Category Archives: Recipes

Sweet Home Dinner: Menu

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Remember when I decided I needed to try gluten-free pasta to see if I could substitute it in for my tagliatelle with gorgonzola? I ran down to the store the other day for the ingredients to make classic mac and cheese with rice pasta, and couldn’t find rice pasta. However, they did have quinoa pasta and corn pasta, so I chose the corn because it came in classic elbow macaroni and cooked it up. It tastes good! Honestly, I couldn’t even tell the difference. Plus, according to the wise comments, rice pasta falls apart anyway – so I will take that to mean my choice of corn pasta was a genius move on my part and even if the store had had rice pasta, I undoubtedly would still have chosen the corn because I just know things like that….yeah….

So this is excellent, and will let me go with my original menu idea of soup followed by pasta and simple veggies, and maybe a nice brown bread for the gluten eaters.  One of my guests offered to bring macaroons for dessert, which are obviously gluten-free and sound soooo good!  I’ll just save the balsamic truffles for another time; it’s always kind of a nice feeling to know you’ve got a dessert in your back pocket that will go with almost any meal and no one has seen it before.  We’ll start with a nice simple zucchini and goat cheese appetizer, which I can not only make the day before, but will be extra vegetables (always good!) and a little protein in the cheese.

Zucchini_Rolls_lgAs for libations, a non-drinking friend is bringing something tasty and non-alcoholic. For the drinkers, I think the wine will have to marry well with the gorgonzola but otherwise could probably be whatever you like. I’ll probably just ask at the wine shop what they would recommend, as I’m no wine expert. I even went to a lovely wine tasting the other night that was meant to be focused on how to order wine from a mysterious wine list – we all know how foreign those look, right?! This was information I needed! – and I kid you not, the advice they gave over and over was “Ask the sommelier.” So basically there is no way to figure it out yourself. Oh well, I still had a great time at the tasting and got to see friends from college, so it was overall a win.

Sweet Home Dinner Menu

  • Gluten-Free Pasta baked with Mushrooms, Gorgonzola and Walnuts (continue for the recipe)
  • Roasted green beans with balsamic vinegar and honey
  • Macaroons from my friend AC

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Herb Butter

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Making herb butter is such an easy way to make a big impact.  Guests tend to be really impressed that you took the extra time to actually “make butter” – even though it takes five minutes, tops – and it can really jazz up a plain piece of bread that would have otherwise not added much to your menu as a whole.

Herb Butter

  • 1/4 cup very soft butter (or adjust to the amount you wish to put on the table)
  • 1/2 teaspoon finely minced herbs (such as chives, thyme, rosemary or basil)
  • Optional: kosher salt, to taste

If you’re a salted butter kind of person, either use salted butter or add your own salt.  A dash of kosher salt in herb butter would throw in a nice flavor, especially mixed with a more subtle herb like basil.

Using a fork, mix the softened butter and herbs together until blended evenly.  Place in a mold or pretty dish, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until set.

If you forgot to put out the butter for softening (as I usually do), you can microwave it on low power to soften it up.  Do this veeerry carefully, though, because it will melt faster than you think.  In my microwave, I put it in for 10 seconds on 50% power.  However, every microwave is different, so err on the side of caution in yours.

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Brown Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

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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 :)

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Making Brown Butter

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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.

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Some ideas for using brown butter:

So how to make it?

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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.

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