Time

Time is elusive. There never seems to be enough. We all want more hours in the day to accomplish that which we feel is important.

We scurry about our lives as the sand silently slips through the hourglass and the sun slowly sinks in the sky, marking the end of another day; one more moment of life just out of reach. There is never enough time, until something happens that makes the world seem to stop and you find yourself wondering what you will do with the minutes, hours, and days that now seem to drag on forever. You question what was so important before, what ate up all that time, and how you will deal with the infinite amount of time stretching out before you.

Four days after my last post my world stopped. The most important person in my life, my best friend, the person who brought me into this world and guided me through it, my Mom, lost her battle with clinical depression and anxiety and committed suicide.

Three months have passed, but time bears no consequence anymore. There will never be enough time to erase the anguish, sadness, and mystery behind this loss.

People say time heals all, but I dissent. I can only imagine that in time you learn better how to cope. That as each day passes it becomes slightly easier to get out of bed in the morning and breathe in and out.

Losing my mom has created a huge void in my soul. It has drained my life of creativity and joy. It is rare to feel anything other than disconnect and lethargy. It is hard to want to go on.

I write all this because it is what my life is right now. There is no shopping at farmer's markets, no excitement about trying a new recipe, no inspiration just waiting to be tried out on unsuspecting guinea pigs. Nothing. Each day I am trying to find my way back toward the light. Trying to find hope again.

As hard as it is to want to come back to this, to try to find moments of happiness and inspiration again, I know that I need to. I need to do it for myself, but more importantly for my mom. Her greatest joy in life was to see her children happy, doing what they loved, and excited about life. I don't know if I will ever experience true excitement or happiness again but I do know that I will do my best to honor my mom and the hopes and dreams she held for me.

M.I.A.

What happened to my blog?!

I know, I'm asking myself the same question. I'm bummed (and honestly a bit embarrassed) that it has been nearly 2 months since I have posted any new tidbits or treats on here.

I don't know what to say other than I feel as though my job is sucking the life out of me as of late. The last couple months have been a period of great transition, having lost my rockstar assistant, my chef, and my fellow sous-chef all within about a month and a half, life at TCR has not been the same. Training 3 new people, overseeing 2 stores, and heading into the busy season has left me with little time or energy for sharing my passion.

This isn't to say I've been living on canned soup and take out alone though. There have been quite a few interesting things in my kitchen over the last 2 months, though I've been lax about documenting them, and more often just not taking the time to sit down and write them up.

Thanksgiving brought an opportunity to try my hand at several new recipes, the stars of which I think were pumpkin spiced nuts and leek and gruyere bread pudding. Unfortunately I think these are among the recipes that didn't get photographed, and are now nothing but a fond memory and a few inches around the waist!

I will try my best to get my act together and put my heart and spirit back into writing this blog for those few of you who read, and hope in the meantime pictures of the thanksgiving feast in which I partook will suffice.

In hopes of redeeming myself I will also throw in the recipe for pumpkin pie spiced nuts, even though there are no pictures to be had. I trust you to use your imagination!

Pumpkin Pie Spiced Nuts

1 large egg white

2/3 cup sugar

Kosher salt

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I looked up a pie recipe, mixed together the spices and then used a tsp of that)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

3 c assorted nuts

2-3 dashes Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 275. Line large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk egg white with 1 Tbsp sugar in large bowl until frothy. In small bowl combine sugar, 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt, spices, and cayenne. Toss the nuts in the egg white mixture, then stir in the sugar-spice mixture and Worcestershire sauce.

Spoon nuts onto prepared pan in small clusters and bake until golden, 30-35 min. (I baked mine about 20 minutes longer to get the toastiness out of the nuts that I wanted. Take one out and let it cool after the allotted time and taste it, if it is still soft and lacks crunch and toasty flavor, throw the tray back in the oven for a bit. It would be hard to overcook them at this low temperature). Cool then break apart.

Yields about 5 cups of nut clusters.

If you're like me you'll have to hide them in a dark corner in your kitchen so you kind of forget they are there and don't eat them in one sitting!!

I think I might be in love . . .

Who's the lucky guy, you ask? I wish I knew. Until he comes along, I will be content to be in love with . . . plums. We started out in a love/hate relationship which quickly grew into a school girl crush and has now become a full blown love affair. The more types of plums I try the more smitten I become with them.

This week the object of my affection is a basket of prune plums I picked up in an effort to stock my freezer with summer fruit for the inevitable lack there of in the coming months. My plan was to quarter them and individually freeze them on a tray before tossing them into a zip loc bag to hang out in the freezer for a while. That was the plan. Then my friend (and neighbor) Yewande called me to arrange a cooking date. Knowing me oh-so-well she inquired as to what fruit, if any, I had lying around and was pleased to hear of my basket o' plums. She quickly appeared with a few cake layers she had lying around and two beautiful fresh figs from the tree in her yard (sigh, I wish I had a fig tree in my yard).

We proceeded to cube and toast the cake layers in the oven until they were golden brown and my apartment smelled sweetly of butter and vanilla. Then came the preparation of said plums. I assumed they were prune plums as they were a dark, bruised purple color and oblong in shape. I was quite surprised when I cut into them and discovered a vivid green interior. I was even more surprised when I timidly tasted a sliver and found them to be sweet, through and through. To my delight the skin was lacking the characteristic mouth puckering tartness I so dislike. However, I am now unsure as to what kind of plums they were. Hopefully I can snag another basket tomorrow and bend the farmer's ear for more information.

Since our cake was already baked (twice) we opted for cooking the fruit alone and topping it with the crumbs at the very end to prevent them from growing too toasty. We debated among spices, would it be clove or cinnamon? Allspice or nutmeg? Ultimately, after tasting the slivers of plum, we concluded it would be a shame to hide their flavor and simply tossed them with a little brown sugar, a splash of red wine vinegar for acidity, and topped each ramekin with a wedge of fig for good measure.


As the fruit bubbled away in the oven we sat, ogled over pastry books, and talked shop (I love that I have friends who are just as big of food geeks as I). In fact, we nearly forgot about our plums amidst all the chattering, though were reminded by the jammy scent wafting across the room. With a peek we assessed the plums were ready for the application of crumbs (that rhymed!) and with a few more minutes in the oven both were hot, toasty, bubbling, and crying out for a generous dollop of freshly whipped cream before being devoured with nothing more than the sound of spoons digging for more and the occasional sigh of contentment.



Plum Crumble
Yields 6 4-oz ramekins

1 pint basket of plums, pitted and quartered
3-4 Tbsp brown sugar, depending on the sweetness of the fruit
1 tsp red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar
left over cake, such as pound cake or butter cake, cubed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scatter cubed cake on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat (not mandatory, just makes clean up easier). Toast in the oven until golden around the edges and dry to the touch. Set aside to cool.

In a medium bowl mix your plums, brown sugar, and vinegar. Taste for sweetness. Pile fruit into individual ramekins, or a casserole if you are making one large crumble. (Top with figs if you are lucky enough to have a fig tree in your yard, or know someone who does.) Lower the oven temperature to 375. Bake the fruit, uncovered, until tender and the juices are bubbling. Remove from oven, top with cake crumbles, and pop back in the oven for a few minutes, just to rewarm the cake and let it soak up some of the juice. Top with a generous blob of lightly sweetened whipped cream and savor the moment.

(I had 1 crumble that sat in my fridge for a few days before I got around to eating it and it had a decidedly more pronounced plum flavor, so if you can wait to eat at least part of your crumble, you will not be disappointed. It is best re-warmed in the oven for a few minutes to take the chill off the fruit and re-crisp the cake.)

All good recipes start with butter.

Ok, not all, but most.

The weather in Brooklyn as of late has felt more like fall than end of summer. This has caused my roommate and I to crank up the oven on occasion in hopes of a hot meal. He has been particularly keen on baking frozen gourmet pot pies, and was so excited about his pot pie one night he urged me to pick one up at the store the next time I was there.

There are times that I stand in the frozen food aisle of the grocery staring through the frosted glass and dreaming of a pot pie, a spicy enchilada, or a single serving of macaroni and cheese. I stand and look wistfully at the enticing pictures on the box but deep in my heart I know it will not taste nearly as good as I hope. So I close my eyes, turn, and march on gathering the rest of my groceries.

This week I decided I've endured enough pot pie abstinance and set out to make my own. A real pot pie. Made in a pot. Ok, in a casserole dish, close enough.

I figured Fanny Farmer would be the place to find a good old fashioned chicken pot pie recipe, but alas there was no such thing under "pot pie". Then I thought to look under chicken, for I think the woman has a whole chapter of things to do with chicken and was sure there had to be a recipe to glean from. Sure enough, under "chicken pie" there it was. I guess hers wasn't made in a pot either.

It was, in fact, easier than I anticipated. Granted I made my pie dough earlier in the week at work. Still the assembly was quick and the pie was delicious! I have just added a new dish to my winter reportoire and I can't wait to make it for a couple friends who are expecting babies in the near future. I imagine it would be great "new parents" food for those times where you are exhuasted and starving and there is not a crumb to be had.

The following is a good rainy day project, although I made it on a perfectly good, somewhat sunny day, the cool temperature and breeze was all the inspiration I needed for this warming dish. I realize it is a little involved because it calls for making pastry, but this is why a rainy day is ideal. For really, what else do you have to do than stay indoors and piddle about the kitchen? Or, if you are really on top of things you can prepare your pie dough in advance and pull it out of the fridge or freezer when the mood strikes.

Fanny's recipe calls for pre-cooked chicken and vegetables stirred into a bechamel-like sauce, covered with pastry or biscuit dough and baked. I wanted to save a couple steps by not individually pre-cooking my vegetables and went a different route.

First I poached my chicken in lightly salted water. As it cooled in order to be cut, I made my bechamel and then tossed in all my vegetables and cooked them gently in the sauce until they were al dente. Together the cubed chicken and sauce went into a casserole and were hidden under pastry, although I like the idea of biscuits on top and plan to try that next time. Into the oven for a mere 30 minutes and voila! A homemade pot pie! Puts my roommate's little store-bought pie to shame . . .

Chicken Pot Pie

1 recipe of The Best Pie Dough (below)

2 or 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 small carrots, diced

3 ribs celery, diced

1/2 yellow onion, diced

1 yukon gold potato, peeled and diced

3/4 c frozen peas

1 1/2 Tbsp flat leaf parsley, minced

1/4 tsp dried thyme leaves

salt and pepper to taste

6 Tbsp butter

1/4 c plus 2 Tbsp flour

2 c chicken broth

1 c heavy cream

Prepare pie dough and place in the fridge for at least 90 minutes to chill.

In a small pot place chicken and cover with water. Add a pinch of salt, cover and cook over medium low until cooked through. Remove and let cool.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large skillet melt the butter, add the onion and cook just until tender. Sprinkle in the flour and stir. Cook over medium, stirring occasionally, until golden brown. Slowly add cream and broth while whisking so it stays creamy and doesn't lump. (I only had 1 cup of chicken broth and 3/4 c. cream on hand so I made up for the rest of the liquid with water from poaching the chicken.) Once it is creamy add your remaining vegetables and cook over low until al dente. They don't need to be fully cooked, but they do need to be somewhat soft. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and parsley. Cube cooked chicken and combine with the sauce. Pour into a 3 quart casserole dish and set aside.

Roll your pastry out on a floured surface so it is large enough to drape over the sides of the casserole. Fold it in half, brush off any excess flour and transfer to top of baking dish, then unfold. Trim off any excessively long portions of dough. Fold the edge under and crimp. The edge of your crust should be inside the walls of your casserole, not on the rim. Brush with a little egg beaten with a pinch of salt. Cut a few slits in the top to allow steam to escape. Pop in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden and bubbly.

Best Pie Dough

This really is the best pie dough recipe I've found in my years of baking. It is from a little cookbook out of the Northwest called the Alice Bay Cookbook.

1 1/3 c all purpose flour

1 stick (4 oz.) unsalted butter

1 tsp salt

1/4 - 1/3 c water

Cut butter into 1/2" pieces. Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Place all ingredients in the freezer for about 15 minutes. If you have a food processor I recommend using it as it makes this dough a breeze. If not you can cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or two knives.

Pulse flour, salt, and butter until the butter is in small pieces, about the size of a lentil. (I know other recipes say "the size of a pea" but I actually think that is a little too big.) Drizzle in water as the food processor is running just until the dough begins to clump and move around the bowl. If you are doing it by hand pour in a little water, mix with a fork, pour a little more, etc. You just want the dough to come together into a ball without over working it. It will be easier to roll out if the dough is slightly wet and tacky as opposed to dry and crumbly. Cutting the butter in sufficiently will also help in bringing the dough together with less water.

Flatten into a disc and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 90 minutes or up to 3 days. If you plan to make it further in advance just wrap it well and throw it in the freezer. Pull it out a few hours before you want to use it and thaw in the fridge. You want the dough to be cold when you roll it out. Yields 1 single crust pie.

If life were really a bowl of cherries . . .

. . . I'd make these brown butter cherry bars every day. Seriously. They are that good. I love me some cake, as you know, but this takes the cake so to speak and puts it on a whole other level.

On the note of cakes, I baked the third plum torte today and I declare it is the best one yet! I lured my co-workers into the kitchen by wafting a cinnamon/plummy breeze in their direction. It worked.



Now back to the topic at hand, brown butter cherry bars. There is quite possibly nothing simpler to make, yet people will think you toiled day and night over the stove once they taste these morsels of goodness.

The genius of this recipe is that it combines a tart and a cake, two of my (now) favorite things. The tart part comes in the form of a crunchy sweet crust that lines the bottom of the pan. Once that is par-baked you pile in the fruit and pour over it a speckled brown butter batter. Throw it back in the oven, wait what seems like a tremendously long time as you are tortured by the delicious scent cast off, and finally after much pacing and willing them to cool, chopping off the corner (the best part; guard them with your life) and devouring it.

As with the plum torte, I can't seem to get enough of these bars. I first baked them a couple months ago after spying the recipe on SmittenKitchen.com. I used a sweet cherry from the greenmarket, though it was a type other than Bing and I'm not sure what it was. This was the best batch of bars made with cherry (one batch made with blackberry, I'll get to that in a minute). The cherries were sweet but very firm and somewhat acidic which held up nicely against the sweet batter.

The second batch I made for my family while in Colorado. I used western slope Bing cherries for this batch and though it didn't keep me from eating just as many of them, they were not quite as good as the ones made with mystery east coast cherries. The Bings were a little unremarkable after being baked, lacking the tartness or acidity of their predecessors.

The third batch I baked last night, thus recieving the stink-eye from my roommate for turning on the oven when it was already 90 degrees outside, and possibly hotter inside. This time I used about a pint of blackberries that had been hanging out in the fridge, just a little too tart for eating on cereal or in yogurt. The stink-eye was worth it. Though quite different from their cherry counterparts they are quite delicious and taste like a summer day cloaked in a bit of cake.

The key to these bars it to par-bake your crust until it is nice and golden so it provides the desired contrast between crust and cake. Don't worry about it becoming too dark while baking the rest of the ingredients, it will be just fine.

Brown Butter Cherry Bars

Crust:
7 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/3 c sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 c plus 1 Tbsp all purpose flour
pinch of salt

Filling:
1/2 c sugar
2 large eggs
pinch of salt
1/4 all purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 stick unsalted butter
8-10 ounces of pitted cherries or other fruit

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line an 8x8 inch pan with two strips of parchment running opposite directions so that you have lined the bottom as well as the sides of the pan. Leave an inch or so poking up above the pan on all sides so you have "ears" to pull the bars out of the pan when cool.

Melt the 7 Tbsp butter in a small pan and pour into a medium bowl. Add the rest of the crust ingredients and smash it around with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until combined. Crumble into your prepared pan and press the crumbs to form a solid crust. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden all over.

In the same pot place 1 stick of butter. Cook over medium low heat. You will hear the butter begin to crackle and make hissing noises, this is normal. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, scraping the bottom of the pan, until it foams and you see dark brown specks floating around. This is brown butter. Turn the heat off and let the butter cool as you mix the rest of your ingredients.

In the same bowl you made your crust in, whisk the sugar, eggs, and salt. Add the flour and vanilla and whisk until smooth. Gradually whisk in the brown butter, scraping all the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan and into the bowl.

Arrange pitted cherries, or other fruit of choice evenly on top of the crust. Pour batter over the fruit and place back in the oven for 40 minutes or so. When it is done a tester may not come out clean because of the juice in the fruit, so the best way to check is look for an even golden color across the surface of the cake; you can also press on a patch of cake with your finger to see if it springs back. If it does, chances are it's done.

Cool the bars completely in the pan. Gently lift out by the parchment "ears". I find they are easier to cut neatly after they have chilled in the fridge, though they taste best at room temperature. If you are not going to consume them all within a day I recommend refrigerating them so you don't have to sacrifice them to the trash can as I sadly did with the meager remnants of my first batch.