Philly Foodie

Caramels ... by the pound!

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:17:27 -0500

I confess… I have a thing for caramels. And I also have a thing for packages. Like, I’m obsessed with knowing when things I order will arrive, and I track them endlessly. So, when an unexpected package arrived, I was delighted. When it was filled with caramels and marshmallows, I swooned. Jenn, you rock.

Deidre Wood is not is Philadelphia, but she is in the Etsy-verse, and you all have Internet access, so… close enough, right? She will ship you ONE POUND of caramels for the low, low price of $11.50. They come in “cut your own” sticks, and it is a shocking amount of caramel (at least 40 pieces worth.) They are incredibly soft and gooey, though, so you might need to refrigerate before cutting if you live in a very warm home.

How delicious are they? I wanted to share some with Jenn, even though it had come up to room temperature. We were in Barnes and Noble, with no napkins and no knives, so we bit right off the stick. The oozy pulls were stringing off with every bite. Face caramel be damned… the whole thing was gone before I got home.

Deidre Wood
http://deidrewood.etsy.com

Tongue

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:16:00 -0500

The enormous cow’s tongues at my nearby Vietnamese market (16th and Washington) have an inexorable pull on me. I recently bought and cured one. It’s a pretty easy process, a good warm-up if you plan on corning beef for St. Patrick’s Day.

The only special ingredient is so-called “pink salt”, a mixture of table salt and sodium nitrite. You don’t even need it, but including it ensures a beautiful pink color. You’re going to want it for corned beef, bacon, and hot dogs, anyway, so you might as well get a pound of it. (N.B. the salt is dyed pink so you don’t confuse it with real salt. You shouldn’t eat it raw. Keep it away from anyone who might think it’s candy, like children and sweet-toothed roommates.)

The plan is simple: cure for a week then simmer for three and a half hours.

Curing

Curing is easy, and increasingly popular on a small scale. Brining a turkey, for example, is a simple kind of cure. Brining will typically use a 5% salt solution: 5g of salt for each 100g of water. This is enough to moisten the meat of a roast, bringing out the natural flavors of the meat. For tongue, I want something with a stronger, more assertive taste, so we’re going to corn the tongue. Corning is a very aggressive kind of brining, using more salt (10% instead of 5%) for more time.

To comfortably cover a 1.2kg tongue, I made 2L of brine:

2L water (or adjust using these percentages for more or less volume)
200g salt (10%)
50g sugar (2.5%)
12g pink salt (.6%)
Spices, for flavor: a dozen black peppercorns, some bay leaves, a few crushed cloves of garlic, crushed juniper berries, and mustard seeds.

To make the brine, throw all of the brine ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil while stirring to dissolve the salts and sugar. Let it cool, so the brine doesn’t cook your meat! Then dump your brine and tongue into a ziploc bag to chill out in the fridge.

A week later, the tongue comes out firmer and faintly redolent of spice and salt.

Cooking

Three and a half hours of simmering. Following Fergus Henderson’s recipe in The Whole Beast, I simmered the tongue with carrots, onions, leeks, celery, garlic, peppercorns, and herbs.

Fergus says to keep it at the “calmest of simmers”, after which the skin should peel off easily. After uncovering the pot, I discovered that my simmer of about 160F was a little too calm. The tongue was still very tough. Now, cooler heads might say, “No big deal, we’ll just simmer longer at the higher temperature”. But not me. It was late, I was tired. No, I decided to flay the thing then and there. I’m sorry: first, ‘flay’ is a little too graphic; second, look at this pathetic picture.

The skin didn’t “peel” at all, and I took to hacking with my knife. Look at all of that wasted tongue! Frustrated, I wrapped up the tongue and went to bed, leaving the cooking liquid to cool on the stove.

Re-cooking

The next day, I brought the (now heavily trimmed) tongue back up to a boil in the liquid, and threw it in a 200F oven for three and a half hours. No mistakes this time: my tongue simmered while I stewed. Then, miraculously:

It sliced like a charm. Meaty and succulent, with a vague hint of spice. It’s been great with eggs and as an accent to salads. Smaller than a brisket, tongue seems like an easy way to get that delicious “corned” taste into your life more often. The process was not my finest showing, but I’ll never make the “so calm it’s not even a simmer” blunder again. I’ve been playing with using the oven for simmering (like when making consommé), but now I’m a convert!

Delancey Street Bagels

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:04:00 -0500

Regional specialties can be so cruel. How can New York have at least 3 reasonable bagel options per block, yet Philly is such a bagel wasteland?

Here are the places I know of that sell bagels in Center City: South Street Philly Bagels (which I always thought was just called Hot Bagels), Manhattan Bagels and Breugger’s Bagels. There’s also the Bagel Factory on Walnut Steet, but they aren’t open on weekends, which makes them nothing but a cruel tease. Hot Bagels is my go-to Center City option, but they only have 3 seats, and it’s far enough from my home that, at best, they’re Lukewarm Bagels by the time I get to eat them.

And so, though it is vaguely embarrassing to admit it, my actual bagel place of choice is in the suburbs, land of plenty. Delancey Street Bagels has it all in spades — plenty of seating, plenty of parking, and plenty of everything on my everything bagel. And they virtually never run out of my chosen flavors, even when I get there an hour before closing.

And it’s more than just bagels and cream cheese, folks. Want a sandwich? Just look for the words “melted marinated string cheese” on their menu. I prefer the white pizza bagel (shown above), but Meng would trek out there multiple times a week for the tuna melt. The bacon, egg, and cheese on a croissant is so tasty, you won’t even notice it’s turkey bacon. They even have a nice selection of muffins and cookies, in case you walk in half-starved, and you cannot wait another 3 minutes for your bagel (not that I would know anything about that.) I also hear that they have very good coffee (which I really would not know anything about, but I trust that Jenn is not trying to trick you or me.)

If Delancey Street opened a Center City location, it would change my whole weekend structure. Do you have a favorite bagel place in Philly? You can tell me. I promise I won’t buy the last everything bagel out from under you.

Delancey Street Bagels
50 East Wynnewood Road
Wynnewood, PA 19096-2013
(610) 896-8837

Dulce de leche, can to pan

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:41:00 -0500

If you would like to draw me to a recipe, here is the phrase that pays: “It only has one ingredient!” (In my world, salt is not an ingredient. It is a fact of life.) It takes almost no prompting to get me to whip up a batch of butter. So, the idea of boiling a can and getting out a tasty treat had immediate, obvious appeal to me.

Traditional dulce de leche requires you to spend one to two hours tending a pot of sweetened milk, until it has reduced down to a yummy goo. Quick ‘n easy dulce de leche has you simmer a can of sweetened condensed milk for a few hours until it’s gone from a can of milk to a can of deliciousness. What could be easier?

I paid attention in chemistry class, though, and I have a bad track record with sugar products. (See: the time I set the roof of my oven on fire making baked apples.) With Bryan out of town, the vision of dragging myself to the hospital covered with super-heated sugar globules after the can exploded ran rampant through my head. That is, I chickened out. After 3 hours of simmering, this is my can contents.

A change had happened. Just not much of one.

It’s ok, though. In the 3 hours it had been simmering, I had been looking at recipes. I could add cinnamon! I could add SALT. Suddenly, the idea of finishing it off in a pot seemed very appealing.

I simmered it on a stovetop at medium (to medium-low; my stove was a little too hot, and I did get some browned bits as you can see) for about 10 minutes. I added about a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and kosher salt. It reduced by about 25%.

I can see why people talk about eating jars in one sitting. Yum!

Dulce de Leche

1 can sweetened condensed milk
cinnamon, nutmeg and/or salt, to taste

Place can in a pot of simmering water. Make sure there is enough water to keep the can covered at all times. Simmer for 3 hours.

If it’s still too thin, take it out of the can, season as desired, and simmer for another 5 to 15 minutes, until it reaches the desired consistency. Place in a container, and eat!

Hello, and Consommé

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:09:14 -0500

Hi! I’m Michael. I’m friends with Helen and company, and I’m excited to be share some of my cooking with you fine people.

This is my kitchen; it’s in Philadelphia. (I mean, so am I.)

I love to cook: saute, steam, fry, bake, cure, smoke, brew, whatever. (You can see evidence of most of those in this picture, actually.) I like to make things myself, to a fault.

But enough about me. Today we’re making consommé. Consommé is the apotheosis of stock, made by clarifying a stock with egg whites. (Yes, egg whites.) It’s something to sip piping hot on a cold, blizzard-y day, but it’s also great as a base for soups and sauces or as a braising liquid.

The technique here is Michael Ruhlman’s, as described in his book Ratio. The idea is quite simple: to make X consommé, make X stock, then simmer the stock with a mixture of 3 parts (by weight) X, 1 part egg white, and 1 part mirepoix (which itself a 2:1:1 mixture of chopped onions, carrots, and celery). Typically, X ranges over meat and poultry: veal, beef, and chicken are all common. This time, it’s chicken consommé. (This time…ha! I’ve never made this before. Here we go!)

Our plan:

make a chicken stock

strain

cool (overnight)

skim off the fat

bring to a simmer, with more chicken, egg whites, and mirepoix

cool again for bagging and freezing

It’s a long process, but there isn’t too much active time. We’re going to use two stewing chickens and a bunch of chicken feet to build the stock. (The feet will provide lots of gelatin, which will help provide a rich mouthfeel later on.) For the clarification, we’ll use boneless thighs.

First, we’ll chop up the chicken feet and some scrap chicken from the freezer.

Small bits make sure we get all the goodness.

For kicks, I took apart the chickens neatly. You can just maul them to small bits, if you like. I went at them with the cleaver after taking this picture.

Cover with an inch or so of water and bring to a simmer, say around 180F. Don’t let it boil, or the stock will be very hazy. (Whether it’ll be so hazy that the clarification won’t work, I don’t know. But why go looking for trouble?)

Eventually fat and foamy scum will rise to the top; keep skimming this off until it stops coming.

Rather than fiddling with the heat on my stove, I set my oven to 180F and simmered for four hours.

About two pounds of mirepoix. Throw in some crushed peppercorns, bay leaves, garlic, herbs, or what-have-you, too.

Adding the mirepoix will cool the stock down again, so it’s easiest to finish it on the stove. It takes another hour.

Another 45 minutes to an hour of simmering, and we’re ready for straining. I used a sieve lined with a (very clean!) kitchen towel, but a colander will do just fine.

I should say: this is a perfectly good stopping point. After it’s cooled a bit, you can see that we already have a tasty, relatively clear stock. But we have not yet begun to fight!

We’ve been basically following Ruhlman’s recipe, though I’ve slightly increased his quantities: about 4lb of chicken made a little under a gallon of stock. We’ll use about a pound of meat (15oz) and 5oz each of egg whites and mirepoix. I’ve added some tomato, for both flavor and color. (Plus a bay leaf and some ground black pepper.)

Apart from my knife, my most important piece of kitchen equipment is my scale. Four eggs yielded 5oz of egg whites.

I forgot to photograph the chicken, but I chopped 15oz of boneless chicken thighs (with the fat cut out and rendered for something else) to a paste in the food processor.

We bring the stock, meat, egg whites, and mirepoix up to a simmer, stirring to avoid scorching. I’m using a flat-edged spoon, as Ruhlman suggests.

As the egg whites congeal, they’ll form what’s called a “raft”, floating all of the other bits to the surface. The proteins in the egg white will filter the stock as it floats to the top, like a French press in reverse. This process is a little slow and requires some attention—it took about twenty minutes.

Now that we have a nice raft, we simmer for another hour. Foam will rise up and over, filtering back through the raft, leaving the scum on top. Ingenious!

After an hour has elapsed, we’re ready to strain. The stock is already very clear (look at that shine!), but we’re going to use a sieve lined with a coffee filter to be extra certain.

It’s said that you should be able to read the date off a dime at the bottom a bowl of consommé. (Ruhlman says the bottom of a gallon.)

Let’s have a closer look.

2007, if you squint. Not bad.

So: consommé. I served it garnished with beech mushrooms and scallion greens. Definitely worth the effort. I think it’s particularly interesting that unlike many other “luxurious” dishes, consommé is very low in fat. (Not that I’m into that sort of thing, but still.) I hope this little (?) walkthrough gives you confidence to try it yourself.

It’s been fun, and there’s more in the pipeline: tongue, morcilla de Burgos, and beer!

Mmmm, mushroom soup!

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:17:15 -0500

I grew up a vegetable hater. Mushrooms were my first love of the vegetable world. (Fungus world… whatever. They were not a meat, fruit, grain, starch or fat, and you find them in salads. Thus, they are vegetables.) Why? Because mushrooms have the delightful property of taking on a lot of the flavor of their environment.

So, for my Saturday snowday, I made a pot of stock, and then, mushroom soup. Normally when I make a big pot of soup, I have a couple of bowls, then freeze the rest because I’m sick of eating it. Maybe it was the extra snowfall, but this pot of soup got eaten by Tuesday! I hear there is more snow coming. Unless you are a mushroom hater, you may want to get the supplies for this soup, and spend your next snowday savoring this soup.

Mushroom Soup

(Based on Kalyn’s Kitchen double mushroom soup)

1 lb crimini or button mushrooms, plus 6 mushrooms for garnish
1/2 lb shitake mushrooms (or 1/4 lb dried shitakes)
6 cups stock, or mix of stock, mushroom soaking liquid and water
1/2 onion (or to taste)
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
heavy cream to finish

Slice your onion into thin half slices. Melt 2 tbsp butter and the olive oil in a pot deep enough for the whole soup. Sautée onions over medium heat until translucent, about 5 minutes.

Clean mushrooms, and remove stems. Rough chop the mushrooms.

Add the mushrooms to the pot, browning them until they release their liquid and the liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes. Add the stock/water/soaking liquid, and simmer for 60 minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and puree with an immersion blender to your desired consistency. I like some mushroom bits, so I didn’t puree all the way. If you aren’t going to eat your soup right away, stop here and stick it in the fridge. I didn’t try freezing it, so let me know how it turns out if you do!

Cut 6 garnish mushrooms into thin slices. Heat 1 tbsp butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Brown slices until liquid is released.

To finish, add heavy cream to taste, and simmer for a minute or two to bring the cream up to temperature. Stir in slices, and serve immediately.

Philly Cupcake

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:25:53 -0500

After a particularly ill-fated trip to Betty’s Speakeasy last October, where the only cupcakes on offer included stout, chipotle and zucchini, I wrote my own personal rules for

How to Be a Good Cupcake Purveyor

Have chocolate-chocolate and vanilla-vanilla, every day.
Cupcakes are all about the cake-to-frosting ratio. Don’t screw it up.
Don’t refrigerate. It makes your cakes dry.
If you are going to have crazy flavors, they better be good.
If your cupcakes are worse than the ones I bake at home, get out of the cupcake biz.

Philly Cupcake must be creepin’ around my windows, because they nailed all 5. They even have a sign on their wall that reads, “We don’t refrigerate our cupcakes, and neither should you.” And they got the secret rule of how to be a good anything in my book… Be convenient. While I love the cupcake truck and Whipped Bakeshop, their locations and hours make them less than ideal.

My favorite and general crowd-pleaser on their standard menu (sorry, facebook link) is the red velvet. (The one shown above is a new offering — chocolate red velvet! Also very good.) When making your pick, be wary of one thing. Standard cupcakes are $3. Those marked special don’t just mean “daily special”. They also mean “costs $4”, which is a little pricey for my taste. Maybe if they had a nice thick chocolate ganache… but I haven’t really felt like the $4 were worth the extra buck so far.

Philly Cupcake
1132 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 625-4888‎
Philly Cupcake is cash-only.

I've been otherwise engaged.

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:22:00 -0500

I know I’ve been a bit blogging delinquent for the last few weeks. I hope you can forgive me; I’ve been otherwise engaged… literally! And since there’s nothing my sweetie and I like better than a good challenge, we’ve set the date less than 3 months away. So, that’s been eating most of my time. (Argh, engagement clearly brings out my inner punster.)

Which brings me to call on you, my fair foodie friends! I’m looking for a cake, or a creative melange of all things sweet. I’m not really much for a tower of painted fondant (not that I actually hate fondant — I find its texture weirdly appealing.) Let someone else get something that looks beautiful and photo-ready; I’m looking for something that tastes good. Do they make cream-cheese-frosted wedding cakes?

I’d love to hear your suggestions for the tastiest wedding sweet in the Philadelphia area. There are 37 items on my to-do list, so I need to knock one off every two days… eek! Help a girl out, and tell me where to go to get my sweet on!

Hopefully, we’ll also be adding a new member to team Philly Foodie soon! Keep your eye out for his first post in the next couple of weeks. Mike is not only a great cook, but a home beer brewer and a lover of all things challenging (which I most certainly am not!) I think he’s going to be a great addition.

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled no-excuses blogging. :)

Q.T. Vietnamese Sandwiches

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:45:00 -0500

For many years, I denied myself bánh mi, because I have a simple rule regarding changes to a dish.

If you want one thing changed, that’s ok; if you want more than one thing changed, order something else.

In addition to the meat, shredded carrots, jalapeño and paté, banh mi is served with two of my traditional food enemies, cilantro and cucumber. Yes, I know you love them and think they both taste delicious. Cilantro tastes like soap to me and supposedly many others. Cucumber, I just dislike. Don’t tell me that it doesn’t taste like anything. It tastes… bad.

But, as anyone who has worked in the same location for a long time knows, some days, you just cannot eat one more chicken red curry/molé burrito/ turkey sandwich/, and you wander out into the lunch wilderness to find something, anything, different. And so, in December, I found myself entering QT Vietnamese Sandwiches, and ordering an unmodified bánh mi.

And since then, I have found myself at their door at least twice a week. They have 9 varieties of bánh mi (including 2 veg options), and all nine cost less than $5. Lemongrass chicken is featured above, but my current fave is the grilled pork (#7). They cook the meat fresh to order, so it’s always warm and tasty on these cold winter days. Yet I always feel like I’m back out the door less than 5 minutes later, possibly because of their back issues of In Style to flip through while you wait.

They have non-sandwich dishes, too, including breakfast, but I haven’t been able to tear myself away from the bánh mi just yet. If you have, give us a report!

They also include the cilantro as one long sprig, instead of a sprinkling of chopped cilantro. So, it can be easily removed if you’re also a hater. And, who knows? I may just come around on this cucumber issue.

Q.T. Vietnamese Sandwiches
48 N. 10th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19107
267-639-4520

Stocking up: chocolate chip cookies!

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:50:00 -0500

Come winter, stocking homemade cookie dough in your freezer is a game-changer for folks with a sweet tooth. Those times when you were craving something sweet, but the thought of schlepping down to Wawa was giving you frostbite? In the past! A hot, fresh chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven is basically the best thing you can ask for on a cold wintry night.

There’s just one teensy thing that makes it hard. Instead of doing this:

You have to do this:

Take a whole sheet of cookies, that could be plate of warm, gooey cookies in just 10 minutes, and stick them in your freezer instead. I won’t lie. It is hard. Consider making a double batch. Or you may end up with a mutiny on your hands.

The sad face of someone who knows that sometimes he has to sacrifice today’s cookies for tomorrow’s? Or the devious look of a hardened cookie dough poacher? You’ll find out which one you live with if that bag of frozen dough balls runs out in 3 days or less.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a slightly oversalted variant of the Toll House recipe. Most any cookie recipe will freeze, though, so use the one you like best! (and … tell me what it is!)

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla together until creamy. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a second bowl, then gradually incorporate the mixture into the first bowl. When fully combined, stir in chocolate chips.

Prepare a level spot for a baking sheet in your freezer. I use the top of my ice maker to hold up one side, and just stack to the same level on the other side. (This is much easier to do without your dough balls on the sheet.) Then cover the baking sheet with parchment or wax paper, because the frozen dough will stick a bit without it. Scoop out your dough balls. Remember, you’re not going to bake these, so you can cram your dough balls really tightly on the sheet. Freeze for at least an hour, then dump the frozen balls into a ziploc bag or airtight container.

When you’re ready to eat them, preheat the oven to 375 degrees, then put the dough balls on a baking sheet and into the oven. You can bake them straight from the freezer; they should be done in about 15 minutes.

Aloe vera bubble tea

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:01:47 -0500

I have a well-known fondness for bubble tea. When I first discovered it on a trip to Singapore many years ago, I was drinking multiple teas a day, and there was a brief, brave moment when my sister and I considered opening a bubble tea business. So, when I arrived in Australia, Jane said we had to go to EasyWay and get a passion fruit bubble tea with aloe, which had been recommended to her by one of her students.

Post-tea, she said that she should have made all her students write down three things she had to eat before leaving Australia on the first day of school. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t discovered this until the week before leaving.

For those of you who may not have had bubble tea (or if you’re troubled by beverages with bits in them), it is usually served with tapioca balls or flavored coconut jellies, both of which are fairly chewy. The aloe was totally different. It was crisp. Jane said it was like eating a soft, sweet ice cube. I loved it. We had one every day until we left Australia. According to the Internet, it might also be incredibly good for you, but take that with a grain of salt.

Luckily for all of us who don’t have a trip to Australia planned, Rising Tide also has several tasty drinks in their “Nutritious Natural Series” with aloe vera chunks. And at $3 each, you can try them all, and discover your own favorite!

Rising Tide
937 Race St
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 925-0266
Beverages are cash only.

Resolutions for 2010

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:09:00 -0500

Happy New Year, my dears! It’s resolution time, and a great many resolutions have to do with food. I’m taking the advice of two of my favorite bloggers, and making sure my resolutions are concrete — things that can be clearly separated into done or not done.

I have a generic resolution to eat local. To transform that into concrete plans, I will: join a CSA, shop at Fair Food once a week, and remember local pastas, cheeses and other prepared foods (hello, Green Aisle!) when buying.

If you are thinking that 2010 will be the year you join a CSA (what is a csa, anyway?), now is actually a great time to start your research. Most CSAs start accepting signups in March, and they can fill up fast. If you wait until the first strawberries hit the stands in May to think CSA, you may find yourself out of luck for the year.

Local blogs are a great resource for potential first time CSA members. I documented my own experience with Greensgrow’s CSA at length. Farm to Philly tracked Blooming Glen Farm, Lancaster Farm Fresh, Red Earth Farm and Dancing Hen Farm. Shana Lee photographed Keystone Farm’s 2009 offerings, though not for her blog. Metro farming documented Pennypack Farm’s 2009 CSA. Someone out there is taking pictures of nearly any CSA you might want to join.

Back to the resolutions! I also want to keep better track of food I try. I have a terrible habit of trying a wine, cheese or beer, but remembering nothing about it except that I have tried it. It ends with me either re-buying something it turns out I didn’t like, or just sticking with my old standards, because I can remember I do like them.

Concrete plan: photograph everything with my iPhone, stick it in Evernote, tag it “like”, “dislike” or “neutral”. If I’m feeling really ambitious, I might even write my thoughts, but let’s not push it. I’m using Evernote just because I’ve used it in the past. If you’re tracking wines, etc. in some handy way, share it in the comments!

And, because I love a good secret resolution, here is mine: improve my photo composition. (What’s a secret resolution? One I don’t feel guilty about not keeping, which usually means it has a higher success rate than my “real” resolutions.) I probably take 50 shots for every one I post here. In Japan, I didn’t have a way to offload the photos on my SD card, so I had to shoot more mindfully.

In 2010, I shall channel the spirit of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and focus on the decisive moment. Or something. Take fewer pictures. Make more of them good ones. That is, spend more time thinking, less time clicking. I’d love some tips on making this concrete, though. I’ve been looking for a photography class without a darkroom component for a while now. Let me know if you’re aware of a good one!

Will you be making any food resolutions this year? Cook at home more? Eat more colorful foods? (I thought about that one.) Cook your way through a cookbook? (hee….) Stop eating so many g-d burgers you keep reading about on the Internet? Tell us in the comments!

Best of 2009

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:14:00 -0500

We’re coming up on a full year together! After registering phillyfoodie.com almost 5 years ago, I finally dusted it off and did something with it in 2009. In commemoration of my first 12 months, here are your favorite posts of the year.

And then my own personal picks for the articles I wish more of you read (actually, read, don’t read…. just go eat the stuff in them!)

Shop: Best Candy: Sea Salt Caramels @ Capogiro
Dine: XIX: Oysters at my ultimate lunch spot
Cook: The world’s simplest carnitas
My favorite pic: Clementines, the ideal fruit

Got some favorites of your own? Tell me in the comments! (especially pics… I’d love to know which ones strike your fancy.)

Thanks to all of you for reading over the last year. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, emailing you, seeing your comments and interacting with you on Twitter, and I look forward to more of all it in the coming year. Thanks to Jenn, my co-blogger when baby allows, and my blogtator, editor and sounding board all the rest of the time. And thank you especially to Art at Foobooz, who is certainly the reason at least half of you even know I exist, and the rest of the Philly food blogging community, who have uniformly been delightful, supportive, interesting and totally inspiring to me. I can’t wait for 2010!

Harry & David pears

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:00:00 -0500

Certain foods always taste like a holiday. (Like this cake = my birthday) Harry and David pears will always taste like Christmas to me.

My grandparents would send us a case of them every Christmas. If they hadn’t arrived by the second week of December, I would start staking out the mail, and checking the crisper drawers to make sure thay I hadn’t missed their arrival. They are the “Royal Riviera” pears, and I’ve never seen them anywhere else. They are, without a doubt, the most spectacular pears I’ve ever had. And they should be, because Harry and David seems to stake their entire brand on them.

For years, Harry and David was mail-order only. Today, all you procrastinators are in luck — they have local shops at King of Prussia, the Shops at Sagemore and the Willow Grove Mall. If you need a last-minute gift for fruit-loving friends and family, a case of Royal Riviera pears could start a new holiday tradition.

Meringue Cookies

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

When Helen first mentioned that she would be leaving for several weeks and then asked if I’d mind posting several entries, I was thrilled. I decided, immediately, that I wanted to blog several different types of cookies, combining my love of baking with my loves of Christmas and blogging! This would be my opportunity to leave the safe world of chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles.

My first choice was the meringue cookie, as part of my plan to only blog about apple or egg white desserts! Plus, they seemed so adorable. White little clouds that crunch, then taste like sugar before dissolving on your tongue… what wasn’t to like? However, the whole recipe seemed a little too easy. Sure, they were time intensive for the actual baking/drying part, but I was easily able to whip up a batch right before Nathan went to sleep, and then leave them in the oven to dry overnight.

As it turns out, these cookies were a complete success. My son and I finished off quite a few of them in only one day, and I gifted the remainder to our next door neighbors. They’re delicious, gorgeous, and great at using up extra egg whites. If you don’t have egg whites stored in your freezer, like I do, consider making some ice cream, pots de creme, or gâteau breton first to get those yolks out of the way!

My only ahead-of-the-recipe advice for these cookies is to really mind the drying out in the oven stage. I ate several before they completely dried out and they almost tore my fillings out. I was worried that I had messed up the recipe, but the ones I had the next day were perfect. Simply make these cookies at night, and leave them in your oven overnight after you’ve finished baking.

Recipe: Meringue Cookies

From: Baking Illustrated

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Set oven to 200 degrees and set your racks to the upper and lower middle positions. Line 2 baking sheets with either parchment paper or Silpat.

2. Beat the egg whites at a slow speed until they are frothy. I stopped when I thought to myself, “That’s a lot of bubbles.” As a side note, I used my Kitchen Aid stand mixer for this recipe, but I think it’d be doable with a hand mixer.

3. Add the cream of tartar and take it up to medium-fast now, for about 90 seconds. I didn’t count seconds, but looked for a ‘texture much like shaving cream’. Sprinkle in about half the sugar, and beat for another 60 seconds or so.

4. Add the vanilla and reduce the speed to the lowest setting. Sprinkle in the remaining sugar, and mix until that sugar is incorporated into the ‘dough’.

5. Dollop out the meringues about one inch apart. I followed the instructions to do 3 rows of 5 each and got enough for nearly two trays.

6. Bake for 1 and 1/2 hours. Touch the cookies to see if they feel dry. If they don’t feel firm and dry (or if they seem sticky still), go for another half hour. If they are done, just turn off the oven and let them dry out for several hours. Do not skimp on this step.

Supposedly these cookies will keep in an airtight container for weeks. I wouldn’t know, and I suspect that you won’t either.

marcie blaine chocolates @ Verde

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Since my first visit shortly after Verde opened, marcie blaine chocolates has been experimenting the pants off chocolate! The flavors very widely almost every time I buy them, and the downright strangest chocolate I’ve had in recent memory came from their kitchen. They have also hit upon some of my new most favorite flavors. For you, dear readers, I made the sacrifice of tasting all their recent flavors, so you may buy gift boxes with confidence.

Must-buys:

the gingerbread was spectacular, warm and buttery, with a kick of spice at the end. Just like the real deal.
the classic is a 70% cacao ganache, and just super tasty.
the hazelnut praline is a little denser than most pralines, which just makes it feel richer. It also had a very defined nut flavor, not the Nutella taste you get in a lot of hazelnut chocolates.
the rose tattoo claims to be a rosewater caramel, but tastes more like butterscotch to me. Delicious and pretty-looking to boot!

I liked:

The mint is kind of dry, but a it’s a light, fluffy taste that doesn’t make you feel like your tastebuds have been obliterated by toothpaste.
dry chocolate pecan w/ pecan brittle had a warm, salty flavor, with a roasted aroma and taste. A good one for people who don’t like sweets.
the spicy peanut was another praline, with heavy peanut butter flavor. I didn’t tasty any spice, but I still liked it.
the green tea was a very mildly flavored ganache.
the rosemary pinenut fleur de sel caramel, while not very caramelly, was still interesting, as you could really taste all the flavors. The salt brought out the rosemary.

Not for me:

the Bindi madras has a white chocolate ganache, which isn’t my thing. You can really taste the curry; the coconut, not so much.
the cacao nibs tasted like just plain chocolate to me. Get the classic instead.
blood orange and olive oil is novel, but I still don’t like citrus in my chocolate.
the lavender vanilla was very lavendery, which makes me feel like I’m eating a sachet.
the bacon caramel may appeal to sweets haters. It made me feel like my brain was shutting down from weird overload, and shoved me back from the edge of bacon madness.

Their flavors change regularly, so all of these may not be available when you visit. I really hope they have gingerbread, though. It’s SO good! They also sell chunks of chocolate bark, for which I am very grateful. It can be painful to go to buy someone a box of nice chocolates, because then you would like a box of nice chocolates. Their bark gives you a nice way to get your chocolate fix without feeling guilty about spending a fortune on a second box of chocolates!

marcie blaine chocolates @ Verde
108 S 13th St
Philadelphia, PA 19107-4532
(215) 546-8700

Cheese tasting at Quince

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Oh, cheese, how I love you so! I was so excited to discover Madame Fromage, a Philadelphian blogging all about cheese, and I was thrilled when she said she would be organizing monthly cheese tastings at Quince Fine Foods in Northern Liberties.

I find cheese tastings delightful. An expert takes the time to select a menu of cheeses that will work together, pairs them with spreads and accoutrements to enhance your experience, and hopefully, introduces you to something you may never have discovered on your own. In short, a cheese tasting is all the things you’re looking for in a dining experience, at a fraction of the cost. Plus, if you find something you like, it’s so much easier to recreate at home!

The November tasting featured Caña de Cabra, Brillat-Savarin and Valdéon.

The Caña de Cabra is a semi-soft goat’s cheese, with a chevre-esque crumbliness in the center, and a gooey, soft ring around the rind. At the tasting, it was served warm, topped with honey and toasted pine nuts. It’s a mild, fresh-tasting cheese, and a nice introduction for someone who may have been shying away from soft cheeses.

The Brillat-Savarin is a triple-crème brie (which basically means the closest cheese to butter allowed by law. Mmm!) The ladies of Quince paired it with Marcona almonds (so different from regular almonds! Pick some up at Trader Joe’s the next time you’re there.) and dried apricots. The salty nuts were a great complement to the sweet, buttery brie.

The tasting ended with Valdéon, a very mild Spanish blue (at least, in my opinion — Internet opinions vary) served with a fig cake and sherry. This seemed like a great “gateway” cheese for a cheese fan who might be scared of blues. I hadn’t had this cheese before, and I’ll definitely be picking some up in the future.

All the cheeses were very accessible, so don’t worry if you aren’t a cheese expert already. Tenaya (Madame Fromage herself!) gave great rundowns of all the cheeses during the tasting, and both she and the women from Quince wandered around, answering questions. They are clearly cheese lovers on a mission to spread the good word of fine cheeses.

Madame Fromage’s next tasting is $12, and it’s scheduled for this Saturday, December 19th, at 4pm. To join her, RSVP via email to quince@quincefinefoods.com.

Quince Fine Foods
209 W. Girard Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19123
215.232.3425

Chocolate covered pretzels

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Some people make Christmas cookies. I make chocolate covered pretzels. My great aunt Helen would send us a tin of chocolate covered pretzels every year, and I will forever associate them with Christmas. Plus, they are insanely easy to make!

The 3 things you need to make chocolate covered pretzels: chocolate, pretzels and wax paper. Do not forget about the wax paper, or you will be eating pretzel bits you chip off your plate.

Also, buy more pretzels than you think you’ll need — about a third of any bag will be broken ones. I also look for a slightly thicker pretzel (like Utz Sourdough Specials), so they don’t break during dipping.

You can melt your chocolate in a double boiler, but I have always had better luck with the microwave. It only takes 45 seconds to a minute to melt half a bag of chocolate chips in my microwave. Underheat, don’t overheat! If the chocolate gets too hot, your pretzels will have white marks on them.

The bowl and chocolate are both hot. The top chips will still look dry when there’s plenty of heat to melt the whole bowl. Start stirring. If all the chips don’t melt, run the microwave in 10 second intervals until they’re all melted.

Once you have a bowl of melted chocolate, start dipping! Dip one side, then the other. Make sure you have chocolate all over (I tend to miss the top edge if I’m not being careful.)

Clearly, I am not an ace dipper. That’s OK!

That is why they invented sprinkles! I’ve used jimmies, pralines, nuts, and sea salt (yes, really.) You could use crushed up candy canes, Nerds, Heath bars, Oreos… you are limited only by your imagination. Never has misdirection been so tasty!

Chocolate covered pretzels

1 bag pretzels
12 oz. (one bag) chocolate chips

Microwave the chips for 45-60 seconds. Dip the pretzels in chocolate until they are covered. Decorate. Lay on a wax paper covered cookie sheet, and refrigerate. Makes 25-30 pretzels.

Apple Crisp

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:00:00 -0500

When my mom offered to host Thanksgiving, I asked what desserts she’d like me to bring. Her answer? “Pumpkin pie and that apple dessert you made two years ago, the one I’ve asked you to make four times since then.” What she didn’t say, but she and I both heard was, “And which you never made even though I asked you to serve it for Nathan’s first birthday.” And I did felt a little guilty when I (virtually) heard that, especially since I had made the crisp for Helen just days before.

The good part was that I had made the crisp only days previous. So, I knew where the problems with the crisp were, and I could ‘fix’ them for Thanksgiving.

Paul and I love America’s Test Kitchen. When I first decided to try my hand at apple crisp years ago, we pulled that recipe and made it. Our immediate reaction was, “This is delicious, but the tasters in the test kitchen hate topping.” We quickly increased the amount of topping by 50% which improved the crisp by roughly 500%. This is the huge fix in this recipe.

The second fix? America’s Test Kitchen tells you that you need cold butter for the topping. I go a step further and say your butter better darned well be frozen. Do not muck around with butter from your refrigerator unless you keep a subarctic fridge like my mother. If you use cold, but not frozen, butter, you will end up with a giant unappetizing lump of dough for your topping, not the “damp sand” texture desired. If you end up with said giant unappetizing lump of dough, do not give up. Work on breaking it up as best possible and top your crisp with it. As Tim Gunn would tell you, “Make it work!”

The last thing worth mentioning isn’t really a fix at all, but a personal preference. I love McIntosh apples and I love to not eat a meal prior to making my baked sweets. This means that when my McIntosh apples hit the bowl of sugar and lemon zest and juice mentioned in step 5 below, I start to snack on them. I normally eat about half an apple to a whole apple before I can stop myself. Due to this, if you’re like me, I’d suggest adding an extra McIntosh apple, 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice, and an 1 tablespoon of sugar, and using a full rind of zest for this recipe.

Ingredients for Filling:

3 medium Granny Smith apples
3 medium McIntosh apples
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Ingredients for Topping:

8 tbls unbleached all purpose flour
7 tbls unsalted butter, chopped into 1/2 inch bits
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans
3/8 cup packed light brown sugar
3/8 cup granulated sugar
3/8 tsp ground cinnamon
3/8 tsp nutmeg (use fresh nutmeg and microplane for best results)
3/8 tsp salt

1. For the topping, put the flour, sugar, spices, and salt in your food processor. Don’t worry if you have a small one. My wimpy food processor handles this recipe like a pro! Pulse the ingredients once or twice to mix. Add the frozen butter. Pulse, pulse, pulse (about ten times) for 4 seconds each. Your topping should look like sand or coarse cornmeal. It should not be a big giant lump. if you got the lump, your butter wasn’t frozen enough, but don’t despair. You can break it up and use it, but it’s more work and it doesn’t look as good. Add the nuts, and do 4 one second pulses.

2. Make sure to refrigerate the topping for about 15 minutes or for the time to it takes to deal with the apples.

3. Turn on your oven to 375 degrees and make sure your oven rack is in the lower middle of your oven.

4. Peel, quarter, and core your apples. Cut them into 1 inch cubes.

5. Toss the apples, lemon juice, zest, and sugar in bowl. I usually combine steps 4 and 5, tossing each apple into the mix as soon as I’m done with it. This allows me to take a nice long Bejeweled break in the middle when I get tired of peeling and coring apples. It also allows me to snack on some of my McIntosh apples!

6. Pour this mix into 8 by 8 baking pan. Make sure to scrape the apple/lemon juice mix into that pan. Distribute the cooled topping on your apples, and cook for 40 minutes.

7. Crank the oven to 400 degrees for another 5 minutes.

8. Let it cool slightly on a nice cooling rack and then serve (warm) with a nice cinnamon ice cream or whipped cream.

Clementines, the ideal fruit

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:30:00 -0500

The following was prompted by a lengthy discussion 12 years ago on the ideal fruit. Not your favorite. Not the tastiest. The most ideal. Now presented in its entirety, the document formerly known as “the clementine manifesto”.

They taste good. They are sweet, and you rarely get bad ones.

They are good at satisfying both hunger and thirst. While clearly food, clementines are very juicy, quenching thirst.

They are portable. They are small enough to fit in a pocket, and you do not need to wash them before eating them.

They are easy to eat. First, they are easy to peel, then they break into bite-size portions, perfect for eating any time. And there are no seeds.

They are neat. You do not get juice, pulp, or bits of any sort all over. The peel creates a good place to put the rest of the clementine down between bites, yet is biodegradable, so, in the absence of a trashcan, it can be thrown on the ground.

They smell good. If you’ve smelled them, you know what I mean.

They come at the right time of year. Summer fruits are delicious, but there are so many of them; how can you concentrate? Clementines are in season when few other fruits are.

They have positive associations. Clementines are traditional Christmas gifts, associating them with one of the best-loved times of the year.

They are easy to share. First, because they are small enough that you can bring a whole bunch with you, and second, because they split apart so easily.

They make people happy. Yes, giving someone a clementine is sure to bring a smile to their face.

The only compelling counter-case made was for the banana. But I hate bananas, so there is no banana manifesto.

Oranges are a traditional gift of St. Nicholas, whose feast is December 5th. So, don’t forget to put out your shoe tomorrow night to see if someone will leave you an ideal treat!