Toffee and Truffles

I absolutely love giving away treats and there's no more perfect time of year for wrapping up some homemade goodies than the holiday season. Last year Chris and I gave homemade candy canes and peppermint marshmallows. This year I was inspired by my cousin to try my hand at toffee. I've never been a big toffee fan but last year I was blown away by cousin D's homemade confection. Can you think of a better combination than butter and sugar? If not, toffee is for you.

To go with this super easy candy, I prepared an adaptation of the Chocolate Chambord and Macadamia Nut Truffles from the book Bakewise by Shirley Corriher. I received this book last Christmas from my sister and it's one of the best resources I have. It delves into the hows and whys of baking and has a ton of educational information that help you understand why your cake looked awful when you tried to omit one egg. Anyway, I couldn't find Chambord in my local supermarket, so I substituted Kahlua instead. I was tempted to omit the Chambord all together but it very specifically said that if enough "water-type liquid" was not added, the chocolate would seize. The other modification I made was to roll half the truffles in crushed macadamia nuts and the other half in unsweeted cocoa powder. These truffles have something for everyone; the mac nut truffles have a burst of salty followed by the sweet smooth chocolate while the cocoa coated confections have a slightly bitter cocoa taste surrounding the sweet chocolate center.

The finishing touch on this years tasty treats were fantastic treat boxes by Martha Stewart through Michael's craft store. They come with everything from the boxes, to the tissue paper, to the ribbons and labels. I'm just in love with them.

I Declare Holiday Baking Season Open!

It's started! The nonstop month of baking between Thanksgiving and Christmas! I've got recipes lined up for just about every occasion and decided to open the holidays with a favorite recipe of mine. Most people seem to avoid chocolate desserts on Thanksgiving in favor of more standard fall treats; so I decided to go with my favorite Chocolate-Glazed Chocolate Tart from last year's Gourmet magazine (which no longer exists sadly!). The idea is pretty simple - start with a chocolate graham cracker crust, add a chocolate custard of sorts, and top it off with a thin layer of chocolate ganache. In all, it takes less than 2 hours to prepare but tastes like it took a week. It's also a great opportunity to use some of your favorite chocolate; I wholly recommend using a good quality bittersweet chocolate for this since it is the centerpiece of the recipe.

Black and White and Cake All Over

It's been a little while now since I baked like a maniac. Fortunately, one of my labmates again gave me a good excuse to destroy my kitchen. We decided to go with 4 dozen cupcakes and a two-tiered cake to match! I was really conflicted over what kind of cake I wanted to do. For some reason I was just stumped. Then, it came to me. My bedroom curtains were the perfect inspiration! I have an eclectic mix of black and white striped and black and white floral curtains in my bedroom that made for what might be my favorite cake yet. I decided to add to the mix of patterns by stacking a round cake on top of a square one.

On the cupcake side of things, I went with 4 different designs to give everyone a good choice. First off were vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream adorned with pearlized silver sprinkles and gold-dusted white chocolate "J" pieces. Second were (my favorite) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing adorned with silver sprinkles and gold-dusted dark chocolate finials (generously gold-dusted by E.!). Also with cream cheese icing were a set of carrot cake cupcakes (easy as pie to make!). Finally, I went with a unique caramel cupcake with a caramel buttercream (E. and I ate all the extra out of my bowl!) and spun sugar abstract decorations on top. All this baking taught me one thing: I need to make cupcakes more often. The most difficult thing: keeping Chris away from all the cupcakes for any appreciable amount of time.

I was very pleased with how it all turned out and even more surprised we got everything to the park in one piece! I had good help with the transport. Hopefully there will be more cupcakes in the future.

Stormy Weather Stew

It may not have been what many of you east coasters would call stormy, but it was stormy enough by my Pasadena standards to warrant a good, hot, rustic stew. This is a little late coming, but a few weeks ago, it got cold (for about 2 days) and even rained! When I say cold, I mean it got below 70 (in the 50s at night!) and when I say "rained," it might have drizzled for 20 minutes. That's a big deal here in October! I seized the opportunity though to bust out my first real winter dinner of the year! My favorite nasty weather recipe is none other than my mom's beef stew recipe. I have no idea where it comes from or how old it is, but it does the trick when I feel icky and cold. It takes a little while to braise the meat and get the veggies to the right amount of "mushy," but it's worth the time and little bit of extra effort. In the end, it may not look pretty, but it always hits the spot.

I started with 1.5 lbs of pre-cut stewing beef and dredged it in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. In a small amount of heated oil in a heavy bottomed cast iron enameled Dutch oven (my FAVORITE!), brown all the meat, being careful not to crowd it too much. After all the meat is browned, add 2 32 oz. containers of low sodium beef broth (I use low sodium so that I can control the level of seasoning). Once you add the beef broth, you get to the best part: DEGLAZING! Make sure you get all those brown flavorful bits off your pot and into your broth (wood spoon, please). After you've delgazed, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour. While that's simmering, give 8 carrots and 6 red potatoes (peeled) a rustic chop job and set aside. After the 1 hour, toss in your veggies (and whatever else you want really) and simmer covered for another 45 minutes. If your stew doesn't thicken up enough during the cooking process, you can use Wondra mixed with a little water to thicken the stew after cooking is done. The last thing I add is a little salt, pepper, and gravy master. You can dress this up however you please; it's kinda like a blank canvas in that sense. I serve it steaming hot over egg noodles with fresh sourdough bread and a good red wine.

This is the first real family recipe I've made recently and posted. I'm hoping to get a few more of my mom's favorites up here in the near future.

Hometown Homage

Yesterday another one of our labmates graduated and as is becoming the custom, I made the cake. It's been a little while since I made a big cake (and as such I must have forgotten saying I would never make one during the work week again), so I was itching to do something big and extravagant. Our labmate is moving on to a postdoctoral position in New York and this is where I drew my inspiration. What better way to instill excitement about his upcoming NY adventure than an homage to my own hometown in cake? I went with a 2-tiered blue fondant white cake with vanilla buttercream. The bottom tier was rectangular while the top tier was a small round cake offset from the center of the lower tier. Around each cake I depicted silhouettes of the city in black fondant (tip: buy black fondant, don't dye it yourself!). The lower tier had silhouettes of the city skyline while the upper tier had a Brooklyn bridge silhouette wrapping it. Both cakes had the little yellow "Broadway lights" along their lower border (and great thanks to Chris's little sister for rolling all those for me!). On top of the round cake I thought I would mould a "Big Apple" our of rice cereal treat (great trick for keeping it light) and cover it with fondant. To finish it off, a Broadway street sign, a few subway line signs, and a little "I Heart NY" sign surrounded the big apple. For the first time ever, the cake I served actually looked like the picture I drew. Maybe I'm getting a little better at this or maybe I'm becoming more realistic about what I can accomplish in a week's time in cake (likely the latter).

Portabello Burgers

Hello loyal readers, all 10 of you. Sorry it's been awhile since our last post. We've been busy, but the upshot of that is there's a lot to talk about. Among those things is my first formal food post.

One of the under-appreciated benefits of living in Southern California is the fresh produce available not only in the farmer's markets that are ubiquitous throughout LA's cities and towns, but also the ease of access to that produce in the supermarket. Sure, you can get real organic heirloom tomatoes every Thursday night in South Pasadena, but you can get them all week in Whole Foods, Pavilions, or even Vons. Needless to say, the fact that we can get such vegetables without any special effort got Pam and I thinking less about what to have with chicken, and more about what to have with a produce centerpiece.

This paradigm shift in our dietary planning is much healthier, as well. Sating your hunger with more filling-but-calorically-poor foods like produce, and less from calorie-rich-but-not-filling pre-prepared foods and meats leaves you feeling full, but with fewer calories to burn at the end of the day. So, if you're concerned with caloric accounting, this is probably the easiest way to go quickly from the distinctly American habit of overeating to feeling full but having to worry less about how much you ate that day. If you're grad students like the two of us are, it's certainly the least time-consuming way that we've focused on for living a more healthy lifestyle.

Before I digress much further, this is the philosophical underpinning for some of the dishes we've been experimenting with lately. Specifically, a classic entree that shocks many when they're told how satisfying it is as the centerpiece of any meal: the Portabello Mushroom burger.

The Portabello has all sorts of health benefits of varying veracity that are detailed in other places, but the revelation that appealed to us was that each portabello has about 20 calories in it. 20 calories, and you can feel as full afterward as if you just ate a normal-sized hamburger.

The downside is that the mushroom itself has little to no taste before being cooked, but that's where the fun really starts.

To start with, we prepared a dressing consisting of a 1:1 mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Into this suspension was mixed a combination of crushed fresh rosemary (great to use the rear end of a wooden spoon to crush these in olive oil), and minced garlic, with a little fresh ground pepper and salt for extra seasoning. The flavor of fresh rosemary is subtle relative to its dried counterpart, so feel free to liberally add the herb. Also, a touch of basil similarly crushed gives a savory kick to the dressing if it is desired, but has a tendency to dominate the flavor, so be careful. This dressing was prepared in under 5 minutes, so it's a simple, healthy and fresh addition.

After removing the stipe (a mushroom's stem) to give a flat, patty-like bell, we added our well-mixed dressing by drizzling it from the bowl onto the underside of the mushroom in order to saturate but not overfill the gills. Now we're ready to cook.

We've had a lot of trial and error with the grilling side of things, but have found that the best way to keep the mushroom moist and flavorful without the leathery undercooked texture or the burnt blandness associated with too long on the grill is straightforward. Placing the dressed mushroom top-down on a squared piece of aluminum foil and wrapping gives a neat, grill-ready package for cooking.

Insofar as the grill is concerned, pre-heat to about 500 degrees, then just throw your mushrooms on for about 10 minutes, keeping the temperature in the 400-500 degree range. The foil keeps the mushroom cooking evenly, and prevents burning. Perhaps most conveniently, you don't have to flip the mushroom while it's on the grill, so if you're like me, you can watch TV (sports and other manly things, never the food network) inside, and come back in 10 minutes.

To check if the mushrooms are done, just peel back some of the foil and see if the mushroom gills look softer, in that they have lost their ability to hold their shape. Generally, if the dressing is boiling on top of the mushrooms, you're in good shape, and you can take them of the grill. Once that's done, turn up the heat to high, hopefully over 600 degrees.

At this point, peel off the package and take out the mushrooms. To the extremely hot grill, add these again in order to sear both sides, for about a minute each. Grill the top sides first to get your customary grill marks and then flip, letting the dressing fall out. This will kick up flames, so be careful. Close the grill top to keep the flames down, but after only a minute, take the mushrooms back out.

We recommend serving them with a slice of tomato and a thick slice of mozarella cheese on a bun. Let them sit for about 2 minutes with the cheese on to get an awesome texture contrast of the soft cheese with the crisp and juicy mushrooms and tomatoes. The result is a satisfactory bite with a sour and meaty burst of juicy flavor from the first bite to the last. If you still feel like adding extra seasoning, we haven't found them lacking, but we'd certainly love to hear your suggestions.

This is our first go-to thoroughly vegetarian meal, and has inspired us to look into more. So, as the summer starts to wind down, give it a shot... happy grilling!

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

It was as if Gourmet magazine knew that my little sister had bought me the Cuisinart automatic ice cream maker for my birthday. In this month's issue (August 2009), they had a whole frozen desserts section that I promptly flagged for weekend cooking fun. First on my list was the salted caramel ice cream. One thing that always lacks for me with store bought caramel ice cream is the homemade caramel aftertaste. I don't think I could put words to it, but if you've ever made caramel at home, you know what I mean. And if you haven't made caramel at home, it's about time you did!

This recipe starts out with a simple dry caramel. Most caramel you make begins with a sugar/water solution and gradually boils off the water. This takes quite a bit longer than just dumping a cup of sugar in your pan and heating it up - as in a dry caramel. I had never done this dry caramel before but I think I've been converted. Just watch the heat so it doesn't cook too quickly. Once you hit that deep amber color, you can start adding the cream. The recipe says this splatters, and it's correct. Add the cream slowly so that you don't hurt yourself or your stove. From there onward, it's a standard ice cream recipe with a cooked custard base combined with the caramel sauce.

The end result of this was beyond my expectations. Hands down this was the creamiest ice cream I've ever had. Even after 2 days in the freezer, it still has a texture that can only be compared to silk. As far as taste goes, it's distinctly homemade, very rich, and very sweet. The added sea salt really enhances the sweetness of the caramel. I'm usually one to dress up my ice cream with toppings or whipped cream, but this one must stand alone. It needs no help at all.

The Other Half

Ever since Le Petit Chef got started, Pam's been insisting I find something to post about. I've got a few ideas, but as a first step, I'll just say a couple things about how I got into actually enjoying the art (and science!!) of food preparation. I remember when I first started grad school, a coworker asked if I liked cooking. I said 'god no,' and he was shocked. His reply was something along the lines of 'how can you be a good chemist and not cook!' Through watching Pam and trying a couple of things myself, I've certainly discovered that organic chemists (at least) have a natural inclination, if not an outright affinity for the culinary arts.

Pam has already shown a penchant for things in the kitchen. In fact, I'm not allowed to do anything in the kitchen except prepare things for the grill. Needless to say, the stovetop and oven are not my forte. I won't go so far as to suggest that the grill (or if we want to be pretentious about it, the grille) is my forte, but I am learning. If you, our reader(s), start early on enough, you can learn with me that grilling is much more than 1/4" patties of low grade beef turned twice and served over cheese between buns. In fact, grilling goes much deeper than that, as I have recently discovered, to facilitate the preparation of almost any food.

So, as we proceed, I will do my best to chronicle my hopefully educational, sometimes comical, inevitably disastrous and ideally edible (if not downright delicious) experiments for you. Best-case scenario, Pam and I become a wildly successful Michelin-rated two-person operation. Worst-case scenario, you learn a thing or two that inspires you to fire up your cheap propane gas grill or Webber kettle and give some pork rubs or vegetable marinades a shot, and eat more happily and healthily.

In either case, I hope it's a fun ride. Bon apetit!

As American as Apple Pie

I don't think it gets more American than apple pie, so that was my choice for a 4th of July treat. Chris and I spent an awesome weekend out in Malibu on the beach with our west coast family and friends. As usual in Malibu, there was no shortage of good food! My contribution was this apple pie, which I adapted from "The Joy of Cooking." I cook the filling, first cooking the apples in butter for several minutes covered before adding sugar, a healthy dose of cinnamon, and a bit of nutmeg. After cooling the filling, I spooned it into my pie crust with the accumulated juices and syrup. For the top of the crust, I used aspic cutters to cut stars out and used the little star pieces to further decorate the top before placing it on top of my pie. After an egg wash, I sprinkled a little bit of coarse sugar on top to lightly caramelize the pie crust upon baking. In all, if you cheat a little (like I did here) and use a pre-made pie crust, you can make this pie in less than 2 hours, before cooling.

One Word: KitchenAid!

Or is it two words? Who cares! Thanks to my awesome (and baking enabling) parents, I welcomed my first KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer this week! KitchenAid has a great deal where you can buy a refurbished model for about half the MSRP through their website. I chose the 5 qt. Artisan stand mixer in "Ice" and couldn't be happier with it. It comes at a great time where I'm pretty sure that one more batch of icing would have burned out the motor on my small hand mixer. I'm most excited about beating perfect egg whites with it and not having to stand there holding the mixer while trying to slowly add sugar and such! That may not sound super exciting to all of you, but it's thrilling to me! I feel much more legitimate now as far as baking goes, that's for sure.

An Herb Garden Companion

As you may have read previously, Chris and I have been growing some herbs on my balcony in pots for everyday cooking. When Chris' mom was visiting, she taught us how to cut the herbs, dry them, and freeze them for future use. I for one certainly was worried what I would do when she left and we were left to our own devices in caring for our little garden. This was quickly remedied by Chris' mom (and sister!) who sent me (as a birthday gift) this great little guide to growing your own herbs and using them called "Your Backyard Herb Garden". It covers everything from growing your herbs to using them in cooking and crafts. I'm especially interested in the handy chart on pests and molds to watch out for. In short, this is exactly what we needed to keep our little garden thriving and keep cooking with our herbs through the winter season. Thanks for the awesome gift!

Birthday Cake, Anyone?

This Saturday will be my 26th birthday and I'm happy to share it with our great friend, Andy! Some of you may also know that Chris' birthday was just last week. Of course this calls for birthday cake! I put this little guy together over Wednesday and Thursday nights after work. It's a 2 tier, blue and yellow, birthday gift cake with a great big blue fondant bow on top. I added a few little yellow bows on the first tier to jazz it up a bit too.

Chicken with Madeira Cream Sauce

I think this is officially my favorite chicken recipe; and it's easy! It's from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1" and requires very few ingredients. The chicken is baked in butter in a dutch oven covered with parchment paper. Julia Child says the chicken requires only 6 minutes or so to cook, but I think this was before the time of our oversized American genetically engineered chickens because my thin sliced bread fillets take around 13 minutes to cook at 400 °C in the oven. Once the chicken is done, transfer it to a plate and keep it in a warming oven until the sauce is done. To the juices and butter in the pot add 1/4 cup Madeira wine and 1/4 cup beef broth. Heat these on medium-high heat and reduce to a syrupy consistency. At this point, add 1 cup of heavy cream and heat for a few minutes until the sauce thickens a bit. In the photo, I've spooned some of the sauce over the chicken cutlets and garnished with some parsley.

As a side note, some people are surprised by the use of beef broth in the sauce with a chicken recipe. Julia Child says you can use either but I found the beef stock compliments the Madeira wine better than chicken stock. The sauce can be made separately and served with vegetables as well. I served steamed haricot vert lightly buttered and salted and sauteed quartered mushrooms with green onions, shallots, and garlic. Both these side dishes taste delicious with the Madeira cream sauce. Serve everything with some good French bread, and you're done!

Our First Homegrown Herbs

About 5 weeks ago, Chris and I planted a few herbs on my patio in an attempt to grow some of the food we eat. We planted basil, oregano, mint and rosemary. Last week we used the rosemary in a balsamic rosemary garlic marinade for some portobello mushroom burgers. This week we collected our first samples of the basil, oregano, and mint. Fortunately for us, Chris' mom was here this weekend and gave us some good tips on how to preserve some of the herbs for use in winter. After cutting and washing, you can either freeze the leaves for use later on or you can dry them on a cutting board or hung upside down. Once dried, store in an airtight jar. I think our first use for the oregano and basil will be some homemade pizza, while we might use the mint in some mojitos this weekend. As someone with a thumb that is more black than green I was worried about growing usable quantities of these herbs and spices but found that they're easier to grow than weeds. (It's more likely though that Chris learned a lot about gardening from his mom and has been keeping them all alive.) The biggest bonus of growing your own herbs and spices though has to be that it's much cheaper than buying them in the supermarket, fresh or dried. And they taste better! Anyway, here are some pictures of our first homegrown herbs.

Cakes Galore!

Lately, I've been making a lot of cakes for graduations and just for fun. Here are the three most recent cakes. All of them use a recipe for white cake from "The Joy of Cooking," which is a cake that is both light and strong enough to hold fondant and other heavy decorations. It really has a great taste and texture. For fillings, I use primarily vanilla or chocolate buttercreams (the Wilton recipes). Because these icings use shortening they seem to hold up longer. They taste great too!

This cake was based on "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss and was made for my sister's graduation from college. All the letters are made from fondant (painfully cut out with a craft knife!) and the hot air balloon was painted with "paint" made by mixing powdered food colorings with small amounts of clear vanilla extract.

This cake was another graduation cake for a colleague who had just completed his Ph.D. I tried to create (from fondant) elements of his thesis while using the Caltech colors to accent the cake. All the decorations are made from fondant and painted with black food coloring "paint."

I call this my celebration cake. It was made for the same party as the one just above it as a graduation cake for a group of graduates. These decorations had to be prepared several days ahead of time, so I used gum paste instead of fondant. This might be my favorite cake so far.

French Strawberry Tart

I thought it would be best to start things off with a traditional french dessert: the French fruit tart. I put this one together in about 2 hours one evening when Chris' dad came over for dinner (more on the ribs we made that night later!). Anyway, on Thursday nights in South Pasadena there is a phenomenal farmers' market that's really more like a street festival every week than a farmers market. Chris and I always find the most amazing strawberries there and I thought that this traditional tart would be a great way to show them off.

I mixed and matched a few recipes to make this tart. The crust was a shortbread crust taken from "The Art and Soul of Baking." I've been known to read this book in bed as it's so incredibly informative and visually enticing. After baking, the crust was sealed with a thin layer of melted semisweet chocolate to prevent moisture from making it soggy. Next came the creme patisserie. Julia Child says that every good chef should know how to make a good creme patisserie - so I used her recipe from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1." In my opinion, everyone who owns a stove should be required to have this book. (It's another one I read in bed often.) Creme patisserie requires a lot of arm strength to whisk the cream as it thickens, but is very rewarding in the end. The creme patisserie was spread evenly over the tart crust and briefly refrigerated to let it firm up a bit. After a little while, I arranged the sliced strawberries around the top of the creme patisserie and then brushed them with a little bit of heated seedless strawberry jam, so that they just shimmered. If you want, you can use any variety of berries in combination with each other to design an unlimited number of French fruit tarts.

As far as taste is concerned, this is the perfect summer dessert. It's light and refreshing and takes full advantage of the sweetest strawberries around.

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to Le Petit Chef! We have decided to start this blog for several reasons. After our 2008 trip to Paris, I acquired a serious interested in cooking and baking (mostly baking), while Chris has recently discovered his love of grilling. Recently, we've been emailing many photos of our meals and creations to family and friends and thought that this might be a better forum in which to share our culinary adventures. We'll cover everything from food we've made and restaurant outings, to fun kitchen gadgets and cookbooks we get along the way. Since we are primarily chemists by training we'll even give you some kitchen science lessons every now and then. Bon appetit!