Author: Blue Cayenne

Get Your Morbid On With A Pickle Brine Margarita

Get Your Morbid On With A Pickle Brine Margarita

Looking for an unusual cocktail? This Pickle Brine Margarita from The New York Times might be quirky enough to fit the bill. You can find the link to the original recipe here. The NYT gives credit for this cocktail to a bar in Brooklyn named  The…

Coffee-Glazed Molasses Bars

Coffee-Glazed Molasses Bars

  This is a delightful little snacking cake. It’s got all the flavors—molasses, allspice, cinnamon, ginger. Oh. espresso. It’s got espresso flavor, too. It is just the kind of flavor bomb you need to jolt you out of your late afternoon funk…or your just-outta-bed bleariness. …

A Really Good Mushroom Soup. Really!

A Really Good Mushroom Soup. Really!

This is the “little black dress” of mushroom soups. It’s basic. It’s elegant. It never disappoints.

This recipe is from Deborah Madison’s cookbook Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen. You can order the book through your local bookstore or on Amazon here. It is a great book to have in your collection if you are a soup person like me. 

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

A Really Good Mushroom Soup

May 24, 2024
Ingredients
  • 1-3 T. butter
  • 1/2 C. chopped shallot (or onion)
  • 2 T. chopped parsley
  • 1 pound mushrooms (rinsed and chopped)
  • Salt and freshly-ground pepper
  • 1 garlic clove (minced)
  • 1 C. bread crumbs
  • 1 quart vegetable broth
  • 1/2 C. cream
  • Chopped parsley (or extra cream) for garnish
Directions
  • Step 1 Melt butter in a large soup pan. Saute shallots and parsley in the butter until they are soft. Add the mushrooms and stir to distribute the mushrooms in the butter mixture. I used cremini mushrooms in my soup.  Add 1/2 t. salt. Mix. Continue to cook the ingredients until the mushrooms release their liquid.
  • Step 2 Add garlic, bread crumbs and stock and mix. Bring the soup mixture to a boil . Lower the heat to medium and simmer for about 15 minutes.
  • Step 3 Puree the soup in a blender or food processor. I found it was too easy to turn the soup into a totally smooth soup. So, I pureed it in batches and left the last batch less pureed. This gave me little flecks of mushroom in the soup and a more interesting texture overall.
  • Step 4 Stir the cream into the soup. Thin with a little broth if you like. Adjust salt and add pepper to your taste.  Garnish with chopped parsley or a swirl of cream. Serve with crusty bread.
Tangerine Trees, Marmalade Skies and a Truly Delicious Broccoli Forest Loaf

Tangerine Trees, Marmalade Skies and a Truly Delicious Broccoli Forest Loaf

Hetty McKinnon’s recipes usually delight my senses. This one caught my attention with it’s fanciful name. In fact, for some reason, this reminds me of the colorful imagery in the first stanza of  McCartney’s and Lennon’s Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. You remember those…

A different kind of pancake:  Yellow Bean and Spinach Dosas

A different kind of pancake: Yellow Bean and Spinach Dosas

I grew up with the notion that pancakes needed to be sweet. You know, sweetened batters cooked on a grill, slathered with butter and drizzled with a generous glug of maple syrup. (Those were wonderful pancakes.) As my palate has matured and much to my…

Oldies But Goodies: Strawberry Pistachio Cake

Oldies But Goodies: Strawberry Pistachio Cake

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is perfect to celebrate spring and this year’s exceptional strawberry crop. This is a recipe for Strawberry-Pistachio Cake. Here’s the link: Pistachio-Strawberry Cake.

You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne.If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.

 

 

Turkish White Beans

Turkish White Beans

These Turkish White Beans are wonderful—delicious and with a distinct Mediterranean flavor.  This would be perfect for a plant-based main dish served with crusty bread and a green salad (maybe with feta?) or as part of a mezze assortment of dishes. This recipe is from…

Maple-Roasted Carrot Salad

Maple-Roasted Carrot Salad

This is a beauty! Having grown up in a household where a chopped iceberg lettuce salad (with Wishbone Italian dressing) was the only game in town, I have always sought out beauty and variety on the salad plate in my adulthood.  This Ina Garten salad…

Bouchons au Chocolat

Bouchons au Chocolat

I don’t know about you, but corks don’t sound all that appetizing to me. Nevertheless, these chocholaty treats, Bouchons au Chocolat,  are basically called “little corks.” 

This Bouchon au Chocolat recipe is from Aleksandra Crapanzano’s wonderful cookbook Gateau: The Suprising Simplicity of French Cakes. Crapanzano is the recipient of a James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. She also wrote a food column for the Wall Street Journal for many years.  Her  book can be ordered through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. These bouchons are very very very chocolaty and the texture is delicate. They are  just the thing to treat yourself to as you wind down a busy day. 

Bouchons au Chocolat

April 24, 2024
Ingredients
  • 2 T. hot espresso
  • 2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 T. dark rum
  • 115 grams (about 4 ounces) bittersweet chocolate
  • 6 T. unsalted butter
  • 1 large egg (at room temperature)
  • 3 T. light brown sugar
  • 1/4 C. granulated sugar
  • 1/2 C. cake flour
  • 1/2 t. baking powder
  • 1/4 t. fine sea salt
  • 45 grams (about 1 1/2 ounces ) mini bittersweet chocolate chips
  • 1 T. powdered sugar
Directions
  • Step 1 Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.
  • Step 2 Butter or use baking spray on your baking molds. I used a Nordic Ware mini-popover pan.
  • Step 3 Measure cocoa powder into a bowl. Pour the hot espresso over the cocoa powder and stir to dissolve. (I used King Arthur Baking espresso powder mixed with a little hot water.) Stir rum into this mixture. Set aside.
  • Step 4 Melt chocolate and butter together in a double boiler. Remove from heat and set aside (briefly!). (I used Guittard bittersweet chocolate wafers).
  • Step 5 Using your stand mixer, briefly whisk egg. Add light brown sugar and granulated sugar and whisk until the ingredients are well mixed. Add the espresso mixture and the butter-chocolate you melted in the double boiler. Whisk until smooth.
  • Step 6 Sift flour, baking powder and salt into the chocolate batter and then, using a rubber spatula,  fold these ingredients into the chocolate batter.
  • Step 7 Fold in the chocolate chips (I used chopped Guittard chocolate wafers here.).
  • Step 8 Spoon this batter into your molds and bake for about 20 minutes. When your bouchons are done, a knife inserted into the bouchon will come out clean. Remove from oven and let the bouchons cool on a rack for about 20 minutes before unmolding them.
  • Step 9 Dust with powdered sugar.
  • Step 10 (Cook’s Note: These are wonderful served with a scoop of high quality vanilla ice cream.)
Oldies But Goodies: Italian Chickpeas With Pesto

Oldies But Goodies: Italian Chickpeas With Pesto

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is perfect to celebrate spring. It’s a recipe for Italian Chickpeas With Pesto. You don’t want to miss…