1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 Kitchen spoon of Karo
Butter (size of egg)
Pinch salt
Milk-enough to dissolve ( 1 cup or a little more)

Cook as you do fudge

Recipe 2

This second one is cleary a cake, guessing it’s a one bowl mixing method since there are very few wet ingredients.

I’ve seen recipes lately that call for goat cheese icing, but I wanted to attempt an entire recipe–cake and icing–using only goat dairy. My first attempt at an icing was all goat cheese and the result was simply too much goat flavor. I didn’t use goat butter simply because the grocery store didn’t have any. The final recipe uses a cupcake batter based on buttermilk cake, and the icing combines both goat cheese and cream cheese–resulting in a tart, almost lemon yogurt flavor.

Pre-heat oven to 350°F

Cupcake Batter
1/2 cup softened butter, unsalted
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp lemon extract
2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup goat milk (plus 2 tblsp fresh lemon juice)

In small bowl combine goat milk and lemon juice, set aside for 5-10 minutes.

In mixer, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy; beat in eggs, 1 at a time.  Add lemon zest and extract.

In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Stir dry ingredients into butter mixture, alternating with goat milk in 2 batches.

Use ice cream scoop to fill cupcake tins. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes. Let cool and ice.

Goat Cheese Icing
8 oz. plain goat cheese
3 oz. plain cream cheese
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar (slightly more if needed)
juice of 1/2 lemon
zest of 2 lemons

Beat goat cheese and cream cheese until smooth, 1-2 minutes. Add sugar and beat on high for another minute. Add in lelmon juice and rind and beat until combined. Mix in more sugar, by the tablespoon, if mixture is too loose or too tart.

(Pictured from left: fresh artichokes, baked pasta, stuffed artichokes, fried cardoons)

Late October in Rochester, NY is always unpredictable–sometimes sweater weather, while other times a full coat and scarf is required. But while cool and cloudy outside this weekend, the kitchen was warm and packed full of some of my favorite foods–and people.

The whole extended family (nieces, nephews, cousins and family friends) descended on my parents’ house for my dad’s surprise 60th birthday party. In Addition to the cakes, cookies and pizza there was an abundance of home cooked dishes including baked pasta, oversized meatballs, stuffed artichokes and fried cardoons. While the prep time on these dishes is long, the taste is really worth the wait.

Even amongst all the chaos and cooking, we all still found an opportunity to make flavored martinis and sit back and sip.

I like mixing vodka, triple sec, pomegranate juice and lime into an ice-cold concoction I call the Sidekick.

2 parts vodka
1 part pomegranate juice (pure juice, not the blend)
Splash of triple sec
Splash of fresh lime juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and agitate for about 10-15 seconds until cold. Strain and pour into chilled martini glasses. Garnish with lime wedge.

And now for the food. While in Rochester I always do my shopping at Wegmans. Since my childhood the supermarket chain has evolved from the local favorite to a multi-state mammoth that is even heading into Westwood MA–a little to late for me, though. Even now living in SF with so many option and fresh produce stands, the hometown supermarket is still a favorite–huge selections, from ethnic to gourmet and organic, and much, much cheaper than food out here. They also have an impressive produce section–including artichokes and cardoons (sometimes called cardone), recipes below.

Fried Cardoons
My father’s parents often made this dish as part the multiple-course, hours-long Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. And while they haven’t made an appearance at the holiday table in several years, I took this opportunity to cook the dish with my grandmother to be sure I was authentically recreating the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 stalk of cardoons
2 eggs
lemon
flour
breadcrumbs
salt & pepper

Wash and pat dry the cardoons. Trim the tops and bottom as you would celery, discard the tough outer stems, as well as the leafy parts. Use a vegetable peeler or small knife to remove the fibrous strands. Cut stems in approx. 3″ pieces and let soak in cold water with the juice of 1/2 a lemon

Next, boil the cut cardoons in salted, boiling water for 25-30 minutes until they are fork tender. Remove from the boiling water and allow to dry on a towel and cool.

Then bread the vegetable using the same process used for breading meat: dredge in seasoned flour, dip in egg wash, then dredge in seasoned bread crumbs.

Fry the breaded cardoons in a frying pan with about 1/2″ of hot oil until golden brown. Serve with lemon wedges.

The artichokes too are quite time consuming, but are one of my favorite vegetables. I always request these each time I make a visit home. And while I always simply called them my grandmother’s stuffed artichokes, the Talisman Italian Cookbook refers to them as Artichokes Sicilian Style.

Stuffed Artichokes
My grandmother’s secret to keeping the stuffing moist is to occasionally baste the tops of the artichokes with the cooking liquid.

6 artichokes
1 C Breadcrumbs
1/4 C Pecorino Romano cheese grated
1/4 C Mozzarella cheese, grated
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
Juice of one lemon
Bowl of cold water

Combine breadcrumbs, cheese, garlic, salt and pepper in bowl. Set aside.
Remove stems from artichokes then snap off any tough, lower leaves.
Cut top 1/3 of leaves and trim any prickly petals that remain.
Soak stems and artichokes in bowl of water and lemon juice. Drain on paper
Spread leaves apart, making room for stuffing.
Stuff artichokes, making sure to get between all the leaves.
Bring about 1″ of water to boil in large Dutch oven
Place artichokes in pan and drizzle with olive oil.
Cover and let cook 30-40 minutes, adding water to pan as it evaporates.
The leaves will easily pull away from heart when fully cooked.

I had planned to make this eggplant bolognese for dinner, but never made it to the market. So instead I cobbled together what I had at home including, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, carrots and a piece of salt pork.

Here’s my ingredient list:
Olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, diced
3 tomatoes, chunked
2 zucchini, chunked
1 lb mini eggplant, chunked
1 28 oz can (peeled) tomatoes
Approx. 2 inch cube salt pork
1lb whole wheat pasta
Red wine
Bay leaf

Boil salt pork in water for about 10 minutes, then drain and cool.

Meanwhile, saute onions until translucent, then add cooled salt pork to pan and cook for about 5 min. on med. heat. Then add carrots and garlic and cook until the veggies are soft and translucent, but don’t let garlic burn. There should be a bunch of brown bits on the bottom of the pan from the pork and carrots.

Next, deglaze the pan with approx. 3/4 cup red wine and stir until wine reduces. Next I added the eggplant and zucchini and saute for another 5-10 minutes until tender. Then I added fresh and canned tomatoes, bay leaf, a little black and red pepper and let simmer for about 20-30 minutes.

Serve over pasta. I garnish with a bit of chopped basil and parsley.

Note: I don’t think I boiled the salt pork long enough because the sauce was just about perfectly salty without adding extra. But I did enjoy the extra fresh tomato flavor that the heirloom tomatoes added.

Mexican Fudge handwritten inside of The Betty Furness Westinghouse Cook Book, 1954. I either picked this book up in New Orleans or Austin, I can’t remember.

This NY Times article was tucked inside the Ladies’ Home Journal Cookbook from 1960 that I picked up at a garage sale in Providence. The article, dated Jan. 1, 1970 takes a look back at The 1960′s: Haute Cuisine in America. The author, Craig Claiborne looks back at the trends of the last decade including, French cuisine, the influence of the Kennedy’s in the White House, the abundance of new restaurants in NYC and Julia Child.

“The most astonishing part of the nineteen-sixties on the New York restaurant scene was the awesome debut of restaurants of numerous nationalities.”

The caption below the photo of the beef Wellington notes, “The most sought-after entree towards the end of the nineteen-sixties was the difficult-to-prepare beef Wellington, above. Fondues of all varieties–cheese, meat chocolate–were also popular for dinner parties.

What I found most odd about this clipping was that there were not attached recipes, the previous owner simply folded up the article and tucked it into her cookbook

Even funnier is that the reverse side of the paper is the sports section–hockey headline to be exact: Gilbert Returns to Action as Rangers Take on Black Hawks on Garden Ice. Even in adulthood I can’t seem to escape my childhood of Upstate NY full of food and hockey.

Thought I’d roast a turkey breast for sandwiches instead of buying the deli stuff.  Made a batch of rice stuffing to bake underneath the turkey.

Drizzle turkey with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika.

Rice Dressing
3c cooked rice
1/2 c chopped celery
1/3 c grated pecorino romano or parmasean cheese
1egg, beaten
1/4 c chopped parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all dressing ingredients and place in the bottom of a baking dish. Top with seasoned turkey breast and bake at 350 until internal temp. reaches 160. This was a fairly large turkey breast so cooking time was nearly 50 minutes. Take out of oven and let turkey rest–it should reach a temp of 165.

I left the skin on for cooking but removed before slicing. I also bought the breast still on the bone so I could remove the meat for roasting and use the rib bones for making stock.

Had a few slices of the the meat and some stuffing for dinner and will use the rest for sandwiches this week. I’ll use some of those super-fresh tomatoes from the market along with a crusty slice of sourdough bread, no mayo needed.

My Sunday dinner was Paella made from the December 2003 issue of Everyday Food. I made a few changes to the recipe: I added a pinch of saffron to the spice mixture and left out the turmeric. I also used pork chorizo instead of chicken sausage. I would have added clams, but neither the supermarket nor the fish store had any. I wonder if clams are unpopular here in San Francisco.

The recipe is tasty and quick, but next time I make it I’ll likely add clam juice as a cooking liquid for the rice, along with the chicken stock and tomatoes, as I really wanted a bit more of a seafood flavor.

The first time I ever tasted paella was nearly 20 years ago when I spent a summer in France. The family I was staying with went on August holiday, to visit family, to the village of Uzes. There I visited the nearby cities of Nimes and Avignon and went to my first farmer’s market where I still remember the pungent smell of lavender wafting from sellers’ booths.

In fact, it was a summer of many culinary firsts including; goat cheese, beignets, pain au chocolat and of course, paella. I don’t remember the details, but the family was having a large party just outside the village, somewhere in the Cevennes, and to my surprise out came a giant pan of rice and seafood. I remember the family wanted to be sure I had a chance to taste all the seafood–including the head-on shrimp. I was a little horrified. At 15 I was much more squeamish about food than I am now. I think I passed along the little shrimp to another diner and then took delight in the rest of the savory dish full of bold and new flavors.

Everyday Food editor Sandy Gluck yesterday posted a tweet asking followers about kitchen gadget collections. That post got me thinking about my cookbook collection which is composed of mostly vintage editions procured at garage sales, online and used bookstores. I’ve been fascinated with the books since I was a kid. I was that odd child people talk about. On weekends when my peers were watching cartoons I would watch Julia Child on PBS. And in between the Nancy Drew novels I would peruse my mother’s cookbooks.

The first, and most often used, was Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, the 1972 edition with the ‘red pie’ on the cover (1). I remember pulling out the book one day when my mom was out running errands and deciding I would make an apple pie—I believe it was around 4^th or 5^th grade. I can’t remember how it tasted—let’s hope it was tasty.

We used the cookbook mostly for baking; cookies, cakes, brownies and quick breads. Many weekends were spent in the kitchen fighting with my brothers over who would lick the mixer paddles. I actually can’t recall any ‘meal’ made from the book. Instead, most dinners at our house were put together from family recipes long stored in our heads.

And this is how I thought about cooking—Italian family recipes mixed with some ‘Americanized’ deserts—until I was a Jr. in High School. I spent the summer between 10^th and 11^th grade in an exchange program in France, and when I returned I was enamored of all things French. I wanted to be French, speak better French, live in France and most importantly eat like the French. It was upon my return back home that I discovered a strange cookbook that I had never touched before. It had been sitting there on the kitchen bookshelf my entire life with its Fleur de Lys, the roast beef on the cover and the black and white picture of chefs on the back. Of course I’m talking about Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. And even though Julia mesmerized me on TV, it had never occurred to me to open the book and actually cook those dishes.

But there it was full of foods I had never heard of and ingredients we never stocked in our house. My first conquest was Mousseline au Chocolat-chocolate mouse. Pages 604-605 are forever blemished with my chocolate fingerprints. I’ve since taken the book off my mother’s shelf and it now lives with me.

I made the mousse for a French class project–filled my mother’s mustard yellow Tupperware bowl with the mouse, boarded the bus and brought it to class. Mind you this was 1990/1991. The cool kids were certainly not reading French cookbooks, instead they were discovering Seattle grunge and skateboarding. Just another reason why I was very happy when high school was over. And while both Julia and Kurt Cobain are gone, I still have my chocolate mousse, onion soup and boeuf bourguignon recipes.

(1) Mom, it was the 1972 edition, right?

1 brick firm or extra firm tofu
Tempura batter
Salt, pepper, onion powder & chili powder to taste
Oil for frying

Drain tofu, trying to get out as much water as possible and cut into 10 strips. Then freeze tofu, at least overnight. Thaw and drain again by patting dry with towels. Season tofu with salt, pepper, onion powder and a dash of chili pepper. Dip in tempura batter then fry in 350-375 degree oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt while still hot.

Serve with duck or plum sauce.

Adapted from my grandmother’s recipe–the honey adds a distinct taste and sweetness.

1 1/2 C All purpose flour
1 C Whole wheat flour
2 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 Tblsp Ground flaxseed
1 tsp Salt
3 tsp Cinnamon
1 1/2 c Sugar
2 Tblsp Honey
3 Eggs
1/2 c Vegetable oil
1/2 c Apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 C Grated zucchini (make sure to squeeze the water out of the zucchini)
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 C Walnuts (optional)

PREHEAT: oven to 350° F. Grease loaf pan

COMBINE: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, flaxseed and cinnamon in bowl. In separate large bowl beat together eggs, applesauce, oil, sugar, vanilla and zucchini until ingredients are smooth. Stir flour mixture into wet mixture until combined. Fold in nuts if desired. Pour batter into two 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ loaf pans.

BAKE: for 40 to 45 minutes.