The Fourth of July harvest:

We grilled some turkey burgers (I added some peach/pineapple salsa that was taking up room in the fridge, and it made the burgers so delicious - try it!), corn with cayenne-spiked butter and the zucchini (thinly sliced with s&p), steamed the green (and purple) beans, and feasted. 

I decided to continue the tradition of July 4th chocolate decadence, and made these double-decker bars.  On the bottom, fudgy, chocolate-chip and walnut laced brownies.  On the top, chocolate chip cookies.  Daaaaamn.

Chocolate Chip Cookie-Topped Brownies From Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  Have you bought this book yet?  Shouldn’t you click that link and do it?

For the brownie layer
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 2/3 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

For the cookie layer
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cups (packed) light brown sugar
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or 1 cup storebought chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9×13 inch baking pan with aluminum foil or parchment (use enough so that it comes up and over the sides), and butter the foil/parchment.  Or just grease it.

To make the brownie batter, melt both chocolates and the butter together in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally. Melt and stir just until the mixture is shiny and smooth, then remove the bowl from the heat and set aside.

Meanwhile, beat the sugar and eggs together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a hand mixer) on medium high speed for about 2 minutes, until pale, thick and creamy. Beat in the salt and vanilla, then reduce the speed to low and mix in the melted chocolate and butter, mixing just until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then add the flour, mixing on low speed just until it disappears into the batter. Turn off the mixer and fold in the chopped walnuts by hand with a spatula, then scrape the batter out into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Set aside.

To make the cookie dough, first whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl, and set aside. Wash the bowl of your stand mixer (that you used to make the brownie batter), and then beat the butter and both sugars together using the paddle attachment on medium-high speed until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes. One at a time, add the egg and the egg yolk, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla, then reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear into the batter. Still on low, mix in the chopped chocolate.

Drop the cookie dough by spoonfuls onto the brownie batter, then use a spatula to gently smooth out the cookie dough layer evenly over the batter.  It’s hard.  You might have to use your fingers, then take tastes.  You’ve earned it.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, until the cookie top is deep golden brown and a sharp knife inserted into the pan comes out with only faint streaks of moist chocolate.

Transfer the pan to a cooling rack to cool, then when you’re ready to cut them, just lift them out using the foil/parchment that you lined the pan with. It’s easiest to cut these when they’re cool/cold, if you can wait that long. 

I gave away most of these to the neighbors, and packed up the rest to put in the freezer for a special treat - I had one yesterday straight from the freezer and, daaaaaaaamn.  Even better.

I’m trying my best to be a good little hippie.  I really am.  So, when we ran out of peppercorns in the Trader Joe’s grinder, I went down to the co-op, bought some bulk peppercorns, and attempted to refill.  Then I made meatballs for Chris’ favorite, baked pasta.

Ugh.  I tried to fish out as many as I could, but there was only so much time I was willing to commit to sorting through turkey with my bare hands.  It gets old.  So, spicy it would be:

Adapted from Gourmet:

For the meatballs
1 pound ground turkey
1 large garlic clove, minced
3/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted and chopped
1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves (preferably flat-leafed)
1 large egg, beaten lightly
1 teaspoon salt
About a CUP of PEPPERCORNS.  I mean, 1 teaspoon black pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound ziti or penne
1 1/2 cups coarsely grated mozzarella cheese (about 6 ounces)
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 ounces)
about 6 cups tomato sauce, or if you don’t have that, you can sub a large can of diced tomatoes, drained
15oz ricotta cheese

In a bowl stir together well turkey, garlic, bread crumbs, onion, pine nuts, parsley, egg, salt, and pepper and form into meatballs about 1 inch in diameter. In a large heavy skillet heat 2 tablespoons oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and cook half of meatballs, shaking skillet, until browned and cooked through, about 4 minutes. Transfer meatballs to paper towels to drain and brown remaining meatballs in remaining 2 tablespoons oil in same manner.

All this busyness is making me long for more extended kitchen time (and therefore more website time!) - it’s amazing how much better I feel when I am able to just putz - try new recipes, use up old strange treats in the fridge, eat leftovers for lunch instead of buying something.  Starting this weekend, my schedule will lighten some and the kitchen good times will begin again, just in time for summer. 

In the meantime, we’ve been mainly subsisting on takeout and the occasional batch of pancakes for dinner; a far cry from my last kitchen adventure.  A few weeks ago, we had some lovely friends in town from the East Coast and I cooked up a feast, the highlight of which was this mushroom galette.  Decadent, delish, delightful. Make it today:

Mushroom Galette adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Galette Dough:
2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
12 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1/3 to 1/2 cup ice water as needed

Fillin’:
Olive oil
1 large onion, cut into 1/2 inch dice
2 tsp minced rosemary
salt and freshly milled pepper
2 pinches red pepper flakes
1/2 lb portobello mushrooms
1 lb large white mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 Tbsp tomato paste*
2 cups vegetable broth
1 tsp aged red wine vinegar
1 T butter
2 T chopped parsley
2 T melted butter or beaten egg for glaze

The dough is the real star of this dish, I think.  I mean, how can you really go wrong when you’re alloting a stick and a half of butter?  To make the dough, mix the flour, salt, and sugar together in a food processor, then cut in the butter, leaving some pea-sized chunks. Sprinkle the ice water over the top by the tablespoon and toss it with the flour mixture until you can bring the dough together into a ball.  Press it into a disk and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Lightly flour the counter and roll dough into 14 inch circle about 1/8 inch thick. Transfer it to a cookie sheet without sides, because it will be larger than the pan until you fold the edges over the filling.

For the filling: Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet.  Add the onion and rosemary and cook over medium heat until the onion is lightly browned, about 12 minutes. Season 1/2 tsp salt , a little pepper, and the red pepper flakes. Remove to a bowl.  Heat 1 Tbsp oil in the same skillet over high heat and saute the mushrooms until browned (you may need to do two batches), then season with salt and pepper.  Combine with the onions and return everything to the pan.  Add the garlic and tomato paste diluted with a few spoonfuls of stock and the vinegar. Add the remaining stock, bring to a boil, then stir in the butter and the parsley. Cook for 5 minutes, then drain, reserving the juices.

Preheat oven to 400°. Mound the filling into the galette dough round, leaving a few inches border.  Loosely fold the dough over the filling and brush it with melted butter. Bake until the crust is browned, about 40 minutes. Heat any reserved juices and spoon them into the mushrooms.

*y’all.  I must digress here.  I found the most exciting little tip the other day.  You know when you buy a can of tomato paste and only use a spoonful?  Well.  You can use a can opener to open the other side of the can, creating a tube.  Then freeze it for a few hours, take it out and push the frozen paste out of the can.  You can then cut it into 1″ rounds (which comes out to about 1Tbsp apiece) and freeze them in a plastic bag.  Genius.

Anyway, this dish was delicious.  Along with the last of this season’s artichokes and some sauteed broccoli rabe, we had a nice homecooked (ahh) meal.  It was made during the tragic lens-got-sat-on-camera-dead era, before Chris bought me a new fancypants neato lens for my birthday, but luckily Lynelle was around to do the honors:

We’re not big drinkers at my house - after a long day, either one of us can be known to crack open a cold beer, but we’ll typically stop at the one. Now that I’m thinking about wedding stuff though, I want to come up with a fresh, seasonal beverage to serve people in February. It should be something that can be easily adapted to be virgin so that everyone can enjoy.

Last night I decided that we should start experimenting. After visiting Palm Springs this year and seeing all the beautiful citrus trees, I figured that grapefruit would be a good place to start. The Grapefruit Margarita made its debut last night, and was so delicious. It’s a contender, and may be even better when I make it’s cousin, the Smoky Grilled Grapefruit Margarita. Yowza.

I haven’t been posting lately due to the fact that my camera was sat on, and the lens is now dead. Bummer! I’m saving up for a new one, but in the meantime I’m relying on Lynelle and Chris’ cameras. I didn’t make anyone take a picture of these, so you’re left with my interpretation. Ahem…

Anyone have any other winter-boozy-and-non-boozy-drink ideas? I’m also open to warm drinks, seeing as it might be chilly. Let the taste testing begin!

Edited to add: how about the ingredients?  This just goes to show that my brain is a bit scattered these days.  Anyway, here’s the mixture - make it today!

First, make a simple syrup.  Combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan and set over high heat.  Stir occasionally until sugar dissolves.  Boil one minute then cool.

Combine 1/4 cup of the simple syrup with 3 cups fresh pink grapefruit juice, 3 tablespoons Triple Sec, Cointreau or Grand Marnier, and 6 ounces tequila.  Stir to blend and serve over crushed ice.

I was going to draft some emails to friends and family who I haven’t talked to yet, but hell - what good is a website if you can’t take care of these things in one fell swoop?  I’ve been filling this space with such personal things lately - I promise, it’s back to caterpillars and mulching soon.

Chris proposed, and I happily accepted.  We’re gettin’ hitched!  We’re both really excited and twitterpated, and I keep staring down at my hand.  My mom generously gave us the stone from her engagement ring, so we’ve definitely got some good marriage juju working for us!

My obsession with 99 Ranch has been documented on this site before. I teach once a week out in Kearny Mesa, and usually have an hour to kill between work and school - the perfect browsing window. Last week’s purchase was a bamboo steaming basket. I have wonderful early memories of steaming plates of dim sum dumplings, and had to find a way to satisfy the craving. The latest obsession has begun - dumpling time!

As fate would have it, this month’s Cooking Light magazine has a feature article on steaming, and included a few recipes that I ripped out and tried right away.

First stop, pork buns (Char Siu Bao). I only had whole wheat flour, so that was the only substitution I made. They weren’t quite as sweet as those from my childhood, and I may need to experiment some more. I fully planned to freeze half of them, but they disappeared too quickly.

I did better with my next experiment - shrimp and mushroom sui mei (I’ve always seen it written shu mai, but there you go).  Yum, y’all.  I only had shiitakes, and steamed them atop some taro leaves instead of napa cabbage, but followed the rest of the recipe exactly.

These turned out exactly right - chewy, bite-sized pouches of chopped mushroom and shrimp.  Chris and I gobbled these up so quickly that I may think of doubling the recipe next time.  The steamfest has begun!

Also, not to get your hopes up, but I’m currently experimenting with my second batch of homemade fudgesicles.  Yeah, it’s gonna be a good summer!

Thanks for checking in, friends and family - lots of love and hugs all around!  And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I’ve been staring at these plants for MONTHS, watching and waiting.  Even though I grew up eating them, I had no idea how artichokes grew.  The long ignorant wait is over…

So pretty!  I keep hearing the same things outside my window when people walk by: “Oh, what a nice gard… wow, what the heck is that big plant?”

In other garden news, we’ve got fertilization happening with the squash - both with a few of our winter (hard) varieties and with the mystery compost squash that sprouted up from last year’s vegetable waste.  We’re still not sure what it’ll turn out to be…

Turks cap squash - should eventually turn out looking like this.

The mystery squash is making a run for it!

I love spring.

My memories of my dad are less clear than they used to be, but they’re still all there.  I remember the sound his heart made when I’d snuggle up next to him on the couch.  I remember his crinkly-eyed smile, the one that was true and had love behind it.  I remember his suited shoulder that I would crash into when he came home from work.  I remember his voice soothing me to sleep, and I remember his voice admonishing me for being rude.  I remember the sound of him chewing.  I remember watching him pull my mom away from preparing dinner to dance with her.  I remember his laugh in all its incarnations - the polite hee-hee all the way to the tears-streaming-down-the-face hysteria.  I remember his “proud papa” look.  I remember hearing him forage for a midnight snack.  I remember how good it felt to feel surrounded in his hugs.  I remember him calling me Punky Doodle All The Day, and I remember the day when I was 13 and I told him I was too old for that nickname.  I remember the disappointed look on his face.  I cringe at that memory.

There aren’t many things I regret - I’m more of the mind that life is life and it goes forward, not back. We make our mistakes and have our successes, and regret simply forces us back in time.  But I’d give anything to take that back and hear him call me Punky Doodle again.

He died eight years ago today.

Lord.  Have any of you tackled that crazy flu that’s been going around?  Whenever I’ve had the flu, there’s been one day when I feel like I’m going to die, then 3-4 days of ickiness.  Well, this was a doozy.  My mantra was “I’m going to die”, and I repeated it hourly for 7 days.  Ridiculous.

Luckily, I have the world’s most patient nurse, so was able to send out for Gatorade and Fudgesicles (the only things I could stomach).  Unfortunately, I then got him sick, so had to reverse roles for another week.  Sheesh.  Thank god that’s over, and next year?  Flu shots for everyone!

I haven’t quite gotten back in the kitchen (currently littered with empty Gatorade bottles, numerous straws and Dayquil packaging), but I have been able to take advantage of this lovely weather and play in the garden.

We planted the east side full of melon and winter squash, mulched the whole lot and started the waiting process.  I can’t wait to see what works, what doesn’t, how they all look - we’re planting a lot of new and interesting stuff this year from Baker Creek Seeds, so the experiment continues.

The west side you’ve seen, but now it’s chock full of tomato seedlings, scattered among the broccoli, and the front is full of summer squash, pumpkin and fennel seeds.

Just as we have risen from the depths, I expect these seeds to do the same (we’re very metaphorical around here)…

My lovely aunt has given me the most wonderful gift - the gift of Persian style rice. I don’t think I’ll ever make it any other way.

As you can see, the rice is really not the highlight of the rice. Does that make sense? It’s early. Directly from my South-African by location, Persian by marriage, Southern Californian by birth auntie. Didn’t I say I have a multicultural family?

Chelo

basmati or long-grain rice – about 3 cups
2 or 3 potatoes peeled and sliced about ¼ inch thick
Butter / oil
salt

Wash rice two or three times (fill the bowl of rice with water, gently move the rice around with your hand to release the starch and drain) and soak in water for 3-4 hours, then drain the water.  Pour water in a large non-stick pan until it is half-full and bring it to a boil. Add rice and a spoonful of salt and continue boiling until rice slightly softens.  Pour rice into a large strainer and wash it with slightly warm water.

Melt a few spoonfuls of butter and cooking oil into the pan.  Place the potato slices in the bottom of the pan and then add the rice taking care not to pack it too tightly.  The rice should be in a bit of a cone shape in the pot.  Add a couple knobs of butter to the top of the rice and then about a ¼ cup water.  Cover the pan and cook over low heat for about an hour.  A delicious crispy layer of rice and potato (called ta-dig) will form at the bottom of the pan.

 Now, instead of fighting over the ta-dig with my cousins, it’s all mine!  Bwah-ha-ha!

Thanks, MP.