my love's birthday dinner

First, we made a culinary stop-off in India for some chicken tikka masala, spiced pulao (rice), potato and pea vadi (vegetable patties), cucumber raita, and naan bread.
My love does not enjoy Indian desserts as I do, so we made a quick detour to France for a crepe cake - 20 crepes layered with vanilla pastry cream and fresh raspberry sauce.

pre-Halloween midnight snack

Organic (Dr. Oetker) chocolate cupcakes with orange-oil spiked frosting and Halloween non-pareils. Tested the idea last night and left a midnight (or 2-3 am) snack out for my guy.

Williams Sonoma pumpkin bread pan!

I love when things come out like they are in the picture! I used the recipe on the back of the label, and it was fantastic.

Portuguese sweets in an unlikely location

Last month, I met a friend in Boston and we spent a few hours wandering around. We were in Chinatown, and on a mission to find an Asian market called Super 88, but we had no luck. We saw the parking area, and a sign with an arrow that said "Welcome" but we could not, for the life of us, find the door. Anyway, we set off to find an Asian bakery instead, and stumbled upon a place called Great Taste Bakery (63 Beach St). We found lots of the expected, and a bit of the unexpected. There were tons of yummy-looking pastries screaming our names, but the thing that jumped out at me the most were the Portuguese pastries (!!!!). They looked exactly like the Pastéis de Nata or Pastéis de Belém that we ate on our weekend trip the Portugal last year. They're made of delicious custard, surrounded by flaky pastry, and bruléed on the top. Of course, we grabbed a few for the road, and they the taste was quite authentic. What a find!

Grad party!

We had a party with friends and family at our house yesterday to celebrate my graduation from college. It's unbelievable how fast the past four years have flown by. As usual, it was my goal to fill everyone's tummy with good food. Here's what was on the menu:

On the Spanish app table:

• Tortilla (Spanish potato omelette)
• Manchego (traditional sheep cheese from La Mancha)
• Membrillo (quince paste -- traditionally paired with manchego)
• Spicy Catalan olives
• Bread, of course
  
• Pastelitos de gambas (shrimp egg-roll style bites -- learned how to make these in Madrid) *
  

On the veg app table:

• Fresh fruit
• Veggies & dip (we found the cutest little yellow baby carrots!)

On the un-named app table:

• Chips & 2 salsas
• Cinnamon chips & fruit salsa (by Jane)
• Boucher Blue Cheese (by Green Mountain Blue Cheese @ Boucher Family Farm)
  
• Vermont Butter & Cheese Chevre
• Bread & crispy bagel chips
• More fresh fruit

On the kitchen island:

• Maple Whiskey Pulled Chicken from Picante Dulce *
  
• Zesty coleslaw
• Cabot Hunter's Cheddar & rolls for making chicken sandwiches
• Dakin Farm maple glazed ham
  
• Grape tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil salad
• Spinach, red cabbage, and cilantro salad (thanks to an SMC Spanish prof for that idea!)
• Southwest black bean, corn, and red pepper salad
• Potato salad (by my great aunt)
• Roasted veggie, orzo, and feta salad

For dessert:

• Strawberry trifle!
• Oatmeal & cinnamon chip cookies

* MMcC -- I saved you some in the freezy!

GSC-Style Samoas Bars

Earlier today, I was looking through the hundreds of recent posts on my Google Reader (I subscribe to some 60 different blogs -- almost all are food-related) and this one thing caught my eye: a post about Samoas bars from the kitchn. Their inspiration comes from The Crepes of Wrath, who adapted the recipe from Baking Bites. The recipe is ingenious! It's based on the Girl Scout Cookies called Samoas (although I always knew them as Caramel deLites) and it brings all the major players to the table: the cookie base, slightly salty caramel, crunchy coconut, and chocolate. I whipped up a batch and was completely satisfied with the result. It was so much easier than the alternative Samoas procedure -- cutting out rings of cookie dough would have taken me much longer. All in all, it was a big hit among the roommates, and I'll probably make them again. In fact, as soon as my guy sees this, he'll probably make me sign a contract to that effect. =)

return of the raw apple cake :: reaparición de la tarta de manzanas "crudas"

One of my favorite easy cakes... Check out the recipe here.
***
Una de mis tartas favoritas y fáciles. Haz clic aquí para ver la receta en inglés.

Going beyond chocolates & flowers...

Have you ever seen those commercials for Edible Arrangements and wondered if they're really all they're cracked up to be? Let me be the first to tell you, if you're getting one from the Burlington location, they are! I had always wondered what they were like, and I guess at some point I mentioned that while watching their commercial. For Valentine's Day this year, my boy picked me up one of these. The fruit was fresh, perfectly arranged, and overall -- delicious! For a fruithead like me, it really ranks in the top ten gifts.

Stuffed Cupcakes for my Valentine

This year, I made some cupcakes inspired by these, except I made them more Valentine's Day friendly by adding CHOCOLATE!

I stuffed devil's food cupcakes with strawberries, and frosted them with vanilla buttercream.









































A new outlook on chocolate-covered strawberries. =)

Apple Pie Overseas

A few days after New Year's (in Madrid), Kay had Nat and I over for her mother-in-law's famous meatballs and gravy.

Kay made an apple pie for dessert, and it was the perfect bit of American cuisine to make us feel at home. The apples were perfectly cooked and the crust was delightfully crispy with cinnamon & sugar.

The Spanish make a dessert (called tarta de manzana) similar to our good ol' fashioned apple pie, but it's not quite the same.

Pep Restaurante

My favorite part of Spain cuisine is the existence of the "menu of the day". Most places will offer a midday selection of dishes (menu is usually posted outside of the restaurant): you choose a first course (primer plato), and a second course (segundo). Standard menus also include bread (pan), wine (vino) or a soft drink (refresco), and a dessert (postre).

On our second day (I think) in Barcelona, we set out looking for Casa Amalia (Passatge Mercat, 4-6 -- rumored to have a menu of the day for only 7,81€), only to find out that it was closed on Mondays. We went, instead, next door to Pep Restaurante (Passatge Pla, 11) to sample their Catalan cuisine.

The second courses (segundos) we chose were decidedly non-memorable, but the primer plato was to-die-for. Both of us got shellfish soup (sopa de mariscos) -- a tomato-based puree laced with bits of whitefish and tiny prawns. Overall the soup was a perfect balance of savory aromatics and sweet tomatoes and seafood. My only wish was that I had had two bowls. =)

The dessert (postre) we chose was crema catalana (catalan cream), a close relative of France's crème brûlée. Click here for a recipe.

spiced squash custard

This year, as I'm sure many of my fellow turkey-roasters were, I was thinking ahead of time about what on earth I could do with leftovers. For the big dinner, I made a giant pan of roasted mixed root veggies, and planned to make a pureed veggie soup with the extras the next day.

However, I did not plan to have extra filling for my double layer pecan squash pie. I had mixed together about 4 cups of pureed roasted mixed varieties of squash, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, and a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and mace. When I added the mix to two pie crusts, I realized I had too much! So I spooned the extra into a few ramekins and came up with this delicious squash custard.

It's got a smooth texture, it melts in your mouth, and packs a more complex flavor than traditional pumpkin pie. What can you do with your leftovers?

raw apple cake

My grandma made this cake for my birthday last month, and it' s been on my mind ever since. I absolutely love apple season and am always looking for new ways to use up apples. This is perfect. I made a few *tweaks* to the recipe, but other than that, it's the original.

Raw Apple Cake
1 handful sliced almonds **
2 cups grated apple
1 cup grated coconut
2/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon **
1 egg
1/3 cup oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Sprinkle half of the sliced almonds in the bottom of the pie dish (put the other half aside)
2. Mix remaining ingredients together until well-blended
3. Pour batter into dish
4. Sprinkle top of batter with other half of sliced almonds
5. Bake at 350 for 45 mins

The result? A deliciously moist cake with the perfect level of sweetness.

"welcome, baby" cake

French vanilla cake with pink raspberry buttercream and fresh raspberries!

almond linzers

I know I'm not alone when I say that there are at least half a dozen partially-used jars of jam/jelly/preserves in my fridge at any given time. Somehow, although I love jam, there are always a few tucked out-of-view, so I end up with multiple jars of the same flavor! In an attempt to minimize the amount of space being taken up by jam jars, I made some buttery and nutty almond linzer cookies. These tasty Austrian cookies are baked, half whole and half with a hole, then sandwiched together with sweet jams, jellies or preserves. Next on the list for jam-using-up: a linzer torte or linzer bars.

dinner party dessert

Some friends of mine threw a party two nights ago, and I was in charge of putting together the desserts. I used to sell these little blueberry tartlets at a farmers' market, but I hadn't made them recently, so I kind of revamped the recipe.

I put together a dough of ground almonds (done in my food processor), sugar, butter, a pinch of salt, and some ice water. After toasting them up, I filled them with a light cream (housemade sheep ricotta, sheep yogurt, whipped cream, and powdered sugar -- all folded together and spiked with a little amaretto). I topped each tartlet with a gigantic Willow Hill Farm blueberry.

fresh fruit and yogurt cup

I was loosely following Eating Well's Fresh Fruit Tart recipe the other day, and I came out with a little extra filling. I filled a ramekin with the extra yogurt mixture, and it hit me. If you are trying to cut calories, why not take out the crust (it's made with graham crackers and butter)? Don't get me wrong, Eating Well's recipes are already designed to promote healthy eating, but sometimes you just don't want the crust (ok, I admit, I've never felt that way, but some people might!). Either way, it's tasty, and you can top it with (or mix in) any summer fruits that you like. Drizzle the top with a little bit of the marmelade or jam mixture (here I used a mixture of tangerine marmelade and raspberry preserves) and let it set. Yummy!

Bites in Toledo

If you're planning on spending the day in Toledo, I highly recommend you spend your lunch hour on the terrace at Restaurante Kumera (c/ Alfonso X). If you're lucky like we were, their menu-of-the-day may include a tasty green salad (as a starter), fish of the day (mine was served over delicious roasted veggies and drizzled with a red pepper sauce), tender pork tenderloin with garlic and parsley, or lamb medallions stuffed with pinenuts. Try the cheesecake for dessert -- it's light and delicious.

Mini-bite :: La Gloria de Montera

The other night, at La Gloria de Montera, I had a delicious dessert. Fresh strawberry soup with a scoop of tarragon ice cream. I know it sounds weird, but it is amazing. The "ice cream" tastes a bit more like a sorbet, but it is tasty. Give it a try. =)

Chocolatísimo dessert @ La Gloria de Montera