New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

 


Cookies are one of my favorite things to bake. Cookies are an almost instant satisfaction of a sweet tooth. I love sampling the dough as I make it; love a fresh hot cookie right out of the oven; and I really love them the next day when they’ve been in a Ziploc overnight and they are less crispy, and more chewy and tender.

It seems everyone’s been posting about their new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe lately, The New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie, so of course I had to give it a try. These big cookies are made with a combination of cake flour and bread flour, fancy bittersweet chocolate, sprinkled with sea salt and most importantly left to chill in the refrigerator for 24 to 36 hours.

They puffed up more during cooking then a typical chocolate chip cookie, but then flatten to a typical chocolate chip cookie shape. I thought they were less greasy than a typical chocolate chip cookie, which was nice. I couldn’t find any fancy chocolate disks for my cookies, even though I drove to Whole Foods as suggested.  I didn’t make them huge either, so maybe I didn’t get the whole NY Chocolate Chip Cookie experience.




New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour  1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)
Sea salt.

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

Daring Bakers Blood Orange Tian

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

A tian is a dish created in layers. This dessert tian is made of three layers. The first layer is a pate sablee (a classic crust for tarts) topped with homemade orange marmalade.  The middle layer is stabilized whipped cream sweetened with orange marmalade. The final layer is fresh orange segments soaked in a orange caramel sauce.

You build the dessert upside down and then unmold it so that the bottom layer (the orange segments) becomes the top layer. Then you finish the dessert with a drizzle of orange caramel sauce.

 

There are quite a few steps to making this dessert; however a lot of them can be made in advance. The orange marmalade can be made several days ahead of time and the orange caramel sauce and orange segments should be made the day before you plan to serve the dessert.



I decided to use Blood (Moro) Oranges for my dessert because of their gorgeous red color. This was my first time making marmalade and this easy, delicious recipe uses the entire orange not just the rind. This is a beautiful, impressive dessert, but it wasn’t a huge hit with my family. Everyone liked it, they just didn’t love it. If I make it again, I’d probably use strawberries and be sure and let it sit in the fridge to thaw for a bit before serving it.

Visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Achieve for the recipes and the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see the fabulous Orange Tians other Daring Bakers created. Thanks Jennifer for choosing a fun and challenging challenge!

Barbecue Chicken Sandwich

  
This is really more of a dinner idea than a recipe, but when I saw it in Everyday Foods a few years ago I thought it was a great idea and I’ve been making it on busy nights ever since. The original recipe used leftover chicken from Thyme-Roasted Chicken, but I often buy a roast chicken from Sam’s Club or Costco. I use most of the breast meat to make BBQ Chicken Sandwiches and then use the skin, bones and dark meat to make quick homemade Chicken Noodle Soup another night.

Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches
2 roasted chicken breasts, shredded
3/4 cup barbecue sauce (KC Masterpiece is my favorite)
4 hamburger buns or rolls, toasted

Place shredded meat and sauce in a large skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until heated, 4 to 5 minutes. (Usually I just microwave the meat and sauce in a microwave safe dish until heated.) Add more barbecue sauce if needed. Serve on split, toasted hamburger buns or rolls.

Key Lime Cream Cheese Pie and Spring Flower Macarons

It’s a busy week for food bloggers. Pi Day is on March 14, St. Patrick’s Day is on March 17, and Macaron Day is March 20. So many fun food holidays in one week! I wanted to celebrate all these holidays, but was running out of time to get everything baked and posted. So I thought why not make something that celebrates all these holidays in one dessert.

Pie is one of my favorite desserts, so that was an obvious choice and limes are green, so that covers St. Patrick’s Day, and I topped my pie with a Key Lime Macaron for Macaron Day.

I love key lime pie (and yes I know key lime pie should not be green - except for St. Patrick’s Day) and I really love frozen key lime pie on a stick dipped in chocolate from Kermits’ Key West Lime Shoppe, in Florida. So I decided to add a chocolate twist to my key lime pie and make a chocolate crumb crust, which lead me to Epicurious’ Chocolate Crumb Crust recipe, which lead me to Epicurious’ Key Lime Pie recipe.

I decided to try the Epicurious key lime pie recipe because it was a cross between key lime pie and key lime cheesecake and I thought it would make a yummy macaron filling as well. And it did! I had to thicken it up a bit with powdered sugar, but I actually loved it as a filling way more than I liked it as a pie filling.

 

The pie was just alright, not something I’d make again, but the macs were delicious. I added a bit of Country Time Lemonade powder and key lime zest to the shells and with the tart key lime filling it was a delicious contrast to the sweetness of the macaron.

The challenge for MacTweets was to create Spring Flower macarons. I had visions of a deep leaf green shell. You know the color of leaves bursting out of the snow on a warm Spring day. But I never made it to the store to buy the green paste food coloring so let’s just pretend they’re that color.



But the best part of baking gorgeous dark green macs was that my sweet friend Tiifany, Food Finery, invited me to make them at her house! She made homemade bread and delicious stuffed mushrooms. We laughed and had the best time while we baked, and we both got pretty feet. Baking with a friend really is so much more fun. Thanks Tiff! 



Tiffany posted the mac recipe we used on Food Finery. Be sure and stop by and check it out and see her scrumptious Burgundy Vanilla Bean Macs with Blood Orange Buttercream. Also, stop by MacTweets on March 20 to see the beautiful roundup of Spring Flower Macarons. The MacTweeters have outdone themselves on this challenge.

Daring Cooks Sweet Risotto: Rice Pudding with Poached Cherries

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.



In January I made an amazingly delicious Sweet Potato Risotto From Real Simple that I had seen posted on several blogs. I added some diced grilled chicken and it was a fabulous one pot meal that I never got around to posting and really should make again.

Since I’d recently made a savory risotto and have made homemade stock many times, I decided it would be fun to make a sweet risotto. I found many delicious sweet risotto recipes on line, but I knew my family would love the Cherry Risotto posted on Cooks Almost Anything.

My adapted recipe is posted below. I didn’t add the cherry juice to the risotto as it was cooking, so that it would highlight the vanilla bean seeds and the contrasting white and red colors. I also incorporated tips and instructions from GoLo Kitchen’s  Rice Pudding--Risotto Style.



This  was a scrumptious rice pudding. I’d never had rice pudding with any fruit other than raisins and it added a whole new dimension to the dessert.  I would like to try using the arborio rice in our family favorite rice pudding recipe, Lamb's Famous Rice Pudding, to see if it would increase the creaminess without all the stirring. But if you love cherries, definitely give this one a try!

  

Rice Pudding Risotto Style with Poached Cherries
adapted from Cooks Almost Anything 
serves 6

1 cup arborio rice 
4 Tablespoons butter 
4 cups milk (add more or less as needed) 
1 cup cream 
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

Place the milk, cream, sugar and vanilla bean paste into a saucepan and bring gently to boiling point.

In large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Pour in rice and stir until all grains have been coated with butter. Cook rice for a few minutes until the rice is glossy and a bit translucent.

Add a half cup of the hot milk mixture. This should absorb fairly quickly and as soon as the majority of the milk has been absorbed, add another half cup. Keep stirring and when this has absorbed, add another half cup. Continue this process of adding milk and stirring until rice is tender. 

(You want your risotto to be smooth and creamy. The rice will absorb more liquid as it cools, so continue to add milk until the rice is tender but all the milk is not absorbed.)

Serve hot with a spoonful of poached cherry juice and poached cherries on top.

Poached Cherries 
12 oz. bag frozen cherries, pitted
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup water

In a saucepan add the caster sugar and water and over a gentle heat stir until the sugar has just melted. Add the cherries, stir to coat and let this simmer until the cherries have coloured the syrup. Cool before using.

Quick Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

 

I was never really satisfied with a chicken noodle soup recipe until I found Pam Anderson’s Soup Up Your Chicken Soup article on Allrecipes. Most of the recipes I’d tried before were okay, but didn’t have enough chicken flavor. Or, if the flavor was great, it was so time-consuming that I wouldn’t bother making it again.

I tested a chicken soup recipe a while ago that tasted fabulous. But it involved hours of work and lots of different steps. It even required you to cut the chicken bones into one inch pieces so you could get every bit of flavor out of the bones. What a pain!

This recipe starts with a rotisserie chicken and chicken broth.  It cuts hours off the cooking time. You don’t have to chop two sets of veggies and throw the first set away. And best of all, It tastes as good or even better than if you’d spent hours making.

My adapted version is listed below, but in her recipe Pam has a chart of add-ins to make different versions of chicken soup, such as curried chicken soup, or chicken tortellini soup. When my son recently had his tonsils removed I made him the chicken and rice soup, which was the perfect comfort food!



Quick Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup
adapted from Allrecipes

3 14 oz cans chicken broth
1 quart water
1 store-bought roast chicken 
1 tablespoons vegetable oil 
1 large onion, diced
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
1 large celery stalk, diced
2 cups egg noodles
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Separate chicken meat from skin and bones. *Reserve meat.

Bring broth and water to a simmer over high heat in a large soup pot. Add skin and bones to the simmering broth. Reduce heat to low, partially cover and simmer until bones release their flavor, 20 to 30 minutes.
Strain broth through a colander into a large container; reserve broth and discard skin and bones.

Return pot to burner set on medium-high and add oil, then onions, carrots and celery. Sauté until soft, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Add chicken and broth. Bring to a simmer. Add noodles and cook until tender.

(Soup base can be refrigerated up to 3 days in advance. Return to a simmer before adding noodles.)

*I always buy one of the big Costco or Sam’s Club rotisserie chickens. I use the dark meat for the soup and save most of the breast meat for making something like BBQ chicken sandwiches or chicken tacos.

Roasted Tomato Pasta Caprese and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches for the FSK Café

 

Asha, of Fork-Spoon-Knife, one of my fabulous foodie/Twitter friends, is hosting a bi-monthly food event - Same Notes, Many Highs. The idea is to use the same ingredient(s) to create at least two dishes which present them in completely different lights. Of course, the ingredient(s) must be the star(s) of the dishes. 
 


The theme for the inauguratory January event is - Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil – some of my favorite ingredients!

When Kathleen, at Gonna Want Seconds, posted Ina Garten’s Roasted Tomato Caprese Salad recipe I bookmarked it and I’m so glad I did because roasting the plum tomatoes turns them from blah winter tomatoes into luscious, can’t-get-enough-of-them tomatoes. 

I made Pasta Caprese with garden fresh summer tomatoes last year and my family loved it. For this challenge, I decided to try Roasted Tomato Pasta Caprese. I knew it would be fabulous with these roasted tomatoes and it does take the recipe to a whole new level. It adds so much extra flavor, you just can’t keep from saying yum!



The second recipe I made using the luscious roasted tomatoes was  Roasted Tomato Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. I posted the recipe at the end of this post, but I didn’t really use any special technique. Just fabulous bread and flavorful ingredients. It was the most scrumptious grilled cheese sandwich I’ve ever had! 
 
 

Roasted Tomatoes

12 plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, seeded without cores removed
1/4 cup good olive oil-plus more for drizzling
1 1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
4 cloves garlic-minced
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
2. Arrange tomatoes on a sheet pan, cut side up, in a single layer.  Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Sprinkle with garlic, sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Roast for 2 hours until the tomatoes are concentrated and begin to caramelize.  Allow tomatoes to cool to room temperature.

 

Roasted Tomato Pasta Caprese
Serves 6

Roasted Plum Tomatoes (see recipe above)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (see note above)
1 small garlic clove -- minced (about 1/2 teaspoon)
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (I didn't have fresh and used freeze dried)
salt and ground black pepper
12 ounce fresh mozzarella cheese -- cut into 1/2-inch cubes (see note)
1 lbs penne pasta or other short tubular or curly pasta such as fusilli or campanelle

Whisk oil, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, garlic, shallot, 1/2 teaspoon salt,and 1/4 teaspoon pepper together in large bowl. Add tomatoes and gentlytoss to combine; set aside. Do not marinate tomatoes for longer than 45minutes.
While tomatoes are marinating, place mozzarella on plate and freeze until slightly firm, about 10 minutes.

Bring 4 quarts water to rolling boil in stockpot. Add 1 tablespoon salt and pasta, stir to separate, and cook until al dente. Drain well.

Add pasta and mozzarella to tomato mixture and gently toss to combine. Let stand 5 minutes. Stir in basil; adjust seasonings with salt, pepper, and additional lemon juice or sugar, if desired, and serve immediately.

Note: This dish will be very warm, not hot. Don't skip the step of freezing the mozzarella, as freezing prevents it from turning chewy when it comes in contact with the hot pasta. If handmade buffalo- or cows-milk mozzarella is available (its commonly found in gourmet and cheese shops packed in water), we highly recommend using it, but skip the step of freezing and add it to the tomatoes while marinating. Additional lemon juice or up to 1 teaspoon sugar can be added at the end to taste, depending on the ripeness of the tomatoes.



Roasted Tomato Grilled Cheese Sandwich

8 slices La Brea whole grain bread (or your favorite sandwich bread)
8 thin slices fresh mozzarella cheese
8 roasted tomato halves
Several basil leaves
butter

Butter one side of each slice of bread. Layer ingredients on non buttered side of bread and top with another slice of bread, buttered side up. Grill sandwich over medium high heat until golden brown and cheese is melting.

Makes 4 sandwiches

Braised Beef Short Ribs

 

Beef Short Ribs were on sale this week at my favorite grocery store. I’d never cooked them before so of course, I went on an Internet search for a fabulous recipe. There were several short rib recipes that sounded great, but Elise, at Simply Recipes, raved about her father’s Braised Beef Short Ribs. Now I’m going to rave about them too!

These are the most tender, flavorful short ribs I’ve ever tasted. My husband could not find enough ways to say how much he loved these succulent, fall-off-the-bone tender ribs. I served the short ribs with one of our favorite sides dishes, Caramelized Onion Mashed Potatoes.  

The ribs are not hard to make, but are time consuming. On day one you brown the ribs, sauté the vegetables, and braise the ribs, covered, in the oven for several hours. Then the ribs need to be refrigerated overnight. The next day, once the fat is removed, you cook the ribs again on the stove for another hour until the sauce is reduced to a thick, delicious, flavorful glaze. Definitely time consuming, but oh so worth it!

Visit Simply Recipes to see Elise’s mouthwatering ribs picture and while you’re there check out more of her simply delicious recipes!

    

Braised Beef Short Ribs Recipe
Simply Recipes

Ingredients

• 12 beef short ribs, bone-in
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 cup grapeseed oil or olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 750-ml bottle good dry red wine (I used a Rosenblum Zinfandel)
• 6 cups veal stock (I used beef stock)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Season ribs to taste with the salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large, heavy bottomed ovenproof pan over high heat. Add ribs and brown on all sides. Work in batches if you need to so that the ribs don't get crowded (this will help with browning).

Transfer ribs to a plate. Pour off excess fat. Add the onions, celery, and carrots to the pan and sauté, stirring often, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Remove the vegetables from the pan, set aside. Then add the wine to the pan, deglazing the pan, scraping off any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce the wine by three-quarters until thick and slightly syrupy, about 15 minutes.

Return the ribs to the pan, add the veal stock and enough water to cover the ribs. Bring to a boil, cover with foil, and place in the oven. Braise, cooking in the oven, until the meat is fork-tender, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. During the last 1/2 hour of cooking, add back in the vegetables. Allow the ribs to cool in the liquid, then cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the excess fat that has solidified at the top from the overnight chilling. Place the pan with the ribs and cooking liquid over medium heat, uncovered. Cook until the liquid has reduced by three-quarters, about 1 hour. Continue to cook, spooning the sauce over the ribs, until the sauce is thick and ribs are glazed. Take care not to burn the glaze; move the ribs around in the pan to keep them from burning.

Serve over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or rice. Serves 6.