The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Apparently, you should let cookie dough rest for 36 hours before baking. Who knew?!

The perfect chocolate chip cookie.

From Orangette:

What I will say about it, however, is that it adds up to a very fine, very fetching cookie. In fact, it is, without a doubt, the best chocolate chip cookie that I have ever made at home. It is also the best chocolate chip cookie that I have ever eaten. It scares me a little to make such a bold statement, but I have decided to do it anyway.

I wonder if the same applies to peanut butter cookie dough.

Recipe Links

Polenta Pudding with Blueberry Topping

Peanut Butter Balls - yummy and healthy. Hmm. I navigated away from the recipe and now have to find the site again.

From memory: one cup peanut butter, one cup honey, two cups powdered milk, one cup toasted wheat germ. Combine peanut butter, honey and milk. Shape into little balls and then roll in wheat germ. Refrigerate or freeze.

Summertime Gazpacho

Long list of food links (to read through later)

Healthy Toddler Snacks

20 Cheap, Healthy recipes made from pantry staples.

6 simple diy freezer treats

And a book to check out at some point: "The Toddler Café"

One more: Chocolate Sorbet. Yum.

Lemon Cheesecake with Shortbread Cookie Crust and Raspberry Sauce

Cheesecake recipe adapted from LEMON CHEESECAKE WITH SHORTBREAD COOKIE CRUST at epicurious.com. Recipe by Executive Pastry Chef James Irby, Kuleto's Trattoria, Burlingame, CA

Raspberry Sauce adapted from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Ingredients:
For shortbread crust:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup finely ground shortbread cookies

For cheesecake:
2 pounds cream cheese
1 cup mascarpone cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 teaspooons lemon zest
6 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice

For sauce:
1 12 oz package frozen raspberries
1/3 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/3 cup sugar (optional)

Preparation
Make crust:
Preheat oven to 350° F. Wrap a 9-inch springform pan with a couple layers of aluminum foil. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together on medium high speed for 3-4 minutes. Add flour and ground cookies to the mixture and blend for 3-4 seconds until fully incorporated. Press the mixture evenly into the bottom of the springform pan. Bake the crust at 350° F for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow the crust to cool completely.

Make cheesecake:
Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese until light and smooth. Add the mascarpone cheese and sugar and continue to beat on medium speed. Add the eggs one at a time. Blend in the lemon zest and juice. Pour mixture into the cooled crust.

Set the cheesecake pan into a roasting pan, and add enough very hot water to the roasting pan to reach halfway up sides of the cheesecake pan. Place in a 350° F oven for approximately 1.5 hours or until the cake is set and the top is golden brown. Remove the cake from the roasting pan and place on a wire rack. Remove aluminum foil from pan as soon as the cake cools down a bit. Please be careful, the aluminum foil will most likely be filled with hot water and butter. Allow cake to cool slightly, run a sharp knife around the inside of the pan, then place the cake in the refrigerator overnight.

Raspberry Sauce (make the day before):
Place frozen raspberries in a fine strainer above a large bowl. Allow berries to thaw completely. Push on thawed berries a bit with a spoon to release juice. You should get about a cup of juice or less.

Put juice in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and boil until it thickens and is reduced to about 1/4 cup. Keep stirring while it is boiling. Lightly oil a heat-proof cup or bowl and take syrup off heat and put in bowl. Let cool a bit.

I mash and stir the berries in the strainer (my strainer is a very fine plastic one) until there are only seeds left. Add this juice and the lemon juice to the reduced syrup. Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Can keep refrigerated for about a week. Or you can freeze the sauce for later.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Ask Moxie recently wrote a post asking for reader suggestions for healthy muffins. I took one of the recipes and adapted it.

I might try them again, substituting the brown sugar for maple syrup.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Dry mix - To make, combine:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cups rolled oats (I used quick oats)
2/3 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp Tahitian vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup flax seed meal

This dry mix is great to make ahead and store. When you're ready to make muffins, mix together:

1 egg
2 cups mashed bananas
1/3 cups organic apple sauce

Then, combine wet and dry ingredients. Bake for 20 minutes at 375°F.

Yummy!

Dark Beans and Sensuous Spices

This is for K.

I recently bought a new cookbook, Feeding the Whole Family, Whole Foods Recipes for Babies, Young Children and Their Parents (scroll down). And it is as crunchy as it sounds. I LOVE it. Lots of great recipes, not just vegetarian. The emphasis is using whole grains and natural sweeteners and all the good stuff you are supposed to eat but tend not to. I never realized I was such a hippy at heart.

It has suggestions for healthy breakfasts, lunch meals to give your kids to bring to school, yummy dinners, soups, desserts, and etc.

Any book that has tips on reducing flatulence has an instant place in my favorites-for-life list.

I made this recipe for Sophie's birthday party, along with a (too-small in hindsight) garlic roasted chicken. I also made Quinoa Garlic Herb Bread, from SCRATCH, a recipe also in this book.

The recipe below serves 4. I doubled it for the party.

Dark Beans with Sensuous Spices

2 tsp ghee or extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced (I actually used 6 cloves)
1 carrot, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp coriander
(my additions: 1 tsp chipotle powder, 1 tsp hot curry powder, ground black pepper)
1.5 cups cooked red or black beans (or 2 cans if you don't want to cook your own)
1.5 cups water or vegetarian soup stock
0.25 cup chopped cilantro (I skipped the cilantro because: yuck)
1 TBSP tamari or shoyu (or substitute low-sodium soy sauce)
1 tsp brown rice vinegar (which I could not find, so I used regular seasoned rice vinegar)

Heat oil in a 4 quart soup pot. Add onion and garlic; saute until soft. Add dry spices and saute briefly. Add carrot and celery; saute a few more minutes. Add beans and water; stir together. You can puree all of the soup in a blender or processor for a smooth soup or puree part of it for a chunkier cream soup. (I used one of those wand blenders that I stuck right into the pot. I also let the soup simmer for a while). This is where you would stir in the cilantro, if you are CRAZY because yuck! Season with tamari and vinegar and reheat before serving.

I also had some shaved asiago cheese on the table. Next time, I'm going to add some plain low-fat yogurt (maybe the yummy greek-style kind at Trader Joe's) and some hot (or medium, for the wimps in the crowd) salsa for people to add to their soups when I serve it.

Yum!

Roasted Garlic Chicken

Stop & Shop had a sale on whole chickens today so I bought two and roasted them at the same time in my enormous turkey-sized roasting pan. I need to get a more normal-sized roasting pan. On the plus side, the entire house smells like roasted chicken and I can freeze a whole bunch and still have chicken all week! This recipe assumes you are sane and only roasting one chicken at a time.

Yummy.

So, without further ado:

Roasted Garlic Chicken

(the ingredients are based entirely upon what I had in my cupboards and fridge at the time)

3-5 pound chicken
6 cloves minced garlic
olive oil
2 or 3 fresh rosemary sprigs; leaves minced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 lemon
1 tsp cumin
1 or 2 tsp ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425°.

Rinse and dry chicken, set on roasting rack in pan.

In a bowl, mix and mash together everything but the chicken and the lemon. Cut lemon into quarters and squeeze one quarter into oil/herb mix. I used a mortar and pestle but that is only because I found a cool set at Ikea. You can also mash it with a fork or something like that.

Grab a bunch of the oil/herb mix with your hands and rub it all over the chicken. Pull up the skin over the breasts and shove a bunch of the oil/herb mix under the skin. Get it all over yourself and the pan and the counter. Shove the cut lemon wedges up the chicken's hoo-hoo-dilly. Maybe throw in some more sprigs of rosemary if you found you had to buy a lot to get just the 2 or 3 sprigs in this recipe. Same goes with any other herbs you might have lying around. The more the merrier.

If you have time and have thought ahead, you could put this whole mess into a big ziplock bag and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Mmmm, marinade.

Add about a 1/2 inch of water to the bottom of the roasting pan. You don't want the chicken to touch this water - so the amount will depend on your roasting rack. The water is to keep the drippings from burning. You are putting this in a very hot oven and you want to try to avoid setting off all the smoke alarms in your neighborhood. There will be a lot of steam but no smoke.

Bake for 1 hour at 425°. You want the skin to carmelize and hold all the luscious juices in. No basting. No salt on the skin.

Check the temperature of the chicken after an hour. It needs to be 160° when you stick the thermometer into the thick thigh meat. If it hasn't reach optimal temperature, keep it in the oven for another 15 minutes or so. Check again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Once it has reached optimal temperature, remove from oven, put a loose tent of tin foil over and let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Slice, serve, eat!

Huevos Rancheros

If no one cares what I had for lunch - does breakfast count?

I made quick and easy huevos rancheros. I'm completely sure that real Mexican cooks would shudder but it is yummy and everyone, Sophie included, loved it.

I normally add a lot more hot stuff to this dish, but I know how much Sophie loves her black beans. And not so much the hot spices.

If you add all the hot peppers, etc., (in parentheses), you get Huevos Rancheros El Diablo.

Huevos Rancheros (El Diablo)

Serves 2ish

5 cloves minced garlic. Sure, you could use less, but it's garlic! Why use one clove when you can use 5?

1 tsp or so of canola oil

1 can black beans. I tend to get the low sodium kind.

1/2 can diced organic tomatoes.

some cumin
some curry powder
ground pepper
pinch of salt

El Diablo additions:
(jalapeno pepper)
(or if you want fire-breathing: 1 habanero pepper + 1 jalapeno pepper)
(good hot sauce)
(maybe some cayenne pepper)
(also maybe some chipotle pepper - I have a chipotle pepper powder that I love.)

4 eggs

Some cheese. I've used parmesan or sharp cheddar in the past. I was out today. I didn't miss it that much.

------------------

Heat oil in a medium frying pan over low - medium heat. Add garlic and turn to low heat until soft and slightly transparent.

Add beans and spices. Let simmer for a bit.

Add tomatoes and stir. Let simmer for a bit more.

Crack eggs into pan - spaced evenly.

Cover pan (if you don't have a cover that fits, you can put a sheet of tin foil over the pan. You want to keep the steam in so that the eggs poach.)

When eggs get cloudy, sprinkle cheese over eggs and allow to melt slightly.

Scoop eggs out of bean/tomato mix into two plates and then spoon the sauce around the eggs.

Done! Some garlic toast would be very yummy with this.

And some dark coffee.

I spooned some of the beans into a smaller dish for Sophie to allow them to cool a bit and then kept giving her a couple of spoonfuls on her highchair tray. Yay! Beans for breakfast!