A couple of weeks ago, I made a recipe that required a few sheets of phyllo dough and then I was stuck with an open roll in the fridge. What to do? What to do? Well, this for one…

Now, you can make this recipe as written, making one galette of each or you can just double the ingredients for the kind of galette you want to make and make 2 of those. The 5 sheets of dough, 1 apple, squirt of lemon and 1 tbsp of butter will make two galettes, no matter which variation you choose.

Apple, Rosemary & Gruyere Galette vs. Apple, Pecan and Cinnamon Galette
5 sheets phyllo dough, thawed
1 apple (I used a gala)
squirt of lemon juice
2 tbsp sugar + 1 tsp cinnamon mixed together
1 handful pecans (about 1/4 cup)
1/2 tsp chopped, fresh rosemary
1 tbsp honey
1/3 cup gruyere, grated
1 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Lay one piece of phyllo down on a work surface. The long way. You know, horizontally. Cover the other pieces you are not using with a damp paper towel to keep them from drying out. Brush some melted butter on the dough. Sprinkle one half with the cinnamon sugar and one half with a little cheese — just a little.

Add another piece of phyllo down and brush with butter and sprinkle each half. Keep doing this until you’ve used all 5 pieces of dough. Cover with your damp towel.

Next, slice your apple up and squirt with a little lemon. Dived your apple slices in half. To one group, add about 1 tablespoon of your cinnamon-sugar mixture and the pecans. To the other half, add the honey and the rosemary. Toss both to combine. Do the best you can with the honey — it doesn’t really want to toss.

Now, cut the phyllo in half, vertically, seperating into the cinnamon sugar side and the cheese side. Mound the apple-pecan mixture in the middle of the cinnamon sugar dough and the apple-rosemary mixture in the center of the cheese dough. Bring the sides up. It will not cover the filling, just come up the sides a bit.

Brush each with remaining butter and sprinkle a little cinnamon-sugar and cheese on the respective tops.

Into the oven with them! About 30 - 35 minutes.

Let them rest for a moment or two and then nom-nom-nom-nom-nom!

I had a hard time picking my favorite. I think the cinnamon-sugar one would be great with a little vanilla frozen yogurt or ice cream and the cheese one…hmmm…maybe a balsamic reduction drizzle? Hell, they were good just as they were from the oven.

Okay, this will probably be the last post until next week. Wedding-Sunday is fast approaching! Everything seems to be going well and, dare I say it, to plan.

eeek!

This is super simple pasta. I first came across the recipe in like, 1997 or 1998 on, of all places, the 4AD mailing list. I know, wacky! I couldn’t find the original recipe when I set out to recreate it but what I could remember was: cottage cheese, milk, diced tomatoes, hazelnuts and tarragon. And I remembered thinking, huh, cottage cheese and pasta? But, it was quite tasty. You could also, of course, probably use ricotta.

So, here’s how I have been recreating this around the house lately. This dish also works excellently as a work lunch. In fact, that has been its purpose for us. I just pop it into containers and when it’s reheated in the microwave at work, the sauce is all creamy and good.

To eat right away, you probably want to toss the cottage cheese and everything in the hot pan, after you’ve drained the pasta, and then all the pasta back in. Heat gently over low heat.

Oh and if you see this and this was basically your idea and you posted the recipe to 4AD-L about 10 years ago, let me know and I’ll give you credit! So, everyone dig out your Cocteau Twins 12-inches and make some pasta!

Rigatoni with Hazelnuts, Tarragon and Tomatoes
1 lb rigatoni (more than rigatoni will work here)
1/3 cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped roughly (I add to a plastic bag and beat with a rolling pin)
1 container (16 oz) cottage cheese (either low fat or regular fat — no fat free)
1/2 cup low fat milk (I have used both fat-free and 2% here)
1 1/2 - 2 tbsp fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
1/3 - 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tomatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 shakes green Tabasco sauce
Salt & Pepper

Combine the hazelnuts through the Tabasco. Mix to combine. Add salt & pepper to taste. Cook your pasta in boiling, salted water. Drain and combine with the sauce. Pack up for lunches during the week, or warm gently on the stovetop for supper.

Awesome!

This might be my most favorite Brussels sprout recipe of all time. I made this on Friday night to go with some fish (oven roasted cod) and we decided to make more for Sunday night’s dinner. Brussels sprouts haters would probably even like this! It looks like a tasty little salad on the plate. Who doesn’t like a tasty little salad?

This will make enough for two people — double the recipe as needed. The only thing is that the original recipe said to discard the cores, which made me a little sad. I also found that getting the little leaves off was kind of a pain after a while. I may try this next with pulling off some of the big leaves at first and then shredding most of the sprout to use as much of each sprout as possible. The sprouts I used were on the small size — logistically-speaking, this recipe might work best with big sprouts if you want to just use the leaves.

Brussels Sprouts with Lemon & Pistachios
Adapted from Bon Appétit magazine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced shallot
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 lb brussels sprouts, trimmed, leaves separated from cores
1/4 cup shelled pistachios (after shelling, I put mine in a baggie and broke them up a bit)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallot and garlic and stir 20 seconds.

Add Brussels sprout leaves and pistachios, and sauté until leaves begin to soften but are still bright green, about 3 minutes. Drizzle lemon juice over.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to bowl and serve.

***

Saturday morning, I was trying to decide what to make myself for breakfast (jwa was going on a jog) and I remembered this mini omelet-maker that my mom got me as a stocking stuffer. What the hell, I thought, I’ll give it a try. I gave it a quick spray with non-stick stuff, sauteed a diced yellow bell pepper and a few chopped broccoli florets and beat up two eggs with a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, salt and pepper.

Added the egg and a little cheese (Tillamook roasted garlic cheddar) to the pan.

Covered it. Cooked a couple of minutes. Flipped it over and cooked that side for a couple of minutes. Opened it up and –

voila! Breakfast! Along with some blood orange segments, it was quite delicious.

You know, I probably wouldn’t have bought it for myself, but it worked really well. I’m sure I’ll get a lot more use out of it with many more tasty omelets on the days when jwa is out jogging or um, sleeping in.

I have always been fruitcake-curious. So, this year, I decided what the hell, I’ll make one. The recipe is Alton Brown’s Free Range Fruitcake. And I made a special trip (to Trader Joe’s) for all the dried fruit and everything. We had the rum and the brandy already. Go figure.

This is a Part I, as I will have to baste the fruitcake(s) with brandy every 2-3 days for the next 2-3 weeks. How fun! It’s like an ongoing project with alcohol.

AB’s Free Range Fruitcake
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup currants
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped (I used dried peaches)
Zest of one lemon, chopped coarsely
Zest of one orange, chopped coarsely
1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped
1 cup gold rum (I used dark rum)
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 sticks (not cups!) unsalted butter (that’s 10 tbsp)
1 cup apple juice
1/4 tsp ground cloves (or 6 whole cloves, ground)
6 allspice berries, ground (I had whole allspice berries but I was too lazy to clean out my coffee grinder,and grind them, so I just skipped them)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 cup toasted pecans, broken
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, broken
Brandy for basting and/or spritzing

Combine dried fruits, candied ginger and both zests. Add rum and macerate overnight, or microwave for 5 minutes to re-hydrate fruit. I went the microwave route — it worked fine!

Place fruit and liquid in a non-reactive pot with the sugar, butter, apple juice and spices. Bring mixture to a boil stirring often, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. At this point, I must confess, I grabbed a spoon and tasted it. Wow. It was so good! I was on the phone with my mom at the time (who likes fruitcake, btw) and told her how good it was as well. She is looking forward to trying some when she is here for Christmas.

So, remove your pot of fruit, rum and butter from heat and cool for at least 15 minutes. (Batter can be completed up to this point, then covered and refrigerated for up to 2 days. Bring to room temperature before completing cake.) Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients and sift into fruit mixture. Quickly bring batter together with a large wooden spoon, then stir in eggs one at a time until completely integrated, then fold in nuts. Here, I used half toasted hazelnuts and half pecans. About 1/2 cup total.

Spoon into a 10-inch non-stick loaf pan and bake for 1 hour. But here’s the thing — I had enough batter for 2 loaf pans! They each got filled up about 2/3’s of the way but it would have been way too much for one pan. If you’ve got a huge loaf pan, you might be fine with just one. Since my loaf pans were of the slightly smaller variety and not filled all the way up, mine were done in about 42-45 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting toothpick into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it’s done.

If the toothpick (or knife) does not com out clean, bake another 5-10 minutes, and check again. Remove cake(s) from oven and place on cooling rack or trivet. Baste or spritz top with brandy and allow to cool completely before turning out from pan. My cakes came out pretty easily. I ran a knife around the edges and the used a metal spatula to start lifting up from the sides and loosening the cakes from the bottom. Then I turned them upside-down and out they came.

When cake is completely cooled, seal in a tight sealing, food safe container. I am using freezer bags. Every 2 to 3 days, feel the cake and if dry, spritz with brandy. The cake’s flavor will enhance considerably over the next two - three weeks. Come Christmas time, you will have one tasty, boozey cake! Hooray!

Okay, so I’ll probably do a mini-update each week on my fruitcakes basting until Christmas. Stay tuned…

We had this meal a couple of weeks ago and I think we’ll have to have it again soon. It was really tasty. The original recipe called for chicken thighs but it worked really well with chicken breasts. You could probably go with skinless and boneless (that would take less cooking time) but go ahead and live a little and use bone-in breasts.

Seriously, this was really good. Give it a few days before you actually want to cook again after Thursday and then make this…

Braised Chicken with Apples and Sage
Adapted from a recipe in Gourmet magazine
2 big chicken breasts with skin and bones (you could probably get away with 3-4 breasts with the amount of sauce that this makes, but lost of sauce is good so it woks with 2 breasts fine)
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp packed brown sugar
2 apples (preferably Gala; 3/4 lb total), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges — I used one Gala and one Granny Smith, and I didn’t peel
1/4 cup toasted walnuts
1/2 cup chopped shallots (2 to 3) — I subbed half a white onion as I didn’t have any shallots
2/3 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/2 tsp chopped fresh sage (rosemary would work well too)

Pat chicken dry and sprinkle all over with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then brown chicken well, starting with skin sides down and turning over once, 10 to 12 minutes total. Transfer chicken to a plate and pour off some of the fat if you have a lot in the pan — you want about 1 tablespoon in the skillet.

Add butter, brown sugar, apples, walnuts and shallots to fat in skillet and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until apples are browned, about 5 minutes.

Add broth, vinegar, and sage and deglaze skillet by boiling, stirring and scraping up any brown bits, 1 minute. Return chicken, skin sides up, to skillet along with any juices accumulated on plate. Reduce heat and simmer, loosely covered with foil, until chicken is cooked through and sauce is slightly reduced, 30-35 minutes. Check the temperature — you want it to be about 165 degrees.

Mmmm….it’s moist and tasty!

Okay, off to California Wednesday. Have a nice Thanksgiving, everyone!

For this Weekend Cookbook Challenge we’re supposed to pick a cookbook that we want everyone to know about. Well, honestly, this one was pretty easy for me. The Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herman Loomis is one of my most favorite cookbooks ever. Ever! It’s also one of the first cookbooks I ever bought. From the cover:

“A cook’s two-year odyssey through the small farms, ranches, dairies, vineyards and orchards of America, with 300 recipes fresh from their kitchens.”

For those who like to read cookbooks as a type of story, it really doesn’t get any better than this one. It also has such a great collection of eclectic and interesting recipes. Here are just some I’ve made since I first got the cookbook in 1991:

* Lamb Chops with a Hazelnut Crust and Rosemary Cream Sauce (for jwa’s 27th birthday dinner — for reference, he just celebrated his 36th birthday. Scary!)
* Mary Navarette’s Garlicky Enchiladas
* Chilled Honeydew Soup
* Blueberry Muffins
* Sunburst Lentil Salad

But, for this event, I made something new, “Becky Campbell’s Chicken with Carambola.” Well, I kind of did. See, I thought it was starfruit (carambola) season but I couldn’t find any at all. Anywhere. So, I substituted gold kiwi. I think it worked well but the next time I see some starfruit, I will pick some up and make this again!

Becky Campbell’s Chicken with Carambola
1 3.5 to 4 lb. chicken cut in pieces (since there were only two of us, I used 2 bone-in chicken breasts, which was probably about 1.5 to 2 lb total)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lie juice
zest of 2 limes
2 small onions, peeled and thinly sliced
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp fresh ginger; minced
1 serrano or jalapeno with seeds; minced
4 carambola (or kiwi if you have to sub) cut in 1/4″ thick slices
salt & pepper
1/2 cup almonds, raw and whole
1 small bunch cilantro

Rinse chicken well and pat it thoroughly dry. In a large bowl, whisk together olive oil, lime juice and zest, onions, honey, ginger and minced pepper. Stir in three-fourths of the carambola slices. Then add the chicken, and turn it until it is coated with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or up to 2 days, turning the chicken occasionally so it marinates evenly. I just used a freezer bag and squished it around every so often.

Now, I deviated from the recipe slightly by browning my chicken first. So, season the chicken with salt and pepper and then brown the chicken quickly on each side in a hot pan, about 2 minutes per side. If the skin gets a little too brown (the honey can burn a little), you can always pull the skin off before serving.

Arrange chicken in a single layer in a 9 x 13″ baking dish. Add almonds to the marinade, stir, and spoon it over the chicken. If you used an oven-proof pan to sear the chicken, you can also just do all of this in the pan.

Bake at 375 F. in the center of the oven, basting frequently with pan juices and turning any chicken pieces that get too brown, about 30 minutes. Add remaining carambola, stir, and continue cooking until the chicken is golden and a thigh yields clear juice when pricked at its thickest part, 15 to 20 minutes. Now, for my two chicken breasts, they were in the oven for about 35 minutes total — 25 minutes, then I added the extra kiwi, then about 10 more minutes and they were done. Use a thermometer and check the temp as needed.

Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. Just before serving, mince the cilantro if you are using it. Serve chicken right from the baking dish, or divide among four warmed dinner plates. Spoon sauce over the chicken, garnish with cilantro and serve. We had the chicken with jasmine rice made green by some pureed spinach in the cooking broth.

Using chicken breasts with the bone and skin really kept it all moist. All in all, we were both very pleased with this meal! The breasts were so big, we even had leftovers for lunch the next day. As always, thanks again to Sara at Weekend Cookbook Challenge for another great event!

I have been meaning to make a blueberry pie all Summer — in fact, I have always wanted to make a blueberry pie. Unfortunately, I hadn’t done so yet but then I came across some tasty looking berries at Limbo and was inspired. Sure I was hot and yes, I was kind of lazy. That’s when I decided a blueberry crumble would be just as good. It was. Was there really any doubt? Nope. So, grab yourself some blueberries, a lemon, some assorted crumble accoutrements and you’re all set.

And, as if that was not enough, as an experiment, I mixed up some plain, non-fat yogurt, seeds from a vanilla bean, a little sugar and some cinnamon and threw it in the ice cream maker. I didn’t strain it or anything, just mixed it all up and that’s it. I ended up
with some pretty tasty non-fat frozen yogurt for the top of the crumble.

Blueberry-Hazelnut Crumble
Slightly based on a crumble recipe from the Whole Foods web site
2.5 cups blueberries (about a pint)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse the berries and drain thoroughly. Put the blueberries in a mixing bowl and add lemon juice, sugar and one half tablespoon of flour. Set aside until you are all ready with the crumble topping.

In a food processor, pulse together the remaining ingredients until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Okay, fine, course breadcrumbs made of butter, oats, sugar and nuts.

Combine, and pour the blueberries into four 1 1/2-cup ramekins. You could, of course, just make one big crumble in a 9-inch pie pan. Next, cover the berries with the topping and bake for thirty minutes until the top has browned and the fruit is bubbling.

You may have a little topping leftover — just store it in the fridge and make yourself another small, single-sized crumble one night after work. Shhh!

Can be served hot or at room temperature. Goes very well with ice cream or frozen yogurt — store bought or experimental.

Coming up also this week: a fish dish with olives, capers and…bacon (!) and September’s Weekend Cookbook Challenge from one of my most favorite cookbooks of all time.

We made these a while ago and they were quite good. They’ll be a little messy if you eat them right away. Have a something to wipe your fingers on near by. Or, depending upon the company you keep, be prepared to lick you(r)* fingers.

If you stash (hee! — three people will get that) them in the fridge for an hour or two after they cool, the residual butter will solidify and they will be less messy.

Curried Macadamia Nuts
Adapted from a recipe found on Food Network
2 tbsp unsalted butter
4 tsp curry powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp cayenne
2 cups roasted, lightly salted macadamia nuts (Trader’s Joe’s brand is good for nuts, for they are lightly salted. If you use another brand, you may want to consider unsalted and add a pinch more salt to the curry butter)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Melt the butter in a small skillet, then add the curry powder, brown sugar, salt, and cayenne and cook, stirring constantly, until aromatic, about 30 seconds.

Toss the nuts with the curry butter on a baking sheet, spread the nuts in a single layer. Bake until the nuts are hot and shiny, about 10 minutes. All ovens are different, so when you can smell them, give them a peek to make sure they are not burning or anything. Cool to room temperature.

Hmmm…now I want a snack…

* jwa, via email, upon pointing out my typo in the original post:

and so on

** I’d like to point out that in jwa’s email, “impertinence” is spelled wrong. Ha!

I originally envisioned this post for Weekend Cookbook Challenge 17, but I didn’t get it up in time. Most of this week (in the evening) has been devoted to working on the wedding website with jwa. Happily, save the date cards went out last Thursday. Well, at least the main bulk of them — there’s a few still lingering on the dining room table while we locate addresses.. Hopefully, those will make it out this week.

But, let’s move on. This recipe is from Everyday Italian and it turned out pretty well. The texture is a little different due to the cornmeal but once you get used to that, it’s really quite good. In addition to the almond paste, I also added about a teaspoon of almond extract, based on the recommendations from reviewers on the site.

Almond Cake
1/2 cup fine yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup almond paste, cut into half-inch pieces
1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar, plus more for dusting
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 eggs
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan with vegetable spray or you could also butter and flour the cake pan. Your choice. After you decide that, in a medium bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, cake flour and baking powder and set aside.

Then, using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and almond paste on high speed until smooth, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low and slowly add confectioners’ sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined and light and fluffy.

Raise speed to high and add the vanilla and almond extracts, whole eggs and egg yolks, 1 at a time. Mix until well combined. Reduce speed to medium and add the sour cream and dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth the surface with a spatula.

Bake in the lower third of the oven for 35 minutes, or until the cake is golden and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

Transfer pan to a wire rack and let cool. Remove from pan and dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Let cool a few minutes and dive in!

This month’s Sugar High Friday 31 is hosted by Seven Spoons and the theme is — “Shades of White.” Fun! Of course, it would have been nice if I had realized that my post was supposed to be up at the beginning of the week but I read the announcement wrong…Hopefully, I can sneak my entry in!

This is a neutral shade and S-I-M-P-L-E to make. Chocolate. Nuts. Assorted flavor whatnots (lavender + orange zest). That is all.

White Chocolate Clusters with Lavender & Orange Zest
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup cashews (edited to add: I used roasted, lightly salted)
1/2 tsp dried lavender
1/2 tsp orange zest

To begin, put the chips, orange zest and lavender in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat in 30 second increments, stirring between each time, until the chocolate is melted. You could also, of course, use a double-boiler for this.

Add the cashews to the melted chocolate and mix until all the nuts are coated.

Scoop 3-4 cashews out in a cluster. I found using two spoons worked well for this. Drop the clusters on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Let cool for about 15 minutes, then pop into the refrigerator to completely firm up — about 30 more minutes.

Because of the orange zest and Spring weather, I would store these in the fridge. I doubt they will last longer than a few days (because you will eat them all, not because they will go bad).

Thanks again to Seven Spoons for hosting SHF31!