Hygge? Gemütlichkeit? Fondue!

SO. It's March, that means random snow storms. Pretty little snow storms. But still snow when I'm ready for my spring flowers. 

On Monday, I decided to do something different with my weekend. The darling princess was with her dad and rather than spend the weekend doing something boring like trying to advance in Candy Crush, I decided to have a cocktail party. This was perhaps not the best plan because when you invite people on Monday to come over Saturday, generally people have stuff going on. And I haven't entertained in long enough that people have clearly forgotten how much fun my gatherings are! Well sort of. Most of my friends had really legitimate excuses why they couldn't come. 

As the week wore on, I started to think about the upcoming gathering and the concept of Hygge (as explained in this fun little book that I picked up). The book explained that I should have candles. Not a problem, I have tons of random candles. The book also explained that it would be more Hygge to have a sort of group potluck where the cooking is all done at the same time at someone's house than to have pitchers of cocktails and teeny tiny little hors d'oeuvres. So I called up my friends who were coming and told them I had changed my mind and we would be having fondue! It seemed more Hygge even though it's Swiss and not Danish. And I should probably call it Gemütlichkeit because my heritage is German and not Danish. They sort of mean the same thing although it's more of a cultural thing in Denmark, I guess.

It also should be noted, that I had received an electric fondue pot as a wedding present and I had never taken it out of the box! I also had my mother's fondue pot and a teeny little crockpot called the little dipper. And it made sense to me that if I had 3 possible fondue devices, that I should make three separate fondues. And I did!! I made an unbelievably delicious Toblerone fondue (found here) that my friends and I discovered that pretty much anything dipped into it came out delicious! Grapes, apples, bread, strawberries, Rice Krispy treats, donut holes, pineapples, gluten-free snickerdoodles, giant marshmallows and teeny little skewers of blueberries, just to name some of what got dipped. Unfortunately my first try at making cheese fondue was a total fail. It was definitely stringy and globby. I'm not sure that's a real word, but it's an accurate description of my cheese fondue. Although, it was pretty good reheated on some potatoes for breakfast the next day!

breakfast!

And finally I made a marscapone and Calvados fondue from The Everything Fondue Party Cookbook. Calvados is kind of hard to find and it's a brandy made from apples. I had bought it for some other recipe and had to go all the way to Columbus to get it. The fondue was good. It sort of tasted like eggnog. The good boozy kind.  It was tremendous when we dipped apples in it. But it just wasn't mind blowing enough to compete with the Toblerone fondue.

We enjoyed a delicious chilled Pinot Grigio and a sweet Moscato with our fondues as well as great conversations and hearty laughs.

What I learned: I learned that making a cheese fondue takes a lot of patience and I think some practice. I also learned that I will be making the Toblerone fondue again. I learned that 3 different fondues for 6 people is a ridiculous amount of food. I learned that Walmart sells little Sterno 3-packs under where the tinfoil pans are. And I learned that I think I will either need to go to Goodwill or some garage sales and try to find traditional fondue pots. The electric one and the little dipper worked really good when I could have them plugged in, but the cords are really short and that didn't work so well for me. I might have to go buy a multi plug extension cord.

Casatiello (Salami and Cheese Bread)

I know I said I was going to celebrate my love of vegetables this month, but as I was fighting the mass of people worried about being snowed in and stocking up on groceries at Walmart I came to a realization. The realization happened as I was looking at some limp and obviously imported asparagus and was furthered by the snow that has been falling since yesterday afternoon. To celebrate my love of vegetables would go completely against eating locally, or seasonally. The only reason to celebrate vegetables in January would be to fight against winter weight gain. And although I'm eating vegetables, the vegetables aren't coming from my garden, which looks like this:

the tastiest and best quality vegetables I'm finding right now look like this.

So I think I'm going to postpone my vegetable celebration until I have some fresh vegetables that are in season and local.

Instead I bring you my fun project for passing the time while snowed in. Well, besides shoveling snow, which burns a ton of calories and I consider to be strength training as well. And I think it's possible that I may be the only dork out there that actually likes shoveling snow. But I digress. My fun project yesterday was Casatiello bread. I know, I said I probably wouldn't post bread until I start really playing with recipes. But I've made this bread twice already and I love it. It's so super delicious. Chunks of salami and pockets of cheese melted in the fairly rich brioche dough. The bread is much richer if you make it the way Peter Reinhart's recipe suggests. I personally felt that I could deal with less fat, so I cut some of it out.

The Brain and I traveled with the first loaf up to Michigan for Christmas Eve. The drive was pretty much freezing rain the entire time, until it changed to snow when we hit Detroit. And let me tell you the Detroit area roads were not good. There weren't any plows or salt trucks or anything. I think they've cut back. Anywho, the Brain and I traveled at 35mph the entire trip and the smells wafting from the warm loaf of Casatiello in the back seat were mighty tempting. Almost torturous. And the bread is so worth the wait. This is the type of bread that I have to cut myself a slice and then freeze the second loaf and put the rest in the fridge and walk out of the room to eat because if I were left alone with a loaf I don't want to know how much I would eat.

I'm totally loving my bread book Christmas present!

*update!* My bread will be included in this week's Yeastspotting over at Wild Yeast! Go check it out!

Casatiello

adapted from the Bread Bakers Apprentice

Sponge:

1/2 cup all purpose flour (bread flour would be better though)

1 Tbsp instant yeast

1 cup low fat buttermilk

Stir together the flour and yeast in a bowl. Whisk in the milk to make a pancake like batter. Cover with plastic wrap and ferment at room temperature for 1 hour. The sponge will bubble and should collapse when you tap the bowl.

Dough:

4 ounces hard salami

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (again you could use bread flour)

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup unsalted butter

7 oz. Parmesan cheese cut into chunks

While the sponge is fermenting, dice the salami into cubes and fry it until it gets a little crispy. Transfer the salami to drain on a paper towel saving the rendered salami fat.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the eggs and the sponge and mix with a paddle attachment on low speed for 1 minute. If there is any loose flour, add some additional buttermilk a little bit at a time to gather it into the dough.

Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Divide the butter into 3 pieces. Add the salami fat to the dough mixing on medium speed until it is incorporated. Do the same thing with the butter, one piece at a time. The dough will be soft. Continue to mix with the paddle attachment for 4 minutes. Then switch to a dough hook and mix for 8 minutes more.

When the dough is smooth, knead in the salami pieces. Once those are evenly distributed, add the cheese chunks. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it ferment at room temperature for about 90 minutes or until it increases in size by about 150%.

Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it in 2 pieces. Form each piece into a boule or ball shape and place in lightly oiled 8-inch round cake pans. Mist the dough with spray oil and cover with a towel and let ferment for another 60 to 90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and move the rack to the lower third of the oven. Bake the pans of bread for about 40 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through to get an even golden brown crust. Bits of cheese will be oozing out.

When the bread is done, transfer it to a cooling rack and try to wait an hour for it to cool before slicing and eating it.

Mr. Reinhart's instructions are way more specific and I think the recipe as originally written is better than this somewhat lower fat way. I love The Bread Bakers Apprentice and really encourage people new to making bread like me and who want to learn more about how to make really good bread to buy the cookbook!

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham

For the most part I am considered to be a maker of "fancy" food. Ask my mother. Even though I think that my food is fairly simple to prepare (there's a growing selection of slow cooker meals), and uses ingredients that mostly I can find out here in rural Ohio, I still get labeled as an elitist in the food department. I apparently don't cook for the people. This alone has been troubling, but this past week, some good friends of our family had a death in the family and I wanted to send over a casserole.

Yeah, yeah, you're thinking. Big whoop. This was actually a fairly difficult job. First, I had to think of a "farmer food" casserole. The patriarch of the family isn't particularly fond of vegetables. About this time, a classmate of mine told me that farmers like potatoes (or noodles), meat, and cheese. She was an expert because her dad wouldn't eat vegetables. (I should also make the disclaimer here, that I'm sure farmers exist who eat vegetables and this is probably a mere stereotype, but the patriarch of the family I was cooking for does not in general.) So the task to make a meat, cheese, and potatoes casserole, was a little daunting because there's a lactose intolerance problem in our happy little family, so for the most part I don't cook with cheese. Or at least not large proportions of it. I finally came across this delicious Scalloped Potatoes and Ham recipe from my trusty St. Columban's Catholic Church cookbook. I also came to the conclusion that we'd be having ham steak for dinner, not extra casserole.

Then the delivery of this casserole posed some more problems. See I had class the night that I made this. And unfortunately, by the time I finished it, the family was at the viewing. So it went in the fridge for the night. The next day, I tried to call and deliver it before I left town, but that happened to be right in the middle of the funeral. I was having no luck. Fortunately, the Brain is a wonderful husband. He took it over after he got home from work. He's also friends with the couples children. I really hope they enjoyed it and that they are receiving some comfort in this sad time.

On a thoroughly happier note, I went up to Michigan this weekend to see my family and because the 2008-2009 season opened at the Michigan Opera Theater. The season opener was the opera Margaret Garner based on a true story of an escaped slave. The libretto is written by Toni Morrison and is incredibly powerful. My best friend T. and I came out of it marveling at the symbolism, thankful for waterproof mascara, and a little annoyed that Black History wasn't included more in our education. The opera has left the Michigan Opera Theater, but the entire cast is going to Chicago to perform at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University November 1-9. If you can get the chance, go see it!

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham

adapted from the St. Columban's Catholic Church Cookbook submitted by Rudolph York

1 1/2 lb. ham, cubed

1 large onion, diced

10 raw Yukon gold potatoes, thinly sliced

4 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups grated mild cheddar cheese

2 cups milk

4 Tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In greased 9x13" casserole arrange half of the ham cubes. Top with half of the onion and half of the potatoes. Sprinkle with half of the flour, salt, pepper, and cheese. Repeat with remaining half of everything. Meanwhile, heat the milk with butter until butter melts and pour over all. Bake, covered, for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 30 minutes longer or until potatoes are done.

Bring on the Soup!

So one of the interesting things about this recovery from knee surgery, other than Jane Eyre is a pretty good book even if it is a billion pages long and makes me think in long and flowery sentences in my head, is that I am being barraged by soup. I don't really mind. I'm fairly certain the Brain doesn't mind either. Actually it's not just soup, but soup has definitely made a strong showing.

First we had my mother in law's chicken noodle soup. It was very yummy. Then she made us her corn chowder soup which was really really really good. And she brought these delicious corn sticks from this brand new cookbook I'm really chomping at the bit to tell you about, but you have to wait until I'm up and cooking first. Sorry. Trust me it's worth the wait. Then my mother in law left for South Carolina to visit with my very lovely brother in law and sister in law who I'm excited to go see this summer. However, my "nurse on call" who happens to be a really fun lady who's best friends with my mother in law, kept up the flow of soup and brought us some delicious chicken soup and some really yummy cobbler. She also dropped by this afternoon with some chocolate chip cookies for me. I've been told we're getting a pot of beef barley soup over the weekend too.

I'm going to have to get a move on with the physical therapy or I'm going to end up like Jaba the Butt. Although the cookies came at an opportune time because I'm just about out of medicinal chocolate. And the cobbler, while way more delicious than cobbler has any right to be, does not fit well in a pocket and thus makes it hard to carry around on crutches. Well and keep the pants clean-ish.

One thing I can say about small town living. Each one of these women make better soup than me. But you know what I can make?

Macaroni and Cheese. I'm not talking the Kraft Mac 'n Cheese that along with Van de Kamp Fish Fillets was a staple throughout the Fridays of Lent of my childhood. I'm talking about the gooey rich deliciousness of homemade macaroni and cheese. The luscious bite of the sharp cheddar. The garlicky breadcrumbs. The smooth smooth cheesy-ness of it all. The stuff I never make just for us, because of that dreadfully malodorous lactose problem. Yeah, but I know it's good because whenever I have an occasion where the other ladies are making their delicious soups, I make macaroni and cheese. And I save a tiny little casserole dish just for me. What do you take people who are layed up for a while?

As a little update. I saw the doc today and although I still can't drive, I'm starting physical therapy and I'm allowed to bend my leg more. Well, allowed is probably not the right word. I can bend it about 50 degrees and now the lockout is set for 90 degrees. If you want to imagine what my life is like, I spend most of my time laying on my back on the couch with my leg on 6 pillows reading books. This would be bliss, except sometimes my leg hurts pretty bad, and I'm really tired of laying on my back on the couch. It's at those moments when I attempt to bend my leg the amount it's supposed to go and I try fun stuff like leg lifts. I'm actually getting pretty good at those. I don't see the doctor again for another 3 weeks, but I'm hoping if I try really hard, maybe I'll at least be off the crutches by then.

Macaroni and Cheese with Garlic Bread Crumbs

from Gourmet

For Bread Crumbs:

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 large cloves garlic, crushed

2 cups bread crumbs

1/2 stick unsalted butter

1/2 cup all purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1 Tbsp dry mustard

1 lb macaroni

2 lb extra sharp cheddar, grated

Make bread crumbs:

Heat butter and oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat until melted. Toss in garlic and bread crumbs, stirring until crumbs are golden. Transfer to paper towels to drain and season with salt.

Make Macaroni:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt butter in a 3-4 quart saucepan over moderate heat. Add flour and cook, whisking 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk, cream and mustard and simmer, whisking occasionally for 3 minutes.

Cook macaroni in a 6 to 7 quart pot of boiling salted water until just tender. Drain in a colander and transfer to a large bowl. Stir in white sauce, cheese and salt to taste.

Pour macaroni mixture into a 13x9x2 inch casserole dish. You can either pile it high, or also spoon some in a small casserole dish big enough to fit the excess. Sprinkle the garlic bread crumbs on top of both casserole dishes. Bake the casseroles in the middle of the oven until bubbly. About 30 minutes for the big one and much less for the little one.

Booze Soup!

The night before the Brain and I left on our honeymoon, a week after the wedding so we could relax and sleep and get all those thank you notes out, his parents took us to a restaurant by the Cleveland airport for dinner. There we were, grateful the wedding was over, ready to start our lives together, fairly exhausted from the wedding planning and execution, excited to go on our honeymoon, and ready for some quiet time. The weather was beautiful and sunny, a dramatic change from the snow on our wedding night (in APRIL). Yes, winter never ends here. Anyway, poised on the beginning of adventure, there we were at this really good restaurant, and I had the beer soup.

I'd never had beer soup before. I think on some level I mourned the 35 years of my life that went by without me having tasted it. Kind of like how I feel about sauerkraut balls and fennel and other such delicious things I grew up not knowing about. It was delicious and cheesy and tasted definitely of beer. And up until now I've simply lived with the memory. The Brain doesn't do so well with dairy.

But then a couple weeks ago, my sister in law handed me a cookbook with this recipe marked. It is the Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread cookbook. The recipe was the Tomato and Potato Cheddar Soup with Beer. She had thought it looked like a good recipe, but her terrific kids happen to be mighty picky eaters and the cookbook just had more elegant tastes than the kids would eat. I happily took the cookbook off her hands and decided that I would make the soup (or my version of it) and eat it for lunches while the Brain was off with the older men on Thursday afternoons, and during Rotary and times like that.

Well now, the Brain looks at my soup and I keep telling him, "no no no, you can't have this soup". It's mean of me. I know. But this soup is REALLY good. And it would make his tummy REALLY hurt. And I did, after all, make him Manwiches *shudder* for lunch today, so it's not like I don't cook what he likes to eat. In fact we've had so much pizza and Chinese and spaghetti and more pizza this week, that I really have to apologize that I didn't try anyone else's recipes this week. I barely made enough to blog about. Sorry, it's been a lazy lazy week.

Tomato Potato Beer Cheddar Soup

adapted from the Daisy Hollow Soup & Bread Cookbook

1 bottle Ale

6 large potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1/4 inch slices

4 cups chicken stock

3 bay leaves

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried oregano

4 Tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 large onion chopped

1 rib celery chopped

1 carrot peeled and sliced

5 cloves of garlic crushed in a garlic press

1 15oz can petite diced tomatoes, undrained

1 Tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp flour

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

1/2 tsp dry mustard

12 oz. extra sharp cheddar, shredded

salt and pepper to taste

fresh flat leaf parsley for garnish

1. Pour the beer into a heavy dutch oven. Add the potatoes and stock. If the potatoes aren't covered add enough water to cover them. Add the basil, oregano and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile in a large skillet, melt the butter and saute the onions until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the celery, garlic and carrot and saute about 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes, Worcestershire, and soy sauce, and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 to 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and cook, stirring constantly for 1 to 2 minutes. Gradually add the cream and stir while cooking until the mixture thickens. Add the dry mustard and Tabasco. Transfer the entire mixture to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

3. Stir the cream mixture into the dutch oven.Turn down the heat so that the liquid barely simmers. Add the cheese and cook, stirring frequently until the cheese melted and the potatoes are falling apart, about 20 minutes more. Once the potatoes are falling apart, blend the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let sit for about an hour to let the flavors develop and then bring back up to temperature and serve garnished with parsley.

Look What I Made This Week!

Yet again I've been lurking around the food blog world. And yet again I've found some delicious delicious posts on other blogs that I gave a try...


This week I decided to give the Egg Muffins found originally on Kalyn's Kitchen, and then found here and here and numerous other places on the Internet. These little babies are a tasty way to start your morning on the go. I usually eat mine cold right out of the refrigerator, but the Brain likes to heat his up. They are super versatile too. I've made them with goat cheese, Swiss, Parmesan, dill and asparagus. I've also made them with red pepper, carrots, fennel, cracked black pepper, and mushrooms. Either way they're great, easy and a healthy way to start the day.


I also made, because I couldn't resist, these unbelievably cinnamony brownies from Quirky Cupcake. They were delicious even though I think I made the glaze wrong. If you'll notice the difference between my week glaze to her luscious glaze in the photos. All I can think is that if mine were made wrong and still tasted so decadent and so lovely that even the Brain, who notoriously doesn't like brownies, ate far more than his share of them. Although it should be noted, because he's been insisting, that I did indeed eat over half of the pan. But I'm not the one who took a fork to the pan the next morning.


Finally I made this delicious Greek noodle dish found on Kalofagas. I bet you were wondering what I was going to do with Halloumi and Ricata Salata. Well okay maybe you weren't wondering. But I have been poking around a lot and when I saw this dish, I knew I had to make it. I just had to wait until I could find some Halloumi cheese and it took a trip to Michigan to find it! And Peter M. is right! Halloumi does squeak when you eat it. I also had to substitute chardonney for port and these fun little radiatore shaped pasta for egg noodles. It's amazing what you run out of when you're not looking. Anyway, it was delicious and light and just perfect. Although I did have some trouble that I kept eating the hot fried Halloumi before I finished making the dish.

Channeling Julia

Sometimes when it's cold and raining or snowing I just want soup. Maybe a sandwich, but for this post let's just say I want soup. Unfortunately, when I'm at my mom's and I'm elected to make dinner and it's cold and raining, I not only want soup, but I don't want to go to the grocey store.

Although let me interject here that I LOVE going to my mom's grocery store. I often will go there and get all sorts of things that are, shall we say, hard to find in Nowhere, Ohio. This trip I picked up ground lamb, Halloumi, ricotta salata, garbanzo bean flour, quinoa, almond meal, and 2 tubes of tomato paste (so much more convenient than opening a can for 2 teaspoons of tomato paste). My mom's grocery store is one of those upscale suburban grocery stores in an upscale suburb. They have all sorts of fancy and wonderfull ingredients.

But sometimes, I just don't feel like going out in the cold. In fact, Mom and her husband are off in the wilds of Arizona right now just because they don't feel like being cold anymore. And my stepdad for all his very odd little quirks (He prefers canned vegetables. Strange.) has been trying for years to convince my mom that they should relocate to the Southwest. He loves, with a burning passion, New Mexico. He says the dryness of the heat makes the difference. Ok.

This is my stepdad's favorite soup. There is a different Julia Child recipe on my to do list, but I thought I'd start out with something more straightforward and less complicated. This is Julia Child's French Onion Soup recipe courtesy of the Food Network. And although Mom had onions, I did end up having to go out to the store for beef broth, french bread, and Gruyere. But it wasn't hard to twist my arm to go to the grocery store. I just had to add some extra layers. And the smell of this soup cooking was really warming and made everything better.

French Onion Soup

from the Food Network

1/2 stick butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

8 cups thinly sliced onions (about 2 1/2 pounds)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp flour

8 cups beef stock

1/4 cup Cognac or brandy

1 cup dry white wine

8 1/2 inch thick slices of French bread, toasted

3/4 pound coarsley grated Gruyere

Heat in a heavy saucepan over moderate heat with the butter and oil. When the butter has melted, stir in the onions, cover, and cook slowly until tender and translucent, about 10 minutes. Blend in the salt and sugar, increase the heat to medium high, and let the onions brown, stirring frequently until they are a dark walnut color, 25 to 30 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour and cook slowly, stirring, for another 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool a moment, then whisk in 2 cups of hot stock. When well blended, bring to the simmer, adding the rest of the stock, Cognac, and wine. Cover loosely, and simmer very slowly 1 1/2 hours, adding a little water if the liquid reduces too much. Taste for seasoning.

Divide the soup among 4 ovenproof bowls. Arrange toast on top of soup and sprinkle generously with grated cheese. Place bowls on a cookie sheet and place under a preheated broiler until cheese melts and forms a crust over the tops of the bowls. Serve immediately.