Well, I’ve done it, folks — joined Daring Kitchen. This is the first recipe I’ve cooked for the site! The post started out with an intro from our host:

Hi all, this is Olga from Las Cosas de Olga and Olga’s Recipes and I’m pleased to be your host at August Daring Cooks Challenge. I’ve chosen a delicious Spanish recipe, Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes by José Andrés, one of the most important Spanish Chefs at the moment.

I have very little need for Lots of Food on my own, so I made this for my parents at their house. They both expressed grave doubts about the edibility of squid in general, and especially the squid I made after it had been cooking so long. But in the end, we all were pretty happy with the way it came out; they even asked for seconds.

My mom is on the “Sugar Busters” diet, so the one major substitution I made was to use brown rice; accordingly I left out the saffron/turmeric, since I’m not really sure what it would have been coloring.

As you’ll see, it came out looking pretty much like a big plate of glorp, something Calvin would stab at and make disgusted faces — but it tasted great! This was my first time making aïoli (I’ve actually made it since), and I’ll freely admit that I probably should have worked it up a bit more to try to get some creaminess going, or maybe used the more modern recipe with raw eggs. Ah, well — next time… here’s the original recipe:

Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes
Cooking time: 45 minutes

4 Artichokes (you can use jarred or freezed if fresh are not available)
12 Mushrooms (button or Portobello)
1 or 2 Bay leaves (optional but highly recommended)
1 glass of white wine
2 Cuttlefish (you can use freezed cuttlefish or squid if you don’t find it fresh)
Sofregit (see recipe below)
2 cups short grain rice (Spanish types Calasparra or Montsant are preferred, but you can choose any other short grain. This kind of rice absorbs flavor very well) – about ½ cup per person
Water or Fish Stock (use 1 ½ cup of liquid per ½ cup of rice)
Saffron threads (if you can’t find it or afford to buy it, you can substitute it for turmeric or yellow coloring powder)
Allioli (olive oil and garlic sauce, similar to mayonnaise sauce) - optional

1 ) Cut the cuttlefish in little strips.
2 ) Add 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and put the cuttlefish in the pan.
3 ) If you use fresh artichokes, clean them as shown in the video in tip #7. Cut artichokes in eights.
4 ) Clean the mushrooms and cut them in fourths.
5 ) Add a bay leaf to the cuttlefish and add also the artichokes and the mushrooms.
6 ) Sauté until we get a golden color in the artichokes.
7 ) Put a touch of white wine so all the solids in the bottom of the get mixed, getting a more flavorful dish.
8 ) Add a couple or three tablespoons of sofregit and mix to make sure everything gets impregnated with the sofregit.
9 ) Add all the liquid and bring it to boil.
10 ) Add all the rice. Let boil for about 5 minutes in heavy heat.
11 ) Add some saffron thread to enrich the dish with its flavor and color. Stir a little bit so the rice and the other ingredients get the entire flavor. If you’re using turmeric or yellow coloring, use only 1/4 teaspoon.
12 ) Turn to low heat and boil for another 8 minutes (or until rice is a little softer than “al dente”)
13 ) Put the pan away from heat and let the rice stand a couple of minutes.

Sofregit
Cooking time: aprox. 1 hour
(a well cooked and fragrant sauce made of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic and onions, and may at times
different vegetables such as peppers or mushrooms)

2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 big red ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (optional)
4 or 5 garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup of button or Portobello mushrooms, chopped (optional)
1 Bay leaf
Salt
Touch of ground cumin
Touch of dried oregano

1 ) Put all the ingredients together in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft.
2 ) Taste and salt if necessary (maybe it’s not!)

Allioli is the optional part of the recipe. You must choose one of the two recipes given, even though I highly recommend you to try traditional one. Allioli is served together with the rice and it gives a very nice taste.

Allioli (Traditional recipe)
Cooking time: 20 min aprox.
Ingredients:

4 garlic cloves, peeled
Pinch of salt
Fresh lemon juice (some drops)
Extra-virgin olive oil (Spanish preferred but not essential)

Directions:

1 ) Place the garlic in a mortar along with the salt.
2 ) Using a pestle, smash the garlic cloves to a smooth paste. (The salt stops the garlic from slipping at the bottom of the mortar as you pound it down.)
3 ) Add the lemon juice to the garlic.
4 ) Drop by drop; pour the olive oil into the mortar slowly as you continue to crush the paste with your pestle.
5 ) Keep turning your pestle in a slow, continuous circular motion in the mortar. The drip needs to be slow and steady. Make sure the paste soaks up the olive oil as you go.
6 ) Keep adding the oil, drop by drop, until you have the consistency of a very thick mayonnaise. If your allioli gets too dense, add water to thin it out. This takes time—around 20 minutes of slow motion around the mortar—to create a dense, rich sauce.

José’s tips for traditional recipe: It’s hard to think that, when you start crushing the garlic, it will ever turn into something as dense and smooth as allioli. But don’t give up. It’s worth the extra time and effort to see the oil and garlic come together before your eyes. Just make sure you’re adding the olive oil slowly, drop by drop. Keep moving the pestle around the mortar in a circular motion and keep dreaming of the thick, creamy sauce at the end of it all.

Here are a few iPhone apps I’ve got on my phone, and am loving:

Big Oven - There are dozens, really, of recipe-compilation iPhone apps, but so far, this is my favorite. It speedily accesses its online database of 170,000+ recipes and classifies by dietary restrictions, ratings, type of cuisine, and more! It will even pick a random recipe from its trove if you ask it to, so if you find yourself stuck at the grocery store with no brilliant ideas of what to cook, you’ll find a shopping list appearing in your hands. Photos of their recipes are rather inspirational, too…

Cocktail Compass: Seattle - This is all about finding hours and specs on Seattle’s Happy Hour. It uses location services to show you what’s closest, and then goes on to tell you how much time you have to get there before Happy Hour ends. Tap on an interesting-looking entry, and you’ll get details on what that location’s Happy Hour involves, as well as a map to them, a call button, and an option to add them to your favorites list. No longer must you wander downtown like a lost, thirsty puppy!

Yelp - It’s just as good as the full website is, with hundreds of restaurant reviews, hours, phone numbers, and details. Even better, it integrates with maps and location services to tell you what’s nearby, and how to get there. You can search by ethnicity, price range, and more, and build up a list of favorites to come back to.

Open Table - So you’ve found a restaurant that looks great, is nearby, and in your price range. Of course, it’s only two in the afternoon, and you need a table for six, but no one’s answering the phone at the restaurants. Open Table will allow you to make reservations online instantly, for free. The one caveat I’d have for this is that the selection of restaurants available via Open Table, while large, is not Every Restaurant in Seattle. Yet.

In the spirit of all things food (which have sparked my interest more and more of late), I wanted to share with you a web-site that a friend of mine found recently: Foodzie. Essentially, it’s Etsy for food. It’s an on-line market-place for small (and generally, indie) vendors and artisans to sell their edibles. Sauces, spreads, jams, oils, vinegar, nuts, cheeses, chocolate, candy — it’s a treasure trove of off-the-beaten-path foodstuffs! I have yet to order anything from them, but here are a few of the things I’ve found which are going on my to-eat list:

Cinnamon Basil Tea Cookies from the Botanical Bakery.

Lavender Hanahbells Thimble Cheese from the Shy Brothers Farm. I’m such a sucker for Lavender!

Grenache Wine Vinegar from Allure Estates.

Scenic City Sizzle, Grilling Pepper from Alchemy Spice Company. I’m imagining this getting slathered all over a grilled halibut. Whoa.

Mint Chip Macaroons from Emmy’s Organics. The “chips” are not semi-sweet or even bitter-sweet chocolate chips, but raw cocoa nibs sprinkled throughout. I love chocolate in its regularly consumable forms, but there’s something so totally pure and perfect about nibs, they’re so dark and bitter but with their own natural sweetness and oiliness that fills your mouth with the smallest amount.

This is a family recipe, but I’m really not sure where it’s from. I’d sort of assume The South, but who knows? From a random sampling of my friends, though, I’ve determined that it’s not exactly a common dish… or one that they think sounds even remotely tasty… but once I’ve cooked it for them, they agree: it’s absolutely delicious. And it can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or your midnight snack. It’s the every-hour meal!

Fried Egg Sandwich

Two slices sourdough bread
1 Tbs Mayonnaise
2-3 garlic pickle slices
2 eggs
1 Tbs butter

1) It’s pretty simple, really. Fry the eggs in the butter over medium heat. Break the yolks, or you’ll have one messy sandwich! Make sure it’s firm, but not brown at all. Flip it if you need to; grind some pepper in if you feel like it.
2) Toast the sourdough; spread mayo on one piece.
3) Place the pickles and eggs on the bread. Make a sandwich. Eat it.

I’ve probably eaten about a hundred of these in my life, and I never regret it. It’s tangy, savory, wheaty, salty… entirely satisfying.

After posting the invitation to the open picnic both on my blog and on Craigslist, I got so few replies that I was ready to throw in the towel on Friday morning, but at the last minute, several of my friends opted in (and recruited others), so that by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, I had seven people attending. The lovely M—- helped me transport my goods to sunny Ravenna Park, where after a brief search, we found an open picnic table at which to set up. I decided I couldn’t really do fancy food on paper plates, so I purchased some relatively cheap alternatives: Bambu plates, which look outdoorsy without being really expensive, and then reusable (but cheap) Tag glasses, bowls, cloth napkins, and place mats. Everything was green and purple.

When I started planning, I had a few things in mind for the menu. First, my dishes had to be things that I wouldn’t be afraid to cook — that is, nothing that I’d be likely to ruin, like a custard. Second, they had to be things that I wouldn’t have to cook there, since cooking facilities would be nonexistent unless I was prepared to pay a $140 shelter fee (and even then, it’d just be a grill). And third, I wanted to play with summer Seattle flavors. I made a list of ingredients that I think are especially summery: heirloom tomatoes, fresh spearmint, avocados, blueberries, cilantro, cucumbers, goat cheese. Then I simply started searching/brainstorming interesting recipes. Here’s what I came up with:

The week of the picnic, I put in a large order to Spud, and they provided pretty much all of the fresh vegetables. They delivered a ton of Purple Cherokee heirloom tomatoes, which are very mild and sweet, and went perfectly in the Bruschetta and Caprese. I served the Crostini and Caprese family-style and just let people dig in before I started piling courses on them. I liked that skewering the Caprese made it easy to transport and serve, but I’m not sure it was the optimal way to serve Caprese otherwise.

The Gazpacho was an easy call, since I could make it the night before and simply chill it until I served it. The Gazpacho recipe I chose was from the Herbfarm Cookbook, and it was amazing — I highly recommend it. Very zesty, very flavorful; the fresh herbs all managed to shine without overwhelming each other, and the green color was bright and cheerful.

The Mushroom/Asparagus Risotto was also based on a recipe from that book, but I was not as impressed with it. I like the idea of a mushroom risotto, but the asparagus wasn’t that exciting, and the trio of mushroom/asparagus/lemon thyme flavoring just didn’t work for me.

The Seared Ahi was based on a recipe from the same cookbook, but I changed the salad up so that it had a few tablespoons of lime juice, a little olive oil, a little salt, four avocados, two cucumbers, and a handful of chopped cilantro. Coriander and cilantro, as they are sold here, are two parts of the same plant, so that shared flavor tied the Ahi and the salad together.

Finally, the Goat Cheesecake was based on Abbey’s infamous cheesecake, which was featured by the Daring Kitchen, and therefore, by food blogs everywhere. It really is a great recipe; I used goat cheese for half of the cheese, and instead of using graham cracker crumbs for the crust, I crushed up some lavender shortbread that I’d made about a week before, so that there was a subtle lavender flavor in it.

Now, to answer the question which I got seven times that day: What is a coulis? A coulis, as I understand it, is some type of sauce which is made by forcing fruit or vegetables through a sieve, so that any particular materials (seeds, skins, etc) are either crushed up unrecognizably or strained out of the final product. At any rate, that’s how I made mine. I gather some people puree and then strain these sauces, but I didn’t really want lots of dribbly seed bits getting into mine, so I didn’t puree the blueberries. It’s very simple, and you wind up with a sauce that is 100% fruit, has a light syrupy consistency, but it hasn’t been cooked and has no added sugar. The blueberry went great with the lavender and cheese flavors, so I’ll definitely be making that again.

A final note I’d like to make isn’t about anything I cooked. As you may or may not know, public parks in Seattle do not allow alcohol unless you restrict the consumption to a covered shelter and pay some kind of huge - like $300 - fee for it. Now, I’ve seen people openly drinking, a lot, at parks all over the place, and I’ve never seen this enforced, but I didn’t particularly want to tempt fate, especially since this would be going on my blog. So while I’d normally serve wine with a dinner like this, I couldn’t. What I wound up bringing instead were: plenty of still water, Pellegrino, and a couple bottles of Golden Star Tea. At $12 a bottle, it was not exactly the cheapest drink choice on the block, but it was a big hit! It complemented the food well, was refreshing in the hot sun, and delicious. So if you’re looking for a no-alcohol alternative to wine, check this stuff out. We gave it two yums up.

Mmmmmmmmm, cheese. I’ve always liked nibbling on various sorts of cheese, but it’s only recently, as I’ve become significantly more gastronomically adventurous (I blame Anthony Bourdain), that I’ve become really interested in trying and enjoying cheeses that I previously would’ve found too stinky or scary-looking. Oh, I’m not abandoning my old favorites: fresh mozzarella, a simple swiss, and a soft chevre all have permanent places in my heart. But I’ve found some others that are pretty excellent contenders. Here are some recent, favorite discoveries:

Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam - probably the best Triple Cream I’ve had. I couldn’t get over this stuff. It weighs in at a somewhat balk-worthy $18 for a small round, but a little goes a long ways, and every bit is worth it. It’s buttery, nutty, and subtle, and has a flavor that somehow blossoms as you let it melt in your mouth. It’s also got an extremely creamy, soft texture (even moreso than your average brie). Slice up a good baguette with it, open a rosé,* and you’ve got yourself a delicious meal. If you like creamy, brie-style cheeses, you’re going to love this.

Cypress Grove Midnight Moon - This is an aged, firm goat’s milk cheese with a lot of zingy, goaty flavor. It’s better with fruit or preserves than with bread or crackers, because the sharpness of the flavor and drier texture plays well against sweet, juicy things; I could see it going well in certain types of pasta sauces or in salads, though.

Beecher’s Blank Slate (Honey) - From Beecher’s (Seattle shout-out!) comes this very soft, very mild honey-flavored cheese. It’s really spreadable, and goes beautifully with sourdough, though I’ve also used it in salad (see recipe below). It’s remarkably friendly, and will go with practically any fruit or soft bread… and I’d like to try making a cheesecake of it one day.

Blank Slate Salad
This is a sweet, summery salad, which makes a nice end to a meal.
Makes: 4 side salads | Prep time: 30 mins.

1 6 oz. tub Beecher’s Blank Slate (Honey) cheese
2 medium red onions
2 soft, semi-firm peaches
1 head green-leaf lettuce
1 1/2 Tbsp champagne vinegar
3 Tbsp walnut oil
2 Tbsp almond slivers
1 Tbsp olive oil
dash of salt
salt and pepper to taste

1) Heat olive oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat. Slice onions into semi-thick rings, and throw them into the pan. Throw a dash of salt on top of them. Break up the rings and let them start to fry; keep moving them, but give them plenty of time to cook down. The goal is to cook them until they’re cooked through and don’t have too much spicy-onion flavor, but not to the point where they’re limp and browned all over.
2) In a separate, small pan, heat about 1/2 Tbsp of the walnut oil on medium-high heat and roast the almond slivers in it. These will brown fast, and you want them to get golden-colored on the outside, but not to smoke or have any burnt flavor, so make sure to have a small bowl ready so that you can get them out of the frying pan as soon as they have reached the right color.
3) Wash and tear lettuce; wash and slice peaches.
4) Mix together the remaining walnut oil and the champagne vinegar as a dressing.
5) When the onions are done cooking (it takes 20-30 mins), assemble salads: a bed of lettuce, then the sliced peaches, then the onions, and the almonds. Crumble the cheese on top of each, dress them, and salt and pepper them to taste.

* This post wasn’t supposed to be about wine, but I can’t let this go without mentioning that I’ve recently fallen hard for rosés of pinot noir. Pinot’s such a meaty grape, but dry enough that when you make a pinot from it, you get a light, friendly, but entirely tasty (and not too sweet) lunchtime-y wine. In this field, C.R. Sandidge makes a reliably good Great Gams, although earlier years have been better. This weekend, I also tasted a lovely pinot rosé from Elk Cove, which makes such an amazingly fine reserve pinot (warning: that one’s not a $20 bottle) that you know they have a good feel for the grape overall.

As promised, here’s the almost vegetarian French onion soup recipe!

I started off with this Basic Vegetable Stock, which I let cook on the stove for a few hours:

3 Carrots (chopped)
2 Celery stalks (chopped)
1/2 cup Green Onions (as I was saving the white ones for the soup itself)
1/3 cup Parsley
3/4 cup dry Sherry
1 Bay leaf
a bouquet (about 8 sprigs) of Thyme
1 Tbsp. Peppercorns
1 Tbsp. Butter
About three quarts of water

While that was bubbling away on the stove, I roasted in a large casserole dish at 450° F:

1 medium Eggplant (cubed)
a dozen Cherry Tomatoes (each cut in half; they don’t have to be cherry tomatoes, it’s just what I had on hand)
a dash of Smokey-flavored Salt
1 Tbsp. Olive oil (just enough to coat the vegetables)

When the roasting vegetables had started to get brownish, I removed them from the oven. I removed the carrots and other vegetables from the stock pot, and added the roasted vegetables to it. The stock had already been a nice tan-ish color, but once I added the roasted vegetables, it started to get really dark. I let it go for awhile (probably an hour) and then came back to taste it. It was at this point that I took a page from one of my favorite Roald Dahl books (and that’s quite a competition!), and started moving around my kitchen, opening up my cupboards and pulling things out at random to see what I had that could go into it. It was clearly lacking something.

I added some spices (Herbs de Provençe, Basil, and a few Cloves), a bit more salt, and then the thing which made it taste almost-perfect but which also makes it not totally vegetarian: about two tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce. It gave it a zing, a bite, and a lot of character, while the roasted vegetables gave it more substance than a regular vegetable broth generally has.

Full of hope that I’d created a good enough stock, I started in on the vegetables. First, I cooked the onions…

and then I cooked them some more…

And then finally started the actual assembly process: a slice of bread into the onion soup crock, then some of the onions, then the broth, and finally, about 3/4 of a cup of grated swiss cheese (I decided on a mixture of Gruyere, Emmentaler, Appenzeller) to completely cover the top. I baked it for just over 10 minutes at 450° F. Here’s the finished product, just prior to me digging in:

All in all, it was delicious, if I do say so myself. Was it beef stocky enough? Probably not. And I failed in my quest to make a totally vegetarian stock. On the other hand, it was extremely flavorful and added much to the soup that would not have been there if I’d gone with your average thin veggie stock. The butter gave the stock an oiliness and creaminess that was extremely appealing; the roasted eggplant made it seem meatier. It was an awful lot of work just to get to a bowl of onion soup, though, so I’d say if you’re going to bother going through all this, you should definitely make a large batch of stock. Luckily, I have quite a bit left, so all I really have to do is buy some more onions, and I’ll be in onion soup for a week or two!*

*(I also used the stock for a veggie-version of pho, which, I gotta tell you, was near-heavenly. Stock, rice noodles, bean sprouts, sliced green onions, mint, cilantro, basil, lime, and Sriracha sauce all came together for a very good cause.)

After reading a zillion different articles, recipes, and entire websites devoted to the idea that fondant is so hard to get right, I decided to just bite the bullet and do it. I didn’t put my fondant on a happily iced cake because I honestly didn’t have an occasion for cake-baking. I just wanted to play with fondant!

If I had had an occasion for fondant-making, it would have been for my mom’s recent birthday, or Mother’s Day. But she has been on a no-sugar diet. Still, the occasion made me think of possible ways to create a cake she’d love, and so I decided to go with her favorite fantastical animal: the dragon.

Ideally this little fella would be sitting on a pile of “gold” of some sort. I almost wanted to build some wacky construction of variously-sized mini, medi, regular, and humongous into a great big cupcake cake for him. If only I wasn’t so dreadfully terrified that any CCC invariably ends in wreckage.

There are tons of fondant recipes out there. Here’s the basic formula that I used, which is based on several different websites:

Fondant

3 Tbsp softened butter
3 Tbsp corn syrup
1/2 tsp anise extract (yep, I used anise. Next time I’ll probably go with almond for a pseudo-marzipan experience!)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 lb sifted confectioner’s sugar
Food coloring as desired (for brighter colors, I’d say about 3-4 drops per 1/2 cup fondant).

1. Mix together the wet ingredients with a mixing paddle (not a whisk attachment!)
2. Slowly add sugar until it starts to look dry enough.
3. Keep mixing until it forms a lump around the mixing paddle. It shouldn’t be sticking to the sides of the bowl much.
4. Break off as much fondant as you need for each color. I rolled each ball of fondant up and then poked my finger into it to create a hole that went to the middle of the ball. Then I put the food coloring in the hole, closed it up, and kneaded it until it was a consistent color. (This didn’t take long.)

Have fun!

I have a problem. I love to cook, lots of food, and I haven’t got enough people to eat all the food I want to cook. I need more gastronomically-adventurous guinea pigs. And I like meeting new people.

July 11th, at one of Seattle’s parks (to be decided and announced), I’ll be serving a mid-afternoon picnic. With any luck the weather will hold.

I invite you: the first four Seattle-area replies I get. E-mail, Tweet me, comment, whatever. It’s okay if I’ve never met you before. It’s okay if I have. If you have specific food allergies or dietary restrictions, let me know. I’ll take into account all factors and construct some sort of menu that’ll fit your needs.

…who’s interested?

If you’re interested, but can’t make it, let me know — maybe I’ll do it again, and I’ll keep you in the loop. And please re-post or show this to friends you think would be up to it!

I love French onion soup. It’s been quite awhile since I had a real one, but I remember it, and it was gooood. Lately I’ve been longing for it, and looking up various onion soup recipes in an attempt to find (or develop) a great one. Here are some rules I’ve observed as factors in French Onion Soup appreciation:

1) Onions MUST be caramelized before they are added to the soup.
2) Selection of cheese and how it’s handled are as important as how the onions are handled.
3) Beef stock is the ONLY way to go; chicken, fish, and vegetable stock are useless.

…which leads me to my problem. I don’t do beef (or chicken, for that matter), so how can I pretend to make a real French onion soup? Beef stock isn’t just an excuse to call this a “soup,” it’s the foundation of the flavor of the soup. So whatever I do, it has to create a really tenacious, flavorful, beeflike stock.

An ordinary pretending-to-be-chicken stock simply won’t do for this. It has to be darker and meatier. I found a suggestion somewhere for a roasted vegetable stock, and I think that’s the way we’ll have to go. It needs to be oily and salty and sit mostly on the middle-back of the tongue. PROJECT: Vegetarian French Onion Soup will commence Thursday night, when I get my weekly delivery from Spud and will have the necessary vegetable ingredients. Here’s my gameplan:

Add to water UNROASTED:

Carrots
Celery
Fresh parsley
Fresh thyme
Dry sherry
Bay leaf

ROAST and add to water:

Crimini mushrooms (may also try a few portabellos)
Eggplant
Onion
Garlic
Olive oil

And when the stock’s prepared:

1) Toast a slice of some small baguette or peasant-style bread.
2) Caramelize the onions (I’ll have red and white).
3) Place ample amounts of onion over bread in onion-soup crock (I have one); add stock; add cheese; bake for 5-10 minutes.

I bought a variety of swiss-style cheeses from Whole Foods yesterday, including a Gruyere, an Appenzeller, a Tete de Moine, and an Emmentaler; I’m going to see which ones will go best with the onions. I’ve bought a LOT of onions and I’m planning to do the stock and then add additional vegetables to the stock, or other spices or flavors, until I get it right…

I’ll keep you up to date as I determine what works and what doesn’t in this experiment. Stay tuned!

(If you’re looking for some serious F.O.S. review power, check out Ron Schnell’s perfectly amazing French Onion Soup Page, where he travels around (mostly in the U.S.) tasting various French onion soups and seeking the perfect one.