recipes
Parmesan-Rosemary Popcorn
I visited St. Louis for a conference last week and had some great popcorn for a healthy snack. I did my best to replicate it at home. Parmesan is one of Sam’s favorite things. When I told him I would be making this, he said, “That sounds good. But I didn’t think you liked Parmesan that much.”
Team Kolaches
2 c. milk
Pizza a la Sam
This recipe is on the regular rotation in the Wolfe house. It’s all in the dough.
You can either top it with barbecue sauce, mozzarella cheese and bits of cooked chicken breast for preferred variation number one, or smother it with bottled marinara sauce, mozzarella, and slices of turkey pepperoni and Canadian bacon for the all-time family favorite.
Pizza dough
(enough for one large round and one small round)
Put in a mixer outfitted with dough hook 1 1/2 cup warm water, 2 T. olive oil, 2 tsp. salt, 1 c. whole wheat flour, 2 1/2 to 3 cups unbleached white flour, 2 tsp. sugar, 2 tsp. Rapid Rise yeast.
Run in mixer for 4-5 minutes until dough is a nice, pliable ball. Let rise til doubled.
Bake the pizzas at 425 F for 8 minutes, one on top rack, one on bottom, rotate and bake til crust begins to brown and cheese is bubbling and golden.
Peanut Sauce Promise
Here is the recipe Mark got from the hornist when they were both principals in the Sacramento Symphony.
I found the recipe unexpectedly authentic and always wondered where Eric got it. Mark used to like to say that, as a French hornist, Eric played very sharp and nearly missed all the notes. It’s tuba humor. You had to be there.
Peanut Sauce
1 chicken carcass
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bunch green onions
3 carrots
1/2 bunch of celery
3 yellow onions, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
1/3 cup ginger juice (grate fresh ginger and squeeze through a cheese cloth)
2 1/4 pounds crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 lb jar of Crosse and Blackwell
red sambal
3 T butter
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
In four quarts of water, boil chicken with cilantro, green onions, carrots and celery for one hour. Cool to lukewarm and strain.
Saute onions and garlic in butter and olive oil til golden, set aside.
Add peanut butter to lukewarm broth. (If broth is too warm, it will coagulate.) Stir until lumps are gone. Add onion mixture, cocktail sauce, ginger juice and red sambal to taste. Stir thoroughly.
This makes a lot of peanut sauce. Serve over cold noodles and cucumber cut julienne. Stir fry tofu til brown, add red peppers and spinach til wilted, stir in peanut sauce as desired. Marinate chicken in sauce, grill, basting with additional sauce. Give a jar to a friend.
Bonenkai or not?
There are many things about 2011 that tell me it doesn’t matter how many black-eyed peas I eat, that Southern tradition for good luck isn’t going to work for me.
I loved being a part of many year-end parties in Japan when I was there twenty-five years ago. (Gad, that’s a long time.) Even though 1985 was a good year, everyone acted as if it couldn’t come to an end soon enough so that they could have another shot at it in the New Year. We ate like kings. And then the New Year came — and that’s three full days of resting and eating and being with family and friends.
Now, 1986 was a very good year for me. So I’m thinking Paige’s little project this afternoon of making ramen noodles from scratch (based on a website that has thorough directions, with photos) ought to be our bonenkai. She’s trying to channel her dad, who was an excellent pasta maker (his recipe below — he would have the noodles cut by the time the water was boiling).
Yep, I’m thinking 2012 is going to be a very good year.
Mark’s Perfect Pasta
Two heaping 1/3 cups of semolina flour
1 egg
1 T. water
salt
1 tsp. olive oil
white flour
large pot boiling, salted water
Put all ingredients in a food processor and process til a ball forms, about 3 minutes.
Turn out on a floured board and knead for a minute or two until supple. If it’s too wet, knead flour into it. Divide into parts and put through your pasta machine. You may need to roll it through several times at the wider setting until the dough is supple enough to start rolling it through the thinner settings. Dust with flour on both sides before you roll it through the cutter.
Drop the noodles in the water and cook until slightly swollen, about five to ten minutes. Big noodles take longer.
Drain.
Serve hot with garlic butter and grated Romano cheese; your favorite marinara sauce; room temperature with pesto; or cold over cucumber cut julienne style and peanut sauce poured over all.
I’ve already posted the pesto recipe. I’ll put up the peanut sauce recipe tomorrow.
Mark’s Kahlua
Just about every year this time of year we’d have to hightail it outside and stay gone for a while because Mark would be making kahlua for his friends and music colleagues. The only thing that stinks up the house more than making kahlua is making mustard. Caramelizing onions isn’t even on the same scale of stink, I’m telling you.
Ok, guys. Here’s the recipe he refined while we were living in Sacramento.
2 quarts plus one cup water
7 cups sugar
6 ounces of freeze-dried coffee
1 T. Hershey’s cocoa, optional
1 fifth of Everclear
3 T. vanilla
1. Drive to Reno to buy Everclear. (After we moved to Texas, he drove to Paradise.)
2. Boil water and add sugar. Add coffee and boil for 15 minutes. The house will be really smelly, so go outside. Add the cocoa and remove from the heat. Let cool.
3. Add Everclear and vanilla. Bottle and keep in your liquor cabinet.
Today it’s four years since he’s been gone.
I don’t like thinking that at some point in my life I will have lived more of my life without him than with him.
Happy 24th, Sam!
The only time in his life I can buy a pack of candles and use every last one of them.
Here is the cake we nearly always bake for a Wolfe family birthday, ever since I bought Rosso and Lukins New Basics Cookbook and adapted it.
The Chocolate Birthday Cake
1 c. butter
1 1/4 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
3 eggs
3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
2 1/4 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
9 T. buttermilk
1 c. boiling water
2 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and the sugar in the mixer for five minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. Meanwhile, melt chocolate in the microwave by breaking the blocks in pieces and microwaving on high one minute. If not fully melted, microwave for 30 seconds at a time until melted. Fold into butter and egg mixture.
Sift flour, soda and salt together. Add one third of flour mixture with 3 T. of buttermilk and mix on low. Repeat two times, mixing until all buttermilk and flour is incorporated.
With mixer on low, slowly pour in boiling water and then add vanilla. Pour into two prepared cake pans (I prefer Doughmakers) and bake at 375 til it pulls away from the sides and springs back in the middle, 25 to 32 minutes.
While the cake cools, melt 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips in a small saucepan with 8 T. of butter over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, gently store in 2/3 c. half-n-half, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 c. confectioner’s sugar. This mixture will be thin. Refrigerate, stirring every 10-15 minutes until its stiff enough to frost the cake.
Start by applying a thin layer of ganache on the bottom cake round. Sprinkle with additional chocolate chips, pressing them down into the ganache. Top with other round, frost top and sides.
Serve. Store any leftovers covered in the refrigerator.
Pesto
Puree in a blender 3-4 cups of basil leaves, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 2 tablespoons pine nuts, 3 garlic cloves, 1/4 tsp. salt.
Pulse in 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup grated Parmesean cheese. Thin to desired consistency with pasta water, or additional olive oil.
JoC’s Strawberry Punch, freely interpreted
For Sam’s graduation party, I put out a devil’s food cake (from Rosso and Lukins’ New Basics Cookbook), chili-lime peanuts (from epicurious), butter mints (from Albertsons) and a double-batch of strawberry punch, based on the recipe from Joy of Cooking.
A few people asked for the recipe. The original is good just the way it is and I’ve made it that way many times, but Sam doesn’t like carbonated beverages, so I had to fake it a little bit.
The Original
Boil for 5 minutes:
4 cups water
4 cups sugar
Cool the syrup. Combine:
2 quarts hulled strawberries
1 cup slice canned or fresh pineapple
1 cup mixed fruit juice — pineapple, apricot, raspberry, etc.
Juice of 5 large oranges
Juice of 5 large lemons
(3 sliced bananas)
Add the syrup, or as much of it as is palatable. Chill these ingredients. Immediately before serving, add:
2 quarts carbonated water
3 cups or more of crushed ice.
The basic mix is concentrated, to offset the dilution that happens with the icing. Water can be added, as desired.
JoC Strawberry Punch, Sam Style
Boil for 5 minutes
4 cups water
4 cups sugar
As the syrup is cooling, hull and slice the strawberries into the syrup (helps the infusion)
When ready to mix, I added one bottle of TexSun Orange-Pineapple Juice (a favorite from his childhood) and 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice, and a small can of pineapple slices, drained.
Chill.
To serve, I added three trays of ice cubes.
An old family recipe
This week the Wolfe house is busy with the making of play-dough on the stove top. The DFW team for Texas Parent-to-Parent will have a booth at the Autism Speaks Walk this Saturday at the Ballpark in Arlington and we plan on giving the kids at the event a super experience for their senses.
I’ve dusted off an old family recipe that was a big hit with Sam when he was little. He was consumed with making sense of the world through his challenged senses. We made this dough, and then added a secret ingredient — a package of unsweetened Kool-Aid to match the color with a flavor “scent.” He loved it.
To wit, put these ingredients in a large saucepan and heat over very low heat, stirring constantly, until it’s thick:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil.
Remove from the heat and as soon as you can work the dough with your hands, make a well in the middle and add 1/2 teaspoon of food coloring to match the Kool-Aid flavor. For example — purple and grape; green and lime; red and strawberry; yellow and lemon; and, of course, orange orange and blue blueberry.
The dough keeps for a few days in a rubber keeper or airtight bag. Plus, if your little one takes a bite, you don’t have to worry about any mystery ingredients.