Recipe 8: Honeyed Cheesecake

The recipe for cheesecake has been advancing since 200 AD, but the concept remains the same: a mix of cheese, honey (sugar) and dough. The recipe below is for one of the best cheesecakes I've ever made. It was perfectly creamy, fluffy and sweet. I love that it has honey instead of sugar.

The danger of making a dessert this good is that you and your loved ones may eat an entire cheesecake in 4 days...

Honey Cheesecake

• 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup of butter, melted
• 4 8oz packages of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup of honey
• 1/4 cup of flour
• 5 eggs
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• zest from one lemon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla

Combine graham cracker crumbs and melted butter. Press mixture into the bottom of a 9 inch spring form pan. I put a piece of parchment on the bottom of the pan to stop the crust from sticking.

Preheat oven to 350°F

In an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, honey and flour. Beat until smooth. Add eggs one at a time. Beat in milk, lemon and vanilla. 

Pour cream cheese mixture over crust and bake for 15 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 200°F and bake for 1 1/2 hours. 

Let the cheesecake cool in the oven with the door ajar for an hour. Refrigerate for 4 hours or more before serving.

Recipe 7: Another Sauce for Fowl

I have been meaning to make this recipe since a friend gave me Radically Simple by Rozanne Gold for Christmas a few years ago. The photo in the cookbook shows a golden brown chicken breast in a bright purple sauce. My sauce doesn't have the same purple color but the sweet grape flavor is powerful and delicious.

Sauteed Chicken with roasted Grapes & Grape Demi-Glace
Radically Simple by Rozanne Gold

• 3/4 pound small seedless red or black grapes
• 3/4 pound small seedless green grapes
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
• 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts, 8 ounces each
• 1/4 cup minced fresh chives

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Remove the grapes from their stems. Put half of the graphes on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast 1 hour, turning after 30 minutes. Puree the uncooked grapes in a blender until very smooth. Strain through a sieve, pressing down hard on the skins.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over high heat. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and cook 4 minutes on each side. Add the grape juice and cook until the chicken is cooked through and the juice become syrupy, 5 minutes. 

Transfer the chicken to a platter. Add the remaining butter to the pan and cook, stirring over high heat, 1 minute. Add the roasted grapes and cook 2 minute longer. Pout the sauce over the chicken. Sprinkle with chives.

Recipe 6: Roasted Goat

"So where roasting - or burning - food distinguished us from animals, boiling was proof of civilization" - William Sitwell


 My inspiration for this meal was this recipe for  Goat in Chile Marinade on Epicurious. I loved the story and detailed directions on how to make an authentic Barbacoa de Cabrito. I made a simplified version and chose to use dried California peppers, mostly because that was all I could find. They were not very spicy but added a nice toasty flavor to the dish.  Honestly, I don't know anything about peppers. My mother is Scandinavian, growing up the norm was boiled potatoes and fish sticks.  Depending on the level of spice you are looking to achieve, you can substitute different kinds of peppers.

 

Goat with a Chili Marinade

• 2 dried California chilies
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon oregano 
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 medium onion
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2.5 lbs bone-in goat or lamb
• 1 bayleaf 
• 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes

 

Remove tops and seeds from chilies. Soak in boiling water for at least 20 minutes.

In a blender or food processor combine chilies, cumin, allspice, fennel, oregano, thyme, garlic, onion, vinegar, salt and pepper. Blend until it becomes a smooth puree. If the mixture isn't blending add a few tablespoons of water.

In a non-reactive air tight container, add goat, marinade and bay leaf. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

Remove meat from refrigerator two hours before cooking. 

 Preheat oven to 325°F

Roast for 5 to 6 hours in an airtight container. If you don't have a lid, use tightly wrapped tin foil.

Remove meat from the oven and shred. Place the roasting pan on the stove on low heat. Deglaze the pan by adding a can of chopped tomatoes. Scrape down the sides to incorporate the brown bits and simmer until the tomatoes melt into a sauce.

Serve shredded meat with tomato sauce and potatoes.

Recipe 5: To Salt Ham

I live in an apartment and don't think my neighbors would appreciate a ham hock hanging from the ceiling in the basement, which is why I made a different salt-cured food - Gravlax. It is one of my favorite foods. I love it on bagels with cream cheese or rye bread with dill sauce. Making Gravlax involves covering salmon with salt to draw out the moisture - preserving and allowing for extended storage without spoiling. Although the purpose of curing Salmon is to extend its shelf life, I wouldn't recommend keeping it for more than a week. The curing process takes just a few days with very little effort.

Ingredients: 

• 2 -1lb pieces of skin on Salmon which are approximately the same size
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• A large handful of dill

Combine the salt and sugar. Roughly chop the dill.

Place the salmon skin side down. Rub the salt mixture on the flesh side of both pieces.

Make a salmon and dill sandwich with the skin of the fish on the outside.

Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place in a dish that has at least 1inch sides. As the Salmon cures the moisture will seep out, you do not want fishy water all over your fridge.

Refrigerate immediately. Flip the fish every 12 hours for 3-5 days.   

Unwrap the salmon, rinse off the dill and salt. Slice thinly.

 

Serve with Mustard Dill Sauce.

Mustard Dill Sauce

• 1/4 cup dijion mustard
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoon chopped dill

Mix mustard, sugar and vinegar. Whisk in oil until incorporated, stir in dill.

Recipe 4: Baked Fish in Fig Leaves

Chapter 4 is dedicated to Archestratus, who tasted his way around the world, poetically recording his findings. He preferred simply prepared dishes made with the freshest ingredients and had strong opinions, preferring seafood over meat and despising rich sauces. He poured his knowledge and passion into one of the earliest cookbooks created, Life of Luxury.

Baked Fish in Fig Leaves is a recipe out of his cookbook. Having no idea where to get fig leaves, I decided to wrap the fish in parchment paper (also referred to as en papillote). The key to successfully steaming the fish is to tightly seal the edges so the paper puffs while cooking. The bonus of cooking this way is that you can add vegetables and herbs to flavor the fish. I chose leeks and mushrooms, but you can use any flavor combination you want. Another great option would be peppers, onions, cliantro and lime or tomatoes, basil, lemon and white wine. 

Ingredients:

• 2 pieces of firm white fish
• 1 leek, sliced
• 8 oz mixed mushrooms
• herbs de provence 
• 1/2 cup white wine

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Saute the sliced leeks and mushrooms in a tablespoon of olive oil for about 5 minutes They don't need to be completely cooked since they are going in the oven. Add the wine and herbs de provence, cook for 1 minute.

Rip off a large piece of parchment paper, you want to be able to fold the paper enough times to tightly seal in the fish. Lay down the sauteed vegetables (including cooking liquid) and place the fish on top. 

Wrap as tightly as you can, crimping and rolling the edges.

Place on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

Recipe 3: Tiger Nut Sweets

When I first read the words Tiger Nut I immediately thought of the worst case scenario - Oh no, I really hope this recipe isn't similar to Rocky Mountain Oysters - which are deep fried bull testicles. Luckily, it's not even close. Tiger Nut Sweets refers to a mix of fruits, nuts, honey and spices. It's appearance is similar to a tuber root with the same name. Tiger Nut Sweets are one of the earliest desserts and were given as a gift to show appreciation similar to the modern day hostess gift. 

This vegan, gluten free, no added sugar recipe is almost more of a snack than a dessert. I've actually seen a few energy bars with the same ingredients. To really satisfy my sweet tooth and make the original recipe more of a dessert, I opted to coat them with chocolate instead of honey.

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup whole pitted dates
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/3 cup shelled walnuts
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 oz of chocolate
• 2 tablespoons of whole milk or cream
• 1/3 cup ground almonds

 Finely chop the dates. In a medium bowl add dates and stir in 1 tablespoon of water until mushy.

Finely chop walnuts. Mix cinnamon and walnuts with dates.

 Shape the (very sticky) date mixture into balls.

Add the milk and chocolate to a double boiler and melt. You can also use a microwave, stirring the mixture every 30 seconds until melted. Set aside to cool.

Roll the date and walnut balls in the chocolate until completely covered in a thin layer. Roll the chocolate covered balls in ground almonds until coated. 

Recipe 2: Lamb Stew with Pearled Barley

Stews have always been an integral part of cooking. Braising tough, inexpensive pieces of meat breaks down the connective tissue, while also tenderizing and adding flavor. The oldest recipe for meat and vegetable stew was found on clay tablets from Yale University's Babylonian Collection. The recipe contains an immense variety of ingredients - some of which can't be deciphered. Having written documentation of ingredients and cooking techniques gives insight into what life was like during that time.

Lamb stew with Pearled Barley is the perfect meal to coax fall into returning, although now that I live in Atlanta, there's no telling how long that will take!

Ingredients:

• 2lbs bone-in lamb stew meat
• 1 large onion
• 4 carrots
• 4 celery stalks
• 1 leek
• 1 tablespoon of Herbs de Provance
• 1 bay leag
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 1/2 cups of red wine
• 4 cups of chicken broth
• pearled barley

Add just enough oil to coat the bottom of a dutch oven - I used my Le Creuset. On high heat, sear the lamb in two batches. Set lamb aside. 

Saute chopped onions, carrots, leek and celery in remaining oil until soft, about 5 minutes. Add Herbs de Provence, thyme, bay leaf and red wine. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the wine has reduced by half.  

Add chicken broth and lamb. Simmer for 2 hours or until the meat is tender and falling off the bone.

While the lamb is simmering, cook the pearled barley. For two cups of barley, use 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Let the barley sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Remove lamb from the dutch oven, shred the meat and discard bones. Add the lamb back to the simmering liquid. Serve with pearled barley.

Onion and Shallot Dip

Last weekend I attended a book club hosted by one of my neighbors. The book being discussed was Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married by Gary Chapman, which I managed borrow and speed read the previous week. I'm usually not a fan of self-help or therapy-related books, but I found this one to be really interesting - if you ignore the Christian undertone. Many of the ideas can be applied to any relationship since the book focused on communication and learning to speak your partners' "language." The section on learning to apologize was especially helpful since I've necer thought about how to apologize or if I was communicating my apology effectively. 

I've always wanted to be in a book club and really enjoyed spending the evening with an intriguing group of women. I don't think anyone in the group was from the same state and that's what I love about Atlanta - you meet people from all over the country. Our diverse backgrounds and cultures brought about thought-provoking topics and fascinating points of view.
 

You can't discuss a book on an empty stomach, so we were asked to contribute an appetizer. I brought an Onion and Shallot Dip served with potato chips. It tasted a million times better than the standard onion dip packet mixed with sour cream, but it looked a lot like tuna salad. In fact, Paul asked, "Why the hell did you make so much tuna?" Even the host gave me a confused look when I set it down on the table. 

 

This recipe has a large yield - we went through 2 bags of chips and still had some left over. Next time, I'll wait for a huge party or half the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds large yellow onions, thinly sliced
• 2 large shallots, thinly sliced
• 4 springs of thyme
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar - red wine vinegar can substitute
• 2 cups sour cream
• 1/4 cup minced chives - Omitted
• 1/4 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
• 2 teaspoons onion powder

Preheat oven to 425°.  Thinly slice the onions and shallots using a knife, mandolin, or your 

food processor with a slicer attachment.

                                    

Mix onions, shallots, thyme and olive oil in a large roasting pan. Season with salt and pepper. 

 

 Roast onion mixture, stirring and scraping down the sides of the pan every 10 minutes, until the mixture breaks down and become golden, about 45-55 minutes. If the onions start to burn, turn down the oven temperature and add a few tablespoons of oil.

Discard thyme sprigs, most of the leaves will have fallen off but you don't want to eat the woody stems. Add wine and vinegar, roast for another 15 minutes until it is a deep golden brown and caramelized. Remove from the oven and cool.

 

Mince the cooled onion mixture and transfer to a bowl; combine with sour cream, yogurt, onion powder and chives. Season with salt and pepper. 

We have more free time in the evenings after Emerson goes to bed, which is why I made the dip the night before the book club meeting. Also, allowing the dip to sit over night in the fridge helps the flavors develop.

 

Recipe 1: Egyptian Bread

The first recipe in A History of Food in 100 Recipes is Egyptian Bread. According to William Sitwell, one of the earliest known recipes was painted on the wall of Senet's tomb. She lived during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period, which is between 2005 and 1650 BC. The recipe is shown in a series of drawings where characters perform the step-by-step process of making bread, including grinding the wheat into flour and kneading the dough.

It's amazing to think that bread, a staple in most American households, has been around for more than 4,000 years. 

I love bread, hence the name of my blog, which makes this recipe the perfect start to my cooking project. I made a simple flat bread with sauteed eggplant and a fava bean, feta salad.

Flat Bread

• 500 grams of flour
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 300 ml of water

In a big bowl combine the flour and salt. Mix in water and olive oil. Knead into a soft dough and allow to rest for 40 minutes. 

Form dough into 6 equally sized balls. Roll each one out to desired thickness. I rolled mine out as thin as I could which allowed them to brown and cook quickly. 

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Fava bean and Feta Salad

• 20 pods of fresh fava beans, crumbled
• 10 ounces of fresh feta
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• 1/4 cup of olive oil
• 1 clove of finely chopped garlic

Combine the olive oil and garlic, set aside. 

Bring a pot of water to a boil, remove fava beans from the pods and boil for 1-2 minutes. Add the fava beans to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Once the beans of cooled, pop them out of their waxy shell.

Combine the peeled fava beans, feta, and cucumber. Discard the garlic from the oil and drizzle over the salad. You will have left over oil. I used mine to make another salad.

Chicken Tikka Masala

I know I said I was going to cook my way through William Sitwell's A History of Food in 100 Recipes, and I am, but I just wanted to share this recipe first.

I love Indian food and when I saw this Chicken Tikka Masala recipe in Bon Appetit, I knew it would become a fast favorite. I've made it three times. The first time it came out perfectly; the second was a complete failure; and the last was pretty good, even though I completely butchered the recipe. I also never have all of the ingredients on hand and don't always remember everything at the supermarket. I usually have to leave out ingredients or substitute, hoping it still works out.

Below is the recipe, with the mangled version I actually made in blue.  

Ingredients:

• 6 garlic cloves
• 4 teaspoons of finely grated peeled ginger - Omitted
• 4 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 teaspoons garam masala 
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 1/2 cups whole-milk yogurt (not Greek) - I only had Greek, so I added milk to thin it out
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 2lbs boneless, skinless, chicken breasts, halved - I used boneless, skinless, chicken thighs
• 3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
• 1 small onion
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 6 cardamom pods, crushed - I substituted with ground cardamom
• 2 dried chiles de arbol or 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 cups of heavy cream
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro - Omitted
• Steamed Basmati rice 

Combine garlic, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, coriander, and cumin in a small bowl. 

Whisk yogurt, salt, and half of spice mixture in a medium bowl; add chicken and turn to coat. In a rush to marinate the chicken between conference calls,  I accidentally added all of the spice mixture to the yogurt. Cover and chill 4-6 hours. Cover and chill remaining spice mixture.

Heat ghee in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add onion, tomato paste, cardamom, and chiles and cook, stirring often, until tomato paste has darkened and onion is soft - about 5 minutes. Add remaining half of spice mixture and cook, stirring often, until bottom of pot begins to brown - about 4 minutes. Since I didn't have any spice mixture left, I moved the chicken to broiler pan and added the left over marinade to the pot on the stove.

Add tomatoes with juices, crushing them with your hands as you add them. BE CAREFUL! The tomatoes are filled with juice so when you crush them they spray everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. Not that having my shirt covered with food is a surprise or even remotely abnormal but most people prefer not to wear tomato stained clothes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pot, until sauce thickens, 8-10 minutes.

Add cream and chopped cilantro. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, 30-40 minutes. I used only 1 cup of cream, since I added the yogurt based marinade.

Meanwhile, preheat broiler. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack inside sheet. Arrange chicken on rack in a single layer. Broil until chicken starts to blacken in spots (it will not be cooked through), about 10 minutes. I love chicken cooked this way it's toasty and adds a lot of flavor without taking the time to light the grill.

Cut chicken into bite-size pieces, add to sauce, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, 8-10 minutes.

 Serve with rice and cilantro sprigs.

Babies: The Ultimate Time Machine

Who knew that once you have a baby, time would move so quickly that yesterdays events are immediately forgotten and it seems like an eternity since last month. It's been a over ayear since my last post and since then I have spent hundreds of wonderful hours with my son Emerson and moved twice - first to NJ and then Atlanta.

Emerson and Paul both started school last week. With my boys busy learning, I now have spare time, and Paul bought me the perfect book to occupy it. I am going to attempt to cook my way through A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell. The recipes in first half of the book aren't exact, so I'll have to improvise and research similar recipes. This is especially important since we will have to eat whatever I make and I would like to avoid a riot at the dinner time.