You will want to do more than window shop these windows! You get to eat these.

I have done a “One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato” blog entry where I posted three of my favorite baked potato recipes. This has to be “four”.

It was really nice here in our part of Texas today and I should have been out surveying all of our dead plants that we lost during the winter this year. But, my husband has already cut back and pulled up every dead thing in our yard and right now it is looking like a pretty naked yard. You get him going with a chain saw or pruners and watch out. No such thing as ”take a little” off with him.  I can put off taking a look until tomorrow. Today, I decided to just practice bridge and play around with making these little potato delicacies

I saw this recipe years ago in a cookbook and recently I was searching for how to make them and and came across this site. A couple of weeks ago I did a little cooking demonstration for our garden club on herbs. We had one member talking about the herbs and then I showed them how to make somethings using that particular herb. I did a cucumber soup, my Rosemary and the Goat appetizer, Lavender scones, a lemon basil/mint sorbet and these Potato Window Panes.

I love potatoes. Even though we don’t eat them often, I’m always looking for new recipes. Last summer I found this recipe using potatoes and arugula  and after tweaking it I came up with my Potato and Arugula Salad using purple and white new potatoes. I think potatoes are one of the most versatile vegetables. They can be part of a meal or the meal itself. You can grate them and use for a potato bread sour dough starter. I remember as a kid we cut them and made designs and used ink pads to stamp out designs with the potatoes. I also remember playing a shower game where you put the potato in a panty hose leg, tied it around your waist and tried to knock a ball across the room (some game huh).

Continue reading »

Little clouds of souffle you won’t soon forget!

This week I’m teaching a class on souffles at Williams Sonoma.  Up until about 2 years ago I had never made a souffle of any type before (I thought). I have always been afraid to attempt making something so fragile that if you breath on it it might fall.

I don’t know why after being married for 40 years and catering for 20 years I would be afraid to attempt anything. I just don’t like failures and I guess I have envisioned pulling out a beautiful souffle to serve to guest and having it fall right before my eyes.

A few years ago on a mother/daughter trip we took with a friend and her daughter we had dinner at the Culinary Institute in Napa. We had two souffles that night. The dessert souffle was to die for and what they did was bring it to the table, inserted a spoon in the middle to collapse it and then poured a pitcher of cream angalise over it. Delicious!

But, before dessert arrived we started the meal with this huge bowl of French Onion Soup topped with Cheese Souffle. My version, Souffled Onion Soup is fantastic. I knew after enjoying this soup that I was going to have to make it. I went to work one day hoping to get someone to tell me how they made a souffle and I couldn’t find anyone who had made one before. Guess I wasn’t the only one who feared making a souffle. So, I bought The Joy of Cooking (can’t believe that wasn’t in my cookbook library) and set about making my version of the Soup. You simply make your favorite (or my recipe) of French Onion Soup, top it with a cheese souffle and bake in the oven. I serve this in my little lion head soup bowls and I really think that the steam from the hot soup keeps the souffle from falling. In fact, it doesn’t fall the whole time you are eating the soup.

Continue reading »

Bakalava, Chocolava, anything made with phyllo dough is fantastic!

I have been making bakalava since the early 70’s and I can’t believe I have never been intimidated by working with phyllo dough.  I love making anything with the stuff.  I have made little baskets to use as vessels for different appetizers. I have roll it up into roses to use for platter garnishes. It is great to make asparagus cigars (asparagus, wrapped with prosciutto and rolled in phyllo). Spanakopitas, of course, are wonder.  I have a delicious recipe for Chicken in Phyllo with a Lemon Veloute Sauce that is outstanding (will post this soon).

Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and a sweetened honey/lemon syrup that is poured over the freshly baked baklava. This recipe has chocolate chips mixed in with the nuts and has melted chocolate drizzled over the top.

When we lived in Iowa back in the 70’s, I knew a girl who was Greek and she gave me a recipe for Baklava which I no longer have. But I remember her recipe had a mixture of walnuts, pecans and almonds and also used nutmeg and cloves with the cinnamon. My twin sister shared this chocolava  recipe with me years ago. Her recipe uses orange and lemon juice for the drizzle. I made a few changes to her recipe using the extra spices and nuts I mentioned above. Hope you will try this version and it will be come a favorite.

Delicious! If I do say so myself.

Continue reading »

The perfect Tiramisu is a balance of flavors of a sweet zabaglione, strong coffee, marsala wine, creamy mascarpone cheese and the dusting of unsweetened cocoa.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

For this challenge I debated about changing up the recipe and doing an orange tiramisu or maybe a lemon and raspberry or my son, Paul, suggested pumpkin ladyfingers with chocolate filling.  I kept going back and forth on ideas and decided to go with the traditional version. You just can’t beat anything with chocolate in it and I may do the pumpkin version sometime in the fall.

For this challenge we were suppose to make our own lady fingers, and the marscapone cheese. The marscapone cheese was so easy and looked beautiful. My first thought about this challenge was “hey, I can use my ladyfinger pan that I have used only a few times in 40 years”.  I have such a collection of pans, everything form 2″ bread pans, tiny bundts, tiny shortcake, madeline, heart shape, fish shape, egg shape, and even cactus shape.  You could say I’m a sucker for gadgets and baking pans. The ladyfingers turned out absolutely perfect. I could have used 2 additional pans as I ended up using cookie sheets covered with parchement for the remainder of the ladyfingers.

Continue reading »

I love all the flavors of Asian food and this has them all.

I remember the first Asian type salad I ever had and it was sitting by myself in a pub in Truckee, CA. Years ago, our family had gone on a ski trip during a spring break from school. One day they were skiing at Squaw Valley and since I don’t ski (been there, done that, hurt knee, surgery, all that stuff–afraid now) I decided to drive myself over to Truckee to shop and have lunch. I didn’t know it at the time but later I found out that about 100 movies have been filmed in Truckee –Misery and True Lies were two of them.

Anyway, I went to this little pub for lunch. They had this great Asian Chicken Salad and I remember they had these fried won ton chips in and around the salad. I love this addition to the salad and now I make the little chips all the time for salads. When I set out to make an Asian type salad, I hardly ever remember what I put in it from one time to the next. So, I’m always coming up with something new to add to the recipe. Sometimes I use red cabbage sometimes the radicchio. You can pretty much put anything you like it in and it will be delicious.

Continue reading »