Lemon cupcakes
Sarah Ferstel

As some of you know, I have been asked by my dear friend, Kate, to make cupcakes for her wedding in October. These cupcakes (Lemon, Devil's food, and Blue velvet) will be a cheaper, cuter, and yummier substitute for a traditional wedding cake. Serving cupcakes at weddings is a fairly popular trend now, and we are whole-heartily jumping on the band wagon. Considering that wedding cakes are typically over-priced, dry, and covered in fondant (blech!), this trend seems pretty reasonable in the wacky world of wedding wallet wastage.

To the delight of my coworkers, I have started testing cupcake recipes and bringing the results to work. So far, I've only brought in Red velvet (at the bride's request, I'll use blue food dye instead of red for the wedding) and this past weekend I made lemon cupcakes. I used a recipe found at Geek-kitten's livejournal blog, and though I received many complements, I'm not 100% satisfied with the outcome. The flavor of the cake is very good, but the texture is a little too crumbly for my taste. My friends insist I'm too picky and that they really like them, but these are for a wedding and I want to find the best recipe out there.

Kate, the bride, has been an enthusiastic accomplice in my cupcake endeavors. She has even ordered edible pearl luster spray that I'll wield like a Tanning Salon Maverick and give those girls (read: cupcakes) a beautiful summer glow! She also ordered bronze spray for the Devil's food cupcakes and blue for the blue velvet cupcakes. I can't wait for these weird bottles of sprayable candy to arrive.

So, back to the cupcakes. When looking for a lemon cupcake recipe, I really didn't have much in the way of criteria beyond (1) I wanted the ingredients to be easy to find and (2) the recipe should be pretty straight forward. I've looked through plenty of recipes online, and many of them call for intricate maneuvers that would be feasible if I weren't trying to make several dozen cupcakes.

Following Geek-kitten's recipe was easy, but I would recommend filling the baking cups only 3/4 full instead of nearly to the top as she has suggested. Filling the cups too full resulted in a muffin shaped cupcake (see pic below) for the first batch. For the second batch, I filled them 3/4 full and the results were a recognizable cupcake shape.


While the cupcakes were cooling, I made the frosting. The original recipe for this frosting is here, but I tweaked the recipe. Here's the ingredients and amounts I used.

2 sticks, unsalted butter (softened to room temp for about 30 minutes)
1/3 cup of Crisco (weird, right?)
2 cups of powdered/confectioner's sugar (you might want to add more depending on how sweet your tooth is)
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tbsp of fresh squeezed lemon juice

Mix it all together with an electric mixer, slop it into a frosting bag, squeeze, and voila!




As adorable as these are, it was obvious that I needed to up the cute factor so I added jelly beans and small slices of lemon to the frosting.



Cute, right? I'll be making a second batch of lemon cupcakes later this week with a different recipe and with the lustre spray. I'll post the results here, of course. TTFN!
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Where is everyone, Julie?
Shelly
So, I'm going to cheat and not include a recipe here at all. If you're so inclined to cook this mystery dish, you can haul out your copy (or check one out at your local public library where there are tons of librarians just WAITING to help you) of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One. . . then turn to page 407. There, on that very page, you will find. . . are you ready for this? Foie de veau a la moutarde. . . aka Liver with Mustard, Herbs and Bread Crumbs.

I have to confess, I've owned my copy of Julia's cookbook (and Louisette and Simone) for over a year and haven't cooked any of the recipes. I had decided when I first acquired the book (through nefarious means) that I needed to eat better - like a FRENCH person. I was going to live off of recipes from the book. And then I actually started to look at the recipes and quickly changed my mind. I think that's why I was so fascinated when I began to read Julie and Julia. Julie had made the same decision and followed through with it. In a way I envy her, and in a way I'm glad that she did it, so I know in advance that I'm better off cooking a Julia Child recipe once every two years or so.

When I was reading Julie and Julia, there were a couple of recipes that she mentioned that really caught my attention and stood out to me. I'm sure that this is a fairly common experience. . . Miss Powell is an entertaining storyteller after all. So, this recipe was one of those that really caught my attention. . . and since there are no lobsters writhing around in tanks in Donaldsonville. . .

Okay, I'm going to be honest here. My dad fries beef liver about once a year. My mom always refuses to be in the house when this happens and rarely eats it herself, always in a gravy, never fried. I've never been able to handle liver or do the cooking myself because the texture of it raw really freaks me out. However, I would always eat a piece when dad fried it up (although I won't go near it in a gravy). Since I've been out of my parents house for a little over ten years, and fried liver isn't always that easy to find in restaurants. . . . okay, there's no real justification for craving liver. However, that IS the one recipe that I really wanted to try. I don't know how many people that I've told that I was cooking a Julia Child liver recipe tonight. I've sent Sarah at least six e-mails trying to convince her to come and visit me in my lonely apartment and to experience this with me. . . Alex has even run away across the entire state. . . I can't imagine why, but no one wanted to be here. . . which leads me to my question. . . what did Julie and what's his name do with all of their leftovers? Imagine this. . . she was cooking every day. Most of these recipes serve 6-8 people. . . and sure your friends come over. . . when you're cooking lobster. . . but what do you do with all of the leftover liver?

That is for me to know, and you to find out. . . ha ha ha ha ha. . .

(Actually, it came out quite tasty, if you were wondering.)
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Pork-filled Chinese dumplings
Brett Chiquet

Living in Houston, there’s a great variety of different cultural eateries on every corner. We live almost across the street from this AMAZING dumpling place (http://www.b4-u-eat.com/houston/restaurants/%20reviews/rsv0646.asp), and their dumplings and green onion pancakes are to die for! Normally I wouldn’t even bother attempt to make my own when I can walk across the street, but a co-worker of mine brings dumplings to a lot of our lab pot lucks and before she moved, I decided I should learn some basics from her. The basic filling recipe, purse-making and cooking method ideas came from her. She recommended I start by finding fresh pre-rolled dumpling dough at my nearest Asian supermarket. I checked at a couple of my local non-Asian supermarkets (not wanting to drive over to the Asian part of Houston) and figured it would be less-lazy of me to make my own, so after a quick google-search for Chinese dumpling recipes, I think I found something that would work (http://userealbutter.com/2007/10/04/chinese-dumplings-and-potstickers-recipe/). *Note: this links to another blog that has a great description of the entire process. However, being someone who finds it hard to follow recipes, I had to add my own touches. Michael has been craving fresh-peach pies from House of Pies (amazing diner in Houston, and the one near our place was where the first portable computer was sketched http://en.wikipedia.org/%20wiki/Compaq). Chinese dumplings don’t typically go with peach pie, but Michael’s from Georgia, where they like their pork BBQ and peaches, so I thought I’d attempt an Asian pork BBQ dumpling to go along with the peach pie that I picked up from the restaurant. Let the fun begin!

Asian Pork BBQ Dumpling filling:
1 fresh peach, finely minced
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 T sugar
1 lb. ground pork
4 green onions (greens and whites), finely minced
½ package of mushrooms
¼ cup ginger, finely minced
1 t ground white pepper
1 clove garlic, finely minced


Dough:
2 cups of flour
½ cup warm water
Pinch of salt (because all dough needs a little salt)


Dipping Sauce:
Freshly minced ginger
Freshly minced jalapeno
Soy sauce
White vinegar
Sesame oil


To prepare the filling:
Combine first four ingredients, let sit in bowl while mincing the other ingredients. After all ingredients are prepped, mix in large bowl and refrigerate until dough is ready.

To prepare the dough:
In bread machine (because I can), add ingredients and set to “Dough” setting.

To make the dumplings:
Pinch off about a 1-inch round ball of dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll into a circle. Place in the palm of your non-dominant hand. Add 1 Tbsp of filling to center of palm and fold into purse. Okay, so check out Jennifer Yu’s blog (http://userealbutter.com/2007/10/04/chinese-dumplings-and-potstickers-recipe/) for pictures and instructions. I mostly followed them J Just make sure you get a good seal on them, otherwise you’re in for soup!

To cook the dumplings:
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add the dumplings. Gently stir so they don’t stick. Once they start to boil, add 1 cup of cold water. Once they start to boil, add another cup of cold water. Once they start to boil, remove from boiling water. I wanted mine to have a pan-fried bottom, so I transferred them to a warm, buttered sauté pan until they were golden brown on the bottom.

Dipping sauce:
One of the best things about the Dumpling King is the Do-It-Yourself dipping sauce. So, each eater can combine the 5 ingredients into their own concoction.

Afterword:

Okay, so everything was delicious! I couldn’t get the dough just right, and pastry was a little thicker than ideal, and I only ended up making ~12 dumplings (that were pretty large). But the important thing is that none of the pouches burst open! The remaining filling I made into little meatballs, which I served over bow-tie pasta (limited resources in my pantry that week) with a quick sauce of ginger, soy sauce, carrots and the rest of the mushrooms. I also made some green onion pancakes (regular pancake mix, followed directions, added remaining green onions). Not too bad. Desert was the regular peach pie from House of Pies. It wasn’t quite fresh peach season, so had to settle on that. It was still good. I’ve since had the fresh peach pie and it really is delicious.
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Bebe and Pop-pop
Sarah Ferstel
Bebe and me, 1983

On July 27th, my grandfather, "Pop-pop", called to let us know that my grandmother, Shirley 'Bebe' Hutt had passed away. Bebe is the pepper to Pop-pop's salt, and I don't think any of us were quite ready for her to go. I won't dwell on the details of her death or my family's grief. Instead, I'd like to use this space to reminisce about the food that I ate at my grandparents' homes in New York and New Jersey.

I know that Bebe cooked many meals in her lifetime, but I actually don't have too many memories of her particular recipes. Off the top of my head, I can only recall the pot roast and her stuffed artichokes. Her kitchen in Long Beach, NY, was tiny and not conducive to more than one cook. So, I never really helped her in the kitchen much. Later in the week, I'll share my grandmother's Ginger Snap pot roast recipe, but for now I'll just give y'all a peek into my family's kitchen and dining room. Here's a brief list of my childhood favorites.

1) Jello pudding pops - loved by Bill Cosby and the Hutt grandchildren. I'm sure most of my clothing had stains from these fast-melting treats. They no longer make these *cries and cries,* but click here for a recipe of the homemade version.

2) Tree top (?) apple juice in the small cans with the sticker pull tab - the perfect amount of apple juice for this former juice fiend.

3) Olives, pickles, and anything else related to those two food groups. My grandparents' supply of these is second only to the Olive bar at Whole Foods. How many young kids do you know who love kosher dill pickles and kalamata olives? I've only met a few and they're all related to me.

4) Bagels and lox - I'm not a fan of lox and I get a lot of flak for this in my family, but I'll eat a whole, gigantic NY bagel with gobs of cream cheese to prove that I'm serious about breakfast.

5) Coffee - Regular is available at all hours of the day in varying degrees of freshness and temperature.

6) Candy - Ah, the constant availability of M&M's, Dove chocolate, and York peppermint patties drove my mother nuts. Bebe and Pop-pop always have a little bowl of at least one of these candies out. As a kid, I was very adept at taking from these bowls when my mother wasn't looking. In fact, all the Hutt grandchildren have reached an advanced skill level for surreptitiously eating small amounts of candy when our mothers aren't looking. Sorry, Stefan and Mikey - the gig is up.

7) Those little boxes of General Mills, or Kellogg's, cereal that come in a variety pack. I lived for those as a kid. LIVED FOR THEM!!!!

8) Brie (and Jarlsburg, and Cheddar, and on and on) - Pop-pop has discovered in the last few years, or maybe earlier, that brie on bagels is pretty freaking fantastic.

*Side story: I once showed Pop-pop that the best way to soften brie from the fridge is to microwave a plate (just the plate) and then place the brie on the warmed plate for a few minutes on the counter. It's a gentle way to warm the brie without actually nuking it (God forbid!). Pop-pop was very impressed and I got lots of kudos the rest of the morning!

9) Salmon patties with Spanish olives. I can't remember if Pop-pop ever made these at the Long Beach house, but he made them for me when he and Bebe lived down here in Louisiana for a few months when I was 13-14 years old. My love for these is natural (please see #3).

10) Beer - Pop-pop would poor a little of his Heineken into a juice cup for me when I was a kid (my mother just learned of this - I guess she thought it was apple juice). Since Bebe was drinking her White Zin from a juice cup too, I felt pretty grown up while I sipped my 2 ounces of beer.

I'm sure my cousins (Angelica, Arielle, Sasha, Stefan, and Michael) have many of their own particular memories, but these are the ones that are most prevalent in my mind right now.

I think everyone should add your favorite grand-parent related food memories in the comments section!
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Get along lil doggie
Shelly
When it comes down to it, you can group recipes into a very few amount of categories. There are the recipes that you keep telling yourself that you're going to try. There are recipes that you look at and think that you would never take the time to make or would never want to eat. There are the recipes that you've tried once or twice and remember fondly. . . and there are the recipes that you absolutely can not live without. This is one of those recipes that I absolutely can not live without. . . not because it blew my mind the first time that I made it. . . just because it's good. It's real food, the kind of food that my mom would have made when I was growing up - if she had cooked more, and if my dad would have been willing to eat stew.

The recipe actually comes from a cookbook that my elementary school compiled when I was in third grade, courtesy of Mrs. Norma Nix. (Her son was a year above me and a real jerk - which did not keep Maria from having a huge crush on him in high school.) I never got around to making it, though, until a few years ago. . . when I was going through this phase of romanticising life on the prairie and wishing that I had been a pioneer. . . spending long days outside and evenings in a flannel nightgown by the fire. . . with a garden out back, a cold cellar, and thirteen children running around barefoot and dirty with the puppy dogs in the back yard.

Chuck Wagon Stew
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 c. flour
2 lb. cubed beef
2 Tbsp. shortening
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. chili powder
1 bay leaf
2 tomatoes, peeled and quartered
1 (10.5 oz.) can beef broth
6 small potatoes
6 small carrots
6 small onions
3 or 4 stalks celery (I never use this because celery is gross)
1 c. frozen peas (And I have never once remembered to buy peas, so this always gets omitted too)

Combine sugar and flour. Coat beef and brown in shortening. Add seasonings, tomatoes, and broth to meat. Cover and simmer 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Stir in vegetables, omitting the peas. Cover and cook about 30 minutes. Add peas. Cover and cook about 15 minutes.

Aside from the time that it takes to cook, this is a really EASY recipe - translation, you don't have to chop the veggies which equals awesome in my book. Ha. I'm such a lazy cook.
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