After having beef, corned beef, a casserole and crab, we were ready for some chicken. I flipped through more of my to-try recipes and this was the ticket. I had all the ingredients, which made it an instant winner! And it had citrus (it calls for lime juice; I had lemons instead), garlic and cilantro. If I’d started it several hours ahead, or even overnight, it likely would have been even better. But I did it at the last minute. It was delicious. I really enjoyed the garlic (6 cloves for 4 servings . . . wow), and the tang of lemon juice.

The recipe came from Sunset, in March of 2006, submitted by Cheryl Brown of Englewood, Colorado. The recipe blurb said Cheryl and her husband Rick once owned a restaurant in Littleton, Colorado, and this dish was a popular favorite.
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There are years when I don’t do anything special for St. Patrick’s Day. I may not even wear green. Even though part of my genealogy is Irish. I certainly wouldn’t ever drink green beer, but then I’m not a beer drinker anyway. What tilted me over the edge this time was seeing a Niman Ranch corned beef round at Trader Joe’s. You’ve heard it from me before, Niman Ranch makes some mighty fine meat products. The corned beef I bought was called a “corned beef round,” so I’d guess it was a slightly different cut. It had absolutely NO fat on it at all, and cost me about $14.00 for 5 pounds.

I also knew exactly what recipe I would make, too. My friend Linda T, a very good cook, has told me about her recipe for a couple of years, and I’ve been meaning to make this, so it was time.

The ingredients in this version aren’t all that different, but the cooking method IS a bit unusual: you simmer (always below a boil) the corned beef for 3 ½ to 4 hours, then cool the meat in the water until it reaches nearly room temp. (My guess is that time allows time for the meat to reabsorb some of the liquid it lost during the long slow simmering time). You remove the meat, spread it with a glaze and bake it for about 45 minutes before serving with vegetables you simmered in the cooking water from the beef. So you need to plan ahead with this – it’s not that it takes much hands-on time (it doesn’t), but you need to watch over the pot on the stove so it doesn’t boil (a very important aspect of this dish). It’s like braising – long, slow cooking at just under a boil. Keeps the meat more moist and succulent.

I wasn’t totally successful keeping the pot below a boil – I needed to run a couple of errands, and left the pot on the stove during that time. When I got back and lifted the lid, it was bubbling away. Perhaps a safer method would be to put the corned beef in a crock pot and pour boiling water over it, add the pickling spices and turn it to low right then and there. I’m not certain what temperature a crock pot on low is, but the beef might need a few more hours of that slow cooking than normal. With my crock pot (which is very old) on high it is boiling. I should measure the temp of the food one of these times when I use it.

If you use regular potatoes, just cut them into 4-6 pieces so everything will be done at about the same time. My favorite part of the vegetables is always the cabbage, especially simmered in that flavorful water. All the vegetables were done at the same time (I used fairly small carrots – if larger, you might want to give them an extra 5-10 minutes before you add all the other veggies).

The beef was moist and juicy. Easy to slice into thin pieces. The flavor? Outstanding. I’d make this again soon. If I could get more of Trader Joe’s corned beef, that is. I’ll have to look and see if they still have some and I might just buy one to make in a few weeks.

Cook’s Notes: remember to keep the corned beef below a boil during the 3-4 hours of simmering. Time the vegetables so they’re just done when the corned beef comes out of the oven. And save the cooking liquid – you use it for the veggies.
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With family visiting this week, and needing to get much bigger and easier dinners on the table every night, I flipped through the to-try recipes and this cake was the perfect solution. Easy. Made in a 9×13 pan with a oh-so-easy sugar topping. No frosting needed. I probably would have passed by the recipe except for the write-up about it. From Gourmet in 2005 (April), the brief blurb about it said that it’s a family favorite of Cynthia Knauer, the mother of one of Gourmet’s cross-testers, Ian Knauer.

It comes together in a jiffy. You first make an egg and sugar batter, but you beat the heck out of it until it’s really fluffy and ribbony. Meanwhile, you melt milk with a cube of butter until piping hot. After adding a flour and mace mixture to the eggs, you stir in the hot, hot milk and butter, pour that into a pan and bake, after sprinkling the top with a mixture of sugar and mace. It probably took a max of about 15 minutes to prepare the cake, and another 25 minutes to bake.

I really, really liked the cake. Lovely, subtle, soft flavors of the mace. I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake or anything where the predominant flavor was mace. You know what mace is, don’t you, other than just one more little jar on your spice rack? It’s from a covering on nutmeg pods. They’re beautiful looking, these coverings, in a kind of whorly-swirl, a kind of husk.

I read the recipe over at epicurious also, as well as the reviews of the cake. All but one person liked it a lot. One person mentioned she’d made it with some new mace she’d ordered from Penzey’s. Gave me an idea, since I’m certain my little jar of mace is many years old. The cake is nearly white-white, and with the sugar/mace icing, it’s still a very light-looking cake. So serve it with strawberries (recommended by the author). She also said that it never lasts very many days in her house as everybody stops by the pan and has a little slice every time they go through the kitchen. I understand. I had to laugh – our family has done the same thing, slicing off just a little bite here and there. A tiny snack.
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I remember it so vividly, the first time I had Chinese Chicken Salad. It was about 1977 or 1978. Regularly, I was flying from Orange County to San Jose, to supervise and train people in an office I managed (from a distance). I usually flew one morning, spent one night and returned home the next night. The office staff would take me out to lunch one of the days I was there, and a favorite place, close by, was Ming’s in Palo Alto. It’s still there, likely serving much the same menu as in the 70’s and 80’s. I tried the Chinese Chicken Salad, and was mesmerized. Most likely it was the fresh cilantro and the dressing that hooked me. Whatever it was, I’ve been a convert ever since. I believe that was the first time I’d ever been served a salad with nuts in it. What a revelation.

I must have missed the Sunset issue when Ming’s recipe was published. Nevertheless, I’ve collected Chinese chicken salad recipes by the dozens ever since. One year, attending a women’s luncheon, I particularly enjoyed the salad served, and was able to procure the recipe. I hadn’t made this for years and years and years, until the other night. Friends had been invited to dinner, and they requested I make salad, something light, and easy. First, we had cheese (fontina and manchego with some pear jam on the side) for appetizers, with some wine, then the salad, served with ciabatta. Followed by the pumpkin custard I posted yesterday.

The salad is quite simple in its construct. Cabbage, head lettuce, green onions, cucumber, almonds, cilantro and the noodles (dry) from Top Ramen (without the seasoning packet). The dressing is nothing by oil, seasoned rice wine vinegar, dark sesame oil, a little sugar, salt and pepper. It does take some time to chop and mince, but this salad is not as complicated as some I’ve had or made. The guests, and the family, raved about it. One guest said he thought the salad had the perfect proportion of cabbage and head lettuce, and that they were sliced just right. DH and our son-in-law Todd asked me to make it again, soon. No problem. I’ll be happy to.

A note about steeping the chicken: It was many years ago I read an article in Sunset about the Chinese (Asian) method of poaching chicken, used for any cold chicken dish you wish to make. It’s so very easy, and produces a much more tender and juicy piece of chicken than you can do by baking or even using a rotisserie chicken from the market. If time permits, bring a pot of water to a boil and add some carrot, celery and onion (otherwise just use water), allow it to simmer for 15-20 minutes, then add the boneless chicken breasts. Allow it to simmer very slowly for about 5 minutes or less. Put a lid on the pan, turn off the heat and allow the chicken to just sit (steep) in the liquid for about 30 minutes. Save the broth for another use, if you want, then allow chicken to cool a bit so it’s easier to handle, and chop or slice.
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I’ve been promising you, all my loyal readers (thank you, by the way), that I’d post this recipe. I mentioned it way back last Fall, saying that I had this low calorie, low fat dessert, perfect for the autumn months. I’m sure I’ve mentioned, I’m a big fan of anything pumpkin. Pumpkin pie is my most favorite pie. But I don’t make it, really, except at Thanksgiving. My will power is about zilch when it comes to pumpkin pie. I have an entire stack of recipes in my archives devoted just to all-things-pumpkin. Pies, cakes, tortes, breads, muffins, cookies, tarts, pudding, etc. But I try to stay away from them as much as possible.

The recipe came from Cooking Light, back in 2001. And the writer/developer raved about the flavor, telling readers it was worth making. I couldn’t agree more. This little number satisfies my yearning for pumpkin pie, but without all the calories, without the crust, and with a lot less fuss. And with very little fat. And it’s easy on top of it.

You’re wondering . . . where’s the praline? I ran out of time, so this time I served the custards with just a little covering of heavy cream (less than a tablespoon each). I make these in custard cups, espresso cups, or ramekins. If you use small cups, rather than ramekins, you’ll be able to serve more.

Whipping this together takes all of about 10 minutes (yes, really), then you bake them in a water bath for about 50 minutes, cool, serve. You whiz up the custard in the blender, to make sure the cinnamon gets distributed (ever noticed how cinnamon kind of floats everywhere it goes, especially liquid?). You definitely want it to disburse in this custard, so do use a hand mixer or a blender. But the ingredients can all fit in the blender bowl and takes but a few seconds to combine. Then you pour it into spray-covered ramekins and bake. I started the tea kettle to boil before I started the custard prep and by the time the water was boiling, I was all ready. But be sure to preheat the oven first – my oven wasn’t even hot when I was ready to put these in. That’s how quick they are to make.

A little bit about nutmeg here. I can’t stress enough, that there is real value (taste value) in using freshly grated nutmeg. Here’s a photo of a nutmeg pod. It’s about ½ inch in diameter, and I’ve had my nutmeg for years and years. I don’t think they go bad as long as they’re still in the whole form. So I bought this little gizmo, a nutmeg grinder, some years ago. It’s nothing fancy, comes apart in a jiffy, and contains the whole pods in a compartment in the top (you can see one pod inside) and the bottom part is the grinder. The flavor is so enhanced with fresh nutmeg. If you like to bake, you’ll find it worthwhile to have one of these grinders. As an aside, I went online and was going to give you a recommendation of a grinder, but having read reviews of several brands, I’m not sure which one I’d buy. They range in price from about $15 – $75. My little plastic one was under $10 when I bought it. Do read the reviews, though, before deciding on any of them. It appears the William Bounds ones get better write-ups.
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Did you know  . . . according to Prevention Magazine (December ’07) . . .

• “Cozying up with a good book shields your brain from decline. Baltimore’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Neurology studied 112 factory workers with similar blood levels of lead, a known mental health hazard, and those with an 11th grade reading level or lower did half as well on cognitive tests as better readers. Researchers theorize that bookworms develop a brainpower reservoir that’s tapped when disease or aging threatens their gray matter.” And, the article also says:
• “The average number of books a person has read in the last year . . . 4.”

I read waaaay more books than that. I read a lot – not just books, but also magazines and a variety of things online. Puzzle type games are supposed to be good for our brains too. Well, considering how many solitaire games I play, the amount of reading I do, and the fact that I also graduated from college, with those statistics, I’m likely to live to at least 120 or more. 😉

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Certainly you’ve had Beef Wellington at some time in your life, haven’t you? I’ve even made it a couple of times in individual servings. Very good. This recipe is kind of like a Beef Wellington except the beef is already cut into cubes, and it’s combined with a mushroom sauce inside, then served with a wonderful spicy horseradish sauce on the side. The recipe is Phillis Carey’s, from a recent cooking class. The subject of the class was “entertaining entrees.” And yes, they were. Are. For entertaining. Two other recipes from the class I probably won’t make (a pork tenderloin with port fig sauce and a chicken breast stuffed with spinach) as they weren’t very “wow,” in my book, anyway. If the recipes don’t wow me, I don’t even enter them into my recipe software program. But the orange roughy with leek sauce and this one I entered immediately.

The best thing about this beef tenderloin in puff pastry is that you can make it up ahead – like a week or so and freeze it (and bake it 10 minutes longer) – or you can make it up to 4 hours ahead and keep refrigerated until you’re ready to bake for your guests. I like those kinds of options when I’m entertaining.

The origin of the horseradish chive sauce is interesting. Phillis loves the jar of similar sauce made by Rothschild, and she looked at the ingredients on the jar and created a sauce very, very similar to it. Certainly cheaper. And really quite easy. She combines sour cream, mayo, chili sauce (not the hot type, more like a thick spicy catsup), garlic, horseradish and chives. Everybody in the class was “mmmm“-ing while we ate it. I made these for a dinner party last weekend. Got lots of ahhhs. And I promised to post the recipe for our guests so they can make this themselves.

The beef: gorgeous tender tips of fillet mignon briefly browned; a sauce with mushrooms, onion, garlic, dry sherry, broth; puff pastry cut into quarters and rolled out to a larger square. Beef and sauce in the center, pastry edges brushed with egg then pressed together into a kind of envelope. Then it’s baked in a hot oven. Have your dinner all ready during the last 5 minutes of baking – maybe even get your guests seated at the table. Whisk out the pastries and serve them immediately.

I did learn something in making these myself . . . I had a box of puff pastry in my freezer already. I also bought another one, because we had 9 people for the dinner party. I hadn’t looked at the dates on either package, but the newer purchased one was actually older than the one I had in my freezer. I could tell the difference. Some of the dough stuck to itself. I managed, but it was a little bit difficult. So, my advice is to buy fresh (well, it’s frozen) puff pastry and don’t keep it long. I also didn’t buy the recent package at a regular grocery, but an independent market, so it had been there in their freezer for nearly a year. The more recently frozen the puff pastry, the more likely it will be easier to roll out and manipulate.

Just be sure to defrost the puff pastry a day ahead – in the refrigerator. Don’t just set the box on the kitchen counter, or the pastry sheets will stick to themselves. The beef cubes need to be ever-so-quickly browned. That’s it. Just browned. They need to be still very, very red inside since they bake for an additional 15 minutes, and you’d like the meat to still retain a bit of pink. If you freeze the pastries, they are baked differently – don’t defrost them. Bake from a frozen state, at 400 for 25 minutes. And I’m being repetitive here, but serve them immediately. No dilly-dallying even 5 minutes.
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One year, many years ago, my DH and I took a driving trip up to Wine Country, in northern California. We stopped here and there, wineries, the Napa Valley Olive Oil Company, restaurants (Mustard’s was my favorite), and a darling little gourmet market that’s located on Highway 29. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s still there, on the east side of the highway. They carried mostly gourmet jars, cans, and a lovely selection of cheeses and olives, tapenade, grilled peppers, fresh bread and snacks. I was in heaven shopping in that little store. The clerk behind the counter recommended a cheese torte thing, to make a little picnic lunch we planned. He sliced off a wedge and off we went. Well, since you’re getting a recipe here, you can guess the torte was out of this world.

Once home, I researched a few cookbooks, and found nothing. I knew it had provolone cheese in it, some cream cheese and pesto, but I couldn’t pick out anything else. Weeks and months went by, and then one momentous Thursday morning our local paper (this was in 1989) featured an article about cheese tortes. Aha! I made it immediately, and made just a couple of little alterations to it.

What this is, is just layers of provolone cheese, pesto and a garlicky cream cheese and pine nut “cream,” then you allow it to sit overnight before unmolding it to serve. It’s really quite simple – probably no more than about 15 minutes to put together.

Leftovers: I almost always have some leftovers of this torte, as we can only eat so much of the appetizer night after night. So one time I cut what was left into little chunks (I used a chef’s knife and just chopped and chopped, then tossed it into a piping hot pot of pasta. It’s almost good enough to combine these ingredients without making it into a torte. Everything melts when you toss it with hot pasta.

Necessary items: a 7-inch round bowl, flat bottomed, or non-metal bread sized pan or dish. It needs to have sides that are about 3 inches high. You also need cheesecloth – not something every home cook has in her repertoire. But it really is necessary. I suppose you could use plastic wrap, but the torte oozes a little, and the cheesecloth absorbs the fluid.
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We’ve had an informal and infrequently-meeting gourmet group for a few years. Initially we met every couple of months, but then traveling got in the way of more than one gathering. Now we seem to meet only when one of us can manage to get everyone’s schedule to jibe. And initially the group was also a “healthy” gourmet group. We called it – and still do – the HGG (Health Gourmet Group). The healthy part lasted about 2 years, I’d say, and now it’s more like a “try to be healthy if you can” group. But when we do get together, we have a great time.

My friend Sue brought this salad to one of our dinners, and everybody just loved it. I’ve served it more than once since then, always to raves. There is an elusive flavor in this salad. Maybe it’s just the combo with the strawberries, which isn’t often seen in salads. Sue said the recipe came from one of her Junior League cookbooks. I’ve altered the recipe a little – reducing the amount of greens to serve 6 – it served way more originally, and I always had leftovers which didn’t keep, of course.

I made this as a separate course the other night for a large dinner party, while the main entrée finished off its cooking in the oven. I liked doing that because this salad is just so darned good to get diluted with more intense flavors from the beef we had for our entrée, or the seasoned vegetables either. Know what I mean?
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I wish it weren’t so, but put anything in front of me with chocolate in it, and I’m a goner. About the only thing I don’t eat of the chocolate variety is candy. Unless it’s chocolate covered nuts.

The photo here looks more like a plate of whipped cream with raspberries, but the chocolate cake is hidden behind. I was snapping photos of the food from a big dinner party we did the other night, and I didn’t take much time to compose the picture. I threw the plate in front of my fancy light and SNAP. Done. Whisked the plate to the table.

Obviously Phillis Carey, the cooking instructor who made this, likes chocolate too, as it features often in her class recipes. That’s all right by me.

This cake is not difficult – it has a minimum of ingredients (seven, by count) not including the whipped cream and raspberries served on the top, and it comes together in about 15 minutes. Just enough time for the oven to heat. I’m including a photo of the cake batter – I just love the combination of the colors – the rich egg batter and the melted chocolate. You don’t use the egg whites, so the batter is a very lemony yello color. Isn’t that purr-ty?

You melt the chocolate and butter together, cool it a little. The recipe calls for some instant coffee granules (espresso type). I don’t like to use caffeinated coffee in a dessert, so I made a very small amount of instant decaf espresso (no more than 2 T.). Alternately, you could use ordinary instant coffee dissolved in a tiny amount of water. An egg yolk and sugar batter is also mixed up until light, then the two batters are combined before popping into a greased springform pan. Bake. Cool.
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