As some of you may know by now I recently started writing for a local bakery called The Buttery. My first article for their new blog was called “Sweet Hearts For Your Sweetheart“, and with Valentine’s day rapidly approaching I sort of inspired myself. I’ve been wanting to make Alfajores, a South American cookie sandwich with dulce de leche, but hadn’t quite gotten around to it, so I figured what better time then now! I happen to have a ton of bags laying around, and the decorative tags from art show invitations and a bag of Meyer Lemons from a co-worker, so it all came together amazingly well and very last minute.

INGREDIENTS (Makes 20-30):

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cups of flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup of powdered sugar + more for dusting*
• zest of 1 lemon (meyer or otherwise)
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt*

NOTA BENE: The coarse sea salt is especially important as it creates salt pockets in the cookie that off set the sweetness of the dulce de leche. DO NOT BUY THE FANCY ORGANIC POWDERED SUGAR IN THE WEIRD PLASTIC BAG! It is awful! it sticks and forms hard rocks. I had to put mine through the blender because it was too sticky to even sift, then, by the time I went to powder my cookies it was clumping again! Terrible stuff.

METHOD:

• remove the label (if paper) from the can of sweetened condensed milk and place it in pot large enough to cover it with 1 inch of water
• bring to a boil for a minimum of 1 1/2 hours (maximum of 3 for a much darker caramel) checking periodically to make sure it is still covered with water
• meanwhile…
• cream the butter and sugar together (about 2 minutes on high using a paddle attachment)
• add the zest from 1 lemon and mix until well incorporated
• in a separate bowl mix the flour and salt together then add to the creamed sugar/butter mixture and mix until uniform (if using a mixer, mix on low, stop when the dough sticks together)
• press into a disc shape, wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour
• meanwhile….
• as soon as the can of dulce de leche is ready use tongs to get it out of the water and immediately place it in the fridge
• once the dough is chilled, preheat the oven to 350F
• roll the dough out to about 1/8″ (I have little space and did it in 3 parts) and cut into hearts using a floured cookie cutter
• bake for 6-8 minutes or until BARELY beginning to brown (the smallest hint at the bottom edges of the cookie) then remove and place on a wire rack or cutting board
• gather up the pieces left over and rework them into a ball and roll the dough out- you are only supposed to do this once, I did it three times with no adverse effects
• after the cookies and the dulce de leche are cooled open the can and spoon small amounts onto the backside of a cookie and sandwich it with the backside of another cookie then dip the whole thing (both sides) into a bowl of powdered sugar. repeat until done, package, and deliver!

I realize it’s been a while. I have a million excuses for not posting any food related things recently, but the main reason is that I’m still trying to find that balance between art, work, and food writing now that I don’t have any deadlines. The good news (for me) is that I have been very good at keeping up with art, doing roughly 1 print a week for the past year (even if it’s reprinting something I’ve already made) and I’ve been doing some general posters and drawing, keeping myself busy. The bad news is that I have a terrible internet connection, so doing anything on for a website is a seriously painful experience, meaning I generally only have patience to upkeep 1 site at a time. But! I haven’t been doing nothing food related! I recently made some amazing bread and butter zucchini pickles with my dear friend Elena, a recipe I hope to perfect next year (a little sugar + a little heat), and I recently harvested the last of Rain’s hot peppers for pickling!

I’d like to take any kind of credit for a pickling recipe for peppers, but I do basically nothing besides pickle them in apple cider vinegar and salt. I always (literally every time) use a recipe from a Colorado state website, and just omit the spices. It the simplest most basic recipe (you see an nice list of variations on their site).

The recipe I use is below:

Pickled Peppers

Ingredients (makes about 8 pints):

• 6 cups apple cider vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• peppers (hot, sweet, mixed, whatever)

Method:

• rise and remove any blemishes from the peppers.
• if they are large, cut them into strips removing the seeds and stems. If they are smaller peppers, slice them twice (about an inch long) on opposite sides.
• Pack them tightly into pint jars leaving about an inch of head space.
• heat the vinegar water and salt to a rolling boil, then fill each jar leaving about a half inch of headspace.
• process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes
• let cure for at least 3 months before opening.

Pancakes have always been a frustrating and disappointing experience for me. Most of my life I have been completely unable to cook them without burning the outsides or leaving them raw in the middle. After making pancakes every Saturday for three months, I can honestly say everything I knew about pancakes was wrong.  If you are like me, you grew up making pancakes from a box, not a recipe. Box pancakes are generally easy to make because there is only one way to make them; but as soon as you enter the world of personal, customized recipes everything changes. All the tricks (like, don’t flip it until the bubbles stop closing) lead me astray the more creative I got with my cooking, to the point where I nearly abandoned pancakes entirely. I think it actually took me three months of regular pancake making to gain any confidence in making or adapting them. So, let me first share a few of tips about making pancakes, then go over 3 of my favorite pancake recipes…. (read the rest on Is Greater Than)

• You don’t need bubbles to form if you are making thick cake-like pancakes, and you need the top of the pancake to be almost dry and dotted with tons of holes if you are making incredibly thin pancakes.
• “too hot” doesn’t make the pancakes look weird, too much grease does. Having your pan too hot just burns the pancakes. This explains why the first pancake always looks weird. I’ve found the best way to handle that problem is to use well seasoned iron skillets, seasoned to the point where you don’t need to add additional grease (there is butter in the batter with the recipe I use)
• sugar AND butter are used in the recipes to help caramelize the pancakes, making them a nice golden brown. If you want to remove or adjust one of these you will need to compensate with the other or your pancakes will be pretty gross (over cooked on the inside, or underdone on the outside)

Just knowing those few things should make a HUGE difference in your pancake experience. Over the next couple of weeks I’m hoping to start posting some recipes. My favorites so far:

• Buckwheat Pancakes (with molasses)
• Vanilla and Blue Corn
• Smokey Oat
• Cinnamon Whole Wheat
• Cheddar and Blue Corn
• Ginger Snap

Look for them over the next couple weeks!

Whole Grain Mustard with IPA

Also in print this month is my recipe for making beer mustard! Check it out online with the GRID digital edition, or read below:

These days you can find any number of novelty beer mustards at boutique grocers, but nothing will be as delicious or as the one you make yourself with a local beer. Choosing a bright flavorful beer like Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale or Dogfishhead 120 Minute IPA will make your mustard taste like biting into a crisp summer cucumber, and there is no better way to take a break from beer than with more beer!

Ingredients (Makes 1 8oz Jar):

• ½ cup mustard seeds
• ½ cup of beer
• ¼ cup of salt

Method:

• in an 8oz jar soak the mustard seeds overnight in beer
• blend the seeds in a food processor adding more beer as needed until most of the seeds are broken up and you have a smooth spreadable paste
• keep refrigerated for up to 2 months

Home Brewed Sour Plum Beer

This month my article on home brewing a sour plum beer is featured GRID, check out the article online or read below:

A lambic is a wild fermented beer from Belgium that is marked by a bright, funky, and intense sour flavor with a wonderfully clean finish. It is perfect for escaping a bit of the hot humid weather during a Philadelphia summer, and is the inspiration for Sour Ales made in the United States today. Think of it like a grown up lemonade, or the sourdough version of beer. The process for making a lambic is long and complicated, sometimes taking 3 years to produce a single complete batch. It starts in the fall where the wort is left out in enormous trays (coolships) with open windows allowing ambient yeast to settle and spontaneously ferment the brew. It ends after it has been barrel aged for anywhere from 1-3 years often blended (young and old) to create a gueuze. It can also be refermented with fruit (a kriek has whole cherries, a framboise has raspberries), or blended with fruit juice just before bottling to create a lambic almost like a desert wine. There are more than 86 possible microorganisms in a lambic, ranging from yeast in the air, to yeast in the brewery, to yeast in the barrels themselves. The process leads to a beer that has wildly different properties based on the year and place it was made, with endless flavor profiles and a deeply devoted following in the United States.

The most talked about yeast in the production of lambics, gueuzes, and sour beers, is Brettanomyces. It is the maker and destroyer of beers, and depending on what you are trying to make you either love it with a severe intensity or hate it just as passionately. It is naturally occurring on the skin of fruits, and is virtually uncontrollable once it gets going. It can contaminate anything porous, especially non-glass brewing equipment like wood or plastic, and is impossible to eliminate without replacing your equipment. This one yeast is largely responsible for the all of the sour beers created in the United States, and Brettanomyces along with various strains of Lactobacillus are the foundation for creating the flavor of a lambic.

Even modeled on the lambic tradition, brewing a sour fruit beer is simple enough. The Roeselare Ale yeast already has a beautifully balanced blend of Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus strains, and the fruit only needs to be thawed and added for the secondary fermentation. The most important aspects of brewing a sour beer are patience, isolation, and sterilization, and none of these are too hard to achieve. You need patience because the entire process takes about 6 months, isolation and sterilization to stop contamination in beers you make afterwards. Designate tubing and a plastic fermenter for sour beers, let it age in a different room, and you’re good.

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs Gambrinus Munich Malt
• 5 lbs Gambrinus Pilsner Malt
• 2 lbs Weyermann Carahell Malt
• 2 oz Aged German Hops (2005)
• Wyeast 3763-PC Roeselare Ale Blend
• 9 lbs of plums, frozen and thawed (for second rack)

Method:

• mash the grain between 150F-155F for about 2 hours
• sparge to collect 6-7 gallons of malted water so that after the boil you have 5 gallons of liquid
• add the aged hops and bring it to a boil for 1 hour
• let cool using your preferred method (bathtub of cool water, wort cooler, etc)
• transfer to a carboy, pitch the yeast and allow to ferment for 3 weeks
• rack onto the plums in a plastic fermenter (bucket) for 3 months
• check periodically for plums that might float to the top and mold, remove them as needed.
• bottle age for at least 6 weeks, continues to age for at least 3 years.

Left: This Recipe, Right: Other Recipes

Recently I spent an extraordinary amount of time testing grenadine recipes, trying to find one that wouldn’t sacrifice color for flavor, or flavor for color. There are a lot of complaints out there about home made grenadine being brown (from the pomegranate molasses) or too watery (when it’s made with juice) or too expensive and time consuming (when you make your own pomegranate molasses).  I thought I had found the solution when I saw on someone’s website that a combination of the two (using pomegranate molassesand juice) produced a bright and deep red grenadine that didn’t turn brown in drinks. But alas! Still brown.  So for about a month I thought about how to solve this problem. There was a time when no one cared that homemade grenadine was brown, but in this newer age of cocktails people are looking for beauty as well as artisanal methods. Food coloring simply won’t do, but neither will a muddy drink. While working on other syrups I discovered the key in a flower I use in almost everything. It’s so simple, so inexpensive, and so beautiful, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner: hibiscus. And you can believe me when I tell you this will make a beautiful, bright, and deep red grenadine that won’t dilute to brown when you mix it. (Get the recipe at Is Greater Than)

A refreshing glass of cold brewed coffee

This month GRID magazine in Philadelphia is printing my article on cold brewed coffee. If you happen to live in the area, pick yourself up a copy, a mason jar, and a bag of coffee and go at it! However, for those of you who don’t live in Philly, you can still get the article right here, or in the digital edition of GRID.

Cold brewed coffee has a long and delicious history in New Orleans. Traditionally brewed at home in old mayonnaise jars with chicory, heavily sweetened and sipped on porches in the hot summer sun, it calls up images of the perfect lazy summer afternoon.  Although the method was made popular throughout the South in 1964 Todd Simpson who developed the technique based on ancient Peruvian brewing methods, it wasn’t until a few years ago that this method of brewing iced coffee really started to make it’s way into the serious coffee scene. It is more or less a sun-tea version of making coffee, where you soak the grounds overnight in water straight from the faucet and wake up in the morning to a magical elixir. Cold brewed coffee quickly became the standard in specialty coffee houses because of it’s unique flavor, low acidity, and ease to make. Where most brewed coffee becomes bitter and unpalatable as it cools, losing important flavors and aromas that make hot brewed coffee so delicious, cold brewed coffee absorbs and preserves a gentle, almost sweet, flavor creating a concentrate that can last as long a week in the refrigerator. And it really is gentle. With less than 60% the acidity of hot brewed coffee, it has become the savior for those with stomach problems who can’t normally drink coffee. But besides the remarkable flavor, possibly the best part about cold brewed coffee is that you don’t have to turn on the stove in the middle of the summer heat to make it.

Coffee cold brewing in a mason jar.

Cold Brewed Coffee

Ingredients (makes 2 large glasses):

• 1 cup of coarsely ground Corsica coffee from La Colombe
• 1 quart sized jar
• water
• French press, fine mesh sieve, or cone filter

Method:

• In a quart sized jar, soak 1 cup of coarsely ground coffee in water for 12-24 hours.
• Strain the coffee and store in the refrigerator.
• To use the concentrate, mix it with water or milk and sweeten to taste. Serve over ice.

Delicious...

Please RSVP if you are vegan or have special dietary needs. Pancakes will be at Apt E. Please don’t let the cats out. Special accommodations will be made for people who have to work, we hope to start the cooking around 9:30ish, so if you need/want to come early to visit or eat feel free, just warn us (me). If I sent you this and you live faraway, it was probably done to torture you (or because you visit regularly, or I thought you would like the poster). Goat Tower is Janina, Dylan, Stacie, Hiram, Amy, Keith & Rachel. The Turret of Velociraptors are Kai & Mykle. If you don’t know where Goat Tower is, please ask one of us (#anti-forwarding-to-randos-

Apple Asparagus Scramble

I have this belief about breakfast places that the smaller the menu the better. I would rather go somewhere that has few options but everything is AMAZING than someplace that has a million options but only a handful worth eating. A large menu isn’t impressive, a thoughtful menu is. I get a lot of compliments from friends about my breakfasts and I believe it’s specifically because even though it looks like I’m throwing a bunch of crap in a pan, I’m actually making something I’ve made hundreds of times. Scrambles are my dish. I can pull a bunch of withered vegetables from the fridge in the unlikeliest of combinations and turn into something spectacular. And because I’ve made hundreds (nearing a thousand at this point) I have this running list of rare seasonal moments when some of my favorite ingredients overlap for just a couple of weeks. One of these is apple and asparagus with sharp cheddar cheese. Asparagus is an early spring vegetable, and apples are a late fall fruit, so there is very little when you can have both in a scramble, but NOW is that time!

Apple, asparagus, potatoes and onions carmelizing.

I admit, the apples at this time of year are less than amazing. They have been in some form of cold storage all winter and are usually bordering on mealy or rubbery, but if you are planning to cook with them instead of eating them fresh it’s just fine. And the asparagus this time of year… perfect!

Apple Asparagus Scramble

Ingredients (makes 1 serving):

• 1/4 onion
• 1 medium potato
• 1/2 apple
• 3-4 asparagus spears
• sharp cheddar cheese
• scallions
• salt
• olive oil

The scramble with egg batter.

Method:

• heat your skillet with enough olive oil to thinly coat the pan
• cut your onion in small pieces and add it to the pan, turning the heat down to medium
• cut your potato into small cubes and add it to the onion, stirring occasionally
• core the apple and cut it into bite sized pieces, add it to the onion and potato. Salt well.
• cover and continue to cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until the potato is tender. If it starts to stick add small amounts of water to the pan to loosen it. Don’t worry too much if it’s sticking, you want the ingredients to caramelize and sear on the pan a little, and a tiny bit of water really will loosen it well.
• meanwhile, cut each asparagus spear into three pieces, and quarter or halve each piece (depending on thickness) and set aside
• break two eggs in a bowl with a splash of milk and beat well. Set aside.
• when the potatoes are tender uncover the pan and add the asparagus. Stir frequently until the asparagus is bright green.
• add the egg batter and let it rest until the edges of the pan seem cooked then begin to stir it until all the ingredients are well covered and the egg is well cooked.
• turn off the heat, top with grated cheddar and scallions, cover and let rest while you make some toast.
• butter your toast and serve!

Topped with sharp cheddar and scallions.