Tag: Eggs

Earl Grey Madeleines

November 13, 2013February 5, 2017

Elsa has discovered my secret.

My dear friend Elsa and I were hanging out quite a bit when she finally got back from her worldly travels this summer, as she was job hunting, so had her days free, just like I do. She came over one afternoon, and we decided to bake something. I started looking for recipes, and suggested rosemary shortbread, thyme/sea salt/chocolate chunk cookies, or these earl grey madeleines from Baking a Moment. She looked at me and said “Are we only allowed to make things that involve weird flavor combinations?”

She’s right. I like trying new flavor combinations. Why have chocolate chip cookies when you can add thyme? Or plain shortbread when you can add rosemary? Why not spice it up a bit? Plus, combinations like this are becoming rather mainstream. I think I’ve got her on the weird flavor combo train at this point, but she still teases me all the time. Anyway, on that afternoon, I convinced her to make earl grey madeleines with me. And dang, were they good.

For the record, Elsa made me zucchini, jalapeno, lime cookies for my birthday.

Earl Grey Madeleines

Ingredients

6 Tbl unsalted butter
3 bags earl grey tea
2 tsp light brown sugar
2 tsp honey
2 eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a small pot on the stove, melt the butter. While the butter is melting, cut open the tea bags, and then stir the loose tea into the melted butter. Allow to steep over low heat for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow it to steep for another 5 minutes. Strain the tea butter. I used a mesh sieve that I overlayed with the tea bags (which I had cut to make sheets). If you have cheesecloth, you can use that.

Stir the brown sugar and honey into the tea butter. They may stay kind of separated, and you can slightly reheat to try to combine them better. Ours wouldn’t really combine no matter how much we reheated them, and everything worked out just fine. So don’t stress about it.

Here’s another weird step. In a (preferably metal) mixing bowl, combine the eggs and granulated sugar. Fill another bowl with very hot water, and put the bowl of eggs/sugar into the bowl of hot water. Mix this with your fingers (I know, I know) until the eggs feel slightly warm and the sugar has dissolved and is no longer grainy. When you’ve reached that point, you can remove the bowl from the water and whip the eggs/sugar on high until it has tripled in volume.

In another bowl (I know, it’s a bowl heavy recipe), sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Gently fold the egg mixture in in two additions. Pour a little bit of this batter into the tea butter, stir it up, and then pour the tea butter into the batter. Again, gently fold until thoroughly combined.

Spoon the batter into a buttered and floured madeleine pan. You only need to fill up the molds about 2/3 of the way. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until they’re golden-brown around the edges. Remove the madeleines from the pan immediately and allow them to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy with a glass of milk, a nice coffee, or tea!

Weekend Finds 11:10:13

November 10, 2013February 5, 2017

Weekend finds this week are all over the place. But you know what? So am I. I finished up my birthday celebrations this week, had a wonderful time at a blogger event (post coming soon), and have been trying to get used to just living at home for a while without jetting off some place every week. So maybe I’m not all over the place, but right where I’m supposed to be.

1. Oyster Shell Salt Cellars

Weekend Finds // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler — Gold leaf painted oyster shell salt cellars. Photo credit: Design Sponge

I know the DIY for these gold painter oyster shells says “WEDDING” on it, but please. These would be so gorgeous on any table, whether it be for Thanksgiving or just your everyday dinner. Now I just have to find oyster shells…

2. Tips from Isa Chandra Moskowitz

These are some great tips from vegan chef Isa Moskowitz. My favorite? Master 5 recipes – memorize, know them backwards and forwards, and then you can start to riff and improvise.

3. Cardamaro

A wine based amaro, huh? The name tricked me into thinking it had something to do with cardamom. And it doesn’t. But that’s ok. I like wine and I like amaro, so I think I’d like to give this liqueur a shot.

4. Ox Restaurant, PDX

Jonah took me to Ox for my birthday this week. While the wait was an hour (!), we enjoyed oysters and cocktails next door at Whey Bar while we waited. And when we did finally sit down, the staff (Elaina and Adam in particular) were so welcoming and fun, the food was impeccable (I recommend getting the carrots and the Uruguayan grass-fed ribeye), and the atmosphere was so warm. What a lovely way to celebrate.

5. Eggs poached in white wine from 101 cookbooks

I’m relatively new to the egg poaching game. I’ve done it successfully a few times, but I still don’t think to do it that often. Still, I wonder why I never thought to poach eggs in liquid other than water. This recipe for eggs poached in white wine looks lovely, and her suggestion to use it to top a winter root vegetable gratin sounds heavenly.

6. Chicken stock from Smitten Kitchen

I’ll admit, I’m planning on making this easy chicken stock tonight. We’ve had a cold going around our house (Jonah has gotten it, so I know it’s only a matter of time) and I can’t imagine how nice it’ll be to have this waiting for me in the fridge/freezer when I inevitably get a sore throat and the sniffles.

The Rattlesnake: a cocktail

September 2, 2013February 5, 2017

Sometimes, when you’re spending all day cooking, it’s important to spoil yourself with a cocktail break. And sometimes you are given an all access pass to someone’s liquor cabinet, and you have lots of cocktail blogs to choose from (There Will Be Bourbon, Spirited Alchemy, 5 o’clock cocktails…), and you finally pick one called the Rattlesnake, and whip up a batch for all the chefs in the kitchen. Just sometimes.

This cocktail is creamy and light, tasting kind of like a grown up lemon curd/lemon meringue drink. Adapted from There Will Be Bourbon, the recipe below makes enough for 6 drinks. When I’m making that amount, I like to use a trusty tupperware with a good seal instead of a shaker… it means you have to do less work by making all the drinks in one batch.

The Rattlesnake

Makes 6 cocktails

Ingredients

9 oz. bourbon
5 Tbl freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 Tbl sambuca (the recipe called for absinthe, but you can use any anise-liqueur)
2 Tbl powdered sugar (or simple syrup, if you’ve got some around)
3 egg whites

Instructions

Combine all of the ingredients in a tupperware (or cocktail shaker, if you’re only making 1 or 2) with ice. Shake it up! Until the egg whites get nice and frothy. If you want more froth, you can add more egg whites. I wasn’t initially going to add any but when I tasted it without them, it was VERY bourbon-y. So I added half as many as the original recipe called for (which is 1 per drink). I never really realized what egg white did to a drink other than create that frothy foam, but it really mellowed out the flavors. Add bits of whatever you like until it tastes how you want. Strain into glasses filled with ice. If you’re feeling fancy, you can garnish with a lemon peel, or a sprig of mint or rosemary.

Kale, Squash, and a Runny Yolk

May 16, 2013February 5, 2017

Sometimes you just need an easy dinner. You need to comb through your fridge, scrounge what ingredients you can, and stand there, for a minute, gazing at your collection, trying to figure out what you can make with all of this. It doesn’t have to be fancy, or even graceful, but tasting good and mildly cohesive would be nice. You’ve got a bunch of kale that you really should use soon, a small, friendly looking butternut squash, and a jalapeño. And eggs. Luckily, the roommates always keep lots of eggs around. And do you know what brings a dish together with ease? A runny yolk.

So you slice up the butternut squash, drizzle with olive oil and salt, mix in some chopped garlic, and lay it out on a baking sheet, laying a couple rosemary springs atop it all, sliding it into the oven to roast. You sautée up the kale with more oil, salt, and garlic, and even some jalapeño. And then, to finish it all off, you soft boil a couple of eggs (one for you and one for the tall fellow you eat dinner with). Simple as that, you have dinner.

Kale, Squash, and a Soft Boiled Egg

Ingredients

A small butternut squash, olive oil, and salt (and anything you’d like to roast with it)
1 bunch of kale, garlic, olive oil, and salt
Eggs

Instructions

Peel and cube or slice the butternut squash into whatever shapes you like to eat. Slide into the oven at about 375 and roast until easily pierced with a fork. Sautée kale with a tsp of olive oil, chopped garlic, and a sprinkling of salt. If you want the kale to steam and wilt a little more, you can add some water to the pan (no more than 1/4 cup) and cover with a lid. After letting the kale steam for a bit, remove the lid and let the water cook off.

To soft boil the eggs, bring a pot of water to a boil. Drop the eggs in, allow to cook for 6 minutes (this can be adjusted depending on how you like your eggs). After 6 minutes, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon, run under cold water, and peel.

Put your egg on top of your kale and squash to let the yolk run over the veggies a bit. It adds a nice rich creaminess. Enjoy.