Recipe, interrupted

Recipe: Soft Crab and Corn Tortillas

This spring a mom visited my daughter’s class for a cooking project. She made corn tortillas with them, using a tortilla press. I heard the kids had a great time with it and, not wanting to be left out of the fun, I had to try it for myself.

Immediately I could see the appeal. The dough comes together like play dough – no wonder the kindergarteners took to it so readily. And because there’s no gluten in the flour, you don’t have to worry about over- or under-working the dough. The flour is masa, which is made of lime-treated corn (like the hominy used in grits). It’s really very easy. I just followed the directions on the bag of flour (which I am basically repeating below). I’m sure that using a tortilla press to flatten the dough down makes the project even more of a Play-Doh Fun Factory. Alas, I don’t have a tortilla press but I did just fine with a rolling pin. And the extra work was rewarded when I got to build a colorful stack of my favorite fresh summer ingredients on top of the tortilla.

Instead of the traditional cotija cheese, I used ricotta salata. I love adding this cheese to salads and some pasta dishes too. It has a clean, milky flavor, with just enough tang and salt to add flavor without being overpowering.

Makes 8 tortillas

Preparation time: 45 minutes

 

For corn-tomato salad:

3 ears fresh corn, cooked

1 cup quartered cherry tomatoes

2 tablespoons minced red onion

2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro leaves

1 small sweet green or bell pepper, diced

juice of about ½ lime

2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt, to taste

For tortillas:

1 cup corn masa flour (such as Maseca brand)

2/3 cup water

1/8 teaspoon salt

For crab:

2 cups fresh fully cooked crabmeat (you can also defrost frozen crabmeat, which I did but it’s just not the same)

1 teaspoon minced fresh chives

½ lime, quartered (use the other half of the lime for the salad)

 

Other fillings:

Guacamole, see recipe

8 small butter lettuce leaves, washed and dried well

½ cup crumbled ricotta salata

 

1. Prepare the tomato corn salad: Remove the kernels from the cob by holding the cob vertically on a cutting board or into a steady bowl and slicing the kernels off in strips with several downward motions of a chef’s knife. Toss vegetables together. Dress with lime juice, olive oil, and salt to taste. Refrigerate the salad while you prepare tortillas.
   
   
   
2. Prepare tortillas: Mix together tortilla ingredients until they come together as a soft dough similar in texture to play dough. If the dough is somewhat dry or crumbly when you try to roll a portion of it, stir in another tablespoon or so of water. Roll dough into 8 balls.
   
   
3. If you have a tortilla press, you can use it to press the balls into 6-inch tortillas. Otherwise, roll out the tortilla between two sheets of wax paper or silicone liner. If you want the tortilla to be perfectly circular, use the rim of a cereal bowl to cut out circles. Keep both the unrolled balls and the rolled-out tortillas moist by covering them with a damp towel while you work.
   
   
4. Heat a comal, griddle, crepe pan, or cast iron skillet with low sides over medium-high heat. Cook tortillas for about 1 minute on each side. When they are done, they should have a dry appearance on the surface but still be tender and pliable. Place tortillas in a dish covered with a napkin to keep warm and soft.
   
   
5. Serve crab and other fillings: Put the crab in a serving dish and garnish with chives. Serve the lime wedges alongside. Serve guacamole, lettuce, and cheese in small dishes so that each person can assemble their tortilla as they like.
   

 

Recipe: Lunchbox Pimento Cheese Spread

The first time, and, up until very recently, the last time I had pimento cheese spread was in Louisville, Kentucky, where I spent the summer after graduating college. I taught at a summer enrichment program for at-risk children. Whenever we had a break to run out and get food, the teachers would go to a nearby supermarket and pick up provisions. As soon as I tasted the odd, lumpy orange spread that someone had brought back, I was hooked. Every few days I stopped by the prepared food/deli section and pick up a container of it. I really had no idea what was in it but I loved the stuff. I’d roll it up with lettuce and avocado in flatbread or sometimes just scoop it up with Triscuits. Yet when the summer was over, my love affair with pimento cheese seemed to end as quickly as it began.

Until the heat of this summer hit New York. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my brain I must associate pimento cheese with stiflingly hot weather and kids. Out of nowhere I started to crave pimento cheese sandwiches and wanted to put them in my kids’ lunchboxes for summer camp.

Fortunately, I was able to consult with my hair stylist buddy, born and raised in the South, while getting my hair cut the other day. Cheddar, pimentos, garlic (usually in powder or salt form, she told me), and mayonnaise are the main characters in most versions of pimento cheese. Variations include cameos by cream cheese, hot pepper, and pickles. She always ate it between two slices of Sunbeam white bread.

I weighed my options and considered a few additions. I didn’t want to stray too far from the classic version. The mayonnaise, though, had to go. I love homemade mayonnaise, but in this heat, I really didn’t want to make up a batch. Of course, I could’ve used mayonnaise from a jar, but I felt there had to be another, less oily option. Crème fraiche has a very similar consistency that would help make the cheese mixture more spreadable, plus it adds a nice mild tang.

If my pimento cheese spread was going to stand a chance of making it into my kids’ lunchbox rotation, it couldn’t be too spicy. So I stuck with mild and lightly tangy flavors. It turned out to be perfect comfort food, delicious in a sandwich spread with a light layer or sweet relish. And instead of Sunbeam, I used an all-natural honey oatmeal bread that is just as soft. My younger daughter loved helping me make it. She’s good at dumping things into the food processor and pressing the button (supervised, of course!). My older daughter loved eating it. And so did I.

P.S. A happy hour pimento cheese spread to enjoy with beer is next on my list. Stay tuned for jalapeno- and horseradish-spiked version.

 

Preparation time 5 minutes

Makes about 1 ¼ cups

 

4 ounces sharp orange cheddar, cubed

4 ounces Monterey Jack cheese

¼ cup sliced pimentos (such as Cento pimientos) 

¼ cup cream cheese, at room temperature

3 tablespoons crème fraiche

1 teaspoon yellow mustard

1 clove garlic, finely minced or passed through a garlic press

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

pinch Kosher salt (to taste)

 

1. Place all ingredients except salt into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until well-blended and more or less the consistency of a small curd cottage cheese. Salt to taste.
   
   
2. In order for the garlic flavor to develop, make the spread a couple hours ahead of serving and refrigerate until shortly before serving. Allow the spread to come to room temperature, or at least lose its chill, before serving. Delicious with crackers or in a sandwich with soft sliced bread and relish.
   

 

 

Technique: How to Cook Fresh Fava Beans

For their simple, delicate, unassuming appearance and flavor, fava beans sure are a lot of work. It’s not hard work or complicated work, just time-consuming. For me, it helps to think of it as a kind of “ritual of spring” package deal. Enjoying fava beans during their brief season requires slowing down to take each step in their preparation and observing them – maybe even appreciating them if the shelling goes easily – in their original form. Going from whole pod to whole bean to peeled bean is like playing that old birthday party game “Pass the Parcel.” Getting down to the little treasure inside is a good bit of the fun.

Here's how to do it:

Split open the outer shell and remove beans. This can take a while. It’s nice to have an extra set of helping hands.

Steam or boil beans 3-4 minutes over/in salted water, until the skins are slightly shriveled and the beans inside them are tender and bright green.

Shock beans in ice water or run cold water over them to stop the cooking process.

Peel away and discard the outer skin of the beans. Eat the beans as is or use in your favorite springtime fava bean recipe.

A big produce bag full of fava beans in their pods may yield only this scant cup of cooked beans. It's better to start out with more than you think you might need. You're not likely to have leftovers and you may have to wait a year for seconds. 

 

Fresh Cheese and Cherry Parfait

When I served this the other day, my family and our guest struggled to name or describe this dessert. “Like cheesecake on air” came closest to capturing the taste and texture of the combination of sweetened whipped cream, fromage blanc, crème fraiche and pitted Morello cherries from Trader Joe's. It’s also like cheesecake on speed; you can prepare it in under 10 minutes.

The idea for this recipe came from a quark-based dessert that my grandmother used to make all the time. Technically, I couldn’t call this recipe “quarkspeise” because I didn’t use quark, but more importantly, what English language speaker would want to eat a dessert with a name like that?

Not that quark isn’t delicious. Quark, fromage blanc, and Greek yogurt are interchangeable in this recipe as they are all dense, tangy, and low-fat. You could also use mascarpone instead of crème fraiche; they are both rich and creamy with the hint of acidity that is characteristic of cultured cream.
 

Serves four

Preparation time: 10 minutes

 

½ cup fromage blanc

½ cup crème fraiche

¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup heavy cream

¾ - 1 cup pitted cherries, preserved in light syrup

1 ounce semisweet chocolate

 

1. In a mixing bowl, beat together fromage blanc, crème fraiche, sugar, and vanilla with an electric hand mixer until smooth and slightly thickened, 3-5 minutes.
    
   
   
2. In a separate bowl, whip cream until thick soft peaks form, 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer. Fold cream into sweetened cheese mixture until well-blended.
   
   
   
3. Distribute the cherries among four small individual serving cups. Spoon the whipped topping over the cherries.
   
   
   
4. Using a grater or a vegetable peeler, shave the chocolate over the cups to garnish. Serve immediately or cover and chill until serving.

 

Recipe: Homemade Goldfish Crackers

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers are ubiquitous in my kids' lives – at play dates, birthday parties, and school snack time. They're not the worst thing in the world, but their salt content is pretty high, and given they eat those things like they're breathing air, why not see how a homemade version would go over with them? 

My kids loved these crackers; I hope yours will, too. They're not exact replicas of the store-bought ones – my fish-shaped cookie cutters were bigger than the tiny fish out of the bag, And while they puffed up into flaky layers, they didn't have that characteristic hollow center. I colored the dough with turmeric which turned the crackers a bright orange-yellow (above) without affecting the flavor. My kids liked the tinted ones, but personally, I liked the color of the crackers without the turmeric (below). 

Making these crackers is much like making pie dough. If you make pie, you know how easy that is. If you don't, try this recipe and enjoy the knowledge that you have the ability make a flaky pie crust, too.

These are cheddar goldfish crackers. It wouldn't be hard to make variations using parmesan instead or adding a bit of garlic powder to the flour mixture. 

Preparation time: 20 minutes, plus about 2 1/2 hour rest time 

Makes about 2 dozen 2-inch by 1-inch crackers

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon mustard powder

1/8 teaspoon paprika

pinch each (or to taste): celery salt, onion powder

2 ounces (1/2 stick) very cold or frozen butter, cut into small pieces

2 ounces (about 3/4 cup) finely grated cheddar cheese

1. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and seasonings until well combined. 
2. Sprinkle the cheese over the flour mixture and pulse again until the cheese is finely ground.
3. Add the butter pieces to the mixture and give the processor about 6 1-second pulses. Drizzle in 2 tablespoons of ice water and pulse about 4 times more. The dough may still look rather dry but should hold together if you gather some up in your fist. If it doesn't, add another teaspoon of water and pulse a couple times more. 
4. Transfer the dough onto a clean surface or mixing bowl. Gather the dough together to form a disk, wrap it in a zip top bag or with wax paper and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. 
5. Return the dough to the counter. To roll it out, it may need to sit at room temperature for up to 10 minutes. Place the dough between two sheets of wax paper or silpat liners and roll from the middle of the dough outward in all directions until the dough is 1/8-inch thick.
6. Rest the dough again (still within the wax paper) for about 30 minutes or until well chilled.
7. Preheat the oven to 375F. Bring the dough out onto the counter, remove the top layer of wax paper and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter or knife. Place the shapes on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges just begin to look a little toasty. 
8. You can reroll the scraps and cut out more shapes. Ideally, you'd chill the dough again before cutting the shapes, but by this point, you may just want to get on with it. 
9. With the last remaining scraps, it's fun to just make free-form shapes with the dough. 

Cooking with Kids: How to Make Butter

This is a perfect rainy day kids project. And I can’t help but report how my picky eater responded to it: she likes butter now!

1. Start with heavy cream, a small plastic container, and a marble. Pour a small amount of cream (about ¼ cup) into the container. The more cream you use, the longer it takes for the butter to form.

2. Drop the marble into the container and close the lid tightly.

3. Shake the container vigorously. It helps to turn on some music and dance.

4. Before you get to butter, you’ll pass through the whipped cream stage. It’s fun to stop here and take a taste.

5. It took us a “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” “Monster Mash,” and a good part of “Tutti Frutti” to make butter. You’ll feel the marble moving with more difficulty through the thick mass and you’ll see the liquid separate from the fat.

6. Drain the milk away (you can save it for your coffee). The butter is ready to eat right away or to chill and save for later. You can roll it into balls if you’d like.

7. Or, spread the butter on wax paper, chill it, and use small cookie cutters to form decorative pats of butter.

Cooking With Kids: Chocolate Ganache "Fondue"

This was a lot of fun. After dinner the other night, we were all craving a chocolate-y dessert. My usual last minute treat, an amazing microwaved steamed chocolate pudding recipe from the New York Times, didn't seem quite right on this warm night. We briefly considered going out for ice cream, but laziness prevented us. 

So I took some chocolate chips, microwaved them in short increments until the chocolate was melting, then stirred in a little bit of heavy cream and a pat of butter to make a quick warm ganache. 

In the meanwhile, my kids and their dad picked out 'things to dip into chocolate.' They came up with pretzels, strawberries, animal cookies. All delicious choices. Soon we reached for more vehicles for chocolate, starting with some toasted bread left over from dinner. Not surprisingly, also yummy with this chocolate 'fondue.' Then my husband had the brilliant idea of opening a little container of peanut butter and apple slices from our daughter's lunch and we launched into some serious double dipping action.

Never realized how easy it was to get my chocolate fix and rid of leftovers at the same time.  

Print Friendly

Eat Your Greens: Edible Flowers

In my never-ending dual mission to (1.) find new greens for me to try and (2.) discover a green that both my kids will accept, I brought home a box of edible flowers from the farmers’ market this week.  I really thought I hit pay dirt: my younger (and pickier one) loves flowers, she’ll surely want to eat them! And since my older one will eat pretty much anything that doesn’t involve zucchini or cornmeal, I was feeling pretty confident.

They both came to the table curious about what I was offering and they both cooed at the prettiness of the flowers. And then the familiar pattern re-emerged. My older daughter tried every flower, even happily eating the ones I warned might be a bit spicy. But my four-year-old refused to let a single petal touch her lips.

Undeterred, I decided to put the flowers on something that might entice her a little more: mini pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing. I realize that a single flower does not provide any significant nutritional benefit, but I was determined to expose her to new foods, new tastes. (Besides, homemade muffins made with whole wheat flower and decorated with a real flower is still a more healthy option than, say, a cupcake mix, ready-made icing, and candy decoration.)

 

Flower first, she bit right into the muffin and consumed the entire thing. And then she ate another muffin, flower included. Ready to clinch the deal, I then offered her just a flower; it was declined. 

Not a total victory, but I came away with plenty of flowers for me to enjoy, plus a few lessons learned.

• Flowers such as nasturtium, sweet pea (not the ornamental variety), mustard, chive, borage, pansy, and impatiens add a pretty edible flourish to salads and other dishes that can use a colorful garnish. 

• Some flowers can contribute a distinctive flavor to a dish. Nasturtium flowers and leaves add a peppery kick, to boot. Chive blossoms pack a garlicky punch. 

• The novelty of eating a flower might be enough to help kids temporarily overcome their resistance to trying new foods, especially if that flower is on top of a pile of frosting. 

Print Friendly

The Eggless Easter Egg

This seems to be my week for dietary restrictions (scroll down for the vegan, gluten-free cake). I have no intention of giving up eggs, but I like this idea as a fun alternative – or addition – to Easter Eggs. 

It's also a novel way to serve kiwi to guests or young picky eaters.

Recipe: Currant Scones with Lemon Icing

This is a good recipe to make with children. There’s no raw egg to handle and no sharp knives to deal with. I let my 4-year-old grate the lemon zest with some kids’ gardening gloves on.

And if you are not making this with children, you can easily do it in a food processor. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in the food processor, incorporate the butter by pulsing the processor about 10 times. When you add the cream, pour it in a steady stream with the processor running. Return the dough to a bowl to mix in the currants.

Makes 12 scones

Scones:

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for kneading

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

grated zest of one lemon (a microplane zester does the job really well.)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut up into ½-inch chunks

¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (or 2 if needed) cream

¾ cup dried currants

Icing:

½ cup confectioners sugar

juice of ½ lemon

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl.
3. Mix the lemon zest and sugar together in a small bowl.
4. Add butter to flour mixture, rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingers until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.
5. Add the sugar to the flour/butter mixture.
6. Add the cream and stir with a fork until the dough begins to hold together. If it is too dry, add another tablespoon of cream.
7. Mix in the currants.
8. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead it 10 times.
9. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin until it is 1/2 inch or so thick.
10. Using a 2-inch round cookie cutter, cut out scones. Gather up scraps and reshape to cut out more scones.
11. Place scones on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden.
12. Place scones on a wire rack to cool.
13. While the scones are cooling, mix the confectioners sugar and lemon juice until smooth.
14. Brush each scone with the lemon icing. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Print Friendly