Overnight Polenta Buttermilk Pancakes

If you like pancakes and have ever tried cornmeal pancakes, this is a great recipe to try!

3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/3 cup dry polenta or ½ cup cornmeal (or ¾ cooked plain polenta without cheese)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
2 large eggs
1-2 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted, cooled
Vegetable oil

If using polenta, the best method is to bring 2/3 cup water to a boil and pour over the polenta, stirring to mix. Cover and let sit over night. In the morning, sift the dry ingredients together and add the lemon zest. Whisk the buttermilk and eggs together, then stir in the melted butter. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients and whisk until blended and smooth.
Preheat oven to 200°F. Lightly coat bottom of heavy large skillet with oil (we use a nonstick). Heat over medium heat. Working in batches, pour 1/4 cup batter into skillet for each pancake. Cook until bottoms are golden, about 1 1/2 minutes. Turn pancakes and cook until other side is golden, about 1 minute. Transfer to baking sheet; place in oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more oil to skillet as necessary.
These pancakes are really good with ¾ cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) added to batter or any berries served on the side. We always serve with maple syrup. Yumm!

An Ode to Toast

The other day I was driving home with one of the high school girls from my mentoring group and somehow we started talking about food. Imagine that! We got on this thing about toast and it keeps coming back to me. Toast is one of those quintessentially simple, yet amazingly good, foods that can so quickly be screwed up by lack of attention. Maybe it's that we recall the smell of toast from our childhood but there is something comforting about a really nice, hot from the toaster, just toasty enough but not too browned, piece of bread. It helps if the bread you started with was a nice crusty loaf and not just Wonder bread but even that can make your morning in the right circumstances. Toast with melty butter or toast with jam, toast with vegemite, or toast with cinnamon-sugar: all great representations of the form. But toast can go wrong and so often does. It's fragile and the shelf life is very short. Good, hot crispy toast is a thing of beauty. Cool, limp, wimpy toast is like eating a dishcloth. Chef-made toast, or what sometimes is referred to as cinders can be enough to make you want to cry. The smell of toast can make your day while the smell of burnt toast burns your eyes and just seems sad. That's the thing about toast: it can go from awesome to inedible faster than just about anything you'll eat. Grabbed from the toaster without the distraction of other tasks at the peak of its toastiness and it is worth fighting over. Left to dispair on a plate getting cold and soggy and it's a shameful thing. I think I'll drink a toast to toast tonight and maybe make myself a stack in the morning.

Spanish Ribs

I've had a little experiment going with ribs lately - pork spare ribs to be exact. It started with a paella dinner for friends in which one is not much of a meat eater so while I normally might put ribs in the paella, I made the ribs on the side. I've since made them again and people really like this dish and it is super simple to pull off, and works great in advance. Just buy a couple pounds of some decent looking pork spare ribs and split them if they are in a rack. Mix the following together and then toss the ribs with the mixture:

2 TBSP smoked paprika (not hot)
1 TBSP finely minced or crushed garlic
1/2 TBSP dried rosemary, crumbled
1/2 tsp. ground fresh pepper
1-1/2 tsp sea salt
2-3 TBSP olive oil

You can leave out the oil but it helps make a nice paste. If the paste is too thick, add a little water. Make sure the ribs get evenly coated with the paste. Place the ribs in two layers of foil, shiny side on the inside and seal it up by crimping the open sides. Place on a baking tray and bake at 300 degrees for about 90 minutes. Check them for tenderness. If they are not super tender, put them back in the oven for about 30 more minutes or so. You can eat them right away, or cool them and refrigerate. Reheat in the oven at about 350 for 15-20 minutes. These are so good, that you won't need a sauce or anything with them!

Happy Australia Day

A few weeks back we hosted an Australia Day party! For those who don't know, Oz Day is like our 4th of July: it's their Independence Day. January is summer in Australia, so the typical celebration consists of a barbecue and lots of beer. We managed to get the beer part right but the weather here in PDX was not quite made for bbq'ing given that it snowed a little that day. We were delighted that some of the Aussies show up in their formal wear: shorts and slip-flops! One even came with a "zinc'd" nose which was good fun.

In the true Oz tradition, I decided to try making a beloved Australian dessert, pavlova, yet couldn't confine myself to keeping it totally traditional. For those who don't know what a pavlova is, it's a meringue shell baked until quite crisp on the outside then topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. You cut it and serve it like a cake. My rendition includes all the traditional ingredients plus some mascarpone, vanilla, and lemon zest folded into the cream. It's quite easy to make so check it out.

Kim's Pavlova
(Serves 6-8)

For meringue shell:
6 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups superfine granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup boiling water

For topping:
3/4 cup heavy cream, very cold
1/2 cup superfine granulated sugar
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese, softened
1 teaspoon lemon zest, finely grated
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups assorted seasonal fruit such as raspberries, sliced strawberries and kiwifruit (the kiwi is a must for Aussies!)

Preheat oven to 350° F. and line a large baking sheet with foil.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer beat together whites, sugar, cornstarch, vinegar, and vanilla on low speed until just combined. Beat until mixture becomes foamy. Add boiling water a little at a time while you continue to beat on high speed 3 to 5 minutes, or until mixture forms stiff, glossy peaks.

Spoon meringue mixture onto baking sheet and spread into a 9- to 10-inch circle or make a rectangle if you prefer. Bake in middle of oven 10 minutes. Reduce temperature to 200° F. and bake Pavlova 40 minutes more. Turn off oven and let Pavlova stand in oven 2 hours. Transfer Pavlova to a rack and cool completely (it will be hard on outer surface and soft inside.) All this can be done the day before.

At least 1-3 hours before serving, make the topping.
In a small bowl, combine the mascarpone, lemon zest, and vanilla until smooth and creamy. In a chilled bowl with clean beaters beat cream until foamy and then add the sugar a little at a time. Continue beating until it holds soft peaks. Gently fold a small amount of the whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture. Then, fold the mascarpone-cream mixture into the the rest of the whipped cream until fairly evenly mixed. Spread the mixture over the Pavlova and place the sliced fruit on top.

Hold the pavlova in the refrigerator until close to serving time. Cut into slices and enjoy.

Breakfast the German Pancake Way

Christmas time is still in the air and it feels like I've eaten about 300 cookies in the last 3 weeks. Fortunately, there have been several big highlights away from the sweets, too, and those are worth writing about. Christmas Eve dinner featured a big, honking, dry-aged ribeye cooked to perfection (with just a little setting the smoke detectors off, and the alarm company calling to check on us). The steak, topped off with Maytag blue cheese and paired with my secret recipe sauteed spinach and a nice Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon, made it hard to beat. Being the troopers were are though, we tried to beat that meal with one the next morning anyway.

Christmas breakfast was a prelude to my New Year's resolution: eat breakfast out more often! Despite this, our Christmas breakfast was cooked at home though and featured German pancakes done two ways: savory and sweet. We made one giant pancake with sausage, bacon, a little onion, and cheese on top and just before that one was done, we threw a smaller one in the oven to be served with maple syrup. If you haven't had a German pancake before (aka Dutch Baby in some parts) it's super easy and worth every morsel even if you have to go to the gym to sweat it off for an hour or so. Be forewarned: the very hot oven and buttery skillet may set your smoke detector off!

German Pancake

Here's a recipe for a basic batter to make a savory pancake that will serve 4 or more depending on how much savory goodness you pile on top:

6 large eggs (room temperature)
1 cup milk (room temperature)
1 cup sifted bread flour or all-purpose flour
2-4 TBSP butter for cooking the pancake(s)
A good heavy skillet such as cast-iron or similar (not non-stick)
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Assorted cooked sausage, bacon, onions, cheese, etc.

Preheat the oven with the heavy skillet inside to 450. A good cast-iron skillet is great for this but any heavy (not non-stick) low-sided skillet will do.

In a blender or with a whisk, mix the eggs, milk, and flour until smooth and well-blended. If you are using all of this batter for the savory pancake, season the batter with salt and pepper.

For cooking the pancake, pull the hot skillet from the oven and add at least 2 or more tablespoons butter, swirling it around to melt and spread evenly. Add the pancake batter and place the skillet back in the oven. Let it bake for 15-25 minutes, depending on size. The pancake is done when it puffs up high and turns golden brown. Just about the time it's finished, we added our cooked sausage, bacon, and cheese and placed it back in the oven for 2-4 minutes to melt the cheese.

For a sweet pancake: Take the same batter recipe and don't add any salt and pepper but do add 2 TBSP sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla and mix well. Bake as above and when finished, drizzle fresh lemon juice and powdered sugar over the top or just serve warm with butter, syrup, fruit, jam, or whipped cream.

To make one savory and one sweet pancake: split the batter in half once it's blended and then add salt and pepper to half the batch. To the other half, add 1 TBSP sugar and about 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Cook as above but note the smaller pancakes will cook faster so check them after 15 minutes.

Much to be Said for Fat

Bacon, lard, and fried chicken. It would be acceptable to ask, what's not to love? We finally made our decadent fried chicken meal. The idea was to take selected recipes from the January 2008 Gourmet and turn them into a true feast for the southern senses. It only took months to get it scheduled with folks who could truly appreciate it: a guy from Arkansas and his partner who spent years in Texas. Okay, so Texas isn't really the south but that's okay for me. This is not the sort of meal you cook for the two of you. You need a bit of a crowd, or 5 of us. at least.

The menu:

Buttermilk fried chicken
Crispy buttermilk biscuits (yep, with lard)
Green beans with ham hocks
Bacon cream gravy
Strawberry rhubarb pie (not from Gourmet but from the local Bipartisan cafe - a place known for a number of things but especially their pies)

The buttermilk fried chicken marinates overnight in buttermilk, onions, and seasoning. The bacon gravy is essentially bacon cooked up crispy so you get a good amount of fat. You save the bacon to garnish the chicken with (let's see fried bacon on fried chicken). You use the fat from the bacon to make a roux and then add milk and pepper to get this really nice creamy, peppery, bacon gravy.

The key to the biscuits is getting good lard and don't overdo anything: i.e. working in the milk or overkneading it. We get our lard from Viande, a local butcher who renders their own. I didnt realize until too late we didn't have a normal biscuit cutter. So, we had giant biscuits but no one seemed to mind!

The one real departure in the recipes I made was with the green beans. You're supposed to cook the ham hocks and green beans together for well over an hour. I cooked the ham hocks for about an hour and then added the green beans as I really didn't want to cook the green beans to within an inch of their little lives. This rendered really tender and rich hammy flavors while the green beans maintained some semblance of being a green bean. Great flavors all around.

I won't bother including the recipes here but suffice it to say that the January 2008 Gourmet focus on southern recipes is one of the best they've ever produced. Pick it up used or go to their website www. gourmet.com and just start experimenting with what's there. Sure, you'll have to jog an extra 5 miles or so to afford the calories, but you'll find the rewards worth it.

Tarte de Flan

Okay, so cracking the mystery of the flan tarte is proving to be harder than first imagined. I've tried several different attempts and while all were yummy in their own way (it's custard, what's not to like?) none have quite been as golden and eggy as the ones in France. I think we need french eggs and tons of cream or something. Perhaps I could import some chickens...

In any case, I've not given up and I'm including the most successful recipe of the bunch so far. More to come once I get even closer.

Tarte de Flan (makes one 10-inch round flan)

For the Crust:

2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 TBSP sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, (make sure it's cold) - cut into small chunks
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2-3 TBSP cold water
10-inch springform pan or other higher sided pie pan

In a food processor or medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt. If using a food processor, next add the butter chunks and pulse in the butter (if doing this by hand, use a pastry blender or two knives) until the mixture is coarse and resembles oatmeal. Next add 2 TBSP cold water and the vanilla and continue to pulse until dough starts to hold together. You may need to add more water if it's still too crumbly. If doing this by hand, use a fork to mix in the water and vanilla. Once the dough starts to hold together, gather it up in a ball. Place it on a sheet of plastic wrap (or pastry cloth) and flatten it into a circle about 3/4-inch thick. Place the pastry in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Once the pastry has chilled, roll it on a floured surface until it is thin and round and about 1-inch wider than the pan you will be using. Gently place the rolled pastry into the pan, being careful not to tear it (easier said than done sometimes) and make sure it extends about 1/4-inch beyond the edge of the pan (trim if needed). Press the pastry edges to the top of the pan a bit to help secure the pastry in place (can make pretty designs if gifted in that way by pinching dough - optional to be gifted). Chill the pastry again for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place a sheet of foil to cover the pastry and add pie weights or dried beans or rice to fill the pan. You don't want to prick the crust. Bake it in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the crust appears to be somewhat dry. Then remove the foil and pie weights and bake for another 10-15 minutes until it starts to become very light brown. Let the pie crust cool for about 10 minutes before adding the filling.

Flan custard

3 cups whole milk
4 eggs
4 egg yolks (save the egg whites for something else)
1/2 cup sugar
2 TBSP corn starch
1 TBSP vanilla extract

Mix the cornstarch in a small bowl with 1/2 cup milk. Heat the rest of the milk in a pan slowly until scalded. Whisk the eggs and yolks together and slowly add the sugar. Once the milk is hot, whisk the egg mixture quickly and slowly stream the hot milk into the egg mixture taking care to keep whisking to mix well. Finally, whisk in the cornstarch mixture and add the vanilla. Add the mixture back to the pan and keep whisking over a low-medium heat until is starts to just lightly bubble. Add the custard to the baked, cooled pie crust. If you have extra custard, just put it in custard cups or ramekins and bake the extra custard on the side.

Bake the flan at 350 for about 30-40 minutes until the custard is firm in the middle when gently poked with the back of a spoon. It should not be jiggly in the center.

Remove from oven and let the flan cool until just warm. Then put it in the refrigerator to chill or just eat the whole thing right then if you can't wait. Make sure to refrigerate any leftover flan but boobytrap it if you want any more for yourself.

Don't feel like making a pie crust? Just make the flan mixture in ramekins! Follow the same recipe above and fill about 8 ramekins with custard. Place the ramekins in a baking dish and fill the dish about half way up the sides of the ramekins with warm water before baking. Check the ramekins after about 15-20 minutes as they cook faster.

Enjoy!