It’s been awhile since I started using Eat Your Books, and thought it was about time I told you something about it. So you can check it out yourself. If you’re an avid cook (well, you must be or you wouldn’t be reading my blog, right?) and have a whole collection of cookbooks and never know where or which book has what, this website is right up your alley.

The other night I wanted to fix cauliflower. This provides a perfect example of how you’d use EYB for cooking at your house. At Eat Your Books, or EYB for short. Somebody mentioned it on his/her blog a couple of months ago, and the website was offering a lower-priced sign-up bonus. Which I did. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I hope to use it day in and day out for years to come (here’s hoping the website is successful and stays in biz!).

Here’s what EYB is all about. Once you sign up for an account (30 days for free at the moment), you enter the names of all of the cookbooks you own. In an ideal world, they would have listings for all the books I have on my bookshelves. Not so, but they had about 75% of them. As an aside, the books they didn’t have listings for are ones I own that are really old, a bit obscure, several books from England, and one Indian cookbook. It also didn’t have several new books I own. Go figure. So I individually entered the titles of all the books that matched up with their list. Their server grinds through and pops up the book. I add it to my cookbook collection at EYB. It did take me awhile (maybe 1 1/2 hours) to do this, but then I own a huge collection of cookbooks. What I did, actually, was stand in front of my cookbook collection and write down all the titles with the author’s last name. That was all I needed for all but a couple of books. Here’s what my EYB bookshelf says now:

You have (147) Cookbooks and (16,480) Recipes on your bookshelf.

THEN, here’s the good part – I was ready to cook something (cauliflower this time, remember) – I went to EYB and typed in the word cauliflower. Up it came with a listing of where, in my cookbook collection, recipes exist for cauliflower. (It doesn’t give you the recipes, it just gives you the recipe titles they’ve gathered from the recipe titles or indexes of the cookbook library.) It gave me about 12 choices. From the recipe titles I could tell several of them were not something I wanted to make (like cauliflower with pasta, cauliflower and peas, cauliflower and rice, cauliflower in a salad), but there were about three that met my initial criteria as a dinner side dish. And the one that sounded most interesting was in Deborah Madison’s book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Time elapsed: It took me about 3 minutes to type in the search term, get the results and hone in on the recipe I wanted to investigate, and about 30 seconds to find the cookbook and go to the right page. A whole lot less time than standing in front of my cookbooks and staring at the titles wondering which one(s) might contain an appropriate recipe for a side dish cauliflower.

There are other functions at EYB too. Like advanced searches for ethnic, or by category. Or maybe gluten-free (I’ll use that one next time my cousin comes to visit), or sugar-free. If the cookbook has been fully indexed it will show you a page with all the ingredients in that dish (so you might eliminate it if it contained something you didn’t have, or didn’t want to go shopping to get).  Only 880 cookbooks at EYB are fully indexed. That means that you would be able to use a cookbook’s intuitive index (like a recipe titled just Provencal Summer Squash Casserole, for instance, might be listed under Squash, Summer Squash, French, vegetables, sugar-free, and gluten-free).

You can also mark recipe titles with a favorites icon, or a do-later one, in case you run across one as you’re doing a search. Like the pasta with cauliflower and peas I spotted on this search. It wasn’t appropriate for this meal, but it sounded interesting for later. I haven’t tried those functions yet, but they sound like great ideas. It will also help you with menu planning if you want, and help create a shopping list (without quantities, though). I used to store my myriad cookbooks in two or three places (now I have just one area), but if you have multiple locations, you can flag the cookbooks in “My Locations” as you enter the info about them, to indicate “kitchen,” or “dining room,” or “garage” perhaps to save time when you need to run and find one. You can also rate (with stars) your own cookbooks. There’s a user forum too, and you can make friends with other EYB members if you want to, like Facebook for cookbook users.

If you want to get a quick tour of EYB, go check it out for yourself. And right now they do have a 30-day free trial. I’m quite pleased with the resources so far. The website was founded/developed by three women who live in far parts of the world. Amazing how the web levels the playing field. I wish these gals success in the venture. Makes perfect sense to me that I can go to the web to find my recipes. Just differently!

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A year ago: Blueberry & Ginger Salsa (so very good with pork)
Three years ago: Peppered Pecans (a favorite)

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Swordfish is one of the fishes that I truly enjoy. Mostly, I’d say, it’s a texture thing. I like that’s it’s more firm, almost meat-like. And swordfish has a distinctive taste. In this preparation the swordfish shines through but is accented with the Greek type additions – lemon juice, fresh oregano, white wine, garlic and olive oil. We don’t have swordfish often – it’s one of the fishes that’s highest in mercury, so we definitely do NOT want to eat it with any frequency. And pregnant mothers or women who might become pregnant are advised not to eat swordfish. With that in mind, I don’t eat it but a couple of times a year.

The fish steaks were washed gently and dried. Then they were marinated for a few hours in the refrigerator (or 30 minutes at room temp). My DH grilled them about 4-6 minutes per side until they were just tender. Well, a correction –  he took them off the grill, we sat down to eat and discovered they were still quite firm and chewy. I cut my steak in half and touched my finger to the center – it was just lukewarm. Back they went on the grill – for a very short time – and then the fish flaked easily with a fork. Now, it won’t flake as easily as halibut, for instance. It’s a firmer fish to begin with – it’s more dense. Maybe that’s a better way to describe it. Anyway, the lemon juice just highlighted the fish altogether. My DH professes to not like swordfish very much. It’s not that he won’t eat it, but he says he’d never order it out. He just prefers other fish. But he admitted this was really good, and he’d have it anytime the way I made it. I have another 4 or 6 swordfish steaks in the freezer, so we’ll be having this again, for sure. In six months.

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A year ago: Bing Cherry Compote (oh, was that ever good – it’s cherry season so I should make it again)
Two years ago: Irish Cream Brownies
Three years ago: Pasta a la Puttanesca (a big family favorite)

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Looks like guacamole, doesn’t it? Wrong. It’s a smooth, unctuous spoon-able soup. Lovely on a hot, summer evening, in small glasses with some crushed tortilla chips on top and a little sprig of cilantro. It was VERY easy to make in the food processor. You just have to have some ripe avocados and some buttermilk. Very delicious.

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Ah yes. You will believe me when I say it was delicious, right? When all you can see is the pitiful bone left after serving a big dinner to guests? And you’ll forgive me for not taking a photo of the finished roast? I hope so!

If it were cooler weather I’d have made some kind of soup with the bone, but alas, it’s too hot in the kitchen or our outdoor patio dining area to make or eat hot soup. So this bone got chucked in the trash. But the meat that came from it was quite good. Good enough that I’d make it again. Easy enough too.

I turned to one of my favorite barbecue cookbooks of late, Steven Raichlen’s The Barbecue! Bible. You don’t find all that many recipes for barbecued lamb anywhere. Raichlen has several in this book (well, the cookbook has 500+ barbecue recipes). Anyway, I had all the ingredients on hand  (always a good sign). All it took was to buy a bone-in leg of lamb and making the relatively simple marinade. And cutting a bunch of slits in the meat to stuff in little slivers of garlic and fresh ginger.

There you can see all the little studs of garlic and ginger. And the Worcestershire and soy marinade. The meat sat in the frig for about 8 hours with the marinade. Once drained, it went onto the barbecue with indirect heat (no searing of any of the meat) with a drip pan below the grates. It stayed there for about 2 hours, until the meat thermometer hit 160°.  This meat wants moderate heat, not high heat. It’s a roast, you know! It sat for about 10 minutes lightly tented with foil before we sliced and served it.

With the pineapple relish stuff Raichlen recommends in the book. Raichlen has traveled the world over for ethnic recipes, and he certainly adheres to the adages in the book, The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. If you haven’t read it, Thomas Friedman dissects how, in our global economy, we can so easily buy (now) a Thai urn, kites from China, saffron from Spain, lentils from Morocco. Or talk to a computer expert in India as if he or she is 20 miles away. And the products are all available at our local stores. In this case Raichlen doesn’t care that the meat preparation is a South African method, and the relish served with it is Vietnamese. And he suggests it be served with Persian-steamed rice. I don’t actually know what that means, Persian rice that’s steamed, or is it a particular cooking method that makes rice steamed in the Persian style. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t serve it.

Back to the Achar. It’s a relish composed of fresh, diced pineapple mixed with a bit of Vietnamese fish sauce. Now, I can already see you turning up your noses! Here in Southern California we’re used to fish sauce because we have a sizable Vietnamese community near us. And oodles of Vietnamese restaurants too. We’ve learned to appreciate all the different foods from that country. But almost everything is seasoned with fish sauce. It’s even standard in regular (non-ethnic) grocery stores. It’s like soy sauce to the Japanese, paprika in all forms to the Hungarians (they don’t even put black pepper on the table, just salt and paprika), salsa or pico de gallo to the Mexicans. So, there’s fish sauce for the Vietnamese. It’s a condiment served on every Vietnamese table. And it doesn’t taste like fish. You’d think it would, being called “fish” sauce and all, but it’s a salty liquid that comes from anchovies. In the picture, the bottle of fish sauce is there in the background. In the center of the bottle label is a graphic of three crabs – Anglos call it the “Three Crabs” fish sauce. It’s the premium brand. Below you can see the relish – with the chiles and sugar. This mixture doesn’t require any marinating time – just mix it up and serve it.

It went really well with the lamb, even though it IS a Vietnamese relish served with a South African barbecue lamb dish! The only thing I’d change next time – I think I’d do a butterflied leg of lamb instead. There wasn’t enough meat on the roast I bought. I know that the bone-in is a better way to roast, but the boneless is so much easier.

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One year Ago: Peach Cobbler
Two years ago: Barbecued Beans
Three years ago: Crisp Apple Pudding (my all-time favorite, my mother’s recipe)

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Oh my goodness, was this good. And it’s so simple! It took about 5 minutes (well, maybe 8 or 9) to make it in the food processor – I did have to crush and chop fresh garlic, and run out to my kitchen garden to harvest some fresh mint, and mince a jalapeno (I didn’t want anyone to get a big hunk of jalapeno in their mouths, so I minced it up really fine to begin with, not trusting the food processor to do it). But the rest of it went into the processor and I touched the pulse button for about 15-20 seconds and it was done. I poured it out into a serving bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and pulled it out before serving.

The herbs absolutely make this. Since I love fresh cilantro any day, any time, and I’m in love with fresh mint these days, the combo of both herbs was a perfect marriage for me. The sour cream is nothing more than a neutral palate (like a piece of toasted bread is to a bit of jam) to mix with the herbs. Using light sour cream likely made no difference to the taste.

You could serve this with little baguette slices (toasted would be best), or the recipe suggested pappadums (an Indian fried bread) or some kind of crisp flatbread. I opted to serve it with some fresh sangak bread. People could tear off a piece of the thin, soft and chewy bread and spoon a bit onto it. My DH made a special trip to Wholesome Choice just to pick up a fresh flat of this delicious bread.

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A year ago: Cherries (everything you’d ever want to know about them)
Two years ago: KFC coleslaw (no, it’s not their recipe, and nowhere near as good as theirs)
Three years ago: Grilled Salmon on Watercress Salad (one of our family favorites)

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Did you ever taste something – way back in your youth – and you never knew how to make it? And you’ve still not found out? Even though you’re a foodie? And you cook a lot? And you read a lot of cookbooks? And you know how to do internet searches? And you’ve still not found the recipe? That’s what this post is all about.

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Lately I seem to be on a roll with chocolate mixed up with something else like bread pudding (the Chocolate Banana Croissant Bread Pudding, for instance). This time it’s a cake, made in a springform pan, with chocolate and fresh pear.

The recipe came from a restaurant in Brooklyn, called Al Di La, and I read about it over at Smitten Kitchen’s blog some time back. I printed it out and knew there would come a time to try it. If you’re interested to read about all the people who have made this cake, the pitfalls and successes, do read all of the comments. They go on, and on, and on!

The making of this cake is not difficult – you do have to whip up the eggs for many, many minutes. You would not want to do this with a hand mixer, trust me. You’ll want a stand mixer. It took about nine minutes to get the eggs to a light yellow ribbony thickness. Meanwhile you brown some butter (that’s a different technique for a cake, eh?) and once that’s done you gently mix in sugar. Then you alternately add a flour/baking powder/salt mixture with the warm-to-hot browned butter. Quickly it goes into a buttered and floured springform pan and the freshly cubed pear and chunked-up bittersweet (I had to use semisweet because that’s all I had on hand) chocolate pieces are sprinkled all over the top. That’s it. It’s baked for about 35-40 minutes (or more if you have a particularly wet batter). Some of the chocolate stays on top, but the pears all sink inside the batter.

As soon as I tasted the raw batter I knew this recipe was going to be a winner. I could really taste the richness of the browned butter. What a combo! In a cake! Browned butter is something that does take a little extra time – and I caution you – do NOT leave the stove for even a second while you’re making it or you may have burned butter, okay? Use a heavy duty pan – preferably one that’s light colored. If you use a nonstick pan, you cannot see when the butter has turned brown. Trust me on this! A stainless pan is best! I have one other great recipe here on my blog using browned butter – a Pear Crisp with Vanilla Browned Butter.

You can see the pear cubes toward the bottom in this picture. And the outer edge is just deliciously crispy. Loved that part. Then there’s the whipped cream – flavored with almond extract. Oooh, that was luscious. Everything about this cake was wonderful. The light texture of the cake (from all that whipping), the good chocolate chunks, the pears, and the topping. This recipe is a keeper.

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A year ago: Beef and Biscuit Casserole
Two years ago: Balsamic Onion Marmalade (a condiment)
Three years ago: Buttermilk Scones (my all-time favorite scones)

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A couple of weeks ago we invited a long-time friend over, who brought her new BF to meet us. Donna brought along not only Mark, but a delicious appetizer too. This stuff is scrumptious. It’s the cream cheese that makes it, I think. Well, and the bacon. And there isn’t anything in it that’s healthy, but if you want an easy and really tasty dip that you can make a few hours ahead (in fact it should be made a couple of hours ahead of time), this is it.

Donna said she found the recipe on the internet somewhere. Ah, I found it at about.com. That site that offers lots of information. Kind of like Wikipedia, but it’s different. And they have some recipes too.

Anyway, you just mix up cream cheese and mayo, then add in the cooked and crumbled bacon, Parmigiano-Reggiano grated, a dash of garlic powder, some green onions, then gently stir in some chopped cherry tomatoes. It gets refrigerated for a couple of hours and you’re ready to go.

We really enjoyed Mark – he’s a keeper, as they say in dating circles. So is she, for that matter! Donna was one of the first employees I hired at the first ad agency I worked for. This was back, oh, 1977, I’m guessing. She only worked for me for a year, then she got pregnant and quit. But we stayed friends, through many jobs for her, through her divorce. That’s what being girlfriends is all about. Donna is a sweetheart and I love her to pieces. She’s a grade school teacher now. She e-mailed the recipe and said it was okay to share it on my blog. This, too, is a keeper.

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Three years ago: Citrus Gazpacho

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On one hand I can count the number of times I’ve made fried chicken. And I just about never order it when we’re out. I’m totally indoctrinated with the chicken skin=fat, fat=bad. Of course, here in Southern California, very few restaurants would even serve fried chicken. But it is making a resurgence in food circles. It’s been featured in several of the foodie magazines in the last year too. So I finally succumbed.

And the answer is yes, I cooked them a tad too long. But, it didn’t make a whit of difference to the taste – they were tender and juicy. The coating was crispy and tender.

My only trouble was I couldn’t control the temperature of the deep fat. I used my tall-sided Le Creuset pot (recommended, or a Dutch oven) because it would splatter less that way and help hold the oil temp. I have a candy thermometer and it perched on the edge of the pan with no difficulty. But the temp on the thermometer was either way up or way down. I think I didn’t have enough oil in the pot, so the temp meter wasn’t submerged sufficiently. I finally gave up and just used my gut feel about it. The recipe was quite specific about what temp the finished thigh or drumstick meat should be – 175°. Well, in trying to cook enough for 11 people I had no time to be testing temps.

Trusting the folks at Cook’s Illustrated as I do, I had turned to their America’s Test Kitchen TV cookbook and found a long, explanatory recipe. The recipe is not available online except by premium membership. I did change it slightly, but not noticeably.

First thing was to snip off all the excess fat from the drumsticks and thighs (top left). Then I made the buttermilk marinade (oodles of garlic, top right, and the finished mixture in a plastic bag, bottom right). I managed to snap one photo of the first batch of frying drumsticks (bottom left).

The chicken pieces are marinated for 2-3 hours, is all. But the marinade contains a lot of mashed garlic, sugar, salt, paprika, and crumbled bay leaves. It’s a cross between a marinade and a brine (there was a lot of table salt in it!). The pieces are removed and placed on a rack to drain for awhile. Then they’re dipped into flour, then an egg/baking soda/baking powder/buttermilk mixture (different than the marinade, which is tossed out), and again back into the flour before being plopped (carefully) into the boiling fat. You were supposed to maintain the oil temp at 325. And if you cooked only 3 pieces at a time you were able to maintain that fairly well.

Initially you heat the oil to 375° because once you add the room temp chicken it lowers quickly to 325°. If you let the oil reheat briefly between frying batches, you hopefully won’t have too much trouble. BUT, the whole process (marinating, draining/drying, dipping, draining again, and frying) will take you a fair number of hours (up to about 6). None of it is intense (well, except the frying part – I got a bit frantic then), but there just are a number of steps to making it.

What I changed about the recipe was the volume of the marinade/brining. It called for 7 cups of buttermilk for 4 pounds of chicken pieces. I had 5 pounds and divided the chicken between two freezer bags and was fine with half that marinade quantity. So I’ve changed the recipe below.

And the result? Well, as I mentioned above – it was VERY juicy and tasty. I know there is some magical temperature that if you deep fry, you’ll have almost no absorption of oil. I’d guess that’s at about 350° or as low as 325°. I don’t know if I hit that number or not. I’d like to try making this again when I’m not so pressed for time (I made this for a lunch we had, and there weren’t enough hours from the time I started the marinating in the early morning to getting it all done by 12:30 when our guests arrived).  I did slip the fried chicken into a 200° oven (on a rack over a tray) for about half an hour before we served the lunch at about 1:00. They kept perfectly warm. According to the recipe, maintaining that deep fat temp is key to the success. If I were to make this very often, I’d need to invest in a deep fryer. But since fried chicken is a big treat, I won’t be doing that! I could try it in my electric skillet – it has fairly high sides. Maybe I’ll just have to do that . . . and I’ll let you know.

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Two years ago: Chicken with Poblano Peppers
Three years ago: Balsamic Fig Sorbet

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At a restaurant near us, they offer an absolutely luscious little tart – a single serving tart with a flaky crust, a chocolate pudding interior (rich, likely made with heavy cream and dark chocolate), fresh bananas, then topped with real whipped cream. The first time I had it, I really thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It’s just off the charts delicious. I haven’t had it in a couple of years – but I crave it now and then. I just don’t indulge my craving. But I think the flavors that are in that tart are mostly in this dessert. That’s probably why I saved the recipe.

It’s been a couple of years ago that I read Haalo’s recipe for this dessert. And I tucked it away in my to-try file. It just sounded right for the gathering of friends we had over the other day. We didn’t want much quantity of dessert, but I wanted chocolate! My DH went grocery shopping for me. Had I been there I’d have known the croissants he chose (from a local bakery – they’re delicious – but they’re very small) would not be enough. I didn’t want him to make another trip, so I made do with 4 small croissants.

You can see that I didn’t quite have enough croissants, or filling. Haalo made hers in a round cake pan, so perhaps I’ll try that next time. Push any banana pieces down into the custard (they get kind of hard if they float to the top). The dish is baked for 30-40 minutes – about. Look to see if the center of the custard is still jiggly – if so, add another minute or two until it’s barely firm. Cool, then cut into squares (or spoon scoops if you use the round pan) and serve.  I served 11 people (small portions) from this little dish. Delicious. And decadent. But so very tasty!

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A year ago: Brown Sugar Berry Shortcakes
Two years ago: A San Francisco weekend with my daughter
Three years ago: Butternut Squash Soup with Jalapeno and Ginger

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