The Petit Four

Well, thank goodness that’s over.

I could explain my prolonged absence, but I’ll save you the trouble. I think it’s quite obvious by now that I’m not the best planner when it comes to organization and making time for things when I have a gazillion responsibilities on my plate.

But now it’s February. And my schedule is looking blissfully less insane. You could even say open. I will have time for things like traveling (Barcelona, here I come!), hosting dinner parties, and getting back into my kitchen. I haven’t used my kitchen at all since Thanksgiving, save for the necessary coffee-making and reheating of the occasional pizza. I’ve mainly been subsisting on applesauce, yogurt and All-Bran for the past month. How I haven’t gotten scurvy yet, I don’t know. So February (yeah, I’m talking to YOU), let’s make a deal. Can you make nice with me this year and just…not suck? That would be a great change of pace for you. One that I’d totally dig. K, thanks.

But since it is February and for most everyone, the skies are gray and winter is still going on, here are a couple of things that I have been really into lately that make me happy.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
This song puts a smile on my face every time I listen to it.  It’s so happy and catchy, exactly what I’ve been needing to get me through these dark, wet Belgian days.

The xx - VCR
Everything about this is perfect - the song, the music video.  All around gorgeousness.

Also, today is Bill Murray day!  Or, in other more conventional circles, Groundhog Day.  Except here in Belgium, it’s La Chandeleur, a day to commemorate when Jesus was officially presented to the temple in Jerusalem.  But hey, since most people here are incredibly secular, they don’t really celebrate that so much.  Instead, February 2 is Pancake Day.  What.a.great.holiday.

The heart of Pancake Day is similar to Groundhog Day.  Because pancakes, or crêpes, are large and circular like the sun, you eat pancakes all day to try and coax the warm sun back into the hemisphere.  Pancakes and the potential of warmth? Sign me up!

Because everyone has their favorite go-to pancake (my personal fave would be my dad’s rendition) and I personally am still trying to recover from a particularly sweetened holiday season, I decided to go down the savory route.  And ooh boy. These things are delicious.

I nabbed this recipe off Bon Appetit and not only are they cheap and a cinch to make, but they are reminiscent of all my favorite types of street food.  Slightly salty, slightly cheesy, slightly buttery.  They’re also easy to fold so turning them into an edible shelf for toppings is easy-peasy.  I recommend topping them with a bit of harissa, a few leaves of spinach, and a dollop of hummus.  And they go well with beer, so really, what more could you want?

Sour Cream and Onion Pancakes*
Adapted from Bon Appetit

1/3 cup chopped onion
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Worcestershire sauce, to taste
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sour cream (or cottage cheese)
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Cook onion, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper in 2 tablespoons butter and Worcestershire sauce in a small heavy skillet over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 12 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, then add sour cream, eggs, flour, 1/4 cup butter, remaining 1/8 teaspoon salt, and remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper and whisk until combined.

Brush a 12-inch nonstick skillet with some of remaining butter and heat over moderate heat until hot but not smoking. Working in batches of 5, scoop 1/8-cup measures of batter into skillet and cook until undersides are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip and cook until undersides are golden brown and pancakes are cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes more. Transfer to a baking sheet and keep warm in oven. Brush skillet with butter between batches if necessary.

*Original recipe calls for cottage cheese.  My grocery store didn’t have any so I grabbed what I thought was cottage cheese, but was, in fact, sour cream.  Turns out it didn’t matter because I followed the recipe to a T after that and it worked beautifully.

In my mind, cinnamon rolls = truck stops. And not just any truck stop, but The Wheel Inn. Growing up, The Wheel Inn was the place to go to hide in the back booths, consume massive, plate-sized cinnamon rolls or pineapple-strawberry milkshakes on seventies-orange Formica tabletops, and indulge in an illegal cigarette or two…or pack. And since it was open 24 hours, it was always there to welcome you with open arms.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time there in high school.

In a brief claim to fame validating The Wheel Inn’s existence (and the number of hours I spent there), Jeff Goldblum stopped there one fated summer night mid-road trip.  Legend has it (on the authority of my friends Marisa and Elyse who had the nerve to sit and drink coffee with him) he, like many who came before him, rustled up some late-night driving energy on The Wheel’s famed cinnamon rolls.  I’m sure he dove into the heaping, swirly pile of warm gooeyness with reckless abandon.  It’s hard not to.  The crispy dough encircles a fragrant mixture of cinnamon and sugar, topped with oozing frosting that dribbles down the sides and onto the edges of the plate.  Paired with a cup of truck stop coffee and it’s enough sugar and caffeine to keep you up all night.  The stuff crack is made of.

I don’t really know if The Wheel Inn still holds the same appeal to angsty teenagers in my hometown.  I rarely go back when I’m home. Partially it’s because I’m afraid that the kids who sat underneath the “No Smoking” signs lighting up cigarettes will still be there, still lighting up but slightly more paunchy and possibly balding. But also because the place isn’t the same. Since I left, they’ve replaced the orange formica table tops, waitress skirts and printed menus with…puce. Now, instead of walking into a den of 70s whitetrash nostalgia, you walk into…well, a place where Jeff Goldblum would never stop in order to fill up on caffeine and sugar. It’s sort of sad really.

Plus, now I’m older and can make my own cinnamon rolls. Not the plate-sized extravagant offering from The Wheel Inn, but a homemade extravagance in its own right. I decided to make these one night when I was suffering from some intense anxiety over recent life developments and needed to mellow out. And after I pulled these out of the oven and smothered the rolls with the maple frosting, I had just the right amount of sugar and gooey, warm carbs in my system to put my life in order. I think Jeff Goldblum would have approved.  Now I just need to figure out the milkshakes.

Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Frosting
Adapted from Pioneer Woman

2 cups milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 package active dry yeast
4 + 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1/2 “scant” teaspoon baking soda
1/2 heaping tablespoon of salt
2-3 cups melted butter
1 cup sugar
generous sprinkling of cinnamon

Mix the milk, vegetable oil, and sugar in a pan and heat on the stove until just before boiling.  Take off burner and leave to cool 45 minutes to 1 hour.  When the mixture is lukewarm to warm, but NOT hot, sprinkle in the package of Active Dry Yeast.

Let this sit for a minute.  Then add 4 cups of all-purpose flour.  Stir mixture together.  Cover and let rise for at least an hour.

Add 1/2 cup of flour, the baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Stir together.  At this point, you can cover the dough and put it in the fridge until you need it.  It can keep overnight to day or two later if necessary.

Sprinkle a rolling surface generously with flour.  Take the dough and form a rough rectangle.  Then roll the dough thin, maintaining a general rectangular shape (this will help later when you’re making “the roll”).  Drizzle melted butter over the dough.  Now sprinkle sugar over the butter followed by a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.  And I mean generous.  Just dump it on there.

Starting at the opposite end, begin rolling the dough in a neat line toward you.  Keep the roll relatively tight as you go.  Pinch the seam to the roll to seal it.  Spread melted butter in round, foil cake or pie pans.  Make sure the bottom and sides are covered.  (You can use spray, but really, the melted butter makes these magical.  You want the butter. You need the butter.  You deserve the butter.)  Begin cutting rolls approximately 3/4 to 1 inch thick and laying them in the buttered pans.  Repeat this process with the other half of the dough.  Let the rolls rise for 20 to 30 minutes, then bake 400 degrees until light golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.

Maple Frosting
1/2 bag of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon maple flavoring (like syrup)
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons strongly brewed coffee
1/8 teaspoon salt

For frosting, mix all ingredients and stir well until smooth.  It should be thick but pourable.  Taste and adjust as needed.  Generously drizzle over the warm rolls.  Use all the frosting.  You won’t be sorry.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a new sheriff in town. This sheriff’s got sass. It’s got gumption. It’s got a kick that will make all you breakfast naysayers stick it where the sun don’t shine. This is not the type of breakfast you bring home to your mother.

This twisted recipe for eggs and toast has been bookmarked for awhile. I can’t quite remember what first caught my eye and made me sit up and take notice. It has so many of my deliciousness beacons in it – garlic, runny egg yolk, yogurt, carbs.

When I first dished this out and placed it in front of Becky, she was more than a little suspect. “Is this going to remind me of China?” she asked. Unfortunately, she and our brother where the victims of bland, teetering on disgusting, overpriced Chinese food during their first week of visiting me last year. I haven’t lived down the experience yet and she still doesn’t believe me that Chinese food is in fact, staggeringly delicious, and leaves you with a minimal 50-50 chance of getting sick.

I admit, I even had my doubts now that I was forced to think about the combination of garlic, yogurt, and egg. In an effort to rally my own gastrointestinal troops, I encouraged her to dig in. But after that initial bite, there was no holding back. This egg meal was filling a hole in my life that I never knew existed.

The way the spices of the crushed red peppers plays with the vinegar boiled eggs is nothing short of genius. And while I don’t think I’ll ever eat garlic yogurt by the spoonful, it was the perfect bed of smoothy comfort and had just the right amount of earthy bite to bring everything together. Sop everything up with freshly made foccacia and I was in soppy-food-heaven.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a new breakfast-for-dinner meal is crowned king. All Hail Emperor Turkish Egg with Sage Infused Butter.

Turkish Eggs with Sage Infused Butter, from Orangette

1 cup plain yogurt
1 large garlic clove, crushed
1/2 stick butter
12 fresh sage leaves (or as I did, substitute this out for rosemary if you find yourself sans sage)
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
salt
1-2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
8 eggs
Bread (like focaccia) for serving

Stir the yogurt and garlic in a small bowl to blend. Season to taste with salt. Divide the mixture evenly between four plates.

Melt the butter in a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the sage, paprika, and red pepper, and stir just until the butter sizzles. Remove it from the heat, and season to taste with salt.

Fill a skillet with water for poaching eggs. Add the white vinegar to the water. Poach eggs until they are cooked to your preference.

When you are ready to serve, remove the eggs from the water, gently shake off any water droplets, and place two eggs atop the yogurt on each of the four plates. Spoon the butter over the eggs and yogurt, and serve immediately, with bread.

Makes 4 servings

I may not be 50% Polish, but most of me does try to be a good citizen.  I was going to say I’m at least 75% hippie, but I can hear my dad’s voice in my ear saying “I was NOT a hippie! I actually DID stuff!” So, I am a good citizen.

Emily’s good citizen examples: Giving up my seat on the CTA for the elderly and pregnant women, a strong advocate of citizen engagement, voting and encouraging others to as well, and I always recycle.

I’ve mentioned my Diet for a Small Planet parents before and I owe most of my weirdness, especially when it comes to the kitchen and the earth, to them.  When I was growing up, there were always fresh grown tomatoes, gourds, and berries growing in our backyard.  At the end of each summer, each item seemed to be waiting for my parents to work their magic on each plant’s extra bounty, turning them into breads, cakes, and jarred versions of something to last us through the summer and into winter. Looking back, I’m amazed that my parents were able to accomplish as much as they did with my brother breaking bones every other week, my sister causing several talks with teachers over the years because of her (well-earned) sass, and me getting my head stuck in things, like pots. And stairwells.

Despite all the trials we put them through, almost every night without fail we sat down to a dinner that was made, canned, or grown by them.  Then, my brother would take out the scraps to our homemade compost pit.

Now I realize how spoiled I was to grow up eating my mom’s kickass homemade applesauce and my dad’s bread.  And how ahead of the game my parents were with this whole carbon-footprint business.

So fast-forward a couple of years where I’m on my own, living on foodstamps and in an apartment sans garden, and having to make my own lunches for work.  Not surprisingly, I’ve learned a couple of things.  Like you can’t kill a mouse by sticking a bowl over it, dishes pile up fast if you don’t do them, and granola bars are really expensive and wasteful.

After going through two boxes a week (1 box = 5 bars for five days x 2 people = 2 boxes.  Ok, so that equation isn’t an algebraic equation at all, but you get the idea) that cost around $6 if I were buying them on sale and throwing away all those wrappers and recycling just the boxes, I got guilty.  Then it hit me, if I just stopped buying granola bars, then not only would I be helping out the environment but I would also be saving at the bare minimum of $24/month.  Which is a pretty decent amount when you only have $172 for the entire month for two people.

Helping out the environment and saving money? It was like Christmas for my grocery bill.

The thing that is really great about making these granola bars is that they were a lot easier and fun to make than I thought they would be.  I like to call them Rice Krispie treats for adults ’cause you get to do fun things like use a gas stove (fire!) and add whatever you want to them- stuff your parents would never let you do when you were making Rice Krispie treats.  This recipe also doubles super easily, which makes it nicer because then you only need to make a batch a month or something.

Cardamom and Butterscotch Granola Bars, adapated from Epicurious and Bon Appetit

2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup dried fruit of your choice (dried cranberries = the best!)
1/2 cup toasted pecans
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup tightly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line a 9-inch square baking pan with alumunium foil, making sure that the foil extends over the sides.  This will help you pull the baked granola out of the pan later.  Spray foil with cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, mix oats, fruit, nuts, butterscotch, and spices. Set aside.

In a saucepan, melt the butter, brown sugar and honey until it’s completely melted.  Pour butter mixture over oat mixture and stir until everything is coated.  Transfer to the coated pan and with your spatula or hands, press mixture evenly into pan.

Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes.  Transfer to rack and cool.  Using the foil as aid, lift out of pan.  Cut into 18 bars.

I’m pretty proud of the way my stomach has held up through all of the beatings and violent abuses I’ve put it through. It must be all scarred and tatted up like some seasoned burly soldier by now, especially after subjecting it to a year of eating in China. I was never really sure what I was eating half of the time and not really wanting to know, but woo boy, things sure were delicious.

Luckily, I only became sick once - on a good ol’ fashioned American meal of pizza and beer two weeks before I went home. I was reduced to a mushy mess on a Chinese hospital bed with IVs stuck in my arm and unable to stomach anything for a week afterward. Important lesson learned - there is a reason why Chinese people do not eat their own pizza.

Other than that tragic episode, I very rarely find myself in some form of pain or discomfort (albeit the kind from eating too much) after eating a little somethin’ something’. So chances are, if you want me to try something, I will heartily agree and dive in with very little trepidation.

But at the same time, there are a few things that I will never eat again (other than Chinese pizza.). Most things with blueberries are avoided like I would avoid Patrick Bateman and the mere mention of lemon-based desserts makes me queasy. Both of these reactions come from very early, scarring childhood episodes of overindulgence. Eech.

When I saw that this week’s recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie was Blueberry Crumble, my heart sank a little. Coffee cake? I love coffee cake! Two types of sugar? Heck yes! Butter and eggs? I’m there. Blueberries and…walnuts? No thanks. So I jazzed things up a bit and substituted a pint of blueberries for raspberries and peaches and swapped out the walnuts with pecans. And the results are of the drool-worthy, go to work a little later to prolong the enjoyment of eating this with some coffee type of good. And they don’t make anyone sick.

Blueberry Crumb Cake (or Raspberry Peach Pecan Crumble Rumble) from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours

For the crumbs:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or pecans)

For the cake:
1 pint (2 cups) blueberries or what ever berry you please, not strawberries however - too juicy. Also, berries should be preferably fresh, or frozen, not thawed)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
2/3 cup sugar
grated zest of 1/2 lemon or 1/4 orange
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter at room temp
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter an 8-inch square pan.

For the crumbs: Put all ingredients except the nuts in a food processor and pulse just until the mixture forms clumps and curds and holds together when pressed. Scrape the topping into a bowl, stir in the nuts and press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface. Refrigerate until needed. Covered well with the crumb mix can be refigerated for up to 3 days.

To make the cake: Using your fingertips, toss the berries and 2 tablespoons of flour in a small bowl just to coat the berries; set aside. Whisk together the remaining flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and the lemon/orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the butter and beat the sugar with the butter on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs one by one, beating one minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla extract. Don’t be concerned if the mixture curdles at this stage. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour and buttermilk, alternately, the flour in 3 parts, buttermilk in 2. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. The batter will be thick and creamy. With a spoon, gently fold in the berries.

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top gently with the spatula. Pull the crumb mix from the fridge and, with your fingertips, break it into pieces. They don’t need to be perfect and uniform, they’re supposed to be crumbs. Scatter the crumb mixture over the batter until it’s covered.

Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until the crumbs are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool just until warm.

The first time I made granola I was in seventh grade.   I was going through a vegetarian phase that collided pretty heavily with my “I listen to too much Simon & Garfunkel and buy too many beaded curtains” phase.  So here I was, hell bent to do this ’60s hippie throw-back phase right when it hit me - aha! granola.

I went on a search for the perfect granola recipe.  I don’t even remember where I found the recipe, but now it’s somewhere in the giant three-ring binder with “Emily’s Recipes” scrawled in faded purple along the spine, full of recipes printed on our old dot matrix.  I found the recipe during the few short weeks where I hunted, retrieved and examined hundreds of recipes, proudly displaying them to my parents (in quite the haughtily manner, as only a thirteen-year-old girl can pull off) to show off my burgeoning gourmet-tude.  When I found the recipe, I dropped everything to commence on my new project.  I found the missing piece in my horribly stereotyped hippie experiment of 1997.

I realized that everything I needed was at the touch of my finger tips already. My parents have always been into oatmeal (does anyone else’s parents give Irish steel-cut oats as Christmas presents? anyone?) so I was surrounded by all the necessary ingredients. Oh, how my parents’ well-stocked kitchen spoiled me from the very beginning.  After I pulled the tray out of the oven, with the smell of baked honey, cinnamon and oats drenching our kitchen, I distinctly remember thinking “Really? That was it?  But it’s so easy.”

Little did I realize then that granola is a snap to make. It’s extremely flexible to individual tastes and basically begs for you to experiment with spice blends.  And for an extra bonus, in these rough-and-tumble economic times, it’s incredibly cost effective because you can buy everything in bulk.  So when my cousin wanted to make granola this week, I was ready and armed to help her on her quest.

No longer using the granola recipe securely placed in that three-ring binder still proudly standing in my parents’ cookbook bookshelf, my granola recipe du jour has been snagged from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything.” And like Mark says in his introduction to the recipe, granola is very forgiving.  If you hate an ingredient, omit it.  If you love something, add it.

6 cups rolled oats
2 cups mixed nuts and seeds (pecans are my personal fave)
1 cup dried and unsweetened fruit, although I usually opt for a mix of regular and orange-flavored Craisins
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg (or any other spice you want. ginger, perhaps?  I’ve always wanted to put a sprinkling cayenne on to see if there would be any amazing flavor combo I’ve been missing)
A dash of salt if you please
1/2 c - 1 cup of honey or maple syrup, based on your preference.  Try 1/2 and 1/2 of the honey and syrup - it makes the maple flavoring really mellow.
1 cup dried coconut (optional)

Preheat your oven to 300F

Pour your oats into a 9×13 baking pan and cook them on the stove on low for a few minutes.  You can arrange the baking pan on two stove tops if that’s easier.  You want to cook them on the stove for about five minutes, until they change color and become fragrant.  If you like your individual oats to have a crunch, this is an important step.  I’ve skipped this before and my granola is still good, but it doesn’t have that satisfying crunch I like so much.

Add your nuts to the cooking oats and stir frequently for two minutes.  If you’ve decided to use coconut, you’ll want to add it with the nuts.  After two minutes, take the pan off the stove and add your spices and sweetener.  Make sure you coat the oat mixture as much as possible before you stick the pan into the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice during this period.  Take the granola out, let it cool and add your dried fruit.

Voila! Insta-health crunch.

Eat as much as you want and make sure you try it with yogurt as well as just eating it straight out of the bowl with a healthy dose of milk.  Homemade breakfast of champions.

Now go take your vitamins.