Cookbook of the Year: Alinea

Looking for the perfect holiday gift for your fellow foodie friend? I recommend Aliena by Grant Atchatz (who won the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef award this year). I find myself at a loss to explain how impressively awesome this book is. The restaurant Alinea, located in Chicago and known for serving 25 course/$225 molecular gastronomic creations, is perhaps the best in our country. If you aren't familiar with this style of cuisine, I recommend a trip to their website. The pictures here are from their gallery. The first is peanuts, then bacon and lastly heart of palm.

The 416- page, 6 pound cookbook was published in-house and the first hundred pages read like an ode to food with famous culinary authors sharing their thoughts on eating, creativity in the kitchen and how to use the masterpiece you are reading. The book is intended to provide the home cook with practical ways in which to make the elaborate recipes within. Though I myself am a bit daunted, perhaps I would make the lavender tofu (made from homemade soy milk of course) but not as a tiny garnish on an elaborate dish.

What I love are the beautiful pictures and unique ways of serving foods I commonly eat. For example, one garnish is grated frozen gravlox, which I would never have thought of. The book contains links to videos so you can watch the chefs perform cooking techniques described in the book as well as information on purchasing the beautiful plates their food is served (or sometimes perched) on.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article published on the 13th of this month, the journalist described several courses he was served: "[F]ish in an environment of tobacco, radish and cedar. This follows a pear enhanced with olive oil, black pepper and eucalyptus. And it precedes a tiny pork-belly symphony with Japanese overtones."

Whether you think it would enhance your coffee table or provide you with hours of drooling-while-reading, I recommend it as a gift to yourself or someone you truly love.

Pea Soup

These past few months my focus has been on soup making...pea soup, spicy sausage lentil soup, black bean puree/soup, chili, squash soup, gallons and gallons of chicken stock...

A friend recently brought to my attention that my way of freezing soup was new to him and so I thought it blog worthy. Here is how I go about storing my soup. I am just freezing for now, but I am very interested in learning how to can my soups.

#1 The first picture is my soup a simmerin'. I realize pea soup is not a universal favorite, but it was oh so good!

#2 The second picture is a freezer Ziplock bag with the soup's name, number of servings and the date.


#3 Next I place the bag in a measuring cup and scoop about 12 ounces of soup per person. Having the cup holder keeps my bag from wobbling all over the place and spilling my precious soup.
#4 I squeeze all the air out of the bag and place it flat on a rack in my freezer.

#5 When frozen I take the bags and line them up in a row or take them to my deep freezer in the garage which you can see in the picture.


More recently I have started serving soup to dinner guests. Usually I have a protein at the center of my meals, but by adding a large salad, whole grain bread from Great Harvest and huge slabs of white cheddar cheese, we have turned these into very cozy meals.

So I have shared with you my soup dinners, what soups do you crave in the cold winter weather?

Bizarre Fruits

I was shopping at our local grocery store the other day and noticed a new section of fruit. Some of them were familiar to me, but many of them were new...and exciting.

I was preparing for a dinner party that evening, the theme: Ethiopian food. This all was decidedly un-Ethiopian, but very exotic and I decided to purchase a pile of fruit and give everyone a knife and cutting board to dice up their fruit. We served the motley collection with four different ice cream flavors.

There was one fruit called Buddha's hands that I did not buy. It was ten dollars and I had a full basket...but I will definitely go back and try it. I pasted a picture from wikipedia on this citrus fruit above. To me it looks more like a yellow baby octopus. :)

From what I can remember, here is what I purchased left to right:

Red Banana - These are about half the size of a regular banana and a bit sweeter.
Horned Melon - This orange fruit has little spikes all over and was a pretty green inside.
Pitahaya (or Dragon Fruit) - Red on the outside but grayish in color on the inside with little black edible seeds. I can't seem to find this one in the picture.
Mango and Kiwi - My fall back fruit.
Star Fruit - This is the tall yellow fruit with the five ridges. When you slice this fruit it actually has the shape of a star. Ours was very tart, but you can find sweeter varieties.
Persimmon - This is the reddish orange fruit on the far right. It was mealy and not too flavorful. I was reminded of a papaya.
Rambutan - I think this was the most unusual. It look like a small red lychee nut with dark bristles all around it. Very easy to peel and fairly sweet compared to the other citrus fruit we tried.

I am definitely not doing these fruit justice. For great pictures and a thorough explanation of several exotic fruit I have listed here, check out: http://www.squidoo.com/exoticfruit. All this simply to say, if you haven't had it before and it is staring you in the face at the grocery store, try it!! You may find something you like. I had no idea what some of these different fruits were going to taste like, so I let my guests participate in the experience.

So, my readers, what new foods have you seen in the supermarket and did you have the kahoonies to try it? What did you think?

Cooking Guru on Xmas Gifts

Question:

Oh Cooking Guru,

Could you please recommend a 9X13 ceramic baking dish for me to buy for my mom-in-law for X-mas? She said she had one and she was baking something in it and then took it out of the oven and added something cold in it on accident and her pan cracked. SO, I would say functionality is top priority. And possibly doubling as a serving dish.

Thanks!

Response:

Ah!! Maybe she had stoneware….I would recommend Emile Henry. They can go from freezer to oven no problem and they are very pretty.

Fresh From The Oven...

One of my favorite things to make this time of year is pumpkin bread. This recipe has been in my family since I was a wee-tyke. I believe the story goes that as a young child I asked my mom about the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can. Being a feeder herself, she whipped up the most delicious batch of pumpkin bread, and the rest is history. I add added a dash of vanilla and perhaps some of the spices over the years.

Right now I have a quadruple batch of pumpkiny goodness in my oven (well, truth be told, only half of it actually fit in my oven). I have mini-muffins, normal muffins, large muffins, mini loafs, regular sized loafs and a 9x9 pan. Pretty much every baking pan I own is involved in the pumpkin-baked-goods process and my kitchen smells yummy.

A normal sized loaf pan takes 60 minutes and any variation you make to the baking container you use will change the cooking time. I believe my mini-muffins take 35 minutes, mini loafs 40, etc. Just start checking after 30 minutes and when the edges are brown and pull away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean, you are good to go. The smell test works well also...when it smells delicious it is most likely done or very close.

But what to serve pumpkin bread with?? I love butter or peanut butter on my pumpkin bread. If you are looking for a lovely holiday gift for your neighbors, look no further.

Pumpkin Bread
Makes 2 loaves

4 eggs
2/3 cup water
1 cup salad oil (you can use olive oil or butter)
2 cups (16 oz.) pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/3 cups flour
3 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of powdered cloves

1. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add oil, water, pumpkin, and vanilla. Mix well.

2. In another large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices.

3. Make a well in the center of these ingredients and add the pumpkin mix to this. Mix all the ingredients. Turn into well oiled loaf pans.

4. Bake at 350 for one hour. Remove pans from the oven and set on a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Remove from baking pans and store.

A tip: I brush butter or oil on inside of my baking vessels with a pastry brush. I also dust a coating of sugar on top of the oil to help the bread release after baking.

Another tip: This bread freezes incredibly well. But when defrosting frozen breads, don't leave them in the fridge overnight or they tend to dry out. The best way to defrost frozen bread is on the counter.