blue artichoke

4# ham + 13# turkey / 6 people = a lot of leftovers. What to do with them all?

For the past two mornings, we've feasted on fried ham slices topped with sauteed onions and over-easy eggs, and rolls with cranberry butter and/or honey cinnamon butter. Robust!

We haven't dipped into any of the other leftovers because we've been out and about, carousing with family at meal times.

Cinnamon Honey Butter

1 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a small mixing bowl; beat until smooth. Serve with muffins,
toast, bagels, French toast or pancakes. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Yield: 1-1/3 cups.
Recipe from Taste of Home.

Fresh Cranberry Butter

¾ c. fresh cranberries
1 t. lemon juice
½ c. powdered sugar
2 sticks butter, room temp

Pick over cranberries, discarding bad ones. Chop in food processor.

Add lemon juice, powdered sugar and butter; process until smooth.

Recipe from parts unknown.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday I teased you about some delicious baked plum dessert I was planning to make in my oven. I didn't actually turn on the oven because, while cooler, I didn't want to ruin the pleasantness of finally being able to have the windows open by heating up the place. So, I found a recipe for a delicious plum dish that was made in a pie plate that would fit into my toaster oven. It doesn't heat up the house much at all. So, Plum Kuchen.

Kuchen, the German word for cake, refers to several types of sweet desserts and pastries, and to a Jewish coffee cake usually made from a sweet yeast dough that is shaped, flavored and frosted. My plum kuchen a pie-like coffeecake, with a cakey crust, fruit topping and pockets of cinnamon sugar throughout. It works double-duty as a dessert and as a coffeecake. So, when I ate it last night after dinner, it was a dessert, but when I ate it this morning, it was a coffeecake. Slippery semantics does wonders to ease the guilt. By the way, kuchen is the official state dessert of South Dakota.

A few posts ago, I mentioned the booty from my travels that I have yet to enjoy. Well, after the success of the guava paste experiment, I used the Norwegian dried flowers to garnish the Canadian Bacon-and-Brie Quiche and the unopened Mexican cinnamon-sugar to top the plums in this kuchen. Both worked out well, though if you want to make these dishes and have not recently traveled to Norway and Mexico to buy these products, it won't be a problem. The quiche is just as good without the dried flower garnish and the kuchen recipe tells you how to make your own cinnamon sugar.

Plum Kuchen

I forgot to dust the crust with flour after I baked it, but the plums didn't give off too much juice, so it worked out OK. I also decreased the sugar sprinkled over the plums by 2-3T. It just looked like so much sugar; also the plums were sweet and ripe and I thought all that sugar would make it too sweet.

½ c. butter
1 t. white vinegar
2 T. sugar
1-¼ c. flour
1# plums (Italian)
2/3 c. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten

Melt butter and white vinegar. Add 2 T. sugar and flour. Pat into 10” pie pan. Prick with fork and bake at 500 for 10 minutes. Dust with flour.

Cut plums in quarters and arrange to overlap. [I cut mine into thinner slices, which made for easier overlapping arrangement, and also easier cutting and eating. I'm not saying you have to do this too, but it's easier. I just want you to be fully informed about your options.-BA] Sprinkle top with sugar and cinnamon that has been mixed. Beat eggs and pour on top.

Bake at 400 for 40 minutes.

Serves 8.
With Hands and Heart Cookbook: 1889-1989 Centennial Issue, Bethesda General Hospital & Homes, St. Louis, 1989.

This only used ~6 plums, so I still have many left that are at or fast-approaching the peak of ripeness. GC confessed to me that he doesn't really like eating plums out of hand, so there is definitely no way I'll be able to eat these on my own before they all go bad. Luckily, plums are easy to freeze. Rinse them off and remove the produce code sticker. (An aside - when you buy soft-flesh fruit, like plums, peaches, nectarines, etc;, it is best to leave on the sticker until you're ready to eat it. Sometimes those stickers are really sticky and pull off some of the skin when removed; if you do this early, the exposed flesh is prone to rot. Again, do as you will, but be informed). OK, after rinsing, dry thoroughly, slice in half, remove the pit, and quarter or slice into 1/8, but don't go too thin with your slices. Freeze. You can lay them flat on a baking sheet to freeze individually, just be sure to use a sheet of parchment or plastic wrap between the fruit and the baking sheet to keep the slices from sticking. You can also just throw them all into a plastic freezer bag, but they'll freeze together in a clump, which isn't a problem if you plan to use them all at once. Trying to pull off just a few slices from the clump, though, will be difficult. I'll be freezing my plums for later.

Getting to Know All About You: Favorite fruit?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For some reason, I bought raspberry jam. Usually I'm a strawberry kind of girl, but I guess I wanted to mix things up a bit. Go crazy. GC found it pushed to the back of the odd nook I use for storing kitchen gadgets and pantry overflow, and opened it. We used it on crackers, sandwiches, biscuits, and eventually grew tired of it.

Not long after, I was reminded that I had promised my chocolate tart recipe to someone and had never sent it. The recipe is from cooking school so I needed first to convert the measurements from weights to our Imperial system, and then test the recipe for accuracy. The recipe is actually very easy: spread a layer of seedless raspberry jam over a crust, then top with chocolate ganache (equal parts whipping cream and chocolate). The problem was that the recipe was for a tart; the filling wouldn't fill up a pie crust. I tinkered, weighed, measured and made the pie, but it wasn't nearly as good as I remember it being. It could the the chocolate I used or the raspberry jam, or a measuring malfunction. Whatever the reason, I'm not comfortable giving out the recipe as is. Full of fat and sugar and no redeeming qualities (health-wise, that is), this isn't a dessert I can enjoy often, so I'll have to wait a while to tackle the recipe again.

By this point, GC had sworn off raspberry jam, but I didn't want an almost-empty jar taking up valuable real estate in the refrigerator door, so I found another recipe to use up the rest of the jam: a raspberry-almond coffeecake. It's officially still too hot to turn on my oven, but I did it anyway, waiting until late evening after the sun went down and the house cooled off. I was a bit short on raspberry jam for this recipe, but that was fine with us - the coffee cake had a light berry sweetness without being overpoweringly raspberry. It's a bit unconventional for a coffee cake because it is made in a springform pan, but it is delicious. Here's the recipe:

Raspberry-Almond Coffee Cake

This cake is best eaten on the day it is baked, though it may be made a day ahead. The batter is quite heavy, so you may prefer to beat it with an electric mixer at medium-high speed for a minute or so, rather than whisk it by hand. Do not insert a skewer into this cake to test for doneness until the center appears firm when the pan is shaken. If you do, the topping may squeeze air out, and the middle of the cake may sink.

1 tablespoon dry bread crumbs
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar , plus 2 tablespoons
1 teaspoon table salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter ( 1 1/4 sticks), softened
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk (or low-fat plain yogurt)
1 large egg at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons almond extract , divided
1/2 cup raspberry jam (seedless)
3/4 cup ground almonds (4 ounces)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg yolk

1. Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease bottom and lightly grease sides of 10-inch springform pan. Sprinkle bottom of pan with dry bread crumbs, then shake lightly to coat. Tap out excess crumbs.

2. Whisk flour, sugar, and salt in large mixing bowl until blended. Add butter and cut with whisk until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Remove 1 cup of crumbs to separate bowl.

3. Whisk baking powder and soda into mixture remaining in large mixing bowl. Add buttermilk or yogurt, egg, vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon of the almond extract; whisk vigorously until batter is thick, smooth, fluffy, and frostinglike, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Beat raspberry jam until smooth and fluid, then carefully spread it over the batter with the back of a teaspoon.

4. Add nuts, sugar, egg yolk, and remaining teaspoon almond extract to reserved crumbs and mix with a fork. Thoroughly knead mixture with your fingers until the color is uniform. Sprinkle crumbs over batter, pressing lightly so that mixture adheres. Bake cake until center is firm and cake tester comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Transfer cake to rack; remove pan sides. Let cake cool completely, about 2 hours, before serving. When completely cooled, cake can be slid off pan bottom onto serving plate.

Serves 8 - 10

Cook’s Illustrated newsletter, September 20, 2007

I used low-fat plain yogurt for the buttermilk and was a bit short on raspberry jam. Pretty easy to make and really good to eat, though the raspberry flavor was very faint. Sweet.

Getting to Know All About You: What food or flavor have you grown tired of because of over-indulgence?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)