Category Archives: Loving

Jam Session

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Where the hell was I yesterday? Abandoning you, obviously. I’m sorry. My heart and mind were elsewhere. Consumed with jamming and puppy play time. I didn’t mean to ignore you, I swear.

It was a marathon canning session. 24 jars. 6 hours. 2 pounds of jalapenos. 8 pints of strawberries. 1 pound of tamarind in their lovely, crunchy pods. 3 adorable weck canning jars. Unknown pounds of sugar. 2 doodles (labradoodle, woodle; translation: Bertie (labrador, poodle mix) + Walnut (wheaten terrier, poodle mix).

I could barely stand when I got home. Though that’s possibly because I was weighed down with jars, a yelping puppy and a few too many shots of jam cocktails. Because that’s what brilliant ladies like me and my jam partner in crime @jamsofthenest decided to do with our overflow jars of jam. I think any self-respecting jam maker on hour 6 in the kitchen would agree: BEST USE of EXTRA JAM EVER.

We kicked off the day with some lovely fried eggs, toast, coffee and dog biscuits. Because one cannot live on jam alone! The dog biscuits, of course, went to the dogs. They relished their new found romance + open backyard to run around in + multiple treats from completely enamored owners.

Jam #1: Jalapeno Pepper Jelly. But, of course, we can’t go traditional. That would be boring. So we added red bell pepper for color, orange zest for flavor, and (just for kicks) a few of the smashed tamarind pods. Delightful.

Jam #2: Strawberry, Dill, Jalapeno Sauce/Jam. We’re calling it saucy because it’s blended a bit less chunky than traditional jam. Mind you, the dill and jalapeno just make it awesome. Like crazy delicious. And highly recommended with vodka.

Jam #3: Tamarind Jam. You’ve never heard of this. You barely know what tamarind is. Don’t worry, we’re all in the same boat. I also had never witnessed a pod in person until yesterday morning. Nor did I have any intention of ever making tamarind jam before yesterday in a blurry wander around Whole Foods. I mean, I don’t just wake up and think of these things. But we didn’t just use tamarind in this jam. Oh no! We used cinnamon, ginger, cloves, lemon juice and some secret weapons for this wonder. What does it taste like? Kind of like warm, spicy iced tea in a creamy, oozy spoon full of goodness. It is amazing with whiskey over ice. We invented it. You heard it here first kids.

So, if you’re in Hancock Park in the next few days, don’t lie and say “you’re in the neighborhood” and want to come by for a jam cocktail. Because you’re never in Hancock Park. No one is. Except for me. And Daniel. Sometimes Walnut (he, of course, has many other preoccupations). But yes, you can stop in for a jammy cocktail. And we’ll swoon over puppy love and hours spent over boiling pots of sugar, water and fruit. That’s what we’re jamming.

Dulce de Leche is GOOD

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Thursday and Friday of last week were, to not put it lightly, consumed by caramel. Thursday was spent standing over a pot of dulce de leche for plus/minus six hours, stirring. Then stirring some more. Then recalibrating the stovetop. Then more stirring. Some tasting. More tasting. Sugar high. Stomachache. Stirring.

Then, around 9 p.m., FINALLY, some results: my dulce de leche caramel sauce, made only from whole milk, sugar, whole vanilla beans and a little baking soda. Relief! My arms: tired.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much (hands on) time on a single culinary creation. Then again, quadrupling a recipe does mean quadrupling the amount of time said recipe takes to complete. I hedged my bets, I guess. A glass of red wine helped, too.

Why on earth did I embark on such an epic kitchen journey? For the love of all things GOOD! Well, not good, really, GOOD LA, the launch of the magazine’s LA edition and the most recent meeting of the LA Food Swap. I had to impress the masses, of course.

Let’s fast forward to Friday. I now have six lovely jars of dulce de leche caramel sauce and a pan full of set caramel candy. And what to do with all of this caramel candy?! Cover it in chocolate, duh. Lots of chocolate.

I used some simple round candy molds to start my chocolate candies with a dulce de leche caramel center, topped with a dot of white chocolate and some gold sugar. Commence with six hours over the kitchen counter! Apparently I like to torture myself.

Fast forward to Friday night: must package candy for tomorrow’s LA Food Swap at GOOD LA. Boxes, tissue, ribbon, labels, more labels, chocolate melting onto packaging, cleaning up packaging, apply labels, staple things, fold tissue, tie ribbon. Sit down, finally. Go to sleep….oh wait, I didn’t do that. Actually, I went out to a bar to properly dilute my chocolate filled stomach with tiki drinks. GOOD things.

Want to see it all? Read on…

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Fresh Green Almonds

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I love my little adventures to Super King market in the Glassell Park area (Glendale, sort of) because I always find something I’ve never seen or tried. Today there were tart little yellow guavas, fava beans and (amazeballs!) fresh green almonds. Gorgeous, fuzzy, little nubbins of a slightly sea foam color dying for me to take them home.

I honestly have no idea what to do with them. One French blogger recommends I add them to some fresh jams, but the summer fruit here isn’t really good enough for canning yet. Most of what I’ve read said devour them as is, simply cutting out the raw, unborn almond out of its fuzzy cacoon.

Or I could go buy like 50 pounds more, fill my bathtub with them and take a fuzzy almond bath.

Perhaps I could get a sharpie and draw little faces on them, line them up in a row and play toy soldiers.

Maybe I should string them into a necklace and wear them around the house for Walnut to admire?

Or would that be weird…

LA Food Swap

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Many of you know I’ve been giddy as a school girl the last few weeks in anticipation of the first LA Food Swap. A bunch of savvy home cooks, bakers and food preservationists (I can call them that, right?) got together yesterday for a food swap of our personal kitchen creations. It was a fabulous little event that I was thrilled to participate in.

I swapped canning disasters and learned so much about how others cook, bake and preserve in their own homes. Top swapping items included marmalade (with all this citrus, why wouldn’t there be?), lemon curd, strawberry jam, scones, breads, more jams, salsa and even homemade tinctures. Don’t worry, I had to look up what a tincture was too….it’s an alcoholic extract of an herb or plant. In my case, I got horehound. I know you’re probably laughing. I did for a minute. But I think it actually helped my allergies this weekend. Anyway…

This was the first LA Food Swap, arranged by the lovely and talented Emily Ho, also known as Miss Chiffonade. She and her boyfriend made the most gorgeous beet pasta I’ve ever seen and packaged them in lovely custom labeled bags. Jealous.

I brought a combo of my canning portfolio, including Citrus Marmalade, Apple-Plum Sauce and some other canned delicacies you may remember from such posts as A Week of Pickles and  Onion Marmalade.

I left the swap with an amazing bounty of homemade items, some of which never even made it in the front door. I blame @resforthree for her deadly brown butter shortbread.

Also now in my pantry thanks to the swap: lemon curd (two kinds!), fresh rosemary, lemons, strawberry lemon rosemary jam, habanero marmalade, a tangerine limoncello, oatmeal brown sugar body scrub and garlic confit.

One of the lemon curd jars is already near empty a day later. My belly is very happy. Check out the gallery below to see photos from the swap and check out the Facebook page to sign up for the next one.

 

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You’re So Unusual

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Well, I’m not referring to you darling, don’t worry. I’m referring to my favorite new fruit and vegetable discovery: the limequat and celery root. Now these aren’t particularly new to the world, but I hadn’t worked with them until recently, and I imagine you’ve never heard of at least the limequat. Isn’t that word amazing? I mean it might as well be the name of a prehistoric bird, not a fruit.

I love introducing you, dear readers, to new and unusual things. Remember Jerusalem Artichokes? How about the Garbanzo Beans? Fabulous, right?

So, let’s start with the limequat. Exactly what the name spells out: a cross between a lime and a kumquat. Genius. Small, about 2″ in length and with a soft, almost bouncy skin. The skin, I learned, is edible, so you can dive into this whole fruit without any waste. The thin rind makes it easy to chew and it dices up lovely. If you can find them (I got mine at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market) buy several and use them in salads, in a couscous or in place of preserved lemon in a recipe. You could also preserve these babies whole. Wouldn’t that be lovely? And you could do that with sugar or salt. I’m drooling over the potential lemony goodness.

 

Want to learn about celery root? After the jump.

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Biscuits for Walnut

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As many of you have come to learn, I’m obsessed with my dog Walnut. He’s the love of my life (sorry Daniel) and he is with me pretty much all the time. And pretty much all the time, I’m in the kitchen. And I know he’s pining to lick that spoon of batter. Or eat some banana bread. Or dive into my pot of soup and lap it up. Walnut – no human food for you!

Today I surprised my little ball of fluff with his very own treats from the kitchen: peanut butter dog biscuits. Remarkably easy and I love that I can make them with my own ingredients. Honestly, I’ve looked at the ingredients on some commercial dog treats and I can’t imagine why someone would feed them to their dogs. They’re laden with corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and mostly corn and soybean byproducts before any “real” ingredients. If you wouldn’t eat it (or can’t pronounce it) why would you feed it to your dog?

Recipe and more pictures after the jump!

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Apple Pie

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Apple Pie just makes me think of America. Oh, proud America! What’s more American than a pie? Maybe football. Or Walmart. Or M&Ms. Or, even better, Peanut M&Ms! Joy to us all!

Now, this pie isn’t 100% from scratch like I normally bake. There was a frozen pie crust in the freezer (a nice, organic flour, good quality butter style one, luckily) and several apples left over from Bread-A-Palooza that needed to be eaten. Thus we must eat pie!

Because my family is not the type to shirk a dessert course, it was really for the good of the family. Must keep spirits high when the entire kitchen is covered in flour and the oven is freaking out because its been on for too long!

My pie is topless (ooh!) because I only had one pie crust. You like that? I’m cutting corners like a pro!

I did get to pull out the amazing old school hand apple crank and play Farmer Lindsey for an evening. That was fun.  Watch this video and see a boring old lady do it. She’s much more informative than me plus I couldn’t balance a video camera while cranking an apple peeler.

So here’s my pie. Ain’t it pretty? The apples were crunchy, not soggy, and it had just the right amount of sugar, butter, cinnamon and lemon juice to spice them up.

Pasta your grandmother would be proud of

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Now, don’t let me mislead you. My grandmother never made pasta. She’s Spanish, not Italian. In fact, I think the closest she ever came to making pasta was boiling some elbow macaroni for a classic 1950′s style pasta salad. You know the kind with the bottled Wishbone Italian Dressing? The little bits of “bell pepper” oozing into a sauce so glossy it shined. Yeah, that one.

Even without a nonna to teach me the way, I’m actually not too bad of a pasta maker. Considering the last time I made it was around age 14. Yes, 14. I thoroughly remember rolling out the dough, running it through a hand crank pasta machine and draping linguine style noodles over every chair in the kitchen. And making a mess. I mean, flour everywhere!

Last night’s pasta session wasn’t too much of a departure. Flour everywhere. The only difference was no pasta machine this time – all by hand, baby. My arms hurt. Rolling pins are no longer my friend, but rather my mortal pasta enemy. Next time, I’m using a machine.

I used a classic egg + flour recipe, painstakingly mixed it by hand and rolled it into a nice, glossy little ball. Fridged it for 30 min then got to rolling.

I cut my pasta into pappardelle, those super wide, long noodles. Boiled them in super salty water and tossed with sauteed romanesco broccoli (the coolest vegetable in existence, my pictures below don’t lie it may as well be prehistoric), ground beef (kind of did a bolognese type deal), diced tomatoes and onions.

Topped the steaming bowl of pasta with some parmesan and mangia! Eat!

 

 

Whole Wheat Chocolate Brown Sugar Cookies

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My VDay dinner ended with these lovely little morsels, Whole Wheat Chocolate Brown Sugar Cookies. I LOVE that they are whole wheat instead of white refined flour. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Honestly, you should make these all the time, for every occasion, using every shape on the planet. They’re that good. And easy. And worth it. Did I mention they’re whole wheat?

Check out the recipe at its original source.

These would be so fun as shamrocks with green sugar crystals for St. Patrick’s Day next month, or eggs with yellow and pink crystals for Easter. I could go on. But I won’t. You get the picture.

Try them. Love them. Thank Joy the Baker.

Vday Recap

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No, not engaged.

No, didn’t get a new diamond necklace.

Did get a lovely orchid from my lovie, and I did cook my lovie a delicious meal. It was all very lovie. .

I actually attempted a very interesting dinner last night, cooked almost completely on the barbecue. I know, you think I’m crazy. But it’s been lovely weather in LA and I didn’t feel like making a mess of the kitchen. Thus, the grill was my solution. Plus my oven was very occupied by heart shaped cookies, so it made my life a little easier.

First, I sauteed some diced onions and a little garlic in a cast iron skillet on the stove. Once translucent, I added a large bunch of washed red kale and some chard and sauteed. I transferred the entire skillet to the outdoor barbecue, placed it directly on the grill. After sauteeing a few minutes to start the greens wilting, I left it alone and moved on the starch and meat.

I placed a piece of oiled tin foil on the grill and then topped the sheet with slices of ready made polenta. I know. Lazy me buying ready made! What can I say, I’m an easy date. Next to the polenta I grilled two pieces of flank steak, seasoned very simply with olive oil, salt and pepper. Apparently I’m not only easy, I’m simple too. HOT.

Within ten minutes, pretty much everything was ready and I plated almost directly from the grill. Hello, one pan dinner! Easy, indeed.

Here’s our lovely meal. Part 2: Valentine’s Heart Shaped cookies coming tomorrow. Hope you felt the love too yesterday. XOXO