Bourboned Cherry and Walnut Rugelach

The last of the holiday parties rolled around last Saturday evening, so off we went through fog and over slick, rain-misted roads to gather at Cathy and Harold's house for one last Bacchanalian food fest! My goodness, what a lot of wonderful tidbits! Cathy always asks that folks share a savory or sweet platter of small bites. There were little shrimp skewered with pineapple and grapes, salty mixed nuts that were perfectly roasted, tiny egg rolls with dipping sauce, spicy kielbasa bites on skewers, hummus and veggie spears, warm meatballs and sauce, decadent brownies, copious Christmas cookies in all their spangled glory, small cheesecake bites, and these perfectly golden and sugar glazed rugelach.

Saturday ...Projects and Pasta

... Penne with Roasted Purple Onions and Buttermilk Blue Cheese ...

Maple Walnut Quick Bread -

... Oh! What a maple glaze ... sticky crunch atop a maple and orange quick bread ...be still, my heart!

Curried Chicken Salad ... and a Hike

This is a healthy and lightened up version of chicken salad with a hot curry kick. It is a recipe found in a magazine called Delight- Gluten Free. I've had my eye on it for a while and was waiting for a day when I knew I'd be hungry for a substantial lunch-time sandwich. Today was the day! I started my day early, as it's really hot out. SB and I wanted to hike a piece of land over near Richmond, New Hampshire where the mountain laurel is in full bloom. We spent the morning exploring the forest trail along a small brook that feeds into Tully Brook and driving the back roads in the vicinity. By the time we got home, we were hot and hungry.

Pain Grenoblois - A Random Recipe

Baking bread is one of the most satisfying of baking ventures and it seems that Dom, our dear friend over at Belleau Kitchen, has tapped his inner baker and become a blogging bread fiend! Well, he's in good company here! In fact, when he suggested that May's Random Recipe challenge was to collect one's bread baking books and randomly choose a bread recipe to make and post, I was pretty excited! I only hoped that I would choose a bread recipe that was new and untried! Score!

This French recipe comes from Paris Boulangerie Patisserie, Linda Dannenberg's excellent book of recipes from the most famous and well-established bakeries in Paris. On opening the book to a random page, I  was greeted by a raisin and walnut bread that comes from the countryside in the southeastern region of France. This bread had me doing something I have never done before in my bread baking. It calls for making a yeast starter dough called Pâte Viennoise and letting it rise for 45 minutes. Then, another dough is made that incorporates the starter dough in during the kneading process. This white wheat flour starter combines with the second rye and wheat flour mixture to make a striated dough, rich with butter, raisins, currants, walnuts, and a bit more sugar than usual ... really a beautiful combination!

Tea ... As An Ingredient

I have heard and read so much about using various teas as ingredients in everything from baked goods to sauces for braising, but I have never tried the technique ... until today. I must admit that I chose a safe recipe to attempt this first time out of the gate. I had some dried dates that needed to soak before going into a date nut bread recipe. I'd been thinking that I wanted to add some orange peel and star anise to the boiling water that the dates would soak in and then I had a brilliant idea ... why not use a Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange Spice tea bag to provide the hint of orange and added spice to the beginnings of the date nut bread batter?

A Wintertime Galette

At last. The Holidays are beginning to become a part of wintertime memory. The treats and candy and excessive savories are a thing of the past. The refrigerator is beginning to look normal again. I am slowly going through the last of the special food gifts received - gorgeous blue cheese that graced a creamy sauce atop venison steaks, roasted and salted almonds that were part of a Gouda cheese, prosciutto and fig jam cheese board, lovely chocolates that came from Beacon Hill Chocolates.

It's time to go back to basics. That's not to say that we must not have a sweet dessert until Easter, though! It just means that I will be rustling about in the stores and using up things that were stockpiled for the holiday baking and cooking and need to be used before I go through a 're-stocking period'.

King's Crown Coffee Bread

One of my little Christmas traditions is to rise early the morning after we have put up the Christmas tree, put the tree lights on, but no others, make an early pot of coffee and sit with a cup and just ... be ... still...

I love to sit and look at the beauty of the tree and the colors. Every year the tree is just a bit different from all the others of years gone by. Maybe it's a different tree variety or a different shape from the previous trees. Maybe I've chosen different sets of ornaments to place on its branches, or used more or less tinsel. Maybe the lights are all colored or all white or a combination of the two. Whatever the changes, I always feel my heart swell up a bit and any Grinchy feelings about the hustle-bustle of the season disappear in that quiet time.

The Good, the Bad and the Yummy ...

Here comes the asparagus! Being on a diet is tough, but when the new vegetables come into market, life is so much easier! We scored beautiful asparagus spears yesterday and the simplest thing to do was to snap the ends, slice them on the diagonal, drizzle them with good olive oil, sprinkle them with Kosher salt and fresh black pepper, toss on about two teaspoons of fresh lemon zest and roast them under foil in the oven for about 20 minutes in a hot oven (400 degrees F). Took the foil off and let them finish for another five minutes to dissipate some of the steaminess ... and then, we gobbled. It was so good!

Cranberry Nut Bread

When the winter holidays roll around, I always dig into the pile of family recipes that have been 'tried and true' over the years. One of the usual suspects is this cranberry nut bread. My mother made it every year with big old chunks of walnuts and fresh cranberries washed and cut in half. This quick bread is not an overly sweet affair ... it has fresh squeezed orange juice and orange zest that add to the tang of the cranberries and a mere three-quarters cup sugar. It is a bulky bread that slices and toasts beautifully and holds up to a slather of soft melting butter ... yum! We always have it with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.