Monthly Archives: November 2009

Survivorman Inspiration

Posted on by
4

I was watching Survivorman today – yes, I know, I’m supposed to be super girly because I spend time making things look pretty, but strangely enough I also enjoy learning what to do if I’m dropped into an arctic tundra or rainforest by accident – and he was on a rocky beach somewhere that looked very Alaska-like with icebergs not far away.  He hadn’t had food in four and a half days (he’s so much tougher than Bear Grylls, I can’t get over why everyone doesn’t see that) and then he caught four huge Arctic Char in the ocean, cleaned them, and hung them over a branch to air out.  Then he ate the raw meat like sushi.  It was awesome.

This does relate to dinner parties, and not by making sushi.  When he put the bubble-gum-pink fish up on the branch, it was so beautifully contrasted with the grey ocean and huge iceberg cliffs in the background, and I thought, “What a gorgeous table setting on which to serve a pink fish like that.”  It would set the bright color of the fish off perfectly and also give the table a quiet, contemplative, ocean feel which would be lovely for a deep wintry evening.

Clockwise from top left: Brides; Laurie Peacock on Elizabeth Anne Designs; Kate Kelly Photography on Snippet and Ink; Martha Stewart Weddings

For the menu, I’m naturally thinking of an ocean/beachy theme.  Dessert took me a while to choose (feeling that fruit would end the meal nicely, but not sure which fruit), but then I realized our Survivorman could conceivably find berries in the woods and the warm color would look lovely on our grey-blue table.  So, without further rambling:

Survivorman Menu

Starter:

  • Oysters on the half shell with lemon

Entrees:

Dessert:

MMMM so yummy, especially the oysters to start – I’m so obsessed with oysters, and this menu just sounds like it would bring that salty ocean taste with just the right touch of warmth to balance it out.

By the way, did you see that Will Ferrell episode on Man v. Wild?  Bear and Will basically went on a long hike in the snow, climbed down an extremely short litle cliff using a rope, camped out in a shelter that Bear built, had plenty of food and were picked up the next day.  Not exactly Survivorman-level surviving.  Which, fine, he’s a movie star and it was impressive that he even did that.  But instead of acknowledging the semi-lameness and admitting that it was awesome that Will was even out there at all, they spent the ENTIRE time congratulating themselves on how hard-core and intense they were.  It was…ridiculous.  And I’m using a nice word for it.

So Bear dipped even lower in my esteem that day.  However, that said, I would really enjoy being friends with someone named Bear (just think how many conversations you could start with “Well, Bear says…”, “Bear?”, “Oh yeah, you don’t have a friend named Bear?”).  So he can come over for dinner and defend himself any day.  I’ll use this color scheme.

Email or Share This Post

Brown Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Posted on by
10

Longest cookie name ever. However, you have to trust me: these cookies are deserving of such a laden moniker.

First, a bit of a meandering introduction to my preoccupation with creating the perfect peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. I grew up in Fairfield, Iowa until I was fifteen, and then my family moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and has lived there ever since. Large pieces of me still are connected to my Iowan roots, including the sense-memory of the most amazing, incredible, perfect peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies made by Cookies From the Heart in Fairfield – cookies to which I have never tasted the equal (and which apparently doesn’t have any sort of web presence). All my readers from Fairfield, you know what I’m talking about – and you should all run, not walk, to Everybody’s and get yourself one of those cookies right now just because you can.

Since I live in New York, not Fairfield, and thus don’t have regular access to those cookies, I have been working on figuring out how to make my own. I knew the key was bringing the full richness out of the peanut butter without overpowering the chocolate chips, but every recipe I tried fell short. So I made up my own recipe, tried it out, and lo and behold FINALLY I’ve found it and it was so obvious it is almost ridiculous. Oh brown butter: you come through every time.

Seriously: I ramped up every rich flavor-filled ingredient, added the brown butter, and added only enough flour as was needed to achieve the cookie consistency. The result is a magnificent creation. I did not eat dinner the night I made these. I only ate cookies.

Brown Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Very adapted from All Recipes

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter (I used mostly Jif with a little natural peanut butter added in.  If you prefer a nuttier taste, use the natural stuff; if you like it to be really smooth, use the stuff that’s bad for you.  I think it’s clear which choice I made.)
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup (I know, it’s bad for you, etc etc etc – I don’t care. It adds a smoothness the cookies really need, so just grit your teeth if you must and add it in.)
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
  • 6 ounces Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chunks (60% cacao), or use the chocolate of your choice cut into chunks

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Brown the butter over medium heat in a saucepan (see Brown Butter instructions) and let congeal in the refrigerator until solid.

To make the brown butter mixable, either leave it out until it has reached room temperature or microwave at low power until it is soft enough to blend but not melted.

With an electric mixer, cream the brown butter, peanut butter and sugars together until smooth and fluffy (about one minute).  Add eggs, vanilla and corn syrup and mix on medium speed until combined.  Stir flour, baking soda, and salt together, then add the dry mixture on low speed, beating until just combined.  Fold in chocolate chunks.

Line your baking sheets with parchment paper (optional, but helps to avoid sticking).  Drop large tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet, leaving at least half an inch between each cookie. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the cookie is set and does not indent when you touch it lightly.  My oven bakes on the slow side, and I took these out at exactly 15 minutes, so if you know your oven let that be your guide.

Let the cookies set on the baking sheets for a minute or two before transferring them to wire racks to cool.

Now eat, possibly with milk to dunk them in, and give up any hope of wanting anything else to eat for quite a while.  It’s not the worst thing in the world :)

Email or Share This Post

Black and White Inspiration

Posted on by
1

Something about these simple stark white hydrangea bunches against the black dresses is really inspiring me – except as accent colors, black and white are so rarely used on tables.  How fun would it be to have such a dramatic table?

Bonnie Tsang on Snippet and Ink

I LOVE white hydrangeas.  I love all hydrangeas, truthfully, but white ones are so versatile, soft and welcoming.  Using them or another fluffy flower like peonies, rather than a  a more delicate flower like white orchids or roses, will lend the black elements on the table some softness that keeps it from being too stark and Sixties mod.  It’s such a harsh color scheme that I would further soften it by adding wide black ribbons to the vases with big bows and long trailing ends.  Rather than a black or white tablecloth, which would make the table too light or too dark, black napkins draped over the side of the table as placemats would add the black element without overwhelming the entire table, and white plates over them would balance the darkness.  For accent colors, I’d like some gold – perhaps a few burnished gold candlesticks with white taper candles on the table – and a little greenery either in the vases or place cards.  I LOVE these simple pear place cards.  So fall-y and simple, and absolutely gorgeous.

The presentation and style of food could either lean towards the more simple and modern if you want to accentuate the clean lines and stark colors of the table, with a carefully presented salad followed by a simple piece of fish.  Or, you could contrast with the table and warm it up with comfortable food such as roast chicken.  Both could end with homemade passed truffles, which will look beautiful on the black and white table (and I just really want to make them!).

More Modern Menu

More Homey Menu

Email or Share This Post

Fall in Atlanta Menu

Posted on by
Reply

A few days ago, I watched Anne Burrell make Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Radicchio, Pecorino, and Fried Capers, which looked soooo yummy and perfect for cool weather. It also sounded like it could be paired with a lot of various dishes, which is something I always like when thinking of menus.  It will add the saltiness and bite component to the group.  She paired it with stuffed calamari, but I know a lot of my guests are a bit squeamish about calamari (though I love them) so I generally stay away from such tentacled things in the interest of making all my guests comfortable.

calamariSorry, that photo is really unappetizing. But really, we all need to be comfortable with how our food looks before it’s cooked, right? Consciousness about where our food comes from and all that? I really like eating calamari but wow, it is extremely unattractive. So, moving on to my calamari-free menu…

Cauliflower is kind of a plain vegetable, and I’ve found that many people think they don’t like it because it doesn’t have a definable taste – but really it just takes on the flavors of whatever you add to it, which makes it a lovely base for a dish with strong salty flavors like capers and Pecorino cheese. Anne also swears that roasting the cauliflower and making it all brown and crispy makes it taste heavenly, and we all know how we like browning things here at BB&B!

cauliflower-cocoa-2Khymos

I think this might be just the thing for a meal during my upcoming visit to Atlanta. My dad has a horse farm outside of the city, and it’s a gorgeous place with a few hundred acres on the Chattahoochee River – you would never know you’re half an hour from downtown Atlanta and ten minutes from a huge suburban Whole Foods. It’s so funny: whenever I leave Manhattan, I’m always shocked at how big the grocery stores are! I guess I just get used to the citified tiny sky-high aisles into which they pack everything they can and, while they somehow stack more than you’d expect, it’s impossible for NYC grocers to carry as many products as an enormous genuine classic Americana supermarket. It’s a treat to wander around wide aisles with a cart and buy lots of things that are heavy knowing you don’t have to physically carry them home as I usually do here – just throw them in the car!  It’s so exciting. And then, when you get home, there’s a kitchen with a lot of counter space and a big oven to cook in! It’s really a genius system and very exciting to the city dwelling cook – though it probably seems insane to be so excited about such things to everyone else, and all I have to say is fine, there are definitely some things New York just cannot match (though we do have home delivery and skyscrapers, so there!).

Back door to the house - with Siddy, the world's sweetest but dumbest dog, and a sign I find particularly amusing in light of my dad's extremely hippie past

Back door to the house - with Dewey, the world's sweetest but dumbest dog, and a sign I find particularly amusing in light of my dad's extremely hippie past

So I’m looking forward to a fun weekend in the country with nothing to do except ride horses, cook and sleep.

Fall in Atlanta Menu

The spicy arugula and sweet orange should match well with the salty cauliflower salad, and chicken just sounds goooood. I always like to have a dessert, even with simple family meals, but I don’t know how much time I’ll have to make a complicated dessert and anyway my family is on a super health kick these days (the P90X craze has hit them). So I’m going to go with a simple applesauce made with sweet apples in season and maybe just a little tiny hit of honey only if necessary, but no other sugar added. I might jazz up the whipped cream a bit – I’ll write this recipe as I make it! So stay tuned :)

Email or Share This Post

Making Brown Butter

Posted on by
1

It seems fitting to write my first post on such a lovely ingredient, made simply by heating butter until it is golden brown.  According to Wikipedia, the science of it is that heating the butter separates the milk solids and butterfat and then browns the milk solids – but frankly what matters to me is that brown butter adds caramel richness, nutty depth, and a little bit of smoky grit to a recipe. I highly recommend experimenting with it – especially for sweet things, which balance the brownness (for lack of a better word) very well.

.

Some ideas for using brown butter:

So how to make it?

.

Put your unsalted butter in a pan (this is one stick, or 1/2 cup) and let it melt over medium heat.

Keep stirring.  It will get all bubbly and start to smell good.  This is about two minutes in.

As it starts to get more brown, around the three minute mark, keep a close eye on it.

When it’s ready, a little over four minutes after putting it on the heat, it will be golden brown and little brown specks will form on the bottom of the pan.  I like the brown specks – they add a little nice roughness to the flavor – but you can strain them out if you like it more smooth.  Remove from the heat immediately and either immerse the bottom of this pan in cold water to stop the cooking or pour the brown butter into another container and refrigerate.

.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Email or Share This Post