Apple Pancakes and Big Little Lies

I read Lianne Moriarty's fun Big Little Lies a few months ago, but with a busy weekend and not enough time to tackle some of the more ambitious projects I had planned (Neapolitan pizza or cream puffs coming soon!), some easy apple pancakes were the perfect choice this weekend.  I have read a few Moriarty books and she creates a really engaging "Real Housewives of Sydney" type of world, but with more depth and less trashiness (and plastic surgery).  In Big Little Lies, Moriarty creates both characters and a story that are funny and slapstick one moment, and dark and sad the next.  This juxtaposition makes the book a little more than the typical light read.  As the title suggests, the book has some secrets that are eventually revealed, so I will be careful and keep the review short and sweet.  The pancakes are inspired by the hunky neighborhood coffee shop guy, who always seems to be trotting out some delectable special pancakes when one of the books main characters, Jane, is sulkily hanging around.  These were an improvisation, so hopefully the recipe will work for you.

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Ina Garten Make it Ahead: Cake, Quinoa and Ricotta

Well hello there!  Long time no see!  Happy New Year!  I am happy to be back with you and back to bookcooker.  I apologize for my long absence - no good excuse really -  lack of inspiration, lack of time, too much work, life etc...The important thing is I am back, ready to start 2015 with a bang and a blog post!  I resolve to blog more this year, this will be helped by an awesome new camera I was lucky to get as an Xmas gift that has inspired me to get back at it!  Starting the year with a visit with Ina Garten.  Now as I posted previously, I clearly have a cookbook problem with 200+ cookbooks in my home.  A good little chunk of this problem is with Ina Garten books.   I have every single on her books, which I think is 9 now?  There is just something about Ina - her personality, her style, her food and her adorable husband Jeffrey that I find irresistible.   I have cooked out of all 9 of these cookbooks, and you know what?   Not one recipe has failed.  Not one recipe has been too complicated.  And not one recipe has been "meh."  I will admit her recipes, after 9 books, can seem a bit formulaic - but it clearly a formula that works, so who am I to question?  For this post I am starting with Ina's newest book - Make it Ahead.  One thing I have noticed in that some of Ina's later cookbooks there is a bit of repetition and some of the recipes seem a tad uninspired.  But even in these books there is loads of great recipes to make, all a combination of accessible and special.  The theme of this Make it Ahead book is obviously recipes you can make ahead of time.  I am not sure how well this theme really drives the book - but like I said, there are loads of great recipes in there.  I made all of them before I ate them ; ), but not anymore than 1 day before I ate them - so not that "make ahead." The three recipes I made are a good example of the end of December to beginning of January trajectory many of us are on: a festive mocha cake (end of December) to a quinoa tabbouleh (beginning of January) with a homemade ricotta somewhere in the middle of a celebration excess and cleanse diet mentality.  All were easy, all were delicious, with perhaps the homemade ricotta as a standout  - such minimal effort, such incredible reward!

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Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins

These muffins, from the "Baked: New Frontiers in Baking" book are a great example of a minimal effort, maximum reward recipe.  You can throw them together in 20 minutes and they take another 20 minutes or so to bake, and yet they are definitely something a little special.  What clearly makes them unique and more sophisticated than the average muffin is the addition of the instant espresso powder.  Pairing chocolate with coffee is obvious, but coffee and banana made me question this recipe briefly - but the coffee adds a nice depth to muffin, making it not too sweet.  This recipe is from the original Baked book from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, owner of the Brooklyn bakery of the same name.  When it came out a few years ago it seemed like the perfect Brooklyn hipster cookbook - baked goods styled with little plastic dears and such.   It is the real deal though, the recipes are both recipes you really want to make and recipes that work really well.  The most famous recipe from the book is the "baked brownie", which I have made many times and it is my go to brownie recipe.  The brownies turn out glossy, rich, with the right balance between fudge-like consistency and depth of chocolate flavor.  There are other gems in here that you should give a try in addition to these amazing, easy muffins (maple walnut scones, chocolate pie, brewers blondies, classic sugar coookies) and many more I want to make (green tea cupcakes, malted milk cake, sweet and salty cake, icebox towers., pumpkin whoopie pies..)

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Still Life with Breadcrumbs and Berry Scones

I recently read Anna Quindlen's "Still Life with Breadcrumbs" as part of a new book club organized by one of my old camp friends.  This is not a book that was on my list or that I was even aware of, but I really liked it a lot.  It is rare these days that a book (or a movie or tv show...) is about a woman over 50, Still Life with Breadcrumbs is a nice break from the norm.  The book is about Rebecca Winter a famous photographer who has fallen on hard times, is struggling to make ends meet, and hasn't taken many photographs lately.  In an effort to save some money (and perhaps find some inspiration) she escapes her Manhattan apartment to a modest cottage in upstate New York.  It is in this small town (after a few days alone in the cottage with a raccoon, questioning her sanity and her decisions) that she walks into Tea for Two cafe and orders the first of many scones from the proprietor, the chatty Sarah.  While she spends a year in the small town, she consumes many of these scones, finds her artistic voice again and finds love.  Along the way it is an insightful, funny and moving read.

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Winter of the World and Doughnuts Again!

For the first book in Ken Follett's Century trilogy I made the original WWI "doughboy" doughnuts.  When it came time to pick a dish for the second book in the series - Winter of the World - I was a bit stumped.  The novel picks up a few years after the first book left off and focuses on World War II.  Kinda hard to pick an appropriate dish when the novel contains so much suffering told from the perspective of Russians, Germans, English and Americans fighting in the war or victimized by it.  The only choice that seemed right to me was doughnuts in coffee - when the American, Woody Dewar, is set to storm Normandy the next day the only thing he can manage to eat is a doughnut and coffee.  The only other food in the book that seemed somewhat appropriate were the dried figs that Lloyd Williams, a British intelligence officer, was able to eat as he helped people escape Nazi occupied Western Europe during the height of the war.  So I combined the two and made fig speckled buttermilk donuts with coffee glaze.  As for the book, it was an engaging follow up by Follett that would especially attract 20th century history buffs.  It continues my trend of late to read really hefty books - it weighs in at over 900 pages.

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The Language of Flowers and Maple Doughnuts

The Language of Flowers is a book with a heroine that loves to eat, so there were many many options presented for bookcooker.  Perhaps if it was another season I would have selected another type of food that Victoria voraciously ate (roast chicken, homemade ice cream, peanut butter muffin), but since I read the book as autumn sets in, I knew immediately as I read the words that I had to make maple doughnuts Who can resist maple donuts?  While these donuts are fluffy and sweet, The Language of Flowers is a book about serious issues - foster care, homelessness, trust issues.  While these serious issues are the focus of the book, I must admit, in some ways the book reads a bit fluffy - there is a lightness to it that makes it feel a bit like one of those 80's after school specials - tough stuff turned into soap opera.   Despite that criticism, I really enjoyed the book but maybe felt a little guilty reading it.  Just like how I felt after eating one of those doughnuts.

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Blackberry Crumb Muffins and Two Books

Hello old friends!  After a bit of a hiatus (a little bit of a writing rut, reading rut, cooking rut and enjoying life outside the blog) I am returning to bookcooker.  I hope you will bear with me as slowly get back on the horse!  I made these pretty little muffins a while ago, when the recipe appeared in the New York Times.  It was perfect timing, because I had recently read two (very different) books that this recipe was perfect for -  Where'd You Go Bernadette and Bringing Up the Bodies.  Where'd You Go, by Maria Semple is a unique novel where much of the story is told through letters, emails and various other documents, like memos.  It is the very funny story of a daughter's search for her brilliant but more than slightly off mother (Bernadette) set in the milieu of affluent and politically correct Seattle.  A disastrous chain of events is set off when Bernadette gets into a dispute with her obnoxious neighbor concerning some unruly blackberry bushes on her property (inspiration for the blackberry part of the muffin.)  Bringing Up the Bodies is Hilary Mantel's riveting second book in her series of books about Henry VIII's right hand man - Thomas Cromwell.  This book follows the downfall of Anne Boleyn - and while this tale has been told many times before, unsurprisingly Mantel brings new wit and intelligence to the story.  While Anne is certainly a compelling distraction, the story is really about Thomas Cromwell - his relationship to the mercurial king and how he manages to survive yet another upheaval in the house of Tudor.  Those around Cromwell give him the nickname "Crumb", hence the crumb part of the muffin.   A two for one recipe was the perfect impetus to get me off my bum and back to blogging.  Here we go.

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Healthy Carrot Coconut Muffins

I have been in a major yogurt rut lately.  I eat yogurt for breakfast practically every weekday - it is healthy, easy and genuinely yummy.  But every day, ugh, I am sick of it.  While I eat yogurt every day, what I really want to be eating every morning for breakfast is a delicious warm muffin or scone.  I am a major carb addict, I am never successful for more than 24 hours trying to eliminate all carbs from my diet.  I just can't do it.  Well, I probably can do it, but I really don't want to.  Of course, as much as I want to, I can't eat a muffin every day, so yogurt it is.  That is, until I found this recipe for Coconut-Carrot Morning Glory muffins that has very little fat, no refined sugar and is made with whole wheat flour.  I am late to the coconut oil bandwagon, but I believe that is the reason these muffins taste so rich and are also somewhat healthy.  While I still shouldn't eat them every day, I did the week that I made them.  Sue me.

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Pumpkin Party: Pumpkin Pancakes

The pumpkin party continues, with breakfast the focus today.   On a cold rainy morning (perhaps while you hunker down before the power goes out during a hurricane?) these rich, lightly spiced pancakes do the trick.   When you add pumpkin to pancakes, there is no doubt that you must let go of any hope that your pancakes will be light and fluffy - pumpkin inevitably brings some denseness to the pancake party.  But while you lose some of that elusive pancake fluffiness, you gain a real depth of flavor.  After all, aren't plain ol pancakes not much more than a vehicle for maple syrup?  Not these things, while they are light on the sugar, the pumpkin flavor really comes through, as does the pumpkin pie spice. And about that pumpkin pie spice, I usually am against using "pumpkin pie spice" and like to carefully put together the right amounts of each of the key spices - nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, etc... but with these pancakes and some other recipes I made for pumpkin week I took the shortcut and used a good quality pumpkin pie spice (penzeys), but when it comes time to make my thanksgiving pies, I will go back to the old fashioned way of a pinch of this and a pinch of that.
These pancakes I adapted from Nigella Lawson, who, strangely, didn't include any spices whatsoever in her recipe!  That just seemed strange to me, as the best part of any pumpkin sweet, in my opinion, are the spices.  So I added some.  For me, pancakes are a little too much effort (and carbs and calories) for everyday, but these are a great fall weekend treat!

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Apple Fest: Apple Ricotta Toasts

We're almost at the end of apple fest and soon will be moving on to pumpkin fest (oh yeah, and this is still a book review blog too, right?  The Marriage Plot and Game of Thrones coming soon).   This Apple Ricotta toast is something for the easy but indulgent breakfast/brunch hopper. I saw it on Food and Wine's website, and the recipe is from April Bloomfield, whose Spotted Pig restaurant I love in NY and whose cookbook, a Girl and Her Pig, I am also a big fan of, for the pictures at least, I have not made anything from it yet.  This toast attracted be because it was different than the usual apple breakfast concoctions - muffins, breads, pancakes and because it had fresh ricotta, which is one of my favorite things to eat.  The recipe calls for thickly sliced pan de mie or other fancy bakery white bread. I went with Trader Joe's Texas Toast and I must say it was a revelation.   I generally don't eat white bread, so have never had this before, though I have seen it often on my sister's kitchen counter.  The bread was perfect for this dish   - it is a thickly sliced enriched white bread - kinda like challah but not quite as rich, making it a good base for the buttery apples and cheese.   Since the bread is so thick, one piece of toast is the perfect portion per person.  This is something you could whip up as a treat for yourself or as a dish for guests.  And while the bread and cheese are great, in truth this is all about the sweet buttery pile of apples.  Enjoy.

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Shadow of Night and Currant Buns

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness is the first book I have read electronically rather in paper form, which is my usual preference. I recently got an ipad but did not immediately switch over to reading on my ipad, because I am a traditionalist and like the feel of a book in my hands.  In addition to being a traditionalist, I also sometimes have attention span trouble, I am easily distracted, especially when it comes to the internet, so I was worried that I would read a lot slower on the ipad because I would be constantly switching reading, checking facebook, and buying sweaters on J.Crew.com.  I put these concerns aside with  Shadow of Night, the second book in Harkness's All Souls Trilogy, because I simply could not wait to go to the store and buy  the book, I was so excited for the book I wanted to read it as soon as it was released.   For me, it was the perfect ipad choice, since I was engrossed in the book and was not distracted by other ipad features, mainly the internet!  Regular readers of the blog may recall that earlier this year I reviewed the first book in the All Souls Trilogy, A Discovery of Witches.  I loved the book, though admitted it was a tad on the cheesy romance side.  I also loved Shadow of Night, and found that either I was used to the cheesiness or it had subsided a bit.  The second book picks up just moments after the first book ends, with the two main characters, Mathew de Clermont (the vampire) and Diana Bishop (the witch) plunged back in time to Elizabethan England.  The story picks up with Mathew and Diana searching for the mysterious Ashmole manuscript and struggling to manage their volatile love affair.  As with the first book in the series, what is fun about Shadow of Night for me is the rich historical references and detail.  Here, the book is set in the past and it is thrilling to read about a present day character getting to interact with historical figures like Christopher Marlowe.  Second books in trilogies are often placeholders - we know that all the real action will be saved for the concluding book, but Shadow of Night was engrossing even if it did not advance the ball, suspense-wise, too much.  More about the book and these currant buns after the jump.

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The Kitchen House and Southern Cornbread

I have had a hard time finding the time to sit down and write my book reviews lately!  A big part of the reason is that I am having a bit of a tech overload  - I finally got an iphone (I have used a blackberry for years and still do for work) and then a couple of days later I decided I needed an ipad too.  As a result, I have been distracted by apps, apps and more apps - the exact reason I resisted getting an ipad for so long - I didn't want it to take away from my reading time!  Oh well.  I have put the ipad and iphone aside this evening so I can finally write about The Kitchen House, which I read in a three day frenzy a few weeks ago.  If you are looking for an engrossing book that will really engage you, The Kitchen House is it.  The book follows the story of a young (white) Irish girl who becomes an indentured servant on a Virginia plantation circa 1791.  She lives with the slaves who work in the "Big House"of the plantation owner, the Pyke family,   works with the slaves and becomes part of their family.  A white girl who will eventually gain her freedom living amongst slaves is clearly a situation that will cause drama and strife and the book chronicles the troubles of the Irish girl, Lavinia, the slaves of the Pyke plantation and the dysfunctional, destructive Pyke family itself. Once I got into the book, it was hard to put down - it is filled with dramatic turns and moments where the characters make such bad decisions you find yourself screaming at the book.  The cornbread above was an easy choice for a dish - even though this book is called The Kitchen House, in light of the extreme poor conditions slaves were forced to endure, food was not plentiful.  But good food was celebrated, and this simple cornbread is surely something that Belle, the cook and Lavinia's surrogate mother, would have made. I have heard The Kitchen House compared a lot to The Help, I see the similarities and will speak more about this after the jump.

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Blackberry Cornmeal Poundcake

This post and little cake should go into the category of cooking inspired by ingredients that are on sale at Whole Foods.  For a few weeks now, blackberries have been on sale for something like 2 packages for 3 bucks, and when it comes to summer fruit, I cannot turn down a deal like that! (Consequently in coming days you will see the ubiquitous spring rhubarb post, strawberry post, and cherry post - though there were no deals to be had on those cherries).  Once I bought the blackberries I knew I wanted to put them into a rich yellow pound cake.  I took a Martha Stewart recipe for a blueberry cake and adapted that and also added some cornmeal, to give it a nuttier flavor.  The cake turned out wonderfully and is it is a very versatile snacking cake - it feels appropriate at breakfast, an afternoon snack, and for dessert.  I used sour cream in this because I had some extra from the borscht I made recently, but Greek yogurt would also work great (though I would recommend at least low fat if not full fat).  Besides switching the fat, this would work with so many fruits, including all the wonderful berries etc... that are coming soon to a farmers market near you.  The other great thing I discovered about this cake was by accident.  I had just poured the batter into the pan and was sliding into the oven when my date for the evening showed up unexpectedly early.  I ended up taking it out of the oven, covering it with plastic and shoving it in the fridge since I would not be able to bake it until the next day.  I was sure it would be ruined, but I just let the cake come up to room temperature and then baked it as I had planned and it was perfect.  So this would be great to put together the night before you want to serve it at brunch if you want to serve it warm right out of the oven.

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The Weird Sisters and Ricotta and Blueberry Pancakes

Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters is a wonderful novel that is at its heart about sisterly love.  The novel is narrated by all three of the Andreas sisters.  I don't mean that novel is divided between each sister narrating in the first person but instead they all narrate together, a collective "we."  This narrative trick is just one of the things that makes this novel so charming.  What is also charming is that the characters often speak to each other in Shakespearean verse.  The father of the three sisters is a professor at a small but prestigious college in Ohio that has devoted his life to the study of the bard.  His deep knowledge of Shakespeare was passed on to his daughters - whether they wanted it or not - and the family communicates both trivial and important things to each other through Shakespeare's words.  The three sisters are named after characters in Shakespeare's plays - Rosalind (Rose) from As You Like It, Bianca (Bean) from The Taming of the Shrew (and Othello) and Cordelia (Cordy) the favored daughter from King Lear.  The book follows these three very different sisters as they all come home, really for their own reasons but also to help care for their mother, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Each sister, while dealing with their mother's illness is also dealing with a major crossroads in her life, and it is the time the sisters spend together that helps each sister move forward.   These pancakes were inspired by a meal the family had together, the first meal cooked for them by the prodigal daughter, Cordelia.  I fancied up the pancakes with some fresh ricotta cheese and Meyer lemon.  A wonderful easy brunch dish.

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Soda Bread Scones

Happy Almost St. Patrick's Day to everyone.  Although I am far from Irish, St. Patty's Day gets a lot of play here in Boston, since there is such a large Irish-American population here and Bostonians in general like to drink, and for most people, St. Patrick's day means lots of drinking!  But for me, in addition to the drinking (a St. Patrick's Day drink will be coming later in the week) it also means Irish-American Soda Bread starts turning up in stores. I know that the soda bread with raisins and caraway seeds is not "real" Irish Irish soda bread, but I love the combination of sweet and salty in the Americanized version.  The problem I often have with the store bought variety is that the loafs are so big and dense, only the edges are really good, and the middle is either underdone or the whole thing is a massive dry hockey pock.  I thought breaking up the soda breads into little scones would solve this issue when I made some at home this weekend, and it really did help.  This are appropriately dense but also tender and moist.  I made these with currants and caraway seeds, but raisins would be just as good. 

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Easy Breakfast: Baked Berry Oatmeal

A little bite of breakfast to tide you over till my next book post (it's a doozy people, last week I became a devotee of the Hunger Games trilogy, plowed through two of the books in one week, perhaps I will be through the third by the time I post!) Here is a quick recipe for people looking to make a healthy breakfast for a bunch of people (or for yourself for a week) with minimal amount of work. And, it feels like a treat since it looks like a pie!  I found this recipe on the Whole Foods website and was intrigued.   I love oatmeal but hate instant oatmeal, so on busy everyday mornings I find I bypass oatmeal as a breakfast option since I don't have the time.  This dish you can make the night before and just heat up in the microwave.  It is also a treat because I make my oatmeal with water, and this little oatmeal pie is made with milk and yogurt.  I used frozen berries and pecans in this version, but the fruit and nut options are limitless, hell, you could even throw in some chocolate chips!  While this is great for everyday breakfast, it also is special enough for a casual brunch (and you could use cream instead of milk to give that special boost).

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