In the front of her cookbook, Martha provides a variety of sample menus for a variety of occasions (e.g. Easter) and seasons (spring, fall, etc.). For New Year’s Eve, Martha recommends the following, which serves an army of six to eight:
· Spicy seared scallop canapés
· Chicken liver pate
· Red and golden beet cheese tart
· Roasted duck breasts with wild mushroom stuffing and red wine sauce
· Tarragon green beans
· Glazed baby turnips and cipollini onions
· Mixed green salad with date-walnut vinaigrette
· Blood-orange pavlovas with grand marnier
· Cream cheese-walnut cookies
This menu honestly didn’t appeal to me, plus it would be way too much food for just the two us…not to mention a ton of work and dishes in my mini-kitchen. Instead, I selected the following menu from the pages of Martha, catering instead to our two dogs and their palette for the main dishes.
· For an appetizer, avocado with grapefruit and sweet onion salsa (page 68)
· Fresh spinach salad (no recipe needed)
· Because we love our dogs, porterhouse with jalapeño butter (page 256)
· Also because we love our dogs, baby red potatoes with cilantro (page 382)
The avocado and grapefruit salsa came out great. I was a little worried because the grapefruits at Willow Creek Ray’s were hard as rocks and seemed like they had been sitting on the shelf since the days of the Carter administration, but it was actually fairly juicy after all. We like spicy food, so we ended up adding in some habañero pepper and eating the salsa with regular old tortilla chips.
For the steak, Mike couldn’t find a porterhouse cut, so he brought home a rib eye instead. Fair enough. Our neighbor Catfish received a brand new extra large George Forman grill for Christmas, which means we inherited his old George Forman grill. I have never used a George Forman grill before, but it seemed simple enough. I aspired to take ol’ George for a spin to ensure Catfish knew we appreciated his generous gift.
The steaks ended up a little overcooked (what do I know about cooking meat…I survived on tofu for nearly a decade…) and the jalapeno butter was tasty but too greasy on an already rich steak. I say Martha errs with this one…Best to put the jalapeño and garlic directly on the meat or perhaps in a soft cheese instead of drenching the steak in butter. Mike ditched the butter and went for the horseradish. I will save the jalapeño butter in the fridge for the next time we make garlic bread or baked potatoes. Also, I don't think cooking the steak on the George Foreman grill was really the best idea either. Live and learn.
The potatoes came out fabulous, although I baked them on a cookie sheet with olive oil instead of boiling them, as Martha advised. I was hoping for an oven fry experience, so I went my own way. I also added some romano cheese to the cilantro, mostly to get rid of it from last week’s chicken recipe leftovers. I tossed the hot potatoes in a bowl of fresh cilantro and cheese as soon as they came out of the oven.
In the end, we are happy and of course the dogs are happy. Happy New Year to all the fuzzy critters in the world…and our friends and family too.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Grilled Pizzas with Tomato, Avocado, and Pepper Jack Cheese
This rainy weather has squashed my motivation to drive to the coast (Arcata/Eureka) to do my usual large-scale grocery mission. Instead, we have made do with what we have around. I picked this recipe because we already had most of the ingredients, and I got lucky and found ripe avocados on sale at Rays Market in Willow Creek.
I pretty much screwed up on the first step—at least this was my theory. To make the cornmeal pizza dough, Martha instructs to dissolve the active dry yeast in warm water at a temperature of 110 degrees. I think my water was too hot (note to self: buy cooking thermometer) and I overcooked my yeast…preventing them from doing their yeasty thing (aka making the dough rise properly). My dough rose a bit, but I think it was supposed to have fluffed up more. I should have been more suspect of my own actions and made a new batch of warm water yeast mix before I added it to my flour and cornmeal. Instead, I continued course, which resulted in flat pizza dough that didn’t much rise in the oven.
There is another possibility, which is the oven itself. Martha instructs, “Heat a grill until medium hot. Generously brush one side of the pizza dough with oil; grill oiled side down, until underside is golden brown and the top begins to bubble, 3 to 5 minutes.” There is great mystery to me in this instruction. At first, I thought Martha was telling me to put my pizza dough directly on to my oven rack. This struck me as a very poor idea, resulting in visions of the Willow Creek Volunteer Fire Department (which is lacking sufficient numbers of volunteers) responding to our desperate 911 call after the oven bursts into flames. Then I realized she must not be talking about putting the pizza in the oven. She is telling me to heat a grill. I don’t have a grill, so how do I heat the grill until medium hot? If I did have a grill, which I don’t, what would it look like exactly? Is she talking about a BBQ? Am I supposed to BBQ the pizza? I quickly gave up on trying to decipher Martha-think and instead warmed the oven to 400 degrees and threw my crust on a cookie sheet (another note to self: buy pizza pans for oven), hoping for the best. I am still irritated Martha does not provide an oven method translation for those of us in the world who are grill-less. How was I supposed to know what temperature to use?
As previously mentioned, the dough didn’t really puff up much and was more like a flat bread, although it was tasty with the cornmeal and refreshing toppings of uncooked tomato, red onion, avocado and lime. I am glad I only did a half-recipe, knowing six 9-inch pizzas would be more than we could handle. As it is, we still have a ton of leftovers. Martha also should have mentioned not to top the pizza until you are ready to serve. Otherwise, the limey pizza topping makes the cheesy crust all soggy. No bueno.
I pretty much screwed up on the first step—at least this was my theory. To make the cornmeal pizza dough, Martha instructs to dissolve the active dry yeast in warm water at a temperature of 110 degrees. I think my water was too hot (note to self: buy cooking thermometer) and I overcooked my yeast…preventing them from doing their yeasty thing (aka making the dough rise properly). My dough rose a bit, but I think it was supposed to have fluffed up more. I should have been more suspect of my own actions and made a new batch of warm water yeast mix before I added it to my flour and cornmeal. Instead, I continued course, which resulted in flat pizza dough that didn’t much rise in the oven.
There is another possibility, which is the oven itself. Martha instructs, “Heat a grill until medium hot. Generously brush one side of the pizza dough with oil; grill oiled side down, until underside is golden brown and the top begins to bubble, 3 to 5 minutes.” There is great mystery to me in this instruction. At first, I thought Martha was telling me to put my pizza dough directly on to my oven rack. This struck me as a very poor idea, resulting in visions of the Willow Creek Volunteer Fire Department (which is lacking sufficient numbers of volunteers) responding to our desperate 911 call after the oven bursts into flames. Then I realized she must not be talking about putting the pizza in the oven. She is telling me to heat a grill. I don’t have a grill, so how do I heat the grill until medium hot? If I did have a grill, which I don’t, what would it look like exactly? Is she talking about a BBQ? Am I supposed to BBQ the pizza? I quickly gave up on trying to decipher Martha-think and instead warmed the oven to 400 degrees and threw my crust on a cookie sheet (another note to self: buy pizza pans for oven), hoping for the best. I am still irritated Martha does not provide an oven method translation for those of us in the world who are grill-less. How was I supposed to know what temperature to use?
As previously mentioned, the dough didn’t really puff up much and was more like a flat bread, although it was tasty with the cornmeal and refreshing toppings of uncooked tomato, red onion, avocado and lime. I am glad I only did a half-recipe, knowing six 9-inch pizzas would be more than we could handle. As it is, we still have a ton of leftovers. Martha also should have mentioned not to top the pizza until you are ready to serve. Otherwise, the limey pizza topping makes the cheesy crust all soggy. No bueno.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Individual Portobello Muschroom Gratins
We happened to have two portobello mushrooms beginning to rot in our fridge, so I embarked to do something Martha-like with them before it was too late. Martha has only one portobello recipe in the New Classics: Individual Portobello Mushroom Gratins. I will elaborate briefly given the title is not so descriptive. The portobellos are baked in the oven for 25 minutes and then topped with a mixture of parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, dry white wine, shallots, fresh herbs, and heavy cream. The recipe was simple and went off without a hitch. I was not a huge fan. It was a little too rich for my palette. Mike gave higher reviews, referring to the dish’s comfort food qualities. I think portobellos require no additional accoutrement and shines best when roasted on their own with a little oil and herbs.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Baked Crisp Parmesan-Romano Chicken
Tonight was a chicken night. I thought I would select a simple recipe after yesterday's lemon meringue pie debacle. The baked crisp parmesan romano chicken (pages 275-76) did the trick. The recipe called for fresh bread crumbs, but I used some boxed dressing my mom brought two Thanksgivings ago that needed to get used instead. I also subbed regular romano for pecorino romano because the tiny Willow Creek grocery store doesn't carry fancy cheese. I was actually impressed they had romano at all.
This is the second recipe in two days that called for parchment paper. I still don't have any, so I skipped that step (again). Note to self: find parchment paper and buy en masse on next trip to town, as Martha often seems to require its use.
I was going to skip cutting up the whole chicken into pieces, as directed by Martha, but boyfriend Mike stepped in as my hero and did the butchering. Butchering was definitely the wiser choice, allowing the breadcrumb-herb-cheese mixture to lay atop the pieces of meat and brown in the oven.
All in all, I will call this a success. Quick. Very few dishes. Edible. Martha suggests serving this dish with arugula, tomatoes, blanched green beans, and crumbled parmesan cheese tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar. I skipped that too, thinking it would be too much food for two and two many dishes. Instead, we opted for a leftover garden salad from last night. The lettuce was a little soggy, but we survived.
This is the second recipe in two days that called for parchment paper. I still don't have any, so I skipped that step (again). Note to self: find parchment paper and buy en masse on next trip to town, as Martha often seems to require its use.
I was going to skip cutting up the whole chicken into pieces, as directed by Martha, but boyfriend Mike stepped in as my hero and did the butchering. Butchering was definitely the wiser choice, allowing the breadcrumb-herb-cheese mixture to lay atop the pieces of meat and brown in the oven.
All in all, I will call this a success. Quick. Very few dishes. Edible. Martha suggests serving this dish with arugula, tomatoes, blanched green beans, and crumbled parmesan cheese tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar. I skipped that too, thinking it would be too much food for two and two many dishes. Instead, we opted for a leftover garden salad from last night. The lettuce was a little soggy, but we survived.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie
Sometime after Thanksgiving, I somehow got it stuck in my head that I would make a lemon meringue pie for Christmas. I have never before made a lemon meringue pie, but the flavor sounded different from my usually holiday fare of apple cranberry pies, pumpkin pies, and my splurge from last year's holiday season--a pear pie. A co-worker said his wife had recently whipped one up. He ran through the steps. It didn't sound too complicated.
A few days ago, I sat down with the New Classics to look up the recipe and make sure I had all the ingredients I would need before our rinky dink grocery store closed shop for the Christmas holiday. Martha's New Classics has always seemed to have pretty much every recipe for which I have ever gone hunting. I flipped to the index and found Lemon Meringue Pie on page 448-49. This is where things started to get complicated. I turned to page 448 and found only chocolate souffle. Huh. I repeated this two-step process several times, grumbling to my neighbor Dorothy (visiting for a holiday cocktail) about some idiot in Martha's shop who flubbed up the page numbering in the index. I flipped through the entire Pie and Tarts chapter and then the Fruit Desserts chapter. Nothing. No lemon meringue pie. Completely confused, I returned to the index only to take notice of the small blue footprint at the bottom on the page. "All entries printed in blue refer to The Original Classics." Great. Wouldn't it just figure. Here it is my first day of setting out to cook every recipe in The New Classics and the recipe I need is in The Old Classics. There is no way I am cooking both cookbooks. That would take ages.
Still determined to make my pie, I confide in Martha's website, which I have often used before to dig up recipes I remember from old editions of her magazine that I neglected to save. With the internet as vast as it is, cookbooks in print are really quite obsolete, providing only the comfort of tradition or perhaps the inspiration of simply turning the page to come up with something new and different for a special occasion.
I found Martha's recipe for Mile High Lemon Pie on her website, with a photo of a huge fluffy pile of meringue at least six inches high and saved it to the Favorites menu on my internet browser. All I needed from the grocery store was unsalted butter. At least that was a plus.
3:00 on Christmas finally rolled around. It was time to start the pie. The first step was to whip up a patch of pie dough, or Pate Brisse, as Martha insists on calling it in pretty much every single one of her pie recipes. I am assuming Pate Brisse is a french term, and this must be Martha's elitist tribute to Julia Childs. The pie dough was made without a hitch.
Next step: Put your pie dough in a pie dish and bake at 400 degrees for twenty minutes or so to brown it up. Martha instructed to use parchment paper and pie weights (or dried beans) to weigh down the crust. I didn't have pie weights (I have never even seen pie weights) and I don't have parchment paper (last Thanksgiving I discovered the hard way that wax paper and parchment paper are not one in the same). I did have dried beans and considered sticking them on top of my dough but hesitated fearing they would get baked into the dough and I wouldn't get them back out. I proceeded by simply skipping this instruction and putting the pie dough in the pie dish and placing it in the oven sans parchment paper and pie weights/dried beans. That was a mistake. I figured the dough would shrink a bit, which it did. It also puffed up like a blow fish. Whoops. I was sad at first and briefly considered abandoning my mission altogether. Reconsidering, I poured a glass of wine, grabbed a fork and flattened my blow fish pie crust down into a single layer, figuring no one would be able to tell once my lemon filling was down on top of my messy crust.
Step two: Make lemon filling. Here too I went amiss. Martha said use a large saucepan. I don't have a large saucepan. I have a little saucepan (too little) and a couple of iron skillets. I opted for an iron skillet. This was all fine and dandy until little black skillet bits from my nicely seasoned skillet starting floating about in my lemon filling as I whisked away endlessly. I filtered as many out as I could with a tea strainer and feared my pie would taste like bacon and eggs. How lovely.
Martha obviously doesn't do her own dishes. The recipe said to transfer the lemon filling into a bowl and then into the waiting pie crust, which I did only to realize I had just made an extra dirty dish--the bowl. Next time, just pour the lemon filling right into the pie dish as to not make more dirty dishes then needed.
While the lemon filling chilled the fridge, I started on the meringue. I have never whipped anything so long in my life. I swear I whipped those egg whites and sugar for half a pro basketball game and they still weren't as fluffy as I thought they should be. I probably could have kept whipping, but my feet were tired from standing at the counter with the electric mixer for so long and I decided my meringue was fluffy enough.
I am pretty sure my lemon meringue pie was several inches (at least) shorter than Martha's. Maybe she cheated and used more eggs in her meringue for the photo shoot--a double batch. That would be just like her.
Either way, I was relieved when the pie didn't resemble bacon and eggs and actually tasted quite good. It didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped, and I have made a mental note to buy parchment paper and a large saucepan for next time.
A few days ago, I sat down with the New Classics to look up the recipe and make sure I had all the ingredients I would need before our rinky dink grocery store closed shop for the Christmas holiday. Martha's New Classics has always seemed to have pretty much every recipe for which I have ever gone hunting. I flipped to the index and found Lemon Meringue Pie on page 448-49. This is where things started to get complicated. I turned to page 448 and found only chocolate souffle. Huh. I repeated this two-step process several times, grumbling to my neighbor Dorothy (visiting for a holiday cocktail) about some idiot in Martha's shop who flubbed up the page numbering in the index. I flipped through the entire Pie and Tarts chapter and then the Fruit Desserts chapter. Nothing. No lemon meringue pie. Completely confused, I returned to the index only to take notice of the small blue footprint at the bottom on the page. "All entries printed in blue refer to The Original Classics." Great. Wouldn't it just figure. Here it is my first day of setting out to cook every recipe in The New Classics and the recipe I need is in The Old Classics. There is no way I am cooking both cookbooks. That would take ages.
Still determined to make my pie, I confide in Martha's website, which I have often used before to dig up recipes I remember from old editions of her magazine that I neglected to save. With the internet as vast as it is, cookbooks in print are really quite obsolete, providing only the comfort of tradition or perhaps the inspiration of simply turning the page to come up with something new and different for a special occasion.
I found Martha's recipe for Mile High Lemon Pie on her website, with a photo of a huge fluffy pile of meringue at least six inches high and saved it to the Favorites menu on my internet browser. All I needed from the grocery store was unsalted butter. At least that was a plus.
3:00 on Christmas finally rolled around. It was time to start the pie. The first step was to whip up a patch of pie dough, or Pate Brisse, as Martha insists on calling it in pretty much every single one of her pie recipes. I am assuming Pate Brisse is a french term, and this must be Martha's elitist tribute to Julia Childs. The pie dough was made without a hitch.
Next step: Put your pie dough in a pie dish and bake at 400 degrees for twenty minutes or so to brown it up. Martha instructed to use parchment paper and pie weights (or dried beans) to weigh down the crust. I didn't have pie weights (I have never even seen pie weights) and I don't have parchment paper (last Thanksgiving I discovered the hard way that wax paper and parchment paper are not one in the same). I did have dried beans and considered sticking them on top of my dough but hesitated fearing they would get baked into the dough and I wouldn't get them back out. I proceeded by simply skipping this instruction and putting the pie dough in the pie dish and placing it in the oven sans parchment paper and pie weights/dried beans. That was a mistake. I figured the dough would shrink a bit, which it did. It also puffed up like a blow fish. Whoops. I was sad at first and briefly considered abandoning my mission altogether. Reconsidering, I poured a glass of wine, grabbed a fork and flattened my blow fish pie crust down into a single layer, figuring no one would be able to tell once my lemon filling was down on top of my messy crust.
Step two: Make lemon filling. Here too I went amiss. Martha said use a large saucepan. I don't have a large saucepan. I have a little saucepan (too little) and a couple of iron skillets. I opted for an iron skillet. This was all fine and dandy until little black skillet bits from my nicely seasoned skillet starting floating about in my lemon filling as I whisked away endlessly. I filtered as many out as I could with a tea strainer and feared my pie would taste like bacon and eggs. How lovely.
Martha obviously doesn't do her own dishes. The recipe said to transfer the lemon filling into a bowl and then into the waiting pie crust, which I did only to realize I had just made an extra dirty dish--the bowl. Next time, just pour the lemon filling right into the pie dish as to not make more dirty dishes then needed.
While the lemon filling chilled the fridge, I started on the meringue. I have never whipped anything so long in my life. I swear I whipped those egg whites and sugar for half a pro basketball game and they still weren't as fluffy as I thought they should be. I probably could have kept whipping, but my feet were tired from standing at the counter with the electric mixer for so long and I decided my meringue was fluffy enough.
I am pretty sure my lemon meringue pie was several inches (at least) shorter than Martha's. Maybe she cheated and used more eggs in her meringue for the photo shoot--a double batch. That would be just like her.
Either way, I was relieved when the pie didn't resemble bacon and eggs and actually tasted quite good. It didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped, and I have made a mental note to buy parchment paper and a large saucepan for next time.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
In the Beginning
First, an introduction. To be brief, I have resolved to embark on a culinary adventure and attempt to cook each and every recipe in The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics. I might, however, skip the recipes with beets. I realize this "cook the entire cookbook and blog about it" has been done (think Julie and Julia, which I have not read, but perhaps now will read for inspiration or a word of warning, depending on the perspective). I have decided not to go in order, as to avoid becoming stuck in the poultry section for months on end, etc. Instead, I will proceed at random and check off each recipe as I go until I am finished. I have had this cookbook for over a year now, and thus have already knocked off some recipes...but not as many as I would have hoped. I aspire to proceed at a pace of two or three recipes each week. One a day would be too much food, and, knowing Martha, too much butter. Considering there are more than 1,200 recipes in the The New Classics, it should take me a couple of years to get through this endeavor. I also hope to stray a bit and throw in recipes from some of my other cookbooks as well. I would not want to get bored cooking all alone with Martha.
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