Food, Photography and Bon Mots
Rough puff. It’s a thing among home bakers–a shortcut to glorious puff pastry. What’s the big deal about puff pastry? The magic of puff pastry (and rough puff) is the moisture in the generous amount of butter that is incorporated into the dough. As the…
Could you use a steaming bowl of creamy rich soup about now? The world is having a heartbreakingly-bad week. This recipe is adapted from Melissa Clark’s recipe on the NYT site. Here is a link to the original recipe: Lemony Carrot and Cauliflower Soup.
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 tasty Macaroni Salad that appeared on Blue Cayenne in 2015: Macaroni Salad.
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.
Need some recipes for dinner dishes that you can make right from the pantry? There are nights when I sure do! Here is a cookbook for you to consider. It is Yotam Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Shelf Love. The premise of the book is just that—recipes…
I usually march to the beat of my own drummer, but the crush of interest in recipes for Burnt Basque Cheesecake has piqued my interest. It turns out that Burnt Basque Cheesecake originated in the 1990s as a Tarta de Queso at La Vina Restaurant…
This is a beauty of a galette–redolent with lightly-caramelized onions, loaded with tender potatoes and sitting atop a layer of Boursin cheese and a generous crisp crust. There is a lot of love here.
A galette, by the way, is a rustic free-form tart from the French baking tradition. As the story goes, the galette dates back to Norman times when it was referred to as a “gale” or flat cake. Bon Appetit Magazine once wrote of the galette that it has that “Oh, I just threw this together” type of charm. Who doesn’t want that vibe at their table once in a while?
There is a lot of versatility with this galette, too. It could easily be the main event on your dinner plate or a hearty side. Or, pair it with an egg for breakfast. Or nibble it right off the tray as I’m doing right now.
As a bonus, this is an easy crust. Pretty, too.
This isn’t Blue Cayenne’s first rodeo insofar as galettes are concerned. Find an outstanding Tomato, Goat Cheese and Honey Galette here and a gorgeous fruit galette here. Come to think of it, why not try them all?
This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Bake From Scratch Magazine (available here).
Raisin Bread, you ask? Who invented Raisin Bread? Lest we look too deeply, the answer would seem to be Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s biographer, Walter Harding, credited him with the recipe, after all. But…alas… Harding later retracted that colorful claim when he learned that the…
There was a bit of a “you say granula, I say granola” tiff involved in the naming of granola. First, it was “granula.” Granula was invented by James Caleb Jackson in the 1860s. Jackson was an abolitionist, a medic, a Christian evangelist and a therapy-spa…
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last
a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
—Ray Bradbury
My good friend and neighbor, Gene, celebrated his 89th birthday the other day. There were a lot of people celebrating with him, too. Gene is a former science teacher at Long Beach Wilson and an all-around smart and good person. Sarah, his wife, hosted a jubilant family dinner on his birthday. Family and friends flooded the family Facebook page with cheers and good wishes or stopped by to offer their good wishes in person.
Juliet and I paid him a visit, too.
Juliet, ever elegant, was dressed to the nines in her vintage pink lamé jacket. Gene is high on her list of favorite people. (The pup likes to party, too.)
Our birthday gift was a box of cornmeal cupcakes decorated with blood orange slices that had been macerated in tangerine marmalade. (We used the wonderful marmalade Sarah gifted us from her kitchen. The marmalade was made from tangerines harvested from yet another neighbor’s tree picked just at the perfect point of ripeness. Clearly, it takes a neighborhood to make an exquisite jar of marmalade!)
The magic in this recipe is that, to get to the subtle not-too-sweet deliciousness of the corn muffins, you have to bite through a “candied” blood orange slice. Those sweet contrasting textures make the recipe pop.
So, one more time, great good wishes, Gene. Party on!
This recipe is adapted from one that appears in The New Sugar and Spice Cookbook by Samantha Seneviratne. The cookbook is available from your local bookstore or from Amazon here. Here is a link to the original recipe as it appeared in Fine Cooking Magazine: Marmalade Cake/Fine Cooking Magazine.
These muffins are at their best eaten on the day you bake them.
Here is the recipe.
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 hearty favorite bean recipe: Guinness Baked Beans. You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again. Want to dive deeper into our…
