I’ve been asked a lot of questions about why I’ve tried so feverishly to squeeze myself into this world. After all, there are a lot of ingredients that make great culinary obsessions. So, why beer?
To explain that, we’ll have to talk about collaboration. Craft beer is the only major market that does this regularly, with breweries constantly teaming up to co-create a beer. Nike and Adidas will never team up for a collaboration shoe. Nor has Ford and Chevy ever co-produced a truck. Wineries don’t do it, or bike makers, or creameries. Brewers do. All the time.
Beer people, big and small, are wide-eyed, unabashed, gushy, groupie style fans of one another. Unafraid to share that mutual adoration. This leads not just to collaborations but deep and meaningful relationships that can be felt widely across the entire industry. It’s common to see the one brewery owner helping another, lending a hand. It isn’t rare for a one head brewery to call another and say, "I’m short a few bags of malt, can I borrow some from you?" and a truck of grains to be immediately sent over. It’s common for a breweries pubs to pour beer besides their own, unheard of any other liquor industry. It’s a community that favors connections over competition. Beer people have a rising tide lifts all ships mentality, the rivalries friendly, pats on the back and cheering each other’s successes. It’s unlike any other industry. And sure the beer is great, but the people are even better.
That’s why beer.
Potato, Porter Caramelized Onions & Beer Goat Cheese Tart
Slice the onion into 1/8 inch rings. In a pot over medium heat add the butter and olive oil. Add the onions and cook until the onions start to soften, about 5 minutes (do not cook the onions at too high heat or they will burn). Add the porter and cook until the beer has evaporated and the onions are a dark golden color, about 15 minutes.
In a small food processor add the goat cheese, cornstarch and IPA, blend until smooth.
In a cast iron skillet melt the butter, add the potatoes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cook until the potatoes have browned.
Preheat oven to 350.
Roll the pastry crust out to a 10 inch circle, transfer to a baking sheet that has been covered with a Silpat or parchment paper.
Spread the beer goat cheese evenly across the tart, avoiding the outer 1 inch edge.
Top the cheese with caramelized onions then with the potatoes.
Fold the outer edge up over the filling of the tart.
Bake at 350 until the crust has turned golden brown, about 20 minutes.
In my world, 4th of July is a lot like Thanksgiving. But with sunburns and pyrotechnics. An underlying feeling of patriotism and national gratitude, a day off work and an evening of food and celebration with friends and family.
But unlike Thanksgiving, the food is all fair game. There are no requisite poultry centerpieces, or traditional casseroles, you are free to cook and eat whatever you like. Most people gravitate towards easy, low maintenance grill style food, or appetizers and dips that can just hang around the kitchen waiting patiently for attention.
Here are some of my favorite foods for low key afternoon get together:
In a food processor, combine 1 1/3 cup flour, salt, sugar and butter, process until well combined. Add the remaining flour and process again until combined. Transfer to a bowl and add the water with a wooden spoon (don’t add the water while the dough is in the food processor or your dough will be brittle and cracker-like). If the dough isn’t moist enough, you can add more water, a tsp at a time until the consistency is right. Form dough into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
Preheat your oven to 375.
Roll your dough out on a floured surface. Using a 3 inch biscuit cutter, cut out 20-25 circles.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the dough circles on the bakign sheet. Prick eat circle with a fork. Bake at 375 for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
Spread each mini tart circle with bacon jam, top with arugula and grape tomato halfs.
Being wrapped in a world filled with food people, the lovers, academics and fanatics, I’ve often lost my footing. Forgotten the simple pleasures of small, honest meals for the sake of a journey towards the creation of an epic recipe. While surrounding myself with people who strive to reinvent the world of food as we know, I’ve been so entranced that I’ve stepped away from the core of who I am and the food I fell in love with.
I am not a moderist cook.
I am not a chef.
I may never create an epic recipe.
I am OK with that.
It was through a process, not of self discovery but of self remembrance, that stumbled upon a memory that I had almost lost within my catalogue of food experiences. Under the thousand dollar dinners, PR events, celebrity chefs, and world renowned restaurants was a small Italian city, and a home cooked meal.
Years ago, on what turned out to be a 16 hour layover, I was stuck in Pescara Italy. A girl about my age, just past 21, took pity on a broke and confused American in her tiny local airport and asked if she could show her town to me. It began with a home cooked meal, from her own mothers hands on a rickety folding table in her living room, the only place in the small apartment that would accommodate us all. Homemade bread, a small green salad, smashed peas and a roasted chicken.
For dessert was a lemon tart. Simple, beautiful and tangy, made by the hands of a woman who didn’t speak a word of English, but who took time to cook for me even though we would never have the ability to have a conversation, and I could never properly thank her. This is the food that I fell in love with, and I am reminding myself to stay true to that.
I’ve done my best to make the beer infused version of the tart that was made for me in Pescara, and chose a beer that is nearly as fascinating to me. Cooney Island Lager has flavors that remind me a great meal made in spring, orange, citrus, bread and apples.
If you can’t find this beer, look for a low hop beer with notes of citrus, tropical fruits and bread.
1cupfresh squeezed lemon juiceabout 6 large lemons
½cupbeer
2tbscorn starch
1stick unsalted buttercut into cubes
For the Strawberries
3cupsstrawberries
½cupbeer
1/2cuppowdered sugar
For the Whipped Cream
1cupheavy cream
2tbsbeer
1/2cuppowdered sugar
Instructions
In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the cubes of butter and process until combined, about 1-2 minutes. Your dough should resemble course meal.
Start with 3 tbs of water, pulse until combined. If the crust doesn’t hold together add more water, a bit at a time, until it does.
Dump the dough into a 4 inch deep, 9 inch wide tart pan with a remove-able bottom (you can also use a pie pan). Starting with the sides, form the crust inside the pan, trying your best to make it all as even as possible. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for a least 3 hours.
Preheat oven to 375.
Place a sheet of parchment paper inside your tart and fill with pie weights. If you don’t have any, dried beans work great.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until your tart is a light golden brown. Remove from oven, allow to cool slightly. remove pie weights.
Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, beer, sugar, corn starch, whole eggs and yolks to a bowl and whisk until well combined. Add the lemon mixture to a pan over medium/low heat along with the butter. Whisk until thickened, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature.
Add the curd to the crust and chill until set, about 4 hours.
Just prior to serving add the berries to a shallow bowl of pie pan and cover with 1/2 cup beer. Allow to stand at room temperature for 15-20 minutes. Drain and return to bowl with the sugar, stir to combine.
Add all of the whipped cream ingredients to a stand mixer and mix on high until soft peaks form, about 4 minutes.
Top tart with berries and whipped cream just prior to serving.
When you get pregnant, people love to warn you about what will be missing from your new life once the baby comes. "You’ll never sleep again!!" They laugh upon hearing the great news. "Have sex now while you can!" His friends will tell him. "You are going to be so broke, those little suckers are expensive!" as if you just bought a tanking stock against their best financial advice.
What they don’t tell you is that you will worry constantly. About everything. An irrational, gut wrenching fear that is so far beyond the non-mom worries you once had, any other type of fear just seems absurd. Even rational, legitimate non-mom fears seem silly in the face of your completely irrational New Mom fears. Forget that old fear of getting mugged late at night in a parking garage that has always given you the creeps, what about a Zombie attack?! What would I do with the baby if there are Zombies? She’s like a tiny appetizer! Fear of getting cancer? Forget it, what if a Mountain Lion wanders into the house and wants to eat the baby! Again, she’s like a tasty little morsel! What would I do?! I need a plan!
You know how insane you’re being. You know it’s crazy. But you can’t help it. Forget sleep and sex and money, the hardest part of being a new mom is the crazy worry that wraps itself around you like a Boa Constrictor and squeezes the air right out of your lungs (Oh No! Boa constrictors?! What would I do if I’m at the park and one of those things got a hold of the baby?! Do they have those in California? Must. Google. It.)
So, for the sake of my own sanity, and I have to admit that I’m sure I’m WAY crazier than most of you, I’ve devised a few rules to help me cope:
1. Don’t watch the news. Especially local news. No good can come of bored reporters looking to sensationalize a story. Just watch reruns of Friends instead. This also applies to clinking on that story of a dead/missing/maimed toddler on the front page of Yahoo news. Just don’t do it.
2. Use the phrase, "Does it end well?" when those friends and family members, who LOVE to relay to you the most tragic news, start to tell you about a story that they just heard. And if they even hesitate for a moment, yell in their face, "WHY ARE YOU TELLING A NEW MOM A STORY ABOUT A DEAD BABY??" It’s therapeutic, I promise.
3. Sometimes you have to make a plan. Even though it’s insane and you know that you will never be adrift at sea after your plane crashes in the atlantic with a toddler and a group of hungry cannibals, sometimes it makes you feel better to just make a plan so that your mind can rest.
4. Dumber People than you have raised kids. Sounds harsh, right? It makes me feel better. When I hear stories about crack addicted mothers living on the streets, turning tricks in dirty hotel rooms while the 6 year old and a newborn baby are locked in the closet, most people think, "That’s awful! Those poor kids!" Not me, I think, "Well if she didn’t manage to get her kids killed or eaten by the ravenous undead, I think I have a pretty good shot!" When I feel like I barely have a 50/50 shot of getting my kid out of childhood alive and intact, it makes me feel better to think, "Dumber people than me have done it."
And when all else fails, bake. But watch those Hansel & Gretel nightmares, those will keep you up at night.
Chocolate Strawberry Cream Cheese Tart
Ingredients
Crust:
2 cups of chocolate graham cracker cookies (like Trader Joes Cat Cookies, or Teddy Grahams)
2 tbs brown sugar
3 tbs melted butter
Filling:
16oz cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
Topping:
2/3 cup water
1 tbs corn starch
3 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
1/2 cup sugar
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350.
In a food processor, add the chocolate graham crackers and brown sugar. Process until only crumbs remain. Add the melted butter and pulse until combined and it resembles wet sand. Dump into the bottom of a 9 inch tart pan with a removable bottom (that has been sprayed with cooking spray). Press very well into the bottom of the pan using the flat bottom of a heavy glass, measuring cup or mug.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese and the sugar until well combined and creamy, about 3 minutes. scrape the bottom and add the egg, beating until well combined. Scrape the bottom of the bowl and then add the vanilla and beat on high for about 2 minutes. Pour over the crust and smooth out with a spatula.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until the center of the cream cheese doesn’t jiggle when the oven rack is shaken. This is not a "toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean" situation. Remove from oven.
While the tart is cooking, add the remaining ingredients to a pot over medium high heat. Allow to boil until thick and very bubbly for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Top the tart with the strawberries and chill until set, about 4 hours, before removing from the tart pan.
It’s hard to be a home cook. Blindly navigating a world that seems to come so effortlessly to others. Comparing our kitchen failures with the extravagant successes we see other producing. Left to wonder why we can’t make a perfect soufflé even when we follow the directions with surgical exactness.
And those of us who reached adulthood with little more skill than it takes to boil water are thrown into the same world with those girls who learned how to make perfect ears of orecchiette pasta by the twirl of their Italian Grandmothers thumbs. Those of us whose childhood culinary training didn’t extend much past reheating and defrosting.
So when you sit there, tears in your eyes as your hard work has turned to a delated over-salted mess, I want you to remember a few things:
1. No one will post their failures on their blogs. Or post pictures of them on their Facebook page. When you compare your failures with everyones success, its not fair to you.
2. Everyone fails. Ask anyone who has ever cooked and they will tell you culinary tails of epic failures. Horrible, inedible food that we will never speak of in the light of day. Sometimes we figure out why we created such a disaster, sometimes it remains a mystery.
3. Great cooks don’t give up. Sure, they fail. A lot. But they don’t give up. Focus more on your success than your failures and just keep going.
4. Make a list of the recipes that you want to tackle. Make it as huge and as grandiose as you want, you have your entire life to master them. No matter how often you make them, and what the end result is, vow to learn something from each batch.
5. Remove emotion. In order to figure out how it is that you have ended up with such a kitchen failure on your hands, you have to be able to look at it objectivly. It is hard not get emotional when you feel like you failed, but that isn’t going to teach you anything. Did you really follow the steps exactly, or are you just saying that to make yourself feel better? Did you use the ingredients that were listed or did you use a substitute thinking it would be ok? If you can use each recipe as a learning tool, it wasn’t a waste. Sometimes it’s the recipes fault, sometimes it’s the ingredients fault, and yes, sometimes it is your fault. But it’s all part of the learning process. We have all tried to change a recipe thinking it would be fine, and sometimes it isn’t. Now you know.
The first recipe on my list of recipes to master was Creme Brulee. It sounded so fancy and grown up, I wanted to learn to make something that was elegant and French and I was shocked at how easy it was. You do need a few kitchen tools, but the recipe and the steps are simple. And the result is incredible. For this recipe, I added a chocolate tart crust and a cocoa powder laced brulee topping.
And a kitchen tip from one of my kitchen failures: Don’t touch the melted sugar before it’s cooled, it will give you the worst mother Eff-ing burn of your life.
Dark Chocolate Crème Brulee Tart
Tart Crust:
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
10 tbs of unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3-5 tbs ice cold water
Custard:
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup of sugar
1 3/4 cup of heavy cream
1 3oz bar of 70% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate, broken into small pieces
1 tsp espresso powder
1/2 tsp salt
Brulee Sugar Topping:
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
In a food processor, combine the 1/2 cup flour, sugars, cocoa powder and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the cubes of butter and process until combined, about 1-2 minutes. Add the remaining flour and process again. Your dough should resemble course meal. Move to a large bowl and add 3 tbs of the water, knead to combine (if you add the water to the dough with the food processor, your crust will turn into a cracker). Add the additional water if your dough is too dry.
Form into a disk, wrap completely with plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour (you can also make the crust a day ahead and allow to chill overnight).
Heat your oven to 375.
Once your tart is all chilled, remove from the fridge and roll out to an even thickness, making sure your dough is just large enough to completely cover the interior surface of the tart pan.
Add to a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom (that has been sprayed with butter flavored cooking spray), pressing into shape and removing any excess dough. If the dough is too fragile to transfer in one sheet, it is ok to press it into shape in pieces in the pan. Prick the bottom of the tart with a fork several times.
Place a sheet of parchment paper inside your tart and fill with pie weights. If you don’t have pie weights, you can use dried beans.
Bake for 20 minutes, reduce the oven temp to 300.
In a bowl, combine the yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar and whisk until light and frothy. In a pot over medium heat, combine the cream, salt, espresso powder and chocolate, stir continuously until chocolate has melted, reducing heat to avoid boiling if necessary. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperate for about 15 minutes (if you add the cream/chocolate mixture to your egg mixture when it is hot, you will end up with scrambled eggs. Allow to cool to avoid that).
While whisking the egg mixture, slowly add the cream until completely combined. Strain with a fine mesh strainer.
Place tart pan on a baking sheet and set in the oven, then add the custard to tart shell. Bake at 300 degrees until the edges are set and the middle is still wobbly (it will continue to set as it cools) about 35-40 minutes. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and keep cold until ready to serve.
In a small bowl, add ¼ cup of sugar and 1 tsp cocoa powder, stir to combine. Add to the top of the tart in an even layer. Run a culinary torch over the top of the sugar, slowly and evenly, until it has all melted and is mostly dark. Due to the addition of the cocoa powder, this brulee topping is more likely to catch fire. Make sure to extinguish any fires instantly. You can also brulee with plain granulated sugar, leaving out the cocoa powder, if it makes you nervous! Serve immediately. Once the sugar has been bruleed, it will start to liquify after about an hour.
I figured out how to pronounce Galette. This was becoming an issue for me. How can I go about baking, and writing about, such an amazing food that I can’t even mention in conversation? So I googled it. I found this lovely little website that has a charming French man (just trust me on the charming part) who so beautifully pronounces the word Gal-Let. You’re gonna press play over and over just to make sure he really said Gal-Let and not Guh-Lay. Or maybe that’s just me.
Apple Brown Sugar (Gal-Let) Galettes
For the Crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter
1/4 cup ice cold water
For The FIlling:
4 cups granny smith apples, cored, peeled and sliced
2 tbs fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tbs melted butter.
Make the crust:
In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the butter (ice cold and cut into cubes) and process until combined. Add the remaining flour and process until combined. Move dough to a bowl and add the water with a wooden spoon (don’t add the water with the food processor or your dough will turn into a cracker). If your dough is too dry, or two wet, add a bit of water or flour to achieve the right consistency.
Form the dough into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.
Once your apples and peeled, cored and sliced, add to a bowl with the lemon juice and toss to combine. Add the brown sugar and butter and toss to combine. Let stand at room temp for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400.
Once your dough is chilled, roll out to an even thickness. Cut out 6 inch circles. Use whatever you have that is round and six inches, I used a small plastic bowl. This recipe will make 6-8 mini Galettes.
Arrange the apples in tight circle in the middle of your dough, leaving a one inch boarder around the edges.
Fold the edges over the filling, leaving the center open.
Brush the remaining brown sugar/butter mixture that your apples were sitting in all over the Galettes and the exposed crust.
Bake at 400 for 28-35 minutes or until golden brown.
Galettes are such an amazing food. Like a tart or a pizza, only much more elegant and easier to make. This dough came out so beautifully, with a buttery flakiness that could be eaten all on its own. There is a very good chance that this Fall will be filled with galettes, sweet and savory.
Fig and Goat Cheese Galette
CRUST
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 sticks of butter
1/3 cup ice cold water
FILLING
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
6 figs, sliced
1 tbs raw honey
2 tbs minced red onions
1/2 cup arugula
2 oz goat cheese, crumbled
1 oz prosciutto, chopped.
1 tbs melted butter
In a food processor, combine 1 1/3 cup flour, salt, sugar and butter, process until well combined. Add the remaining flour and process again until combined. Transfer to a bowl and add the water with a wooden spoon (don’t add the water while the dough is in the food processor or your dough will be brittle and cracker-like). If the dough isn’t moist enough, you can add more water, a tsp at a time until the consistency is right. Form dough into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
Preheat your oven to 375.
Once the dough is chilled, roll into a "rustic" circle. The great thing about a Galette is that an odd shape looks charming, don’t worry about making it too perfect. Transfer to a baking sheet or a pizza stone covered with parchment paper. Spread the ricotta in the middle, leaving about 2-3 inches on all sides bare. Top with salt and pepper. In a bowl, combine the figs, honey and onions, toss to coat. Add the figs to the top of the ricotta, then add the arugula, goat cheese and prosciutto.
Fold the edges into the middle
Brush the crust with melted butter and bake at 375 for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown. I added additional arugula and goat cheese to the top before serving, but this is completely optional.
I remember the very first time I had Creme Brulee. A friend of Mr. Fits (a very fancy friend) order it for me while we where all out for dinner at a little restaurant in Pasadena. I was young, in my last year of college, and I was too embarrassed to say that I had no idea what Creme Brulee was. So I waited. Every dessert flanked waiter who came within ten feet of my table was given a thorough visual molesting as I tried to figure out if what he was carrying was, in fact, Creme Brulee. Is that cake-like thing it? Nope. What about that Chocolate thing in that tiny ceramic pot? hmmm, wrong table. And then it was in front of me. I was intimidated. Do I pick off this thick, hard crust on the top? What do I do? I stalled and waited to see what Fancy Friend did with his. Oh..you crack it open by smashing it with the tip of your spoon. I like dessert that involves very subtle violence. I loved it. The fleeting thought did cross my mind that I would love this vanilla custard with the hardened sugar top in a tart shell. Six years later, I did just that.
This week I wrote another article for the Glendale Examiner on the Montrose Farmers Market. It was there that I discovered that apricots are in the last few weeks of their season. I was so drawn to these huge bins of beautiful pale orange fruit they became the center of my recipe. I wasn’t until I was leaving the market that I noticed the lovely Manilla mangos begging to join the party. I obliged.
Apricot Mango Creme Brulee Tart
Tart Crust:
1 1/4 cups of flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3-5 tbs ice coldwater
Apricot Mango Filling:
1 cup chopped apricots
1 cup chopped mango
1/4 cup of honey
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
Custard:
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup of sugar
1 1/4 cup of heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp slt
1/4 cup granulated sugar for brulee crust topping
In a food processor, combine the flour, powdered sugar, and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the cubes of butter and process until combined, about 1-2 minutes. Your dough should resemble course meal. Start with 3 tbs of water, pulse until combined. If the crust doesn’t hold together add more water, a bit at a time, until it does. Dump the dough into a tart pan with a remove-able bottom. Starting with the sides, form the crust inside the pan, trying your best to make it all as even as possible. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for a least 3 hours (don’t even think about skipping this step).
Heat your oven to 375.
Once your tart is all chilly cold, remove from the fridge and poke holes in it with a fork.
Place a sheet of parchment paper inside your tart and fill with pie weights. If you don’t have any, dried beans work great. Just don’t forget which beans you’ve used as pie weights and accidentally try to make soup out of them later.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until your tart is a light golden brown.
In a pot over medium heat, combine the apricots, mango and the honey. Sprinkle with the cornstarch and stir. If you hate mangos, or apricots or maybe have an undying love for one or the other, this recipe is easily altered. You need 2 cups of chopped stone fruit, you can use whatever ratio of each that you want or 2 full cups of either. You can even sub in some peaches if you wanna get craaaazy. Cook the fruit, stiring occasionally, for about 15 minutes, or until it is thick and the fruit is broken down a bit. Add to the bottom of the tart crust.
In a bowl, combine the yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar and whisk until light and frothy. In a pot, combine the cream, salt and vanilla and heat until steamy but not boiling. Remove from heat and allow to cool for about 10 minutes. While you whisk the eggs, slowly, slowly add the cream, whisking until combined. If there are any lumps or "eggy bits" in your cream mixture (possibly because you didn’t let your cream cool down) strain the custard through a mesh strainer. Pour into the tart shell on top of the fruit.
Bake at 300 degrees until the edges are set and the middle is still wobbly (it will continue to set as it cools) about 40-45 minutes. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and keep cold until ready to serve. Just before serving, top the tart with an even layer of granulated sugar. Pass the flame of a kitchen torch slowly and evenly over the tart until it’s liquified and a light amber colored. Serve immediately. The sugar crust will start to break down after about an hour.
