stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
Life in a Northern Town: the exploits of an ecstatic Alaskan
Lens: the adventures of a girl and her camera
The scene: a beautiful summer's evening. A gathering of friends has come together to feast on grilled halibut, lemon linguine, and flash-cooked veggies. Everything was quite delicious and fresh, and all tummies were singing with joy. But the dessert was yet to be served!
Yours truly decided to serve another dish in the vein of fresh summer fare. I pulled out vanilla ice cream, strawberries, and a good balsamic vinegar and proceeded to combine them. I could tell this had thrown my guests for a loop and no one was particularly looking forward to trying this syrupy brown stuff drizzled all over their perfectly good berries and ice cream. But the moment that combination touched their lips, I could tell that I had a table full of converts.
Should you have a similar reaction to the thought of strawberries and balsamic vinegar, I ask that you recite this eleventh commandment to yourself:
Thou shalt not doubt the culinary creations of your hostess, for lo, she will not lead you astray on the path to yumminess.
This sorbet is in the same spirit of the combination I served last summer. This recipe really doesn't get any easier. Sorbets are usually based on a simple syrup but even that didn't make it onto this three-ingredient list. That's how simple it is! It's really delicious too - strawberries are always good, and when you add a good balsamic to the mix you get something really special. When you add the fact that it's a frozen dessert, well, that just makes it the perfect summer dessert, doesn't it?
Click here for the recipe for "Strawberry-balsamic vinegar sorbet" »
Espresso. Brandy. Ladyfingers. Chocolate. Marscapone.
When you look at that list you may find yourself wondering, "What possibly could go wrong?"
And if you answered an enthusiastic "Nothing!" you would be so, so wrong. I sure as hell hope you didn't bet the farm on that one.
Tiramisu, at its best, is light yet rich, warm-tasting with brandy notes, with espresso to offset the sweetness, and because everything is better with chocolate, a liberal dusting of some Scharffen Berger. However, when executed improperly, it's flat tasting, bitter, and soggy. Trust me, you don't want soggy tiramisu.
It's one of those dishes where everything has to go right. Because of that, I won't order it in restaurants anymore, not even the one that Cory took me to for dessert on my birthday, because they screw it up and frankly, mine is a hell of a lot better (sorry Cory, I know you meant well!).
Luckily, if you have a good recipe, like the one I'm about to share with you, you can't go wrong. Too many recipes for tiramisu are too vague and include verbiage like "stir a couple of times" or "heat until lukewarm" and that sort of imprecision, while maybe appearing a little less intimidating to the novice cook, is a recipe for disaster. For soggy, flaccid, bitter disaster. And you know I would never do that to you.
There is something about baking a pastry - a real, from-scratch, layered bit of flaky dough - that makes you feel like a total badass.
Let's face it, pastries have a pretty formidable reputation. They're certainly not in the "if you can boil water you can handle this" category. I've always had a huge soft spot for croissants, but there is another indulgence - the humble Danish pastry - that has a special, sentimental significance to me.
If there was ever a recipe for me to cut my pastry chef teeth on, this one had to be it.
See, this is another recipe that is near and dear to my heart. Like beef burgundy, my family has been eating these delicacies around holidays since I can remember. Perhaps even more significant, my Mom has been eating them ever since she can remember. When she was a kid, her next-door neighbor (the eponymous Mrs. B) would bring them over each Christmas Eve so that their family could chow down on them the next day. Before my parents' wedding my Mom had a kitchen shower where the guests brought treasured recipes to give to her. Mrs. B brought this.
So when, as I mentioned earlier, Cory and I were in the midst of forging our own traditions, these little gems were so in. I made my very first batch sans supervision this last Christmas (my previous foray being the year before when my Mom was visiting for Thanksgiving) and on the morning of Cory and I ate like royalty, feasting on the light, fluffy, and delicate (both in flavor and texture) yumminess.
I will warn that this is not the easiest recipe I've ever posted. In fact, if you lack the proper patience it's probably actually the hardest I've shared thus far. So with that in mind, use a light hand when folding the dough - you don't want to tear it. If it happens, don't hesitate to pinch the dough closed and put the dough in the fridge since it will start oozing butter. So take your time, enjoy being a real-life badass pastry chef, and enjoy the end result even more!
Telltale scenario #538: How to know you married the perfect man
Your hubby has come up for a visit and, alas, you have to go to a boring lunch for work. You'd pleaded to get out of it, and even your "but I only get to see my husband every three months" argument had fallen on deaf ears. So you go, you eat some awful food, and before long you're back home and you find that not only has he mown the lawn, he has made you a batch of your favorite chocolate chunk cookies.
True story!
Sorry ladies, he's off the market.
Now, these cookies that my wonderful husband made for me hold a special place in my heart. It's not for any sentimental reason, it's just because they're so chock-full of really good chocolate. Perhaps I haven't made it totally clear in this blog thus far, but I'm a total chocolate freak. Not for crappy mass-produced Hersey's, but for the good stuff - as is evidenced by my chocolate stash (yes, all of those striped packages are Scharffen Berger). I'm by no means exclusive in my smittenness - I give my love not to just one but to a select few.
So, unsurprisingly, cookies like this that use good chocolate and a lot of it are right up my alley. I made these cookies last week and gave them away and have been tormented by their memory since - why oh why was I feeling so altruistic???
I wasn't so tortured the first time I made them and they were part of the care package that I sent to Jeremy when he was studying for the Bar. He rated these as an A- and said "as plain old boring chocolate chip cookies go, they're superb."
A-, in my mind, is about right. I've already made them better than that batch - I originally used Lindt Swiss bittersweet and Ghirardelli milk but in my most recent batch, Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet and 41% extra rich milk was the chocolate I chose. They're still not absolutely perfect and they could use a small improvement. To give these cookies just a tad more texture and complex chocolate flavor (but not more sweetness), I think they would benefit from some cacao nibs being stirred in.
It could be that those little nibs will be the key to finally getting that A.
Click here for the recipe for "Scharffen Berger chocolate chunk cookies" »
You may be sad because summer has come to an end, taking with it delightful foods like nectarines, plums, berries, and locally grown vegetables like greens, cauliflower, chard, beets, and carrots.
But don't fret! Fall has its place in a foodie's heart because it brings delights like root vegetables, butternut squash, pumpkins, an untold number of apple varieties, bartlett pears, and pomegranates.
I recently celebrated fall by having a harvest dinner (suggested by my most wise and venerable husband). On the menu was a roasted pear salad with candied walnuts, blue cheese, and homemade balsamic vinaigrette, cabernet-glazed shallots, butternut squash risotto with wilted spinach and toasted pine nuts, sauteed pork tenderloin with an apple-sage sauce, and stuffed baked Jonagold apples with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. I love this menu -- it's so autumn-y with its warm, subtle flavors and unifying themes. Sage and apple are present in many of the dishes but are different and subtle enough to not get old or tiring.
Unfortunately, as with most dinner parties I host, I was pressed for time and eager to feed my guests (and myself!) so I didn't get photos. I'm normally loath to post recipes without pictures, but my desire to share this menu with others beat up my lack-of-photos hesitation and stole its lunch money. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!
This recipe is one that's been near and dear to me for nearly my whole life. My Mom originally clipped it out of a newspaper and it's grown up with me, going through different changes as I changed too.
Originally we made these cookies huge and round with little pumpkin stems and lavished icing and sprinkles upon them like festive, sweet, sticky jack-o-lanterns. Needless to say they never lasted long.
Years later as my brother and I grew out of the whole Halloween thing, these cookies stuck around (of course!) Now that having a good smooth icing canvas was no longer necessary, chocolate chips made their way into the cookies. They marred the formerly glasslike (well, for a cookie) surface but dude, it was chocolate. Yum! My parents would send these cookies to me in my care packages at college, and they brought back memories of childhood the way that only really good comfort foods can do.
Now that I'm all old, non-pumpkin-decorating, and out of college, it's up to me to keep this yummy tradition alive. I've made them every year over the last couple autumns, but this year I discovered my favorite addition: The Squash Quad of Power. As in the Turkey Trifecta, this blend of flavors complements the flavors it's enhancing so perfectly that I wouldn't ever consider excluding them. Unsurprisingly, when you add cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, and cloves to the cookies, they're, well, uhm, wow.
They just might be the best cookie ever.
Who doesn't love biscotti? This Italian twice-baked crispy cookie is wonderful with a cup of espresso or an after-dinner cordial, but let's admit it: sometimes we get tired of the usual almond or lemon flavor.
Enter the humble cranberry and pistachio, the two secret ingredients that make the flavor much brighter and crunch more satisfying. I like this recipe so much that when
I recently learned my friend Jeremy was studying for his impending bar exam and I resolved to make him some yummy treats for a morale package. Cookies were a given, but what else to add? And it occurred to me: Jeremy is probably drinking lots of coffee right now, so biscotti were the logical choice to add to the list of goodies. Using this recipe was a no-brainer. I mean, we all love chocolate and I make a mean chocolate-almond biscotti, but I ended up eschewing this because Jeremy doesn't like almonds in cookies. Surely he has access to lots of great biscotti (he lives in Seattle!) so needed a departure from biscotti boredom.
He, it seems, agreed. They were the highest-rated of the three types of baked goods I sent him, and he called them "exceptional." The bonus? These are relatively healthy (for a cookie, at least), so feel free to indulge in an extra one or two the next time your nose is stuck in a book and your hand is cramping from all of the essays you're writing.
Click here for the recipe for "Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti" »
I'm normally a fan of healthy breakfasts -- y'know, oatmeal, whole-grain low-fat muffins, or multi-grain pancakes or waffles. Every once in a while though, an indulgence is so much fun.
The first time these pancakes got busted out was a couple of weeks ago when a new bunch of people was assigned to me. I thought a good icebreaker would be a big breakfast feed, so everyone signed up to bring an ingredient. I nominated a couple of trusty helpers and we went down to the kitchens to cook this meal for thirty people.
These pancakes were certainly yummy, but I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn't doing the recipe justice. See, the recipe has you fold in beaten-into-peaks egg whites and I could tell that by the time the batter met the griddle -- hours after everything had been mixed together -- the volume was definitely lower. I was pretty sure these pancakes could be even lighter and fluffier.
This morning, I tested that theory. The result has me pretty well convinced I'll never order pancakes in a restaurant again. Why would I, when I could make these at home??? They're so sinfully delicious, so light and fluffy. And the aroma as the batter is mixed is indescribable.
The next time you feel like treating yourself -- or someone you love -- make up a batch of these. I know I'll be making these for my favorite person when he comes to visit in ten days! (squeeeeeeeeeeee!)
Click here for the recipe for "Blueberry buttermilk pancakes" »
Until I made this dessert at home, I had never had panna cotta in the United States.
I hadn't even heard of this indulgent dish until a couple of months ago, when I met someone in Korea who had actually taught at the Culinary Institute of America. I haven't met many people who are bigger foodies than me, but he definitely qualified. A few of us were looking for a restaurant in Seoul for dinner and we decided to pop into an Italian place, and my chef comrade ordered it for dessert, served with a perfect raspberry sauce on top. "Not too shabby," I thought, but didn't think too much of it again until Cory and I's honeymoon.
After our day trip into Siena, we returned to Florence intent on finding a classic Tuscan dinner. We looked through our guidebooks and found a place or two that looked promising on paper but were totally uninspiring when viewed in person. So we started to wander the streets, looking for those wonderful Italian hole-in-the-walls that you hear about from all your friends who were lucky enough to go to Italy when they were still in college.
All of a sudden we passed by a Il Latini, a restaurant that looked very cozy and the menu was actually entirely in Italian, which I took to be a good sign that this place was authentic. It was about 7:05 and the place didn't open until 7:30, so we decided to wait, queuing up like, well, normal civilized people would. About ten minutes later a man walked up and asked if anyone there spoke English, and almost all of us answered that we did. "This is the third time this week that my wife and I have been here, and trust me, the wait is worth it." Cory and I grinned at each other at this, and the man continued, "I know you all think that you're lined up like rational, courteous people, but trust me, when it gets closer to opening all the locals are going to start massing around the door. Lines will mean nothing!"
Well, you know what they say, when in Rome....
So we gaggle up, and before long the man is proven correct when these people start amassing around us, trying to get in ahead of us even though we've been waiting twenty-five minutes. 'Oh hell no!' I thought to myself. "If anyone tries to get around you, throw 'em an elbow!" was Cory's husbandly advice. And throw an elbow I did!
We managed to get in at the first seating and were seated at a table with another couple. The huge bottle of house wine was already on the table, and the food starting coming almost immediately. We never saw a menu, but everything they brought was superb: insalata caprese, pate on crostini, and tabbouleh made with barley for antipasti, Tuscan tomato and bread soup for me and gnocchi with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes for Cory for primi, roast beef for me and roasted lamb for him for secondi, and then a delicious dessert wine, biscotti, espresso, (something delicious that I can't remember), and, of course, panna cotta with a velvety chocolate sauce for dolci. It was an amazing meal (quoth Cory: "my brain pretty much shut down so that the only thing working was the taste buds") and an unforgettable dining experience in my favorite city.
It was also, of course, a wonderful reminder of a dessert that is fast becoming a favorite.
