Truffles, Candy and Confectionary

I picked up this book on a recent Amazon splurge. After I took a look through, I almost sent it back. The truffle recipes are all very basic. And essentially variations on a theme, as the method is nearly identical for each page, it's only the ingredients that vary. Good for a total beginner to truffles, but I'm well past that stage now.

I decided to keep it, however, for the candies and confections portions. While I've developed an intuitive sense of how to work with ganaches for truffles, caramel is still something of a mystery to me, and this book had a bunch of interesting caramel recipes to try. Not to mention nut brittles, marzipans, fruit jellies, and fudges.

The recipes are straightforward and easy to follow. This weekend we had a big party to go to on Saturday night, so I used that as an excuse to try out not one, not two, but THREE different recipes from the book. All of which turned out really well.

At the bottom are Espresso Caramels, in both wrapped and chocolate covered versions. To the left, wrapped and chocolate dipped versions of the Honey Nut Caramels. To the right and in the middle (with the chopped nuts on top) is a slightly overcooked Hazelnut Butter Crunch. It's definitely edible, but darker than I would have preferred. The caramels are both good, but the honey nut is the best.

Here's what the caramels look like inside:

My verdict: If you're new to candy or truffle making, this is an good book. It covers all of the basics, in an approachable style and with methods that don't require a lot of specialized equipment. If you've already got some confectionary experience, then you'll probably find it too simplistic and would be better served with a different book. Even a beginner might have that experience - do you really need a recipe to tell you to temper some chocolate and mix it with roasted peanuts? Or, a couple pages later, the same recipe but with coconut instead? But there are some gems in the mix, and a good grounding in basic techniques, so it's certainly worth a look.

Wishlist: Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet

I don't have an easy-bake oven any more, but I have fond memories of baking itty-bitty cakes in my childhood. So I really MUST have this cookbook. It features 32 recipes from 26 chefs, all specially formulate for the Easy-Bake Oven! It includes recipes from such noteables as Rick Bayless, Mark Bittman, Bobby Flay, Gale Gand, and Mollie Katzen. Plus:

--Rare Easy-Bake Oven memorabilia, an illustrated timeline of the toy's first forty years, plus never-before-seen anecdotes and personal photos from the recipe contributors!
--Six removable recipe cards with fabulous, full-color photos of delicious dishes such as Queso Fundido with Roasted Poblano Vinaigrette, Warm Kumquat and Date Sticky Toffee Pudding, and Roasted Quail Breast with Wild Mushrooms and Pomme Anna.

Quick Food

I love this cookbook. I'd forgotten about it for a while, when I wasn't cooking much, and recently rediscovered it, complete with many post-it-note marked recipes to try. Leafing through, I was reminded of how much I like it. It's a very stylish cookbook. Each recipe takes up only a page, with the opposite page containing a beautiful and appetizing picture. There are rarely more than 10 ingredients, but they're all real ingredients. Unlike most "quick" cookbooks, it doesn't rely on a convenience foods to make things fast. And best of all, it's a cookbook written for cooks - with only a single (small) page for each recipe, the instructions are sparse and assume you know what you are doing.

The roughly 200 recipes in this small chunky book are organized not according to ingredients or place in the meal, but by method of cooking. Pot. Pan. Wok. Grill. Oven. With the exception of a small section called Dessert, they are all main dishes. It's a little gimicky, but I think it works.

According to this article, Quick Foods is just one of a larger series of books originally from Australia (which would account for the larger than American standard number of lamb recipes). Other titles include Comfort Food, Cool Food, Veggie Food and several more. I'd say that I needed to rush out and pick up the rest of the series, but instead, I think I'll try to get through a few more of the post-it notes in this one first! On my first pass through the book, I marked sooo many recipes that I gave up marking halfway through the book, knowing that I could pretty much just open a page at random and find something interesting.

Some of the recipes I've made and enjoyed so far have included:

• Orecchiette with mushrooms, pancetta and smoked mozarella
• Salmon and dill potato patties with lime mayonnaise
• Chicken breasts with mustard cream sauce

Tonight I tried out a new recipe, and was very pleased with the result. Given that I've written about both paprika and sherry vinegar recently, it's not a surprise that it jumped off the page at me and insisted on being cooked.

Pork with Smoked Paprika, Potatoes and Shallots
(adapted from Quick Foods, from Laurel Glen Publishing)

1 tbsp paprika
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
4 thick pork loin chops
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 sherry vinegar
1/2 c crushed tomatoes in puree
1 c hot water
1 lb potatoes, cut into 1/2-3/4 inch pieces
8 shallots, peeled
6 handfuls of arugula

Mix the paprkia, salt and pepper, and sprinkle over both sides of the pork chops. Heat the olive oil over medium in a deep pan large enough to hold all the chops at once. Sear the loin chops until browned, about 2 minutes on each side. Remove from pan and set aside.

Deglaze the pan with the sherry vinegar, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the tomatoes and the water, and bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and shallots, lower heat and cover, and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.

Add pork chops back to the pan and cook for 6 minutes or longer, until they are done to your liking. Remove from the pan. If necessary, bring the sauce back up to a boil and reduce slightly.

Divide arugula between four plates. Top each with a pork chop, some potatoes and the sauce. (Contrary to my picture above, we found that we liked this best when the arugula got wilty, so do go ahead and mound everything up together.)

Serves four.

Risotto in the Pressure Cooker

The first job I had when I moved to Ann Arbor was selling cookware at Kitchen Port, a local kitchen shop. It was an interesting job, and I learned much of what I know about cookware, knives, and gadgets during my time there.

I always had a fascination with the pressure cookers, but at over $100 for the smallest of the Kuhn-Rikons we carried, I wasn't willing to pony up the money to try one out. The promise of a pressure cooker is significant - no need to braise a stew for hours and hours, just pop it all the pressure cooker and 20 minutes later, dinner is served. But I wasn't willing to take a chance on the reality.

So when I came upon a pressure cooker for $1 at a yard sale last summer, it was a no-brainer that I would buy it. If it didn't work, or I hated it, I was only out $1. If I actually used it and liked it, I could decide if I wanted to get a more elaborate one.

It worked fine, and a year later I'm still thrilled with it. I haven't used it a lot, maybe pulling it out once a month or so, but it was only $1, so in any calcuation of meals per dollar spent on cookware, it totally wins. Perhaps this winter I'll try a few more stews and get a little more adept at using it. But yesterday, faced with a conflict between my desire for risotto and my aversion to standing over a hot stove for 25 minutes in the 100% humidity we're living in right now, I decided to try it out for risotto.

Using a pressure cooker for risotto seems counterintuitive. Afterall, the defining characteristic of risotto for most of us is that you have to stir it constantly, and you can't do that with a sealed pot. But lots of people absolutely swear by the pressure cooker version (although the method is not without it's detractors), so I thought I'd give it try.

It certainly was easy - saute some aromatics, toast the rice, add the liquid, put the lid on, and then it's just a matter of timing the cooking. There's not a lot of savings in cooking time, but since you don't have to stir, it's time you can spend doing other things. Taste wise, it was pretty good. Next time I would cook it for a minute or two less, as it had gone past the nice firmness one expects from a risotto. The chicken stock I used was unsalted, so it would have been better to add some salt earlier in the cooking process. It was a little denser than a stirred risotto, but that may also have been a factor of being a little overcooked. My husband said that, given the choice, he'd prefer non-pressure cooked risotto, but that he certainly wouldn't say no to another helping of this one.

Here's the recipe I used, adapted from The Pressure Cooker Gourmet. The recipes in this cookbook look great, and I bought it very enthusiastically, but I haven't used it nearly as much as I thought I would. Maybe a resolution for the fall...

Pressure Cooker Risotto
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 leek, white part only, cleaned and sliced (onions or shallots could be substituted)
1.5 cups arborio or other risotto rice
0.5 c white wine
3.5 c chicken stock (preferably homemade, add salt if necessary)
1/3 c grated parmesan reggiano (about 1 oz)
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the olive oil and butter in the pressure cooker. Add the leek and saute for a couple minutes, just until soft but not beginning to brown. Add the rice and stir to coat with oil. Cook for about 2 minutes, or until it starts to have a toasty aroma and the exterior looks translucent. Add the white wine and cooking, stirring, until the wine is absorbed. Add the chicken stock, then put on the pressure cooker lid. Bring up to pressure over high heat, 3-4 minutes, then lower to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand 6 minutes (original recipe said 8). Carefully release any remaining pressure and open lid. Stir in cheese and season to taste.

This would be great with some blanched or steamed fresh vegetables and some chopped parsley stirred in with the cheese.