but of course, I didn’t because we’ve been so busy. Maybe next week? Or something?

Anyway, this bread is easy. Easier than all the other breads. No kneading, no let it rise, beat it down, let it rise again, do all this fancy stuff. Put everything in a bowl, let it rise, split it up, let it sit again for a bit, then bake. Can it get any easier? I’m gonna go with…not really.

No Knead Bread

Makes 2 loaves

Note: I didn’t want 3 loaves of bread, so I made 2/3 of the recipe. I’ll give you the full recipe though, and you can decide how much you want to make! I’ll put the amounts I did for 2/3 of the recipe in parentheses.

Ingredients

3 cups lukewarm water (2 cups)
1 1/2 Tbl granulated yeast (1 Tbl)
1 1/2 Tbl kosher or other course salt (1 Tbl)
6 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour (4 1/3 cups)
a handful of cornmeal for the pan

Instructions

Ok, put the yeast, flour, and salt in a bowl (I used my electric mixer with the dough hook). Pour the water over the dry ingredients and mix until it’s combined, a few minutes. Now cover your mixing bowl with foil or oiled plastic wrap and let it rise for 2-5 hours (I went with 5 because I was out doing stuff all day).

Now, cover your counter with PLENTY of flour. The dough is crazy sticky and wet, so be prepared for that. Dump it out onto the counter and separate the dough into however many loaves you’re making (original recipe: 3, my recipe: 2). Spread your handful of cornmeal over you baking sheet. Using lots of flour, form the dough into balls and place them on the baking sheet. The easiest way to form the balls is to pull the edges of the dough and tuck them underneath. Hopefully that makes sense. Once they’re on the baking sheet, you can let them rest for 30 minutes.

About halfway through the resting process, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Once they’re done resting, slash your loaves with 3-4 lines. You can do whatever design you like, as long as you do something! The slashes allow the loaves to expand while they’re baking in a kind of designated way rather than just exploding however they want. When your oven is heated, put the loaves in! On a lower rack, put a pan filled with about 1 cup of water. This will create steam which will make the crust crispier. Bake the bread for 30-35 minutes.

After removing the bread from the oven, put it on a wire rack to cool. Try to let it cool all the way before cutting a slice, slather it in butter, and chowing down. Enjoy!

March 6, 2012February 2, 2017

Cheese Straws with a Bite

For some reason I’ve been in the mood to make some kind of cheesy snacking food lately, like crackers or something. So this weekend when I was up in Seattle, I took the opportunity to make these cheese straws from Smitten Kitchen. They are ridiculously easy and have quite a bite to them due to the red pepper flakes. If you don’t want to risk them being too spicy for you (or whoever else may be eating them), you can easily reduce the amount of red pepper flakes, but I thought it was quite delicious.

Cheese Straws

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
4 tablespoons (1/2 a stick) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into 4 pieces
3/4 cup flour, plus some for rolling out the dough
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon milk or half-and-half

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, pulse the cheese, butter, flour, salt, and pepper flakes. Pulse it until the mixture is in coarse crumbs.

Now add the milk until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Lightly flour a cutting board or your kitchen counter, dump the dough out, and roll it into as rectangular of a shape as possible and about 1/8 of an inch thick. With a sharp knife slice the dough into 1/4 inch – 1/3 inch strips. I left some edges ragged and trimmed others, I don’t think it really matters.

Now you can gently put the strips onto a cookie sheet (no need to grease it because of the butter). You want to leave a little space between them, but they don’t need much (1/4-1/2 an inch is plenty). The dough is fragile, so they might break, but don’t worry about it. The cheese straws can be any length really.

Bake them in the oven for 12 – 15 minutes (I think I baked mine closer to 15, I like the ends nice and brown). Remove them from the oven, allow to cool for a minute or two on the baking sheet, and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Good luck keeping these around for long. They were gone pretty quickly. They’re perfectly crispy and cheesy with a bit of spice… Mm! I love them. Enjoy!

March 1, 2012February 2, 2017

Bread, again, but different

Jonah and I keep a little white board in our apartment next to our refrigerator where we write all kinds of things: items to get at the grocery store, tasks to do (such as getting a watch so we can time our couch-to-5k runs which we’ve just started), occasionally notes to each other, and there are also little magnets so we can put checks to be deposited and notes from our bosses, etc. It’s really a handy little space near the door to remind us of all the little things we need to do.

Anyway, on Monday, Jonah wrote a little grocery list on the board before he went into work. Upon seeing that bread was on the list and I hadn’t baked anything in a couple days and hadn’t made bread in quite some time, I decided to make some instead of just buying some. I had found this incredibly easy looking recipe over at Joy the Baker and had been waiting to try it. I think it’s my last “super easy” recipe before I try making my own sourdough starter. So keep an eye out. The other great thing about the recipe was that it only called for bread flour, and I’m still trying to use up that giant bag, so it was perfect. You’ll only need 4 ingredients, one of which is water, so really, only 3.

This bread is delicious with just some butter, toasted with butter and jam. Jonah said it also made a delicious PB+J. And I’m about to go try using it for a grilled cheese. This bread was so supremely simple to make, I think everyone should try it. It’s great for a beginner recipe that still has some of that crispy crust. Enjoy!

Simple Bread

Makes 2 loaves

Ingredients

4 cups bread flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water

Instructions

Put 3 3/4 cups of the flour into a mixing bowl (electric mixer would be nice). Reserve the other 1/4 cup of the flour for kneading/incorporating later. On one side of the pile of flour in your mixing bowl, put the salt, and on the other side, put the yeast. Not sure why this is so important as everything is about to get mixed together, but whatever. Now pour the water over the flour and mix it until it just comes together (I started with the paddle attachment and then switched to the dough hook once the dough had come together).

Once the dough comes together and you switch to a dough hook, put your mixer on a medium speed and let it knead the dough for 2 minutes. The dough should easily clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom a little bit. If you feel the need, you can add a little flour or water depending on the status of your dough, but mine was pretty spot on, so I didn’t want to mess with it. After mixing it for 2 minutes, let it rest for 5 minutes. After the 5 minute rest, mix it again for 3 minutes. At this point you can flour your counter (with that 1/4 cup of bread flour you reserved) and dump the dough out.

Now you can hand-knead the dough, incorporating the 1/4 cup of the flour reserved. You may not need to incorporate the whole 1/4 cup. I’d say I got about 1/8 cup into the dough, and then stopped. This was the first time in my bread-making experience that I felt like I could tell by the feel of the dough when it was ready. Right when I dumped it onto the counter, it was not as dense as my other doughs have been; instead it was light and easy to work with. I didn’t want to push it, so when it stopped taking the extra flour in, I stopped adding. When the dough seems smooth enough, form it into a ball, lightly oil a bowl (I just used the same mixing bowl) and put the dough in, turning to coat the dough with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a dish towel, and let rest for 1 1/2 hours.

After the 1 1/2 hours, the dough should have about doubled in size. Remove the dough from the bowl, punch it down, and reform it into a ball, replace it in the bowl and cover it, letting it rise for another half hour.

After this second shorter rest, remove the dough from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface (I just never cleaned my counter till the bread was in the oven) and cut it into two pieces. Form each lump into a smooth and round ball. The best way to do this is to just keep grabbing the edges of the dough and tucking them underneath. Eventually you’ll have a tight, smooth ball. Cover the two balls of dough with a damp cloth and let them rest on the lightly floured surface (aka counter) for 45 minutes to an hour.

Towards the end of this resting period, you can preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Make sure your rack is in the bottom half of your oven because the bread will rise. And put another rack below it. Put a baking sheet (or baking stone if that’s what you’re using) in the oven while it’s heating so it gets hot. Uncover your balls of dough, and slash the tops with 2-4 slashes to guide the expansion of the bread while it’s baking. When your oven is heated, take out the hot baking sheet and carefully put the dough on it, and put it in the oven.

Now it’s time for the steam. A couple minutes after you put the bread in the oven, you can dump 1/4 cup of water onto the oven floor (if you have an electric oven) and immediately close the door, then repeat in a couple minutes. I wasn’t all about dumping water in my oven for some reason, so I did what I’d read in a previous recipe and put half a cup (so I didn’t have to open the oven again and let the heat escape) of water on another baking sheet and put it on the rack beneath the bread. It also works just fine and creates steam. the steam is what helps make the crust nice and crispy, I think.

Anyway, you’ll want to bake the loaves for 20-25 minutes. They’ll be a beautiful golden brown. It’s smart to throw a thermometer in there too, just to make sure. They should register between 190-210 degrees. Now, transfer them to a wire rack to cool (mine were still making crackling/baking noises for a couple minutes, it was kind of cool). Make sure they are completely cool before taking a slice, spreading on some butter, and enjoying.

February 15, 2012February 2, 2017

The Best Grilled Cheese

When I was little, I called grilled cheese sandwiches “girl cheese” sandwiches. Makes sense, right? Boys had cooties and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to eat something as crispy and buttery with perfectly melted cheese. I thought it made perfect sense.

Last summer, my friend Corey worked at a food cart here in Portland called the Grilled Cheese Grill. If you haven’t heard of it, they have these really wonderful, creative, goofy grilled cheese sandwiches. My personal favorite is the jalapeno popper: roasted jalapenos, colby jack, cream cheese, and tortilla chips on sourdough.

Sometimes, when lunchtime rolls around in our apartment, I go hunting through our cabinets and fridge shelves and I am just so uninspired. But the other day, that was not the case. We had a fresh loaf of sourdough bread from New Seasons (usually we get whole wheat, but when I have my way, sourdough it is), and all I wanted was a grilled cheese. But I wanted to make it interesting, and the other thing I had been craving? Caramelized onions.

When I told Jonah of this amazing sandwich, he got jealous and made himself one for lunch the next day. The fever is catching…

Grilled Cheese with Caramelized Onions

Makes one sandwich

Ingredients

Two slices of bread (preferably sourdough)
Cheddar cheese, sliced into thin pieces (we buy Tillamook sharp cheddar)
Parmesan cheese, sliced into thin pieces
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/4-1/2 tsp brown sugar
Salt

Instructions

The first step is to caramelize the onions. Throw your onion slices in a pan over medium-low heat. Cover and let them soften for a few minutes, then sprinkle the brown sugar and a pinch of salt over them and stir to coat evenly. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, allowing the onions to brown and soften all the way. After the onions are softened turn the heat up to medium-high and let them cook for another couple minutes, stirring. This will give them a nice sear on the edges.

While your onions are softening, butter the outsides of your sandwich bread (the side that will hit the pan). Thinly slice the cheddar cheese and put it on BOTH sides of the bread. This is key. Nothing is worse than making a grilled cheese with stuff other than cheese on it and then having the bread slide around because there’s no cheese sticking it in place. I’m serious. I put slices of parmesan on just one side so there wasn’t too much of it: parm is a strong cheese and you don’t want it to overpower anything.

When your onions are ready, lay them on the bed of cheese you have created for them. Put the two sides of the sandwich together, and throw it in the pan over medium heat. Cover it while it cooks (this makes the cheese melt quicker so that you don’t have to burn the bread while you’re waiting for the melting to occur). When the bread is golden brown, flip, and cook until the other side is golden brown too. Put on a plate, cut down the middle, and serve, warm and gooey and cheesy. Enjoy!

January 31, 2012February 1, 2017

Country Bread

The reason I started making bread is because I’ve always wanted to make one of those crusty light loaves that you find at Grand Central Bakery or Macrina Bakery or Lovejoy Bakers. I’m getting closer, starting with simple white loaves and now moving on to this Country Bread. One day I know I’ll get to one of those crispy on the outside, light and soft on the inside, perfectly sour sourdoughs.

Anyway, my aunt Judy sent me a cookbook (as well as a book about how to write recipes) when I started this blog. It’s called “Flour” by Joanne Chang, who is the chef at a bakery in Boston (where my aunt lives). I’ll admit, many of the recipes in this cookbook look a little daunting, but when I saw the recipe for this bread I knew I had to try it.

WARNING: This is not a quick bread recipe. You have to make the sponge, let it sit overnight, then make the bread, which also has to sit and rest for many hours. It is relatively easy, but there’s lots of waiting around.

Country Bread

Makes two loaves

Ingredients

Sponge

3/4 cup water
1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

Bread

1 1/2 cups water, body temperature
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour, plus some for working and sprinkling
2 cups bread flour
12 oz bread sponge
pinch of active dry yeast
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp sugar
a handful of medium-coarse yellow cornmeal for the baking sheet

Instructions

Sponge

Alright, let’s start with the sponge, hm? In a bowl, stir together the water, 1 cup of the flour, and the yeast until well combine. Place in a covered container (I just covered the bowl with a dishtowel) and leave at room temperature for at least 4 hours and up to 8 hours. After 4 hours (or however many), you can stir in the remaining 1/4 cup of flour. The sponge will stiffen up with the addition of the flour into a very loose dough. Re-cover it (this is when I transfered it to a tupperware) and leave it in the fridge overnight.

Bread

*The next morning*

Get out your electric mixer (or a bowl and a wooden spoon) and stir together the water, 2 cups of all purpose flour, and the 2 cups of bread flour for about a minute, or until you have a “shaggy, stiff dough.” I love her writing. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, remove the plastic wrap and add the sponge, yeast, salt, and sugar. Mix for 3-4 minutes or until they are incorporated. Now, according to Chef Chang, the dough should be a little bit sticky but still smooth and feel “like an earlobe when you grasp a bit between your fingers.” Oh… ok.

If the dough is stiffer than earlobe status, add some water 1 Tbl at a time. If it’s not stiff enough, add all-purpose flour 1 Tbl at a time. I ended up needing to add about 3 Tbl of flour to my dough. Also, I had to stop the mixer a number of times to scrape the dough off the dough hook.

Now, lightly oil a large bowl, and transfer the dough to it. Lightly cover the bowl with an oiled piece of plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for 2-3 hours. The dough will rise a little bit and will be loose and relaxed and a little sticky.

After that wait, turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Divide the dough in half with a knife and shape each half into a ball. The easiest way to do this is to tuck the edges of the dough underneath itself, continuing to tuck until it naturally gathers into a ball with a nice taut surface. Sprinkle the cornmeal on a baking sheet and place the loaves on it, at least 3 inches apart. Cover them lightly and completely in more plastic wrap and let them sit for another 2-3 hours.

Phew. We’re almost done. While the dough is resting (towards the end of the rest), preheat your oven to 500 degrees, with a rack in the center and a rack below that one. When the loaves are done resting, sprinkle the tops with about a teaspoon of flour each, and slash the loaves with a knife. The best way to do this is to use a sharp paring knife that has been dipped in water (to keep it from dragging). You’ll want to use the tip of the knife and use quick, sure movements. You can do whatever design you’d like (I did a square and a line down the middle with lines coming off of it). If you don’t slash the bread, it’ll burst on it’s own, which might also look cool.

Anyway, after you’ve slashed it, put the pan in the oven. On the rack below the bread, put a rimmed baking sheet filled with 2 cups of water (the steam creates a “nice moist atmosphere for your bread to grow”). Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the loaves are a dark golden brown on top (and make a hollow sound when you thump them on the bottom, but who wants to pick up a 500 degree loaf of bread and knock on it?).

Transfer the loaves to a wire rack and let them cool for at least 1 hour. These store really well just in a plastic or paper bag on the counter. They don’t go stale as quickly as some crusty loaves, which was nice because it’s hard to burn through 2 loaves of bread with just 2 of us in the apartment. The bread was really good. A little sweet and a little tangy, and quite dense. At first, I was actually bummed about how dense it was (I wanted something light with lots of holes but I realized that with all the extra flour I added, that probably wasn’t gonna happen), but after eating a slice with butter, I was really digging it. We also used this bread to make the gratinées for the French Onion Soup we had for dinner last night (which I’ll be posting very soon).

December 20, 2011January 31, 2017

Sriracha Salt

Today is my dad’s birthday! In honor of this, I will reveal to you all what I got him for his birthday.

He recently took a trip to New York and went to eat at David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant. He love love loved it, so my sister and I bought him the Momofuku cookbook. It looked beautiful, and I hope that the next time I’m there he and I get to cook something out of it.

Anyway, he and his girlfriend also really like 2 things: salt and spicy food. On my trip up to surprise him for his birthday, they informed me that they’ve been adding hot sauce to their already hot salsa. It’s a little pathetic. Anyway, I found this recipe for sriracha salt on pinterest (it’s actually from the new Sriracha cookbook though) and thought it would make a good little homemade gift.

It’s incredibly simple. You’ll need sriracha and, you guessed it, salt.

Sriracha Salt

Ingredients

5 tsp sriracha
1/2 cup table salt

Ingredients

In a bowl, combine sriracha and salt in a bowl and stir well. Spread the mixture out on a sheet of wax paper on a pan. Let it dry for 1-2 days. When it dries, it clumps up, so I broke it up everytime I noticed it getting hard and clumpy. Then I put it into a neat little jar!

I think it’d tasted good on raw vegetables, especially carrots, and also anything that you think needs a little spice and a little salt!

December 16, 2011January 31, 2017

A Loaf of Bread

Remember a little while back (in the cheddar and sage biscuits post) when I said I had bought some yeast and wanted to use it to make some bread? So I finally did that. I was more than a little bit frightened, and while all did not go perfectly smoothly, it worked! Very cool!

I hunted online for a while for some beginner bread recipes. While I was tempted to jump in and start with crusty french loaves and sourdoughs and breads with all kinds of stuff in it (think garlic cloves, spices, onions, anything else you can dream of), I thought it best to start simply and try to figure this thing out. I found this recipe for just a basic white loaf which didn’t require me to go to the store and buy anything, so already I was a big fan.

I used my kitchenaid mixer because it makes life easier. But a lot of the recipes I read are like “it’s so easy you don’t even need a mixer!” Whatever.

Sandwich Bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

1 package of active dry yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
5 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 – 3 1/2 cups flour
cooking spray or other oil

Instructions

First, warm the bowl by filling it with hot water, then dumping it out. Then dissolve your yeast according to the directions on the packet. Stir until yeast is completely dissolved, with no lumps. I think this is where things started to get wonky for me. I think the recipe assumes your yeast packet will call for 1 cup of warm water, but mine only called for 1/4 cup.

Now add the butter, milk, sugar, and salt to the yeast and stir until it well blended (it will look like a slightly yellow-ish tan liquid). Now add 2 CUPS of flour. No more! Not yet! Mix this very well. If the mixture is still wet, add more flour 1/4 cup at a time, mixing well before adding anymore. Now the recipe I used called for at least 2 1/2 cups of flour, so I mixed in the 2 cups of flour, then pretty quickly added another 1/4 cup thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal. But a big deal it was, my friends. My dough immediately became too dry, crumbling into a million little pieces and it WOULD NOT come together. I was so frustrated! A couple other recipes I had read in my research had said “If your dough is too wet, add more flour. If it is too dry, add more milk/water.” So that’s what I did. I ended up adding probably almost another cup of milk/water. I think the important lesson here is that if you follow the instructions and it’s not perfect, it’s not the end of the world (which I thought it was). Just add a little of this, a little of that, it will all be ok.

Once the dough has come together, you can either let your machine knead it for ten minutes or, if you’re feeling adventurous dump the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it yourself. I did the latter because sometimes it feels better to know you’ve actually put in some physical effort. You know what I mean? There are many different kneading techniques. Some say you should punch the dough down, fold it up, then punch again. Some say you can squish it in your fingers and pull and twist it. I use the good old fashioned push away from you with the base of your palm and fold. Push and fold, push and fold.

I then rinsed out my mixing bowl, coated it in a little oil, put my ball of dough in it, covered it with a dishtowel, and let it rise for an hour in a warm place. Don’t clean up your floured surface, because you’ll need it again. The recipe says that after rising for an hour, your dough should double in size, but not to stress if it’s bigger or smaller than double. This was good news, because mine had not doubled. But it did rise, so we were still on the right track here. Now punch the dough down, and spread it out into a rectangular shape: one side the length of your bread pan, the other side 1 1/2 times the length of your bread pan. Now roll that bad boy up, tucking the ends of the roll underneath (the bottom being where the seam is). Now drop it into the oiled bread pan.

Now you let it rise again, covered with a dishtowel. The recipe says an hour, but mine hadn’t really done much in that amount of time. Here’s where I thought things were going south again. After an hour of rising in the bread pan and not being where it needed to be, Jonah and I had to leave the house to go record his old a cappella group. I know, right? And then we went out to eat. So the dough sat in the pan rising away for a total of 5 1/2 or 6 hours. So I got home and I expected the bread to have exploded and that there’d be yeasty dough all over the apartment (why I suspected that, I have no idea). But no! It had risen the perfect amount!

At this point I’m starting to think that maybe I haven’t completely ruined this loaf of bread. I heated the oven to 400 degrees and baked that sucker for 30 minutes. Once you take it out of the oven, immediately remove the bread from the pan so it doesn’t continue cooking. The recipe says to let it cool all the way before eating. And check it out!

After it cooled and Jonah and I each ate a slice, I was so dang proud of myself. After thinking I had ruined it twice, it worked! And not only that, but our apartment smelled so incredibly delicious. Oh my goodness. This bread makes amazing toast, and tastes wonderful with just a little butter spread on it. And now that I’ve done it once, I feel ready to tackle the world of bread. Keep an eye out for more bread recipes coming soon!

November 28, 2011January 22, 2017

A new cookbook and some jams

For my birthday, I received the most beautiful cookbook: Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller. If you don’t know who Thomas Keller is, well then it’s time to get educated. He is the chef at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, perhaps one of the most famous restaurants in the world: it has won many (that’s right, many) James Beard Awards. He has another restaurant, Per Se, in New York, and both of these restaurants have been awarded 3 Michelin Stars. He is the ONLY AMERICAN CHEF to have had two restaurants both get 3 stars.

But this cookbook is from another restaurant he recently opened. He intended to open a burger joint in an old diner, but when he purchased the space his team was too busy. He decided instead to open a temporary homestyle cooking restaurant called Ad Hoc: no menu, 4 courses, 4 days a week, simple food. Well of course, being Thomas Keller and all, it worked incredibly well and is no longer temporary.

So I bring the cookbook home and I’m looking through it and there’s a section called “Lifesavers.” This section is full of what he calls staples, though not like flour and eggs. There are tapenades, jams, pickled things, candied nuts, anything you might need to make an ordinary dish or meal into an extraordinary one.

I decide, with Thanksgiving coming up and my mom having asked for some appetizer help, that I’d whip up a couple of jams. The two that seemed most appealing to me were the Fig and Balsamic Jam and the Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade. Now, keep in mind while reading this that I have never made a jam before in my life and I have never canned (in fact, I was quite scared of it before). These recipes don’t require actual “canning” or one of those crazy sets with tongs and crazy jar contraptions. Thank goodness.

Fig and Balsamic Jam

Note: So you see this recipe and maybe you say, “Excuse me, what is a sachet? I thought this blog was about stuff everyone can do!” And to you I say, “It is, my friend! I will tell you what a sachet is!” Mr. Keller is all about sachets. In this case, you’ll want about a 5 or 6 inch square of cheesecloth. Place the peppercorns towards the bottom of the square, roll the cheesecloth over them once, fold in the ends, and keep rolling. Now tie it at both ends with cooking twine. See how you have a nice little package of peppercorns? Now you won’t have to try to fish them out of the jam later. Keller also uses this technique with lots of herbs like bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, etc. (you know that feeling when the recipe says “remove the bay leaf” and you cannot find it for the life of you? no more!).

Another note from Mr. Keller: “Note on Plate Testing: To check that compotes, jams, and jellies are at the right consistency, put a tablespoon of what you’re cooking on a plate and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. If it is too thin, return to the heat, cook a few more minutes, and retest.”

Ingredients

2 lbs figs, preferably Black Mission or Kadota, stems removed and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, tied into a sachet
Fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Put everything but the lemon juice into a pan and attach a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, do not worry! You can still just follow the instructions and eyeball things, which is what I ended up doing anyway. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, stirring to break up the larger pieces of fig. Cook until the jam reaches 215-220 degrees. My candy thermometer did not want to get up that high. I cooked this stuff for hours and it would still only get to 205 or so. Keller has a nice little tip in his book that says:

So I did my own version of the plate test which was to turn off the heat, let the whole pot cool on the stove while I did something else (hulu, anyone?) and then came back and checked it. It needed a bit more cooking, so I brought it to a simmer again for another little while. Now remove the sachet and stir in the lemon juice to taste. Spoon the jam into a canning jar or two, cover, and let cool to room temperature. Then refrigerate up to 1 month.

Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade

Ingredients

1/4 cup canola oil
3 cups diced red onions
1 cup chopped dried cranberries
3 cups apple juice
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbl apple pectin (This is Keller’s fancy pectin he gets from lord-knows-where. I just used plain pectin, found at my local New Seasons near the canning jars.)
1 Tbl plus 1 tsp orange zest

Ingredients

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over low heat. Add the red onions and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, until the onions have softened but not colored. Add the cranberries and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the apple juice and cider vinegar. In a separate bowl, combine the sugars and pectin, mixing well so that the pectin will dissolve smoothly, and add this mixture to the pot along with the orange zest. Attach a candy thermometer to the pan, bring to a simmer, and cook until it registers 215-220 degrees. I did the same thing as last time where, because my thermometer didn’t want to get that high, I just let the whole pot cool and then cooked it more if it needed it.

Transfer the marmalade to a canning jar, cover, and let cool, then refrigerate for up to 3 months.

Not so hard, right? These made wonderful Thanksgiving appetizers when paired with some good crackers and cheese (we used mostly Rain Coast crackers, goat cheese, and brie). I bet they’d work great for Christmas appetizers too…