Mother’s Day is on my mind this week. I am replete with motherhood. My belly is large with motherhood. I wake up in the morning with my fingers swollen with motherhood. My feet are so full of motherhood that my shoes don’t fit. My hips are aching with motherhood. A day? Ha! I deserve at least a week of celebration. Or a month.

Check back in two weeks, when all this motherhood will be external rather than internal, but I’m not quite up to the mother’s day celebration this year. So instead of making brunch, I made reservations. The Nuni, my mom and I had a lovely girl’s tea at the historic Langham Hotel right here in Pasadena. The view was lovely, the service gracious, and the sandwiches and pastries were delicious. We ignored the fact that our homemade scones are better. I told Ken that he is in charge of dinner on Mother’s day – we can go out, we can get takeout, he can cook — but I don’t want to be responsible for planning, executing or cleaning up.

If some of you are less lazy encumbered than I am, this blueberry cornmeal cake would be an excellent treat for Mother’s Day. The recipe is supposedly one from Huckleberry, which is one of the best bakeries in LA, and it’s a lovely crunchy, fruity, not too sweet cake. If you’re into mother’s day breakfast or brunch, this would be a great addition – it’s not too rich or decadent for morning. It would also be a standout at afternoon tea, or if you’re cooking dinner for the mother or mothers in your life, it would be excellent with a bit of ice cream (vanilla would work, or I’m thinking a lovely buttermilk sorbet if you want to get ambitious.)

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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2012. | Permalink |
Post tags: blueberry, breakfast, brunch, cake, Coffee Cake, cornmeal, Mother's Day, tea

Cinco de Mayo is one of those strange holidays where the original meaning (Battle against the French? Ring a bell?) is completely forgotten by most of the people celebrating. I could be wrong, but I would hazard a guess that for many Americans, Cinco de Mayo is just an excuse to indulge in tacos, burritos and nachos, preferably washed down with some cheap beer or cheaper margaritas.

As an Angeleno, I don’t need an annual holiday as an excuse to eat Mexican food. We have a vibrant and thriving Mexican and Mexican-American community, and, while tacos and burritos are a regular part of life, I also know that the cuisine goes far beyond them. Mexican cuisine, like any other cuisine, is a changing entity, open to improvisation and inspiration.

This salsa is the perfect example. I make no pretenses that this is based on some autentico salsa especiale I tasted in a tiny cafe in Zihuatanejo. In fact, this recipe is based entirely on a pineapple I had in my refrigerator that was quickly getting a little too ripe (shopping with a 4 year old means you come home with lots of produce and few plans). But it makes use of the Mexican flavors and produce I find all over southern California — the sweet acidity of pineapple matched by savory onions, chiles and cilantro, all mellowed by avocado and enlivened with the crunch of jicama. (If you’ve never had jicama, it’s a great ingredient. Resembling a large pale brown turnip, it’s a juicy root vegetable that’s very faintly sweet and has a terrific crunch not unlike a water chestnut.)
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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2012. | Permalink |
Post tags: healthy, mexican, Vegetarian, weeknight

My personal favorite take on a bunny cake (or a birthday cake, or a Sunday afternoon for no reason layer cake) is an orange layer cake with orange buttercream frosting. I love chocolate cake, and won’t turn up my nose at a good coconut cake, or carrot cake, but when it comes to layer cakes, orange cake might just be my favorite. Orange cake seems to magically straddle that divide between those who prefer what my friend Mike calls the “brown” flavors (caramel, nuts, chocolate) and those who prefer a fruitier touch. I’ve been making this particular cake quite a bit lately (layer cake happens to be a pregnancy craving) and it’s easy to throw together, with a nice orange flavor and a moist crumb.

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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2012. | Permalink |
Post tags: birthday cake, cake, Easter, layer cake, sweets

I have waxed rhapsodic on this blog about my love of a traditional Christmas fruitcake, a classic holiday dessert, but my love of fruitcake extends beyond the Dickensian Christmas cake. During my first year of law school, my parents spent the year living in Florence, Italy, and the Christmas I spent with them that year was the only Christmas I have spent away from home (whether home was in California or New York.) What I remember from that Christmas was the cold, damp air, the lights everywhere, but most of all the food. We went to the Mercato San Lorenzo and loaded up on Prosciutto, Grissini, Pecorino, and even, memorably, whole black truffles that we shaved over pasta for New Year’s Eve. But what I loved the most were the sweets. Panettone in every bakery, and even better, panforte, a fruitcake like confection which may be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

Panforte, a specialty of Siena, a hill town near Florence, dates back to the middle ages, when it was paid as a tax to monks and nuns, and was reportedly carried by Crusaders on the crusades. A combination of fruits and nuts, honey and sugar and spices, it is a cross between a caramel based candy and a cake. It is also utterly addictive, with a satisfying chew from the fruits and the caramel, and a crunch from the nuts.
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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: cake, candy, Christmas, holiday

My father didn’t just love tradition, he loved ritual. He wouldn’t just visit the same city over and over again, he would stay at the same hotel, visit the same restaurant, and order the same dishes off the menu. He was especially particular about holidays: not just turkey gravy and stuffing — GIBLET gravy and this bread stuffing. (Although he called it dressing, even though he also insisted on stuffing the turkey with it.) If we were eating Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s house, my mom always had to roast her own turkey (usually for charity) so we could make giblet gravy and bread stuffing. The man was obsessed.

Thanksgiving morning would see our family gathering around the kitchen table. My father and I would each have a cutting board and a knife — my mother would be standing at the stove, presiding over a large pan of sauteeing vegetables. Dad and I divided up the chopping duties — I took celery and onions, he cubed the loaves of white bread. The kitchen smelled of sage and onions, and we would snitch bits of stuffing — a crust of bread, a cube dipped in the oniony, celery sage butter, before it was ceremoniously added to the turkey, when the smell of poultry and sage would sneak out from the kitchen and fill the whole house.

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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: dressing, holiday, stuffing, Thanksgiving

Holiday dinners, holiday parties, intimate gatherings with family and friends — cooking is key, but you have to decorate too. You could buy the obligatory bunch of grocery store flowers and stick them in the vase that those roses came in last Valentine’s Day, or you could exercise a little thought and creativity and come up with a simple centerpiece on a budget.

I’m no whiz at floral arranging, but I have a few tips on designing your own centerpieces:

• Keep it low. The last thing you want at a dinner party is to discourage conversation by plopping a giant arrangement in the middle of the table! Let your guests see each others’ smiling faces!
• Forget the flowers. Flowers can be great, but they’re also a little expected. There are all sorts of other interesting items you can use in an arrangement. See below for some ideas.
• Move away from the mixed bouquets. If you do use flowers, avoid those bouquets of 10 different types.  Either they cost a fortune or they scream “grocery store!”  Stick to one or two types of flowers with interesting colors and textures.
• Go crazy with your container. There’s a place for a simple glass vase, but other containers can also lend some pizzazz to a plain arrangement.

Below are ideas for five simple centerpieces you can recreate at home or adapt using the materials you have:

1. A pumpkin we will go

A hollowed pumpkin makes a great vase that lends any arrangement a seasonal air.  Here, I combined tiny yellow mums (from the grocery store) with purple Mexican sage (which is taking over my garden).  These are combined in a glass jar that’s placed inside a hollowed-out pie pumpkin. 

2.  A study in scarlet

Seasonal fruits are beautiful and always appetizing on a table.  Here I’ve arranged a few pomegranates — one of my favorite, striking fruits — on a bed of cranberries, with their deep red shine.  To give this an extra holiday flair, I’ve used a green dish.

3.  Chestnuts roasting and an open fire

I always think chestnuts are beautiful and seasonal, and I want to buy them but I don’t want to peel them.   Using them for decoration solves this problem.  Here, I’ve arranged several chestnuts on a low white tray and placed tealights among them.

4.  Citrus Shine

A large bowl of fruit is beautiful and seasonal, and guests may be tempted to help themselves after dinner is finished!  I always associate clementines and their scent with the Christmas holidays, and the bright color is welcome on a dark day. I think a simple silver bowl sets off the shining orange beautifully.

5. Christmas Classic 

Most arrangements have all the color up top in a rather plain container.  Placing cranberries in a glass vase and arranging greens in the berries (here, sprigs of rosemary, which offer a lovely piney scent and also grow like a weed in my garden)  inverts expectations and provides holiday colors and fragrance. 

All of these took less than five minutes to put together, and would add to any holiday table.  What are your favorite holiday centerpieces?

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: Centerpieces, Decor, Entertaining, holiday

The holidays are so much more than a single day. They’re an excuse for gatherings of friends and family, shared stories, and shared meals. A cook during the holidays is always looking for recipes to feed a crowd — for dinners, buffets, lunches, brunches, cocktail parties. Turkey is an obvious choice, roast beef a luxe one, but another great (and economical) dish that will feed a crowd with a lot of payoff for a little effort is a baked ham.

Farmer John is a name practically synonymous with hams, but what I didn’t know is that they are based right here in Los Angeles, and have been for 80 years. I love supporting local businesses and industry — one of the things I love about living in Los Angeles is how economically diverse the region is. Furthermore, Farmer John really emphasizes their local ties and origins. When they approached me to develop a recipe using Farmer John ham and local ingredients, I was happy to work with them.

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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
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I like Halloween, I do. Costumes and candy and creepy crawlies are all lovely. But when the calendar turns to November, my heart starts to beat a little faster. We’re into my favorite time of year — the Holidays, Thanksgiving and Hanukah and Advent and Christmas and New Year. A time when my kitchen is filled with warmth and laughter and the smell of wonderful foods cooking and baking. And a time when our focus turns on gathering — with friends and with family, to warm up this dark time of the year.

With all the holiday entertaining, it’s nice to have a couple of good appetizers up your sleeve — something that can be served to guests or brought along to a party. Something that can liven up a meal of leftovers, or even make for lunch on the day when a festive dinner is taking up your attention. This chicken liver mousse is one of my absolute favorites. It can (should) be made ahead, is just decadent enough, and is cheap to make. I buy organic, air-chilled chicken livers at Whole Foods (because they always have them) and they cost $1.50 for the whole recipe’s worth.

I wish I could take credit for this recipe, but it 100% belongs to Michel Richard, who is one of those great chefs (at least based on this recipe, my favorite from his cookbook). The technique is a little eyebrow-lifting — pureeing raw livers is probably more worthy of Halloween than the Holidays, but the absolutely smooth and creamy results are worth it. Richard calls this “faux-gras” because the texture and richness is reminiscent of foie gras, and he’s right on the money. Foie Gras for the 99%, for Californians after the ban takes effect. Try it — I suspect it will become a mainstay for you, too.

Recipe
Chicken Liver Mousse
The surface of the mousse turns a funky gray color when you cook it. Richard includes a recipe for a parsley gelee to top it with, but I never get around to making it, and nobody really cares about it. Baking it in a cute jar, instead of a ramekin, aids in presentation. I like to serve this with baguette, apples slices and cornichons.

1/2 c. finely chopped onions
1 stick butter, divided
1/4 c. cream
pinch salt
1/2 lb chicken livers

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In a small saucepan over low heat, saute the onions in 1 T of the butter until the onions are translucent. Add the cream, cover, and simmer over low heat until the onions are soft, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining 7 T butter, and return to the heat until the butter is melted. Let the mixture cool to warm. This mixture will make your kitchen smell like heaven, and also will taste divine. Try to leave some for the mousse.

In a food processor or blender, combine the butter onion mixture and the raw chicken livers, and process until smooth. For ultra smoothness, strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a 16 oz. ramekin or canning jar (I often skip the straining because I’m lazy like that).

If using a ramekin, cover tigthtly with foil, and if using a jar, seal the lid, and place into a baking dish. Add boiling water to half way up the container, then place in the hot oven and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool, and chill in the refrigerator until serving.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: appetizer, chicken, Entertaining, Hors D'oeuvre, make ahead, offal

Early fall kicks off birthday season in my family. Somewhere in there, my darling girl turned FOUR. When I started this blog, she was not yet two, a round cheeked, lisping toddler, and now she is a full blown kid, with opinions and ideas and a personality all her own. Also in there, I turn, well, let’s just say considerably older than four, and leave it at that.

I am of the school of thought (and trust me, the Nuni shares this with me) that in order to properly celebrate a birthday, you need cake. Not pie, not pudding, and not even cupcakes. But an old fashioned, frosted layer cake. And it’s nice to have a simple one you can whip out of your oven for just such occasions.

This is the easiest, most foolproof chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever made. I remembered an old internet acquaintance who happened to be one of the best bakers I’ve ever “met” making an offhand comment that her go-to chocolate cake recipe was a Black Magic cake. It was invented by Hershey’s, requires no fussy chocolate melting, or butter creaming. It’s just wet ingredients, dry ingredients, mix, pour into pans, and boom, you’re left with a meltingly moist cake. The cocoa powder and the coffee add that deep dark chocolate flavor, and the cocoa, coffee, oil and buttermilk all make it wonderfully moist. This is the cake to make for anyone’s last minute birthdays.

And because every cake deserves to be tarted up with frosting, I made this intensely flavored roasted pistachio buttercream frosting. The color is real, not artificial, from eight ounces of pistachio nuts. The frosting is very soft and fluffy at room temperature, but firms up nicely in the refrigerator, so plan accordingly, depending on how firm you like your frosting. The key to getting the frosting really smooth is to grind the nuts in the food processor for a good long time. I used olive oil in the frosting, because I thought the green color and peppery flavor would add a nice kick to the frosting.

Recipe
Foolproof Moist Chocolate Layer Cake
(Thanks to Hersheys)
2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder (not dutch processed)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong black coffee
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour (I used Baker’s Joy or an equivalent product) 2 9-inch cake pans.

In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer), combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt, and whisk to combine.

Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla, beat for about 2 minutes. The batter will be thin. Divide evenly between the pans (if you’re bad at eyeballing, a kitchen scale helps admirably with this) and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean (or with a few crumbs, no batter).

Cool the cake layers in their pans for about 10 minutes, then turn them out and cool thoroughly before frosting and assembling.

Pistachio Buttercream Frosting
8 oz. roasted unsalted pistachio nuts (I buy them shelled from, you guessed it, Trader Joe’s)
2 T granulated sugar
6 T powdered sugar, divided
1 tsp olive oil
3 T honey
1 cup unsalted butter
Pinch of salt, to taste

In a large food processor, process the pistachios and the granulated sugar until very fine. Take out a few tablespoons of the ground pistachios to decorate the cake, and set aside.

Add 2 T powdered sugar and the olive oil, continue processing until the nuts are smooth. Add the honey, and continue to process until the paste is smooth to taste, and not grainy. Add the butter and the remaining powdered sugar and beat until combined. Chill.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: birthday, cake, chocolate, layer cake

Before Mother’s Day, the web abounds with recipes for Mother’s Day breakfast in bed and Mother’s Day brunch. Apparently, the morning belongs to the women, because you don’t see nearly as many Father’s Day breakfast recipes. But in my mind, weekend breakfasts — the kind that kids delight in, with pancakes and waffles and sugary anythings — are a dad thing. My mom is not a big breakfast eater, and is of the insanely practical frame of mind that breakfast should consist of proteins and whole grains, like scrambled eggs and oatmeal. My dad wasn’t a big breakfast eater either as a regular rule, but on weekends we used to hit the best breakfast places in town – the restaurantswith the best steak and eggs, or the really good blueberry pancakes, or the giant, gooey cinnamon rolls. When I spent the night at my friend Stacey’s house, her dad would make all the girls coffee ice cream milkshakes for breakfast. Lisa’s dad was always good for Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.

The point is, mother’s day may be the traditional day for breakfast in bed, but in my experience, when it comes to indulgent breakfasts, it’s all about Dad. So why not indulge your dad this father’s day with a sugary, gooey breakfast of his own?

When I saw this maple syrup dumpling recipe in Saveur, I was instantly intrigued. We always keep a bottle of maple syrup on hand (Grade B, natch, for maximum flavor) but we usually pour it over the french toast, waffles or pancakes. These dumplings are cooked in the maple syrup, which gives them an intense maple flavor and gooey texture that’s perfect for a sweet and not at all sensible weekend breakfast.

For me, there’s the added bonus that these, like my father, are French Canadian, and the French name for them is Grands-Peres, or “Grandfathers.” I couldn’t resist offering them up for Father’s Day, since I won’t be able to share breakfast with my dad this year.
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© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: breakfast, brunch, holiday, maple, sweets