Kitchenography

Skye Gyngell's Cauliflower Gorgonzola Soup with Pickled Pear Relish

One of my regular blog reads is  ~JCB~ , a blog authored by Janet whom I have had the good fortune to meet (hi, Janet!), which features short elegant posts about art, vintage photography, English country houses, books, or whatever appeals to Janet at the moment. 

In early October she mentioned a cookbook of "fabulous recipes" she'd purchased in London, A Year in My Kitchen by Skye Gyngell, the chef at Petersham Nurseries. I'd never heard of Skye Gyngell or her book before but looked her up on Amazon and saw that her book was being released in the U.S. in paperback in January.

I didn't think another thing of it until earlier this month when I saw my friend Meg's post about her plans to visit Petersham Nurseries while she was in London. My chance to get the book in November! In hardback! I asked Meg if she'd pick up a copy of the book for me which she kindly agreed to do.

The book itself is beautiful; it's printed on heavy, matte-finished paper, with gorgeous photographs and has ribbons to mark pages. The recipes are arranged by season and feature the fresh produce that's grown at Petersham Nurseries.

Last night Meg came over for dinner and I made the Cauliflower and Gorgonzola Soup. It was the same soup that Janet had made. It seems to be a soup that just leaps off the page because after reading Eggbeater's post about Petersham Nurseries, I see it's the same recipe that Heidi of 101 Cookbooks featured last year.

The soup was delicious although the next time I make this soup I'll cut back on the amount of gorgonzola which seemed to me to overpower the cauliflower. In fact, because the original recipe is given in metric measurements and  I've managed not to learn the first thing about the metric system, making this soup was fraught with runs to the computer to look up various conversions and I initially thought that I'd miscalculated the amount of gorgonzola and added too much. I hadn't but next time I'll add about half of the 8 ounces the recipe calls for. (It wasn't until after I made this that I realized that Janet had already posted the conversions when she posted the recipe which would have made my life a lot simpler.)

This would be a lovely Thanksgivng soup. It's elegant, and the topping of pickled pears and dried cranberries which adds a lively counterpoint to the richness of the soup, seems perfect for the Thanksgiving table.

Cauliflower Gorgonzola Soup

serves 6

1 tablespoon butter
2 small onions, diced
1 medium head of cauliflower broken into florets
4 sprigs of lemon thyme (or regular thyme)
2 bay leaves
1 quart chicken stock
8 ounces of gorgonzola (I'll use about half of that next time)
1/2 cup creme fraiche
parsley

1. Cook the onions in the butter over medium heat until the onions are softened and translucent.

2. Add the cauliflower, thyme, and bay leaf and continue to cook for a few minutes while the ingredients "find their feet." I'll be damned if I know what this means. I suppose it's just an instruction to allow the flavors to mingle.

3. Add the chicken stock, bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes until the cauliflower is soft.

4. Remove the bay leaves and the thyme. Crumble the gorgonzola and add it to the soup. Stir in the creme fraiche.

5. Blend the soup until smooth, either with a stick blender, or by pouring the soup into the container of a regular blender. If you use a regular blender, allow the soup to first cool a little, then be sure to hold down the top of the blender using a folded dish towel while you blend. 

6. Taste for seasoning. Reheat if necessary. Garnish with parsley and pickled pears, if using. Serve.

Pickled Pears (optional garnish)

1 tablespoon currants
2 tablespoons dried cranberries
2 comice pears, unpeeled and finely diced
1 golden delicious apple, unpeeled and finely diced
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar or cider vinegar (I think the sharper cider vinegar works better here)
2 tablespoons castor (superfine) sugar  (I used regular sugar)
1 cinnamon stick
4 sprigs of thyme
Salt and pepper, if desired

1. Soak the currants and dried cranberries in a small amount of warm water to plump them up and soften them.

2. Saute the fruit in the butter until it is soft which will be about five minutes.

3. Add the vinegar, sugar, dried cranberries, currants, cinnamon, and thyme to the fruit and continue to cook for another 10 minutes.

4. Taste for seasoning and add the optional salt and pepper if desired. (I would definitely add a fine grating of pepper. You're looking for a little sharpness.)

Recipe Notebook

 

This is my system for keeping track of the things I want to cook. I use a composition book with a green-speckled cover, probably purchased from the Rite Aid Drugstore around the corner. When I find a recipe I want to try I note the name of the recipe, the book and the page. When I've made the recipe, I check it off. 

The compostion book is divided into time periods and occasions (summer, fall, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) so if I see a really great recipe for tomatoes in November I simply enter it under "summer" and next summer when I refer back to my notebook, there it will be. Of course, I now have multiples of the same category because I've run out of room on the original  pages.

I've been using this for about a year and it works fairly well. Prior to that as I went through a new cookbook I would write down any recipes I wanted to try on an index card which I sometimes put in the book and sometimes collected elsewhere. I never did a get a definitive system down with the index cards, and it turned out to be a short-lived system because it was fairly useless.

Before the index cards I went through a period of copying any recipes I wanted to try but that resulted in a lot of paper to paw through whenever I wanted to see what was in the queue and the system was never efficient or satisfying.  And before that I didn't really have a system other than keeping in mind what I wanted to try or piling the cookbook with whatever recipe I wanted to try in the kitchen. Neither was particularly effective.

For some reason I'm usually able to lay my hand on whatever book I want immediately but the notebook itself is harder to keep track of. It floats around the house between my bedroom where I often read cookbooks in bed at night and the kitchen where most of my cookbooks are stored but sometimes it gets set down in places in between and I find myself hunting for it.

James Beard's Garlic Soup

A few months ago I received an email which began "My name is Renee and I am  Baltimore foodie. About a year ago I started a cook book club with some friends of mine. We are currently looking for a few new people to join our group."

My first inclination was to decline the invitation. I am in a whole different age bracket from Renee and beyond cooking I might have nothing in common with the group. I pictured awkward social interaction.

But I'd read about cooking clubs and always thought they sounded fun, and had thought vaguely about starting one but the logistics of finding a group stopped me. What would I do, advertise on Craig's List?But this was an already functioning group.

And we'd be cooking from cookbooks!

I'm a cookbook aficionado. I'm fascinated and intrigued by them and read them on many levels -- to learn, for inspiration, as a window into another time or place. I'm always hungry for the next one and  tend to acquire them so fast that I don't take the time to immerse myself in one before the next one is in my hands. I have plently of cookbooks from which I'd never cooked a single thing. One of the reasons I began blogging was to encourage myself to use the cookbooks I had more frequently.

I put aside my hesitation and emailed back to say I'd love to join.

I'm glad I decided to do it. The get-togethers are fun, boisterous, we make fabulous food, and when you have five people cooking from a book, you really get a feel for the book.

Last night, the third meeting I've been to, Renee, Joanne, Elizabeth, Coralie, and I cooked from James Beard's books. We had a wonderful meal of clams casino, garlic soup, beef stroganoff, stuffed peppers, and chocolate souffle.

Whoever hosts the dinner chooses the book and assigns a course to each person. We then choose what we'll make. When I checked the soups in the James Beard book that I had, garlic soup was my immediate choice, inspired by the fact that I love garlic, and that James Beard said of this soup, "It is simple but superb."  He was right.

I made this using lard. I would have preferred goose fat but I was unable to locate it in Baltimore. I later learned that Joanne has a freezer full of it. You have to love a woman with a goose fat stash. If you don't have access to goose or other fats, olive oil would also work for poaching the garlic.

Garlic Soup

Adapted from Beard on Food, serves 6 to 8

3 tablespoons chicken, goose, or pork fat
30 peeled garlic cloves (or more or fewer)
6 to 8 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper
Nutmeg
4 or 5 egg yolks
3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
slices of bread, toasted until crisp

1. Melt the fat over low heat, then add the garlic. Cook, without browning, until the garlic has become very soft. This will take half an hour or more.

2.  Add the chicken stock, salt and pepper, and a little freshly grated nutmeg. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Blend the soup either with a stick blender or by allowing the soup to cool slightly and pouring it into a blender. Blend so the soup is completely smooth.

4. Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl then stir in the olive oil. Begin tempering the eggs by adding hot but not boiling soup to the eggs a small amount of the time while beating the eggs. When you've added a half cup of broth or so to the eggs, pour the egg mixture into the broth beating while you do. Heat the mixture being careful not to let the soup come to a boil. You want to make sure you don't curdle the eggs.

5. Place a bread slice in the bottom of each bowl and pour the soup over top. Serve.

Cheese Straws

This recipe is from Clementine Paddleford's classic How America Eats which was published in 1960. Clementine Paddleford (and may I just say how much I love that name) was a food columnist for the New York Herald Tribune  who traveled the country, and occasionally the world, collecting recipes for her column. In the 1950s she was the equivalent of a modern day Food Network star --there was no one who wrote about food in that era who was more famous. 

Cheese straws are an old-fashioned sort hors d'oeuvre, the kind of thing people of previous generations snacked on while sipping cocktails, and recipes for them are a staple of cookbooks from the early and mid-twentieth century. Unlike many popular foods of the past (congealed salads, I'm looking at you), these are still every bit as appealing as they were in the 1940s. Hot, crisp, rich, and slightly spicy they'd be perfect with a glass of champagne while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner.

Cheese Straws

1 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated fine
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
3 cups sifted flour
1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Beat butter and cheese until incorporated. Add flour, cayenne, and salt and mix thoroughly. Roll out dough on floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness.Cut into strips about 1/2 inch wide and four inches long.

3. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 to 10 minutes until lightly brown and crisp

 

Pumpkin Walnut Cake with Caramel Mascarpone Whipped Cream

Does reprinting a recipe from my archives count as a post under the NaBloPoMo rules? Hhmmm.... possibly not. But I like the thought of this picture getting another chance in the limelight. I've always liked it.

The best thing about this cake? The caramel mascarpone whipped cream topping. Caramel mascarpone whipped cream. I don't know about you but those words are like a little tiny delicious poem to me.

Pumpkin Walnut Cake

Adapted from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle

1 3/4 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup safflower or other neutral vegetable oil
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/3 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

1. Position rack in middle of oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9" square baking pan.

2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt into a medium bowl. Whisk to combine and set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the whisk attachment, beat the eggs with both sugars at medium speed until pale, about 2 minutes. Add the oil, pumpkin puree, milk, and vanilla extract and mix until blended. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and stir in the walnuts. Pour the batter into the greased pan and smooth the top.

4. Bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool the cake completely in the pan on a wire rack.

5. To serve, cut the cake into squares, and top each with a large dollop of caramel cream.

Caramel Cream

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons water

1/4 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 1/4 heavy cream, divided

3/4 cup mascarpone cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a small heavy saucepan, combine the sugar, water, and lemon juice and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the sugar is dissolved. Increase the heat to high and stop stirring. Occasionally brush down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush (I confess: I never do this when making caramel and it seems to turn out ok). Cook without stirring until the syrup turns a golden amber color, about 4 minutes.

2. Remove the pan from the heat and add 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Be careful because the mixture will bubble up. Pour the caramel into a heatproof glass measuring cup and loosely cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate the caramel until chilled, about 2 hours.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the whisk attachment, beat the remaining 3/4 cup cream with the mascarpone cheese and vanilla at medium speed until blended. Add the chilled caramel and beat at high speed until the mixture forms soft peaks. Use immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to eight hours.

And my usual warnings about working with caramel: Be careful. You can burn yourself seriously with this stuff.

Suzanne Goin's Squash and Radicchio Risotto

 

NaBloPoMo --or,as it is now known to me, the parade of dismal pictures -- continues. I'm having a remarkable run of pictures which look as if they were taken with a cell phone camera under fluorescent light.

Today I made this risotto for my parents who were thrilled with it. I also enjoyed it, despite the fact that I don't have a completely cordial relationship with winter squash. This is one of those holdovers from childhood and my lack of regard for butternut squash has to do with its "mushiness" factor which the risotto accentuates. The squash is much more appealing straight out of the oven with its edges caramelized and almost crisp. When I make this again, I will serve the squash on top of the risotto rather than stirred through it. The radicchio in the risotto I love (what is it about me and my love of bitterness?) and it makes a nice combination with the sweetness of the squash.

It occurs to me that if you're one of those people who's not bound to mash potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving, this would make a good, if untraditional, side dish. It won't be happening for me though; while I'm not at all bound to mashed potatoes my husband lives for them.

Winter Squash Risotto with Radicchio and Parmesan

adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, serves 6

2 cups winter squash (I used butternut, Suzanne Goin uses kabocha) cut in 1/2 " dice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoons thyme leaves
4 cups chicken stock
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup diced white onion
2 cups Arborio rice
1 chile de arbol, crumbled
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 cup thinly sliced radicchio
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Regianno 
1/4 cup sliced flat leaf parsley

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

2. Toss the squash with 2 tablespoons of oil, the thyme, 3/4 teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste.

3. Add 4 cups of water to the 4 cups of chicken broth, and bring to boil, then turn off  heat.

4. In another heavy, medium-sized pot heat the pot over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons of butter, and when it foams add the onion, remaining 2 teaspoons of thyme, the chile de arbol, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and a grind of pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent. This will take about 5 to 7 minutes.

5. Stir in the rice and half the squash. Add additional salt, up to 1 1/2 teaspoons.  Be cautious with the salt -- if you are using canned broth you may need much less, or may not need it at all. Cook about two minutes, stirring constantly. The rice will become translucent except for a white dot at the center of each grain.

6. Add wine. Once it's been absorbed begin adding the hot broth, 1 cup at a time, and stirring continuously. When one cup of broth has been absorbed, add the next one. The rice should be bubbling and absorbing the broth quickly.

7. After about 15 minutes, begin testing the rice for doneness. It is done when the rice is al dente -- tender with slight resistance to the bite towards the center of each grain. When the rice is almost done, turn off the heat and stir in the remaining squash. Let the risotto "rest" for about 2 minutes, then stir in radicchio and half the Parmigiano-Reggiano. Taste for seasoning and if needed add additional salt. If the rice seems dry (ideally it should be neither soupy nor dry). Stir in the remaining two tablespoons of butter, and the parsley. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.

8. Serve the risotto, in large, shallow bowls.
 

If you've never made risotto, you might find this how-to-make risotto video helpful.

The Farm Journal's Lemon Ginger Pear Pie

The recipe below is from Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook, a book that was published in 1965 and that is part of a series of cookbooks published by Farm Journal Magazine begininning in 1957. The recipes in this book, as in all the books, were collected "by Farm Journal editors from prize-winning farm cooks."  

These books are among my favorite cookbooks. They're charming and evocative and provide a glimpse of farm life fifty years ago. Unlike many cookbooks of the 50s and 60s, the recipes rarely use convenience foods, and when canned fruits or vegetables are mentioned it usually refers to ones that have been home-canned.

The Complete Pie Cookbook has a remarkable variety of pies and recipes that you won't find in modern books such as lemon whey pie (made using the whey left over from making cottage cheese) or unusual combinations like buttermilk date pie. Each recipe is preceded by a brisk and cheerful one or two sentence head note. The headnotes for this pie say, "Elegant! Lemon-and-ginger-flavored fresh pear slices enveloped in pastry." 

Pie making and pie eating are not part of my daily life so my books are mostly for reading, however the Farm Journal Magazine had a serious test kitchen so unlike the recipes found in many older books  (and some modern books) these are reliable recipes which have been thoroughly tested.

The tart I made tonight, based on this recipe, won't be tasted until tomorrow but if the custard batter I scraped from the bowl using pieces of pear are any indication, it should be delicious.

I varied the recipe by making a tart in a 10" tart pan. First partially baking the tart shell (I used this recipe) then slicing three bosc pears and lining the tart shell with them, and pouring over a custard batter made with two eggs, 1/4 cup of heavy cream, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of finely grated ginger, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and the grated rind of one lemon. I baked this for 35 minutes at about 300 to 325 degrees. If I had an oven that worked correctly, I would have baked it at 350 degrees but to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you bake your tarts with the oven you have, not the oven you want. I'll report back tomorrow on how the tart tasted.

But in the meantime, should you decide to make this pie, or any other pie, I quote from the book: "Good luck and good pies."

Lemon Ginger Pear Pie

1 9" unbaked pie crust
3/4 cup sugar, divided
2 tbsp flour, divided
3/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
3 ripe winter pears
2 tbsp soft butter
2 eggs, separated
1 tsp grated lemon peel
3 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 cup milk

1. Combine 1/4 sugar, 1 tbsp flour, ginger, and salt and sprinkle on bottom of pie crust.

2. Peel and core pears, slice thinly and lay slices over sugar flour mixture.

3. Beat butter with remaining 1/2 cup sugar and 1 tbsp flour. Add egg yolks, lemon peel, and lemon juice. Beat thoroughly. Add milk and mix.

4. Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold into lemon mixture, then pour over pears.  Bake in 425 oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake 30 minutes.

 

Lidia Bastianich's Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli

OK, first of all, of course this is wonderful tasting stuff. Pasta and potatoes, leeks, cheese, bacon, and then, as if all of that was not enough, a sauce of melted butter. You can't go wrong with that sort of a combination. (Unless you're worried about issues of weight or cardiac health, but let's not even consider these things right now; it would spoil the mood. I don't want anything to disturb my present carbohydrate induced euphoria.)

The recipe comes from Lidia's Family Table. It's the first time I've used this cookboook in a while and in looking through it I am once again struck by the fact that Lidia Bastianich is first and foremost a teacher. She has pages of directions for making pasta and making ravioli. Her books are tremendously detailed and her recipes contain all sorts of information and cautions that other books assume the reader knows or simply leave out.

There are cookbook which are only a collection of recipes -- in fact, many of my favorite cookbooks are nothing more than a recipe collection. But there are also cookbooks which are every bit as much about teaching technique as they are about sharing recipes. Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is one of these, and Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible is another. Lidia Bastianich's books also fall into this category.

Plus, her recipes are interesting, appealing, and cover a lot of ground. For instance, Lidia's Family Table has recipes for egg pasta and spinach pasta, but also buckwheat and barley pasta. There are recipes for simple tomato sauces and more esoteric things like poached veal tongue.

I am not a regular watcher of her television show on PBS, but of all the cooking shows I'm familliar with, I enjoy hers the most. She's the antithesis of what's on the Food Network these days -- first of all, she actually cooks, now a rarity on the Food Network. In her television show, Lidia comes across as genuine and authentic. If you were one of those people who didn't learn to cook at the side of your  grandmother or mother, Lidia makes an excellent subsitute Italian mother/grandmother. And as if all that weren't enough, she's a renowned chef who creates sensational food.

Lidia Bastianich's Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli

3/4 pound Yukon Gold potatoes (3 small potatoes)
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
5 oz bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4 inch strips
1 1/2 cups finely chopped leeks (about two medium leeks)
salt & pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Fresh Pasta made using this recipe
1 egg, beaten

8 to 12 tablespoons butter
20 sage leaves, washed and patted dry

1. Put the whole, unpeeled potatoes in a pot of UNSALTED (Lidia's emphasis but if Lidia says so, I'm down with it) water, bring to a boil and cook until just cooked through. When the potatoes are cooked, put them aside to cool, then peel and and slice.

2. Meanwhile, cook the bacon in the olive oil over medium heat until the bacon has rendered much of its fat.  Stir in the leeks and cook until they're soft and wilted. Spread the potato slices in the pan, season with salt and pepper, and toss with the bacon and leeks.

3. Cook for 8 minutes or more over medium-high heat, breaking up the potatoes. Spread and press the filling flat in the pan and let caramelize for a couple of minutes. Turn the pieces, press and fry, then repeat. When the filling is thoroughly cooked and has started to color, scrape it into a mixing bowl. Cool briefly then crush the potatoes some more with a fork, then add 1/2 cup Parmesan, and salt and pepper, to taste.

4. Roll out the pasta in sections. I divide the dough into 5 or 6 sections, and roll out and fill one section at a time while keeping the rest covered in plastic wrap. After I finish rolling out a section using a pasta machine, I cut it into sections about twice as long as they are wide, then paint the beaten egg around the edges of the pasta. To fill the ravioli, place a tablespoon-full of filling in the middle of one side of a section, press the filling into a round shape. Fold the other side of the pasta over the filling, then press the pasta pieces together starting at the outside of the filling and working towards the edge. As you finish each ravioli put it on a piece of parchment paper that's been dusted with flour, or a kitchen towel that's been dusted with flour.

5. Melt butter, then add  the sage leaves. Cook until sage leaves are crisp.

6. Meanwhile, bring 6 quarts of water to a boil. Salt, using about a tablespoon of salt. Gently add the ravioli being careful not to crowd them to make sure they don't stick to each other. (You may want to do this in two batches.) When the water comes back to a boil, cook for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes. 

7. Fold a clean kitchen towel in half and put it on a dinner plate. Remove the ravioli with a slotted spoon, place on the towel, then tip into the pan with the butter and sage leaves. Toss gently with the butter and sage leaves and then serve, drizzling butter and sage leaves over the ravioli.   

More Recipes from Lidia Bastianich:

Rice and Potato Soup with Parmigiano Rind

Tomato Risotto with Basil and Fresh Mozzarella

Sausages with Fennel and Olives

Penne alla Vodka

Grilled Tuna with Oregano and Panelle

Some more information on making ravioli.
 

Honey Yogurt Panna Cotta

 

It's 4 p.m.on day 5 of NaBloPoMo: I have big plans for what I'm going to cook this evening. I remembered a great recipe which  I've been able to find online and I print it out so I'll know what to pick up at the grocery store on the way home. I plan to leave work half an hour early to get a good start on the extraordinarily awesome thing I plan to make this evening, and then blog about. Perfect!

But then I don't leave early because one of my office mates goes home sick and another one has to leave early because her son has locked himself out of the house. It's ok. No problem. Still plenty of time to get every thing done.

And then I remember the stupid, freakin' neighborhood meeting I'd promised to attend weeks ago. To talk about parking. From 7 to 9 pm. Damn! DamndamndamndamnDAMN! There goes my evening.

OK, no problem, change of plans: I'll still go to the store on the way home. I'll just cook, photograph, and post after I get back from the meeting. Totally possible. 

Fast forward to 9:40 p.m. Neighborhood parking problem has been discussed in excruciating detail at exhaustive length. (Newsflash. No solution in sight.) I am now home contemplating starting my cooking-photographing-posting project. Did I mention it involves making pasta too? Filled pasta. Just thinking about it exhausts me. My energy is dropping by the moment. NaBloPoMo? WTF was I thinking?

Plan B: I'll just make something else. That Jacques Pepin recipe for poached pears with coffee sauce I wanted to try! Oh, wait that won't work. The book is in the bedroom where Mike has already gone to sleep because he was so exhausted from late night and early, early morning. Don't want to wake him.

Oh, crap. I need a Plan C. Checking my drafts for inspiration, and... hey, a picture and recipe I never published! I made this in late September but decided not to post it because it would have been my third fig post in a row and I wasn't that crazy about the picture But now that I'm in the throes of NaBloPoMo, I don't care! I'm desperate.

So a fig post it is....  

Although it isn't a fig post, it's a panna cotta post, and while honey panna cotta makes a great partner for these braised figs (cooked using this recipe) it also will go nicely with compotes of winter fruit. The panna cotta is a reworking of this recipe. While I often find honey to be overwhelmingly sweet, here the tanginess of the yogurt tempered the sweetness of the honey. 

Panna cotta is usually served unmolded from a ramekin as pictured above. However, it's a lot easier to serve it by letting the panna cotta set in a shallow bowl and then scooping it out like ice cream and serving it with fruit on top. Or serve it in the ramekin.

Honey Yogurt Panna Cotta

serves 8

1 1/2 teaspoons gelatin
1 cup milk
1/2 cup honey, preferably something dark and strong tasting 
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/4 cups Greek yogurt

1. In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over 2 tablespoons of water and let it stand to soften

2. Whisk together cream and yogurt and set aside.

3. Heat the milk and honey over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally, until the honey is completely dissolved. Do not allow it to come to a boil. Take off the heat and whisk in the gelatin mixture. Then whisk the honey mixture into the yogurt and cream mixture.

4. Pour into ramekins or a shallow bowl like a glass pie dish. Refrigerate at least four hours before serving.

Election Day 2008

What an amazing night this is.