New Year’s is rarely a big holiday for me.  I never make resolutions, in part because I know I won’t keep them.  You won’t see any 2009 recaps or 2010 resolutions on this blog.  I hope 2010 will bring us all more happiness and less stress, which seems very promising.  That’s about all I have to say about that.

However, I do have to tell you about the dip I just made for a New Year’s Eve party.  I like a good party, and if you do too, you should add this dip to your repertoire because it is amazing.  If you love garlic, you’ll love this.  And if you think garlic is just all right (though I can’t imagine how anyone could feel that way), you’ll probably still like it a lot.

Here’s the back story: last week, I had dinner with my parents at Bocado, a tapas restaurant in Massachusetts.  We had a lot of great food that night (I love small plate restaurants, because you get to try so many things), but the standout of the evening was “Ajillo azotado con espinacas y queso”: a roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta.  Note that it’s a garlic dip with spinach, not a spinach dip with garlic.  It was very garlicky and very good, and we drove our waitress crazy because we kept asking for more bread until we had literally cleaned out the bowl.

But its brilliance was in its simplicity, and even before we left the restaurant, Nathan and I were plotting to make our own version. New Year’s Eve seemed like the perfect occasion to try.  And it turns out, it was really easy.  So easy that I felt like a culinary Dr Frankenstein, standing in my kitchen giving life to a food that came from somewhere else.  (If you ever hear me cackling in the kitchen and talking to “my creation,” you have my permission to intervene… or run away.)

The centerpiece of this dip is the roasted garlic.  You could do it with fresh garlic and get something that tasted okay, but it wouldn’t be the same at all, because roasted garlic is a whole different kind of tasty.

Roasting garlic, while intimidating, isn’t all that hard; it just requires planning ahead.  When I roasted my garlic for this recipe, I made far more than I needed, so now I’ve got a little dish of roasted garlic sitting in the fridge and it’s oh-so-exciting that I’d suggest you do the same.  It’s messy enough to make that it’s worth making in bulk.  (It’s messy enough that I don’t do it as often as I should.)  You only need one head of roasted garlic for this recipe, but I made four, and I’m saving the rest for later.

There are a few ways to roast garlic, but this is my current favorite:

1. Heat the oven (I use a toaster oven) to 350.
2. Take several heads of garlic.  With a sharp knife, cut about 1/4 inch off the top of each head so the tops of some of the cloves are exposed. (I’m not sure of the reasoning behind this, but it’s standard practice, and it does let you see how it’s coming along.)
3. Put the garlic cut-side up on a piece of aluminum foil, and drizzle it with olive oil – this will help it not to burn.  Wrap the foil into a packet around the garlic so that it’s tightly sealed.
4. Put the foil packet in the oven for at least an hour, up to an hour and a half.  The ideal is to have all the garlic a deep brown color, with the top just starting to turn black.  It’s okay if it starts to burn, because you can remove the burned parts.
5. Let the garlic cool, then remove the tasty cloves from the skin.  This is the messy part.  I find it easiest to work methodically through the cloves, freeing each one from its skin and popping it loose.  Put the cloves into a little bowl, and discard the leftover skin.  If the garlic has gotten really mushy, you can squeeze it out.  Removing the cloves intact gets you the most yield, and makes the least mess.  (At least in my experience -if you have a better way, please share in the comments!)  But however careful you are, be prepared to get your hands covered in garlic mush and little bits of skin.

Once you have your roasted garlic, you can make the dip.

Roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta

• 1 head of roasted garlic, removed from skin
• 1 lb frozen, chopped spinach
• 8 oz feta cheese
• olive oil
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice

In a large saucepan (or in the microwave), heat the spinach over medium heat until it is thoroughly defrosted and just cooked – it should soften and turn a bright green color.  Remove from heat and let it cool.

In a food processor, add most of the spinach and crumbled feta, along with the roasted garlic and a tablespoon or two of olive oil.  Chop on medium speed until well blended, then taste.  Add more spinach and/or feta until you have a nice balance – you may want all of both.

Add the lemon juice, plus more olive oil if desired. Depending on how salty your feta is, you may also want to add a little salt.  Puree on high speed until the spinach is very finely minced.  I couldn’t get the texture quite as smooth as I wanted in my old food processor, but your mileage may vary.

Toasted pita bread is a great accompaniment to this dip, but you could eat it on just about anything.  Be careful lest you find yourself eating it with a spoon, straight out of the bowl!

Christmas is right around the corner now, and if you’re in a sudden panic realizing that you haven’t gotten all your gifts, never fear: there are a lot of quick, easy, and thoroughly impressive-looking foods you can make as gifts.  I was snowed in on Saturday, and made a stunning amount of food (which I then had to find room in my suitcase to transport).

Our crazy machinations included peppermint bark (see recipe below), and these delicious rosemary-maple glazed nuts from Marisa at Food in Jars.  You could also try chocolate covered orange candy, or truffles (neither are hard, though they’re more time-intensive.

You should also check out Smitten Kitchen’s list of gift-able recipes – warning, do not drool on your keyboard while reading the list.

The ingredients for all these recipes are simple and easy to come by.  I like Trader Joe’s for finding large quantities of nuts and decent-quality chocolate at really good prices.

The trick for this peppermint bark (and for the truffles and candied orange peels, and anything else involving melted chocolate) is a process called tempering.  Tempering means letting chocolate harden at the right temperature and rate.  And it is a little tricky.  You know when chocolate gets old, and it sometimes gets a layer of white stuff across the surface?  That’s called blooming, which means that some of the fat has separated out to the surface.  It’s harmless, it won’t affect the taste, but it’s not so pretty to look at.  If you melt the chocolate down and temper it, no more bloom.  If you melt chocolate and let it harden at the wrong temperature and speed, it will invariably bloom.

This is my current favorite tempering method, courtesy Mark Bittman’s blog, Bitten.

To be honest, tempering is kind of a pain in the ass.  It’s time consuming, requires close attention, and if you spend to long working with it, it’ll get too cool and have to start over.  I find that when it’s properly tempered, it’s already too thick to work with.  Mark Bittman points out that bloomed chocolate can have pretty, swirly patterns, which actually look kind of nice.  So, if you’re feeling a little lazy, or the tempering doesn’t quite work out, just pass it off as an artistic choice.

This recipe is, I suspect, very adaptable.  You could try nuts, other candies, whatever you like in place of the candy canes.

Peppermint Bark

• Several pounds of good quality, semi-sweet chocolate
• About a dozen medium, peppermint-flavored candy canes (or other topping of your choice)

1. Break the candy canes into small pieces.  The best way I found to do this is to start by breaking them by hand, then put the pieces a few at a time into a mortar and pestle.  Instead of grinding them, as you usually do with a mortar and pestle, use the pestle to smash them to bits.  Be careful – pieces may go flying.  Another way to do this might be to put the pieces in a plastic bag, then go at them with a rolling pin or even a hammer.  Take care not to damage your furniture, smash your fingers, or frighten small animals.
2. Line a couple edged cookie sheets with waxed paper.  We used 2 sheet for 2-3 pounds of chocolate.
3. Melt the chocolate carefully in a double boiler (or a bowl, set over a saucepan with a little hot water in the bottom).  Don’t let any moisture get into the chocolate or it won’t harden properly.
4. Temper the chocolate.
5. Pour the chocolate into the prepared pans, smoothing it with a spatula.  Sprinkle the candy canes over it.  You can carefully tamp down the candy cane bits if desired.
6. Let it cool for several hours until completely hardened.  Peel off the wax paper, break the bark into pieces.  No need to make neat and tidy pieces – jagged edges make a nice effect.

Our first all-vegetarian Thanksgiving (and our first Thanksgiving in our new house) was a definite success.  Low-key and low-stress, we spent the day hanging around the kitchen: cooking, eating, cooking more, eating more.  Not a bad way to spend a day off.  Considering how adventuresome our menu was, I’m feeling proud – I’ve never made ravioli from scratch before, and they were the highlight of the day.  The cranberry bread, mushroom sauce, and apple pie all came out various degrees of tasty, but the sweet potato ravioli were something else.  I’m going to share the recipe (to the best of my memory) below.

We got started around 10:30 with baking the sweet potatoes, mixing up the bread, and prepping the crust for the pie.  Then we broke for a “light” lunch – cheese and crackers.  But it turned out to be heavier than we planned, because the cheese was addictive.  We splurged on two nice, imported cheeses from Whole Foods, neither of which we’d had before.

The first was Tallegio, a semi-soft, rinded cheese that’s most similar to brie, but sweeter and a little bit nutty in flavor.  It was creamy and almost-but-not-quite soft enough just to spread on the crackers.

The other, cocoa cardona, was at the opposite end of the spectrum – a hard, tangy goat’s milk cheese, and as the name suggests, it was aged with cocoa powder smeared on the outside.  It wasn’t sweet at all, but the cocoa made it rich and gave it a nice edge.  It was about all I could do not to eat them all at once.  (It’s about all I can do now not to get them out of the fridge for “inspiration” while I write this post.)

After lunch, we started the ravioli.  Making the filling was easy and quick (a mixture of mashed sweet potato, cheese, and seasonings); shaping the ravioli was less time consuming than I expected, and easier than many other filled foods I’ve made.  (Assuming you use the right amount of filling, about a teaspoon, the ravioli were easier to work with and to seal than dumplings, wontons, or stuffed pastries.  If our pasta wasn’t exactly refined-looking, it also didn’t leak, even a little.)

The hard part was rolling out the dough.  We used about a pound of egg pasta, which consists of flour, a couple eggs, a pinch of salt, and enough water to hold it all together.  We had the benefit of a pasta maker, which we hadn’t used before yesterday, and it was a big help but didn’t stop the pasta from being long and unwieldy.  You can see in the pictures how long the strips were – and know that many of these we actually cut in half so they’d fit on the counter!

I didn’t get any pictures of the pasta going through the machine, because it was really a 4-hand process.  However, the dough is really forgiving stuff.  It didn’t tear, didn’t stick to itself too badly, and didn’t get pulled out of shape as we passed it awkwardly around and around.

The process goes like this: you cut off a piece of the dough (we cut it in thirds), flatten it, and pass it through the machine on the widest setting.  If it isn’t quite smooth, you can fold it over on itself and pass it through a few more times.  Then, you move the machine to the next narrower setting, pass the dough through, move to the next setting, pass the dough through, and so on until you get the thickness you want.  Technically easy, but logistically complicated, because your fist-sized ball of dough quickly becomes a thin strip several feet long.  If you don’t have a pasta maker, you could almost certainly roll it out by hand and cut it into 2-inch strips, but the benefit of the machine is that everything comes out fairly uniform.  Plus, cranking the machine is much easier than rolling by hand (I know this, because I also made pie yesterday, and rolled that crust by hand).

The best part?  We not only had a filling dinner, but we now have several meals worth of frozen ravioli waiting for us in the future!

Sweet Potato Ravioli

Adapted from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (highly recommended)

Filling

• 1.5-2 cups mashed sweet potato
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 cup toasted pecans, finely ground
• 1/4 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/3 cup cream cheese
• salt & pepper

Pasta

• 2 cups flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 eggs
• water

To make the filling, mash the sweet potato with butter.  Once it’s fully cooled, stir in the other ingredients, season to taste, and set aside.  (Refrigerate if not using immediately.)

To make the pasta, measure out the flour and make a well in the middle.  Add the other ingredients (except water), break up the eggs with a fork, and stir it all together.  If it won’t come together into a ball, add water, just a little at a time, and stir it all up until it holds together.  Knead the dough until it’s smooth, then cover and let it rest a few minutes.

To shape the pasta, roll out the dough into long strips (2 or 4 inches wide) using a pasta maker or a rolling pin.  The dough should be very thin but not so fragile you can’t work with it.  (Mine was almost transparent when it was done.)  On each strip, place a heaping teaspoon of filling in the middle of each 2-inch square, for half the length of the strip.  Dip your finger in water and wet the edges and the spaces between the filling – this will help the dough to seal.  Then fold the other half of the dough back over the filling, working slowly and pressing around the edges to seal it.  Then, cut them apart with a knife and place the finished ravioli on wax paper.

You can cook them immediately in (gently) boiling water for 4-5 minutes; if not, cover them with wax paper so they don’t dry out.

To store them for the future, place them on trays in the freezer until frozen, then keep them in a plastic bag.

We decided not to travel this year – instead, we’re going to stay home and enjoy a rare long weekend in our new house that’s not dedicated to a home improvement project.  With all the work around the house that we’ve been doing, and a bunch of travel on top of that, it seemed like this was a good year to take it easy.  And while I’ll miss seeing my family and having our traditional menu, having dinner just for the two of us means we can have an all-vegetarian meal, which I’ve always wanted to do.

There are three strategies, in my mind, to vegetarianizing Thanksgiving: 1) make all your favorite traditional dishes, and just skip the turkey, which is what you’d do at a regular Thanksgiving dinner anyway, 2) concoct a protein-full main dish that fills the role of turkey in the meal (though, please, let’s not try to make something that looks or tastes like turkey but isn’t – there’s so much better food out there), or 3) make something extra-special that’s not traditional at all.  (I know one vegetarian who has an elaborate Indian dinner every Thanksgiving, and how could you go wrong with that?)

We’re doing something between 1 and 3 – a mix of tradition and other seasonal foods.  We’re also trying to gauge how much to cook for a 2-person dinner, and thus making fewer dishes than we otherwise would.  We’re still finalizing the details (I might like one more side dish), but here’s our plan:

• Sweet potato ravioli
• Mushroom-cream sauce
• Cranberry bread
• Apple pie

I promise to post some recipes later on!

If you’re still looking for ideas, check out last year’s big round-up of vegetarian Thanksgiving main courses, or Mark Bittman’s list of 101 prepare-ahead Thanksgiving dishes.  One of my favorites from his list:

60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.

What’s on your menu?

A gift box of homemade truffles and candied orange peels

Since the economy’s in a downturn, most of us have been subject to two contradictory forces while doing our holiday shopping.  One force says “spend money!  Jump-start the economy!  We need you!”  This is what I’ve been hearing from coupon-laden emails in my inbox, unsolicited flyers in my mailbox, and ads every time I walk out the door.  It’s a little overwhelming (the thought of setting foot in a mall this month sends chills down my spine), and the message of spend-for-spending’s-sake seems to take all the nice things about Christmas and toss them in the trash.  That really turns me off.  So the second force, the one that says “save your money, do something creative and homemade and meaningful,” is the one that swayed me this year.  Since my making-things skills tend towards food, Nathan and I made candy for our holiday gifts.

Candy-making sounds hard, but the things we made (with one exception) were surprisingly easy if a little time-intensive, and all of them (with the same one exception) came out just about right.  They were all delicious.  And the recipients’ exclamations of “you made it yourself?  Really???” were rewarding in themselves.

On the list this year were chocolate-covered candied orange peels, three kinds of chocolate truffles (plain coated in cocoa, walnut coated in walnut bits, and orange dipped in chocolate), and salted chocolate caramel.

The caramel was the ambitious one, and the one that turned out less than stellar.  It tastes fine, and we’ve been carrying it around in our travels to share with people, but it hardened so much that we had to break it into bite-sized pieces with a cleaver, and couldn’t wrap it for gifts.  It melts in your mouth, but you have to get it into your mouth first!  The culprit, I think, was cooking it to too high a temperature, but whether the thermometer was wrong, or we weren’t using it correctly, or there was a typo in the recipe, or there was some environmental problem like too little humidity, I’m not sure.  (My recipe was from the Joy of Cooking.)  It’s tasty enough to be worth another attempt someday.

Candied orange peels, dipped in chocolate and set to dry

The candied orange peels are sort of a tradition for me – I used to make them in college when my co-op had a surplus of oranges, and when I made them for Christmas last year, they were met with such enthusiasm that I had to make them again.  (When your partner’s grandfather says you’ve made one of his favorite candies, how can you not make it again?)  Since they’re so easy and delicious, I may have to make another batch when I get home, just for me and Nathan!  Dipping them in chocolate is an optional extra step – I like them just fine on their own, but I also love anything that’s covered in chocolate.  I tend to melt some chocolate, dip the candy until the chocolate’s gone, and leave the rest plain.  One thing about this process is that it leaves you with a lot of orange innards that are hard to juice, what with having no peel, so you’re going to be eating a lot of messy orange sections.  (If you’ve found a creative use for the leftover orange, please share!)

The truffles were something I hadn’t tried before, but I was pleased at how easy they were.  It’s basically a ganache, made from cream and melted chocolate.  Most of the time and effort comes from shaping them.  They’re easy to modify just by stirring in fillings, and coating them with whatever you please.  And they’re utterly delicious.  I mean, really rich and delicious, every bit as good as the chocolate you put into them.  This is chocolate at its best.

Chocolate truffles, with a bit of orange flavor

Speaking of chocolate, make sure you use good quality chocolate for these.  Your candy will taste as good as the chocolate you use.  I’ve read books saying that you need to use the fanciest brands like Merkens or Guittard, but I found that the pound-sized bars of Belgian chocolate from Trader Joe’s worked just fine, and were very affordable.  I also read a lot about proper melting and tempering of chocolate – the idea is that by gently melting and then cooling chocolate before you dip candy in it, it will harden with a nice shine, and possibly keep better.  But, I had trouble getting the method to work.  By the time I cooled the chocolate to the point I’d heard described, it was thick and difficult to work with.  There’s probably a knack to it, but if so, I’m missing it.  My dipped candies tasted just fine without it, though I’m sure they would have looked a bit nicer if I’d gotten the tempering right.

For presentation, I found some boxes about 1.5 inches tall at the Container Store, along with mini muffin wrappers that were just right for the truffles.  I put handfuls of the orange peels in full-sized muffin wrappers.

Did you give (or receive) any homemade gifts this holiday?  Comment and tell us about them!

Candied Orange Peels

• 3-4 oranges (preferably organic, since you’ll be eating the peels)
• 1 cup sugar, plus extra for coating
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 to 1/3 lb good quality chocolate, for dipping

1. Remove the orange peels in large pieces, with the white pith attached.  The easiest way to do this, I’ve found, is to score the skin down to the fruit, in quarters, then peel the skin slowly away form the fruit.  Then slice it into the desired size pieces – I find that slicing them crosswise works well.  Some recipes will tell you to scrape away the pith, because it’s the naturally bitter part of the orange, but I find that a little extra cooking removes the bitterness, and the pith takes on a nice jelly consistency.
2. Stir together equal parts sugar and water, and bring to a simmer in a heavy saucepan.  Add the orange peel pieces – if the sugar syrup doesn’t cover them by about an inch, make more, using roughly equal proportions of sugar and water.
3. Simmer the peel for about an hour, until the pith becomes translucent.  You can tell when it’s done simply by tasting a bit – it should taste sweet and chewy, and not at all bitter.
4. Line a cookie sheet with wax paper.  Scoop the orange peel out of the syrup with a slotted spoon, and spread them out across the wax paper.  Leave them there to dry for 12-24 hours, turning them occassionally so they dry evenly, until they are sticky but no longer wet.  You can save the syrup that remains in the pot – it will have a strong orange flavor, and goes well in hot chocolate or mixed drinks.
5. If desired, put the dried candy in a plastic bag with a few tablespoons of sugar, and toss to coat.  This makes them less sticky to store and eat.
6. If desired, coat the candy pieces in chocolate.  Break chocolate into small pieces and melt them over very low heat in a double boiler.  If you don’t have a double boiler, put about an inch of water in a heavy saucepan.  Find a bowl that sets tightly in the pot, and heat gently without letting the water boil hard; there should be no steam escaping, because the moisture will interfere with the chocolate solidifying again.  Alternately, you can melt the chocolate in a bowl in the oven on the lowest setting – be careful not to over-heat.  Dip the candy pieces one at a time in the chocolate, and set on a fresh piece of wax paper to dry.

Chocolate truffles – adapted from Joy of Cooking

• 1 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 12 oz good chocolate (I prefer dark chocolate)
• Your choice of flavorings and coatings (chocolate, cocoa, coconut, nuts, extracts, liquor, etc)

Note: these truffles are very receptive to fillings and flavorings, and you can coat them in whatever you like.  Add just a small amount (like 1/4 tsp) of flavorings like peppermint extract, or 1/2 cup of solid additions like nuts.  To add liquor, substitute it for 1/4 cup of the cream.  Make any additions before chilling the truffles.

1. Chop the chocolate into very small pieces.  We used the blender, but make sure your blender can handle it, and do just a little bit at a time.
2. Warm the cream over low heat, stirring frequently, until it is just beginning to steam.  Do not boil.
3. Pour the warm cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the chocolate melts and the mixture is well homogenized.  Stir in any additions (like peppermint extract or nuts) now.
4. Refrigerate for about 3 hours until the ganache mixture is solid.  Remove, and use a melon baller or (as I did) spoons and hands to shape it into balls.  Roll the truffles in your choice of coatings (I used cocoa on one kind, and finely-chopped toasted walnuts on another) or dip them in melted chocolate as described above.
5. Store truffles in the refrigerator in an airtight package.

Grandma passed away recently, so this weekend I made some of my favorite recipes in her honor. Food has a great power to evoke memories, and to me these recipes are intertwined with Christmas and my grandmother.  Her mint brownies are a tradition in my family – it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them. And her gingerbread is remarkable; it’s not hers, strictly, since this one has been passed down for a few generations, but it’s rich and full of spice, and unlike any I’ve tasted elsewhere. Most gingerbread you see is in cookie form, but this one is a cake. It goes great with whipped cream.

Thanks to Grandma for so many happy Christmas memories.  If you make these, I hope they bring a little extra warmth into your holiday celebrations, or into your winter if you make them just for fun.

Mint Brownies

• 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 c butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 tsp peppermint extract
• 1/2 sifted flour
• 1/2 c chopped nuts (completely optional; I don’t usually use them)
• dash salt

Melt chocolate & butter.  Beat eggs well; stir in sugar, peppermint, chocolate, and butter.  Add flour, salt, and nuts (if using).  Mix thoroughly.  Pour into a 9″ square pan and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.  Cool completely.  Stir together a frosting of:

• 2 tbsp soft butter
• 1 c powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp milk (or more if needed to get a spreadable texture)
• 3/4 tsp peppermint
• a few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Spread frosting over brownies.  Make glaze by melting:

• 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1 tbsp butter

and gently spread over frosting.

Gingerbread

Cream together:

• 1/2 c shortening
• 1/2 c sugar

Add:

• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 c dark molasses

Mix well.  Sift together:

• 2 1/2 c flour
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp powdered ginger or 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt

Add to wet ingredients and blend well.  Add:

• 1 c very hot water

and stir until blended.  Bake for 30 minutes at 350 in a 9 x 13 pan.