Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Nostalgia...

We all have our "go to" cookbooks...the ones we've most recently acquired with the slick, beautiful photos (and no grease stains!).  Somehow our old friends like The Joy of Cooking or the Time Life Foods of the World series get relegated to the bottom shelves or packed away in a box and forgotten, their dated pictures and over-the-top calorie dense recipes replaced with the latest food trend.

The other night I was reading David Lebovitz's blog and he has stirred up quite a pot of nostalgia with his latest post about Masterpieces of French Cuisine, how he acquired it, then lost it, then got another copy, and the memories it evokes for him of an old friend who used to visit the kitchen when he worked at Chez Panisse.  Reading the post and the many comments sent me searching through my own collection of books and magazines, like this one I bought many years ago in a used book store and from which I made my very first batch of crepes...


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Tuesdays with Dorie - Chocolate Truffle Tart

First the dough...I made it a few days ahead in the food processor and it came together beautifully. I followed the dough instructions to the letter after watching the YouTube vidoes here and here.  The only deviation I made from the instructions was to use pie weights for the first 11 minutes of baking and then I took them out.


Frissage...(it's really hard to take a picture of yourself doing this! See the shadow of the camera strap?)

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Julia's White Loaves Redux and my favorite soup ...

BRRRR...the temperature this morning in north Florida was in the low thirties, which for us is pretty darn cold.  This Florida girl doesn't like cold weather, so when the temperature drops I go into hibernation.  That means comfort foods...warm soups, homemade bread, braised meats, stews, and rich desserts.  The TV weather guys and gals are saying this little cold snap will last a few days, so I decided to make my favorite Curried Zucchini Soup.  I first had this soup in a local cafe on a cold afternoon and was instantly hooked.  It's warm, creamy and satisfying while at the same time light.  Thanks to Google, I had a recipe 5 minutes after I got home.  Martha Stewart gets the credit for this one and no surpise that it costs only about $.65 per serving, takes all of 10 minutes prep time, 20 minutes cooking time, and a few minutes to blend ...et voila! it's ready to eat.  The best part...it's really low calorie.  Add some homemade bread and a salad and you have a perfect lunch.  Also a great way to use up all that extra zucchini from your summer garden.


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Tuesdays with Dorie - Julia's White Loaves....

I had forgotten how much fun it was to bake bread.  When my children were small (I'm gonna age myself here) and before there were so many places where you could get good  bread, I spent a couple of years baking bread every weekend.  I mean I was a serious bread baker....I bought flour in 25 lb. sacks from the local health food store and wore out my copies of Beard on Bread and Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and was making whole wheat, rye and pumpernickel.  I checked out every book the local public library had about bread baking.  Somewhere life got in the way and I stopped. Imagine my delight when I read that the first recipe chosen for TWD BWJ was Julia's White Loaves.....so I rolled up my sleeves and got started...


I guess by now you've figured out how this blog got it's name.  Except for one other small bit of counter space, this is the sum total of my work space.  This recipe, which can be found here, worked great with my KitchenAid Professional 600 stand mixer.