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French Breakfast Radishes and My Good Friend Joyce

French Breakfast Radishes and My Good Friend Joyce

Joyce. She’s smart, kind, talented, elegant–all the things I want to be if I ever grow up. Joyce and I used to work together. Serendipitously, her daughter was a student in one of my classes: Smart. Kind. Talented. Elegant. (It runs in the family.) Now,…

America Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Chocolate-Chip Cookies: Chocolate-Chip Oatmeal Cookies With a Middle-Eastern Twist

America Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Chocolate-Chip Cookies: Chocolate-Chip Oatmeal Cookies With a Middle-Eastern Twist

Every place in the world deserves a good chocolate chip cookie. Am I right? These Chocolate Chip Cookies With Ras el Hanout are right out of the Middle East. The recipe comes from New York Times Food Writer Nargisse Benkabbou and can be found on…

Asparagus in Puff Pastry

Asparagus in Puff Pastry

Need an easy but impressive dish for the end of the month?

This Asparagus in Puff Pastry just might fit the bill.

Don’t be put off by the puff pastry ingredient. There is no need to make your own. You’ll find puff pastry in the frozen section of most supermarkets. It is very easy to work with. Just defrost, shape, fill and bake. 

My local Jon’s Fresh Marketplace carries little 5 inch by 5 inch squares of puff pastry, the size you’ll need for this recipe. If you can’t find the pre-cut squares in your market, you could, of course, buy the larger sheets of puff pastry and cut them to size. 

You can find a lot of Asparagus and Puff Pastry recipes online. This particular take on the dish is adapted from a recipe that appears on a site called The Bread Stone Ovens Company. You can find their recipe here.

By the way, if this recipe emboldens you to work with puff pastry, you can find another great recipe on Blue Cayenne. That one is for sweet Puff Pastry Pinwheels and you can find it here.The pinwheels are beautiful. 

Asparagus in Puff Pastry

June 29, 2022
Ingredients
  • Puff Pastry Packets
  • A bunch of fresh asparagus stalks
  • 1 T. olive oil
  • A wedge of brie cheese
  • Salt
  • Black Pepper
  • Red Pepper Flakes
  • Squares of puff pastry (thawed)
  • 1 Egg
  • Honey Butter
  • Honey
  • Unsalted butter
  • A pinch of salt
  • Sprigs of thyme for garnish
Directions
  • Step 1 Line a baking sheet with parchment.
  • Step 2 Thaw the puff pastry.
  • Step 3 Snap the tough ends off the raw asparagus. Toss the asparagus in bowl with 1 T. olive oil and salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Set aside.
  • Step 4 Slice thin slices of brie cheese and put a slice on top of each puff pastry square.
  • Step 5 Arrange several stalks of raw asparagus at an angle on top of the puff pastry squares. Fold the edges of the puff pastry over the asparagus and press gently to seal.
  • Step 6 Brush each puff pastry/aspapargus packet with beaten egg.
  • Step 7 Bake at 300 degrees F. for about 25 or 30 minutes. You want the puff pastry to puff a bit and turn a pretty golden brown.
  • Step 8 Mix the honey and butter in a small saucepan with a generous pinch of salt. Heat and stir until the honey and butter are well mixed and until you have a runny honey sauce to drizzle over your baked asparagus packets. Garnish each packet with a few thyme sprigs or grated cheese, chopped parsley and cherry tomatoes and serve.

 

Where Have All The Smorgasbords Gone? Buttermilk-Molasses Quick Bread

Where Have All The Smorgasbords Gone? Buttermilk-Molasses Quick Bread

What ever happened to those wonderful Swedish smorgasbord restaurants?  They were having a moment when I was a younger cook. I remember the beautiful buffets of delicious delicacies. I still crave the savory breads. So it was with great anticipation and a good bit of…

Oldies But Goodies…Midsummer Pasta With Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes

Oldies But Goodies…Midsummer Pasta With Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.”  You will find a link to a recipe for Midsummer Pasta With Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes here. You don’t want to miss this great…

Mediterranean Spinach Salad With Dates and Almonds

Mediterranean Spinach Salad With Dates and Almonds

I’m a salad person through and through.

I have six cookbooks on my bookshelves that are dedicated entirely to salads. I have a new one on order. When I buy a new cookbook, one of the first sections I check out is the salad section.

To me a salad is essential to make a meal, a thing of beauty, a health food and on and on.

This salad from Yotam Ottolenghi’s extraordinary cookbook Jerusalem is all of the above. Plus there is the tart bite of the sumac and chile flakes and the delightful crunch of the almonds and pita.

Don’t let the sumac keep you from trying this recipe. It is available at most supermarkets, at Trader Joe’s, and, of  course, at all Middle Eastern markets. Sumac is usually used in powdered form and is ground from the berries of the flowering sumac plant. Interestingly, sumac is a distant cousin of the cashew and the mango. If you want to know more,  you can find a link to a  thorough article about sumac from Eater: here.

Make this one!

You can buy his cookbook at your local bookstore or on Amazon here.  Interestingly, on Amazon the cookbook is rated 5 stars by 87% of the 4913 reviewers. There are only 45 grumpy reviewers who give the book a 1 star rating and most of those are people whose book arrived damaged.

Mediterranean Spinach Salad With Dates and Almonds

June 14, 2022
Ingredients
  • 1 T. white wine vinegar (I used cranberry pear flavored white balsamic)
  • 1/2 medium onion (very thinly sliced)
  • 4 Medjool dates (sliced into quarters lengthwise)
  • 2 T. unsalted butter
  • 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 pita bread (roughly torn into small pieces)
  • 1/2 C. whole unsalted almonds (roughly chopped)
  • 2 t. sumac
  • 1/2 t. chile flakes
  • 5 oz. baby spinach
  • 2 T. fresh lemon juice
  • salt
Directions
  • Step 1 To make the date/onion mixture, put thinly-sliced red onion into a small bowl along with the sliced dates. Add 1 T. vinegar and toss. Let this mixture marinate for at least 20 minutes.
  • Step 2 To prepare the pita bread mixture, melt the butter in a large pan. Add 1 T. of the olive oil. To the heated oils, add the pita pieces and the chopped almonds. Sauté this mixture until the pita pieces are a golden brown. You want them to be crunchy, too. Remove pita mixture from heat and add in sumac, chile flakes and a generous pinch of salt. Set aside.
  • Step 3 Just before serving, prep your baby spinach. Put spinach in a large bowl and toss with the pita mixture and the red onion mixture. Whisk the remaining 1 T. olive oil and the lemon juice until it is emulsified. Toss the lemon and oil mixture with the salad. Add salt to taste. Serve immediately. This salad does not keep! The pita pieces quickly lose their crunch.

Hot Soup for the Summer Heat! Cauliflower and White Bean Soup

Hot Soup for the Summer Heat! Cauliflower and White Bean Soup

As we head into a hot summer, who doesn’t need a calming bowl of hot soup? I know I do.   Hot soup????  In the summer? It turns out that there is some science behind the practice of eating hot soup on hot days. Epicurious,…

Strawberry Season!!!  Strawberry Almond Flour Cake

Strawberry Season!!! Strawberry Almond Flour Cake

I know. It’s another cake. This Strawberry Almond Flour Cake is just too delicious (and interesting) to delay sharing. And, anyway, it is finally strawberry season here in Southern California.  Interestingly, no wheat flour is involved here. It’s just almond flour and a small amount…

Syrian Nutmeg Cake

Syrian Nutmeg Cake

 

Nutmeg has long been highly valued–sometimes commanding astronomical prices.

In 14th century Europe, a pound of nutmeg could set you back seven fat oxen! Wow!

Nutmeg’s story begins early. According to food historian Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking), nutmeg is known to have been grown in Southeast Asia as early as the 4th century. By the Middle Ages, traders from India and the Middle East were making enormous profits trading the spice. They claimed nutmeg possessed medicinal, aphrodisiac and perfume qualities.

Later still, the value of nutmeg hit stratospheric heights when it is was rumored to be a plague cure. Then as now, desperate people grasped for far-fetched cures for horrific diseases.

Nutmeg was political, too.

During the Age of Exploration that spanned the 15th-17th centuries, plentiful crops of nutmeg (and cloves) in the Spice Islands of Indonesia pitted the European Sea powers in a frantic struggle for colonies and spoils.  The profit potential was enormous. A single nutmeg tree could live for 100 years with a yearly crop of 20,000 individual nutmegs.  (Wow…again!)

It took another couple of centuries to discover that the spice trees could be successfully grown in the Caribbean and beyond. Today Indonesia, India and Guatemala produce 85% of the world’s nutmeg.

This recipe for Syrian Nutmeg Cake is from Joanne Chang’s cookbook Pastry Love. You can buy the cookbook at your local bookstore or from Amazon here. There also are a number of online recipes for Syrian or Armenian Nutmeg cake. You can find Food 52’s version here. The Food 52 cake omits the frosting in favor of a generous dusting of powdered sugar.

The cost of nutmeg has thankfully moderated over the years. You can find reasonable prices in your local supermarket. Better yet, you can find whole nutmegs at many Indian and Middle Eastern stores at reasonable prices, allowing you to grate your own and add pungent freshly-grated nutmeg to recipes like this Syrian Nutmeg Cake. Gone are the days when you had to bet the farm (and your seven fat oxen!) on the spice.

Here is how I baked this cake in my kitchen.

Syrian Nutmeg Cake

May 28, 2022
Ingredients
  • 1 3/4 C. firmly-packed brown sugar
  • 1 C. whole wheat flour
  • 1 C. all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 C. unsalted butter (meltd)
  • 1 C. Greek yogurt
  • 1 C. walnuts (roughly chopped)
  • 1 large egg (at room temperature)
  • 1 t. baking powder
  • 1 t. lightly-packed freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/2 t. baking soda
  • 1/4 t. kosher salt
  • 1/2 C. heavy cream
  • 1/2 C. mascarpone or creme fraiche
  • 2 T. powdered sugar
  • 1/4 t. pure vanilla extract
Directions
  • Step 1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  • Step 2 Prepare a 9 inch springform pan by lining it with a circle of parchment paper.
  • Step 3 Combine brown sugar, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour and melted butter in the bowl of a standing mixer. Mix. You want the ingredients to be totally mixed together and you want the butter mixture to have a crumbly texture.
  • Step 4 Press 1 C. of the crumb mixture firmly onto the bottom of your springform pan. Set aside.
  • Step 5 Combine yogurt, walnuts, egg, baking powder, nutmeg, baking soda and salt with the remaining buttery crumbs until the ingredients are totally mixed. Spoon this mixture into the springform pan and tap with an offset spatula to even the top of the batter.
  • Step 6 Bake for about 1 hour to 70 minutes. Rotate your pan midway through baking. Your cake will be done when a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean and when the middle of the cake springs back when pressed. Allow cake to cool completely.
  • Step 7 When the cake is cooled, invert onto a broad plate. Remove the parchment. Invert again onto your serving plate.
  • Step 8 To make the frosting, Whisk the heavy cream, mascarpone (or creme fraiche), powdered sugar and vanilla together until you have a fluffy and light frosting. Spread this frosting on top of the cake in a circular pattern.

Oldies But Goodies: Almond Cake

Oldies But Goodies: Almond Cake

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.”Here is a recipe for a sweet little almond cake. Here is the link: Almond Cake. You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again. Want…