Malbec Cranberry Sauce

Oh wow! It's already Thanksgiving!

...And I have made nothing. Fail.

Time to whip something together for tonight's dinner with my girlfriend's family! They'll never know that you and I made this last minute (unless they read this).

What's good in a pinch? Cranberries and wine. The definition of synergy.

Ingredients:

5+1c fresh cranberries

1c Trapiche oak cask Malbec

1/2c water

1c sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1tsp anise seed

Making this sauce should only take about 30 minutes, so you'll have plenty of time to travel (and swear at people driving 25 on the freeway), watch the 49ers crush the Seahawks, take a nap, etc.

Add 5 cups of cranberries to a medium sauce pot along with the sugar, wine, water and spices. Cover and cook on low for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then, remove the saucepan's lid and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently. At this point the cranberries should bursting open, releasing their starch and naturally thickening the sauce. After the sauce thickens, add in the remaining cup of cranberries (for textural intrigue) and cook for an additional five minutes. Fish out the cinnamon stick and store the sauce in the fridge after it cools off.

Now you have a wonderful sauce suitable for any wintertime meal! And you also have an entire bottle of leftover Malbec. For those awkward yet lovely family moments. #SloppyThanksgiving #butdrinkresponsibly.

Before I stop talking and let you guys frantically make sauce, I just want you to take a brief moment and let someone know that you're thankful for them. My sister texted me this this morning, and it 100% made my day. No matter who you are, there's always someone to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And Happy Crafting!

Mini Cherry Pies

Cherry pie. Almost as American as apple pie.

Just the word "pie" conjures up an image of a warm, buttery pie sitting on a window sill to cool while a light breeze wafts the aroma about the house (or apartment).

Maybe historically this was the best way to cool down pastries, but I have to wonder how many smashed pies resulted from teetering off of unstable window sills across this great nation. Gravity can be a real witch sometimes.

It was late summer this year, and at work we were having a bake sale to benefit the homeless in Westchester County. You would think that one of the top 10 richest counties in the U.S. wouldn't have such a big homeless problem... but you'd be wrong!

I decided to make cherry pie for my contribution, even though pie itself is kind of awkward to dole out at a bake sale. The best ones are obviously gooey and spill their contents everywhere as soon as you remove a slice. 

"Kyle, why didn't you just make something else?" you might ask. That's because you, the readers, are incredibly rational people (read: I am not). More importantly, huge bags of cherries were two for five at the store! Hooray for cheap summer produce!

My solution: two-inch cherry pies. Just like Mama used to make, if your mama baked everything to 1/12th the scale of normal baked goods.

Ingredients:

3/4 c dark brown sugar

4 tbsp cornstarch

5 c cherries, pitted and chopped

3 tbsp molasses

1 1/2 c whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ground clove

1 stick of unsalted butter, cold

5 tbsp Ice water

2-inch brownie tin

Time commitment: 30min inactive, 30min active, 10min hyperactive

Estimated cost: about $10 for 20 mini pies

First thing to do is to make the crust. Take a cold stick of butter and a pastry blender and go to town cutting up the butter into tiny balls of fat. Don't let the butter warm up or else your crust might not come out flaky!

Mix the flour in spices in a bowl and subsequently blend these ingredients into the butter with the pastry blender or with your hands. Once combined, shape the dough into a large ball and wrap it in wax paper. Place the dough in the fridge for 30min.

Next, make the pie filling by painstakingly cutting all of those delectable cherries in half and removing the pits. Pits will not contribute positively to the gooey consistency of your pie.

Coarsely chop up half of the cherries by hand and put the other half in a food processor to be lightly pureed. This will give you nice a mix of textures throughout your pie filling ranging from chunky to slushy.

Put the all of the cherries in a saucepan and stir in the molasses. Heat of high for about 5 minutes to extract all of those cherry juices. In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar and cornstarch together until they are well combined. Then, add the sugar starch mix into the bubbling cherries and boil for an additional minute, stirring more than occasionally. Remove the pie filling from heat and allow to cool completely.

Take your chilled pie dough out of the fridge and roll it out into a single layer about 1/4 inch thick. Find a random kitchen implement in your home in the shape of a circle, such as a filter inside a stovetop espresso maker (or a cookie cutter, coffee cup or glass). Use said random implement to cut small circles in your rolled out dough, pressing these into a thin layer along the walls of your 2-inch brownie tin. Re-roll the dough and repeat until all of the dough has been used up. Or until you get tired.

Make sure to prick the bottom and sides of each shell with a fork before baking (a process called "docking") to prevent puffing and blistering of the crust. Bake the pie shells for 20 minutes at 350F. Then, remove the shells, spoon in the cherry filling and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Throughout the baking process, I found it highly amusing to sing "sweet cherry pie" to the tune of "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. I don't know many of the words to that song, so I basically just sang the chorus over and over again. I'm sure that didn't annoy Jenn.

Good pies never seemed so good.

Happy Crafting!

Craftertaste Special: Tomatoes

Tomatoes. Aren't they delicious? I mean, compared to their fruit brethren I guess they're actually pretty disgusting. But as a vegetable, the tomato is king.

I prefer to eat them in their purest form: mashed up with sugar and salt in a little something we like to call "ketchup".

Every now and again though, I do eat them au naturel. In this form the tomato faces two main problems. One: its shelf life is significantly shorter than a ketchup packet. Two: it's much more difficult to spread the tomato on other delicious food stuffs (I.e. pizza, pasta, french fries) in its natural state. Especially if you're too lazy to make fresh tomato sauce for yourself (this guy [thumbs]).

My girlfriend's father has the solution. He explained to me that the tomatoes you buy in the store are garbage, chosen mostly for their ability to travel well and NOT for their flavor and texture. I concurred. Then he proceeded to tell me that we would be making jarred plum tomatoes in the traditional Italian style, using bushels of tomatoes fresh delivered from a nearby farm.

"In other words… we're making canned tomatoes? Like Hunts?" I asked. I received a look of disgust that I cannot translate into words. But if I could, it would say something like "there is something wrong with your generation."

So began my education on making Italian tomatoes. First we picked up the necessary (and deceptively heavy) equipment from a friend's basement. Then we swung by to see an older Italian gentleman who was clipping the grass, shirtless, on a riding lawnmower*. I'm not really sure if this was part of the tomato making process, but regardless he was a nice guy. Finally, we assembled the equipment alongside the previously delivered bushels of tomatoes and prepared for our day-long tomato making adventure.

If you don't have the patience to read the whole post, this cartoon should give you the highlights.

Ingredients:
6 bushels of plum tomatoes
Fresh basil leaves
About 140 1 liter mason jars
Blood
Sweat
Tears

Estimated time commitment: the entire day

Why does that cartoon look faded? I'm keeping it "rustica". That's Italian for rustic. I also messed up my usual method and this is was the only way I could save it. Just go with it!

The first stage of the tomato-ing process, I was told, consisted of unpacking the tomatoes from their crates and washing them off with a garden hose. We checked over every tomato by hand, rubbing off loose dirt and grime. A few of the tomatoes had growths and other deformities on them. These, I was told, we're perfectly usable after removing the affected portions with a paring knife. Suffice it to say that I was very generous with my knife strokes for the blighted tomatoes; mold should not be your secret ingredient!

After a good number of tomatoes had been washed, I started up the "cracking" station. I placed three very large pots on the stove and brought water in each to a boil. I then added tomatoes in batches and let them sit in the boiling water for about 10 minutes per batch before removing them with a slatted ladle. The result of their hot tub excursion is that the tomatoes begin separate from their skin, making them easier to peel in the coming step. See the cracks?

After frantically cracking as many tomatoes as possible, I ran batches of piping hot tomatoes outside to a picnic table covered with a table cloth. Here, a number of family members / friends who were convinced (read: coerced) to help out for the day proceeded to handle the piping hot tomatoes and remove the skins by hand. 

If you wait for them to cool off the skin becomes harder to remove, sooo... burning your hands on hot tomatoes it is! Which can have an effect on your disposition after six bushels.

But don't go throwing away the skins just yet! Send these through the tomato mill to squeeze every last ounce of juice and pulp out of them. If you're going to process so many plum tomatoes, you'd better make the most of it!

Next we combined the skin juice with the skinned tomatoes, mashing them up a bit by hand. Then we ladled the tomatoes into mason jars. A LOT of mason jars.

The basil leaf adds a hint of herbal goodness to each aliquot. After all of the tomato mush had been dispensed, we sealed the jars tightly with mason jar lids.

Finally, two extremely large pots were packed to the brim with the mason jars, wedged in tightly with towels to keep them from bouncing around. A hose was connected to a nearby hot water line and each pot was filled to cover the jars. Beneath the jars, huge burners were lit to bring each pot to a boil. Awesome.

But why? Heating the mason jars and allowing them to cool activates the vacuum seal on the mason jar lid. This way, you can keep your jars of fresh tomatoes on the shelf for years! Same red color, same great taste.

Close to being done, it was time to sit back, relax and listen to the soothing sound of tomatoes being boiled in extremely large pots.

We boiled the tomatoes for about 45 minutes, then killed the heat and let the pots cool overnight. The following day, we removed the cooled mason jars and arranged them artistically on the patio table. Final count brought us to over 130 jars!

I hope this batch lasts us until next year. It'll probably take that long for my hands to recover from skinning scalding hot tomatoes.

At least I got a small stash to call my own. I recently tried out some of the jarred goodness in a sauce on top of whole wheat penne. The verdict? Way better than Prego. Who knew!

Thanks to everyone who helped out for including me in a wonderful family tradition. Despite all of my complaining I can assure you that I had a great time!

Until next time, happy crafting!

*Note: Not literary exaggeration.

Craftertaste Special: Macarons with Friends

Macarons. No, not macaroons, macarons!

I have been seeing these all over New York recently. I think they've actually been there the whole time and I've just been ignoring them; I assumed that the taste couldn't match the curb appeal. But after I walked into the La Maison du Macaron on 23rd street, I realized that every minute of my life before that moment had been wasted not eating macarons.

Is it the most over-engineered cookie you've ever eaten? Or maybe a cake disguised as a small sandwich? Let's be honest: it looks like a lot like an Oreo that has let itself go.

Macarons may look and taste simply delicious, but it turns out they are fairly challenging to make (read: even I have my limits!). So for this one I had to call in re-enforcements. Enter Emily, Eva, and Jacie. And Martha Stewart. People who actually know what they're doing! Hooray!

Did I mention Martha Stewart? I did. Awesome. 

For this Craftertaste special event, we all decided to try to recreate the macaron a la Martha Stewart's recipe, which can be found here. I'll walk you through what we did, and add in a couple of tips that Emily showed us as we traipsed about in macaron land. And what would this post be without an obligatory Craftertaste cartoon??

After first whisking together the almond flour and sugar, we went ahead making the egg white "meringue" that would give our macarons their chewiness on the inside and a hard shell on the outside. Here, we just used egg whites from the carton left out on the counter for about 30 mins (to get them to room temp), substituting one serving size per egg. No yolk separation necessary! 

Beating together the egg whites, cream of tartar and superfine sugar in a stand mixer yielded "stiff peaks" that look a little something like this.

When we folded in our flour mixture into the egg white mixture, a rich and creamy batter formed that we lopped into a pastry bag. Don't have one of those? A Ziploc with a corner cut off will do the trick. Just dont forget to seal the Ziploc before you start piping!

Emily actually had a silicone macaron baking sheet (who has that??) that we piped the batter onto, with its tiny silicone rings to keep the batter in a nice uniform circle. At the end of the day though, we realized the batter that we added directly onto parchment paper came out slightly better, as these cookies were easier to remove from the sheet after baking.

Don't forget to tap the baking sheets on the counter before baking! Air bubbles son no bueno.

For the cream filling, we followed a buttercream recipe (here) supplemented with one tbsp of vanilla bean paste. I know what you're thinking, and yes, the vanilla bean paste DOES have to be from Madagascar, you heathen! (No, it doesn't). For half of the buttercream, we removed it to a separate bowl after mixing and stirred in two tbsp's of instant coffee for filling variety.

What's that you say? Buttercream soup is splattering about and desecrating your otherwise spotless kitchen? Emily has the answer.

If you read the recipe hyperlinked above, you'll realize that Martha Stewart wants you to bake your macarons by letting them sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, followed by baking them in an oven that has been pre-heated to 375 but immediately turned down (for what!) to 325 prior to putting your cookie-laden baking sheet in the oven. To many, this will seem like baking voodoo. You might as well sacrifice a stick of unsalted butter upon a tiny altar before baking them. But hey, it's hard to argue with results.

I should mention that up until this point Emily has actually done 90% of the work while the rest of us tried to look busy. However, everyone could be found constructing the macaron sandwiches at the end. Look at how much fun we're having!

I have to say, the end result turned out much better than expected. I mean, we even got the little crinkly bits coming off the edges of each cookie ("feet"). Go team!

If you're thinking of making your own macarons, save time and macaron with friends! Especially friends that like to do a lot of the work for you.

Honorable mentions: Tommy, for serving us wonderful beer throughout the process. Geoff, Jillian and Ryan, for playing Settlers of Catan.

Happy Crafting!

Chocolate Granola

Hmm... What to eat for breakfast...

Cereal? Boring.

Yogurt? Blah.

English muffin? Again?? No way.

I've got your solution in the form of crunchy, chocolatey, nutty goodness.

Feed your inner (and outer) hippie with this chocolate granola!

Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats (quick oats)

1/2 cup of each of the following: pecans, dry roasted peanuts, shelled pistachios, cocoa almonds

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/4 cup extra light olive oil

1/4 cup honey

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Time commitment: 1hr 15min... But it's worth it!

Estimated cost: 15$

Yield: a LOT of granola

Preheat the oven to 250F. Chop all of the nuts to a medium-coarse chop and stir together with the rolled oats in a large bowl. Add in the brown sugar, cocoa powder and cinnamon and stir to evenly coat the nuts and oats.

In a separate bowl, mix together the honey and olive oil. They don't really come together well, but this helps to distribute them both on the granola mix at the same time. Add the mixed honey and oil to the nuts and grains and stir to coat.

Dump the coated granola mixture onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and spread the granola around into an even layer. Into the oven it goes!

Bake the granola for 40 minutes at 250F, then bump up the temp to 300F and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Be sure to turn the granola with a spatula every 20 minutes to avoid burning it!

At this point, you're realizing that an hour is a long time. As someone who's willing to take the time to make their own granola, I have a few suggestions as to how to pass the time:

(1) Do a second round of yoga. Lots of child's pose.

(2) Backcomb your dreadlocks.

(3) Repair your torn tie-dye shirts with peace sign patches.

(4) Watch "The Best of Burning Man" on DVD.

Hopefully you enjoyed doing all of those things! I know I did (not). Remove the granola from the oven and scrape it into a large bowl to cool. How good does that smell?

Spoon your favorite yogurt into a bowl and top it off with some chocolate granola. You could even put it on top of some strawberry mousse (wink wink nudge nudge). Or just eat it by the handful; a particularly attractive idea for those without spoons. Store excess cooled granola in a Ziploc bag to preserve its crunchiness.

Going on a hike because your significant other is way more active than you are and enjoys watching you suffer? No worries! Throw some chocolate chips and dried cranberries in that same Ziploc bag and you've got yourself some mighty fine trail mix. 

It won't make the hike easier, but keeping your mouth full will stop you from complaining too much (like I do)!

Happy Crafting!

BLT Chicken Burger

Ahh Memorial Day. The first long weekend of the outdoor season. Time to throw on your stunna' shades, crack open a cold one and fire up the grill.  

This presents a problem for people like me who don't have any outdoor space. Sure I could fight for the use of a coal pit at the local park.  But based on where I live, this sort of altercation would likely result in me getting knifed.

I don't want to be a statistic. I just want a nice, post-modern burger. 

That's why I played it safe this Memorial Day and baked my burger in the oven. Short on grill marks, big on chickeny goodness. 

Enjoy an altercation-free holiday with this upscale BLT chicken burger!

Ingredients:

2 sundried tomato chicken sausages (Al Fresco; it's pre-cooked!)

1/2 cup frozen kale

4 strips of bacon, cooked (crispy!)

1 tbsp extra light olive oil

1/2 vidalia onion

2 corn english muffins

Serves 2, or 1 super hungry person

Time commitment: 30mins

Estimated cost: 12$

I know, I know. Chicken sausage? Again?? Just trust me, okay? Have I steered you wrong so far? (Read: rhetorical).

Hopefully you saved some from those chicken parm bites a couple posts ago ;).

Cut the skin away from the chicken sausage with a paring knife and place chunks of the sausage in a food processor. Add in the olive oil and kale. Take the bacon (cooked on the stovetop until crispy) and crumble two of the strips into the food processor. Pulse chop until the ingredients are combined into a ground beef consistency and the olive oil has coated the mixture.

Take the burger substrate and form into two ~1/3lb patties, i.e. allocate half of the mix per patty. Don't these already look good?

Bake for 15 minutes at 350F, to give them a nice golden brown crisp on the surface. Since the chicken is pre-cooked, no need to worry about doneness.

While the patties are in the oven, toast the corn english muffins (Thomas') and cut thin slices of the vidalia onion for topping the burger.

Assemble the burgers on the muffin buns, topping with an extra slice of bacon each, as well as the onion. A little ketchup or mustard never hurts either!

Although I had a hard time putting this down, I realized the blog could benefit from a more dramatic shot of the burger.

Just ignore the fact that it's half gone already.

Want a more bacon-filled experience? (Read: rhetorical). Substitute the olive oil for a tablespoon of bacon fat. Just spoon it right out of the pan you cooked the bacon in and into the food processor. No, not your mouth, the food processor!

Happy Memorial Day!