Cream Cheese Brownies

I made these brownies mostly because I happened to have all the ingredients on hand and I needed a dessert for company. The recipe is from Let Them Eat Cake by Susan Purdy with some minor altitude adjustments for my mile-high location. I've put the original in too for you folks who are altitudanally challenged. :-) Also, I used full-fat cream cheese - because that is what I had. Purdy has written some of my favorite baking cookbooks: Have Your Cake and Eat it, Too (a healthier baking book like Let Them Eat Cake), The Family Baker, and an excellent high-altitude baking book called Pie in the Sky. Her recipes are well-tested and most are totally doable by novice bakers.

Cream Cheese Brownies
(makes 16, one 9x9" pan)

French Fish Soup

Here's a simple, light fish soup but it's also hearty, full of veggies and chunks of fish. I made it with mahi-mahi but you could use halibut, bass, snapper, or shrimp. Its flavor is delicate - it's about the veggies and the fish.

French Fish Soup
(serves 4-6)

2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
½ cup finely diced heart of celery, including some of the leaves
1 medium carrot, finely diced
½ of a medium green bell pepper, finely diced
1 teaspoon loosely packed saffron threads
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup dry white wine
1 ½ cups unsalted chicken stock
1 ½ cups water
1 medium potato, cut into ½" cubes
1 ½ pounds fresh fish fillets, such as mahi-mahi or bass, cut into 1" chunks
½ cup chopped parsley
fruity olive oil for garnish

Heat the olive oil in a medium soup pot over medium heat. Add garlic and onions and cook until wilted but not browned. Add celery, carrot, green pepper, saffron, salt, pepper, thyme, and bay leaf. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes. Add wine, chicken stock, and water. Stir, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Add potatoes, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Potatoes should be nearly done, but not quite. Add fish chunks, stir, cover again and cook for about 5 minutes, until fish is opaque all the way through - just done. Stir in the parsley, drizzle with a fruity olive oil if desired, and serve with crusty bread.

Adapted from The New York Times 60 Minute Gourmet, Pierre Franey, Fawcett Columbine, 1979.

Lamb Chops with Gyro Marinade

This recipe was inspired by my daughter who loves gyros. Gyros are a combination of ground meats, beef and lamb usually, with some nice herbs mixed in. I think the secret ingredients are lemon and a generous amount of garlic. I found a recipe in The New Look of American Lamb from the American Lamb Council (thanks Kasja!) for lamb gyros and ran with that. They turned out mighty tasty!

Lamb Chops with Gyro Marinade
(serves 4)

3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons dried lemon peel or the zest of 1 fresh lemon
¾ teaspoon dried basil
¾ teaspoon dried marjoram
1 ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
8 lamb rib chops or 4 lamb shoulder chops
salt and black pepper

Mix together garlic, olive oil, and lemon zest in a non-reactive pan that will hold all the lamb chops in one layer. Crumble up the dried herbs in your palm and add to the garlic mixture. Add the parsley and mix to combine. Put the chops in the dish and rub the herb mixture all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate for up to 8 hours.

Season lamb chops with salt and black pepper. Broil or grill to desired doneness. We like our lamb medium-rare but you do what you got to do to keep your diners happy.

Yet another pretty Dessert photo

Happy Birthday to Jenny! You can read Jenny's poems by following the link on my blog page(Le Poeme). I made this cake for her birthday dinner. It's another Maida Heatter beauty. It's called the Montana Mountain Cake. Because it's about as tall as a Montana mountain (the nice icing peaks don't hurt either). And, I didn't even bake the layers in 8" cake pans, as she says you can. It would have been ridiculous!

It's three tall layers of delicious mild chocolate cake with loads of coffee-caramel 7-minute icing. Very impressive - when you walk in the door, the guests all go "Oooh!" and "Aaahhh!" Even more ooohs and aaahhhs when they taste it.

People ask me if I like baking desserts best. Certainly, the adulation is lovely. I really love cooking, with baking another part of cooking. I don't really understand people who say they can't bake, especially great chefs/cooks. If you meet me, don't tell me you can't bake. You might not be able to bake this cake as your first (or even 10th) foray into baking, but you can bake. Takes a bit more attention to detail, but if you can follow a recipe, you can bake.

Goat Cheese - Porcini Tamales

Goat cheese tamale with fig-lemon salsa

Here's one of the tamale recipes I made for Christmas: a moderately aged goat cheese wrapped in a porcini masa. The recipe is based on one from Tamales by Mark Miller, Stephen Pyles and John Sedlar. It's served with a tasty fig-lemon salsa. In the original recipe, the goat cheese is paired with a black olive masa (which sounds like another stellar combination) but I wanted to try the porcini one. It's not a powerful mushroom flavor, just an undercurrent of earthy nuttiness.

Wrapping tamales takes a bit of time and practice and it's nice to have extra hands to make the work go quickly. This recipe makes 8 tamales, so you won't be stuck wrapping forever even if you make them on your own. They are worth the effort.

This recipe calls for an aged goat cheese. I used a ripe Humboldt Fog® from Cypress Grove Chevre in Northern California. It's an earthy pungent cheese. You could use a milder goat cheese, one that isn't aged but it can be very sticky to work with. Also, the aged goat is the perfect counterpoint to the sweet fig salsa.

Beet and Carrot Salad with Coriander-Sesame Salt

I pulled this recipe off of Epicurious.com. It's fantastic. Really, really delicious. What a great way to get your vegetables. Because these are hardy vegetables, it keeps quite nicely for a few days in the fridge too. The beets turn the carrots red, but who really cares?

Beet and Carrot Salad with Coriander-Sesame Salt

Lamb and Walnut Stew

Lamb and Walnut stew over Israeli couscous

I love pomegranate molasses. It's highly reduced pomegranate juice and it is intense and syrupy. Like molasses, but it has a tart-sweet flavor that is totally unique. You can find it in ethnic grocery stores (ones with a good selection of Middle Eastern products are a good bet) or high-end supermarkets, like Whole Foods.

A little of this stuff goes a long way, given its intensity. Which means that a bottle of it lasts a long, long time. It does keep forever but I'm always on the look-out for recipes that use it effectively.

This is a richly flavored stew perfect for winter. Though the pomegranate molasses is sweet, it is not overly sweet. A perfect balance of sweet, tart, and spicy. Not hot spicy but exotic spicy.

This recipe is from Sephardic Cooking by Copeland Marks (Primus, 1994), an incredible collection of Sephardic recipes from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Sephardic Jewish cooking retains more of its Middle Eastern roots and is normally associated with the Mediterranean. But, Sephardic cooking comes from such unexpected places as India and Central Asia. This recipe is Persian, what is now known as Iran. I used lamb but you could make this with any meat: chicken parts, turkey thighs, beef, or veal.

Like most stews, this tastes even better after it's chilled overnight and reheated. It freezes great too.

Fesenjan: Meat Stew in Pomegranate and Walnut Sauce
(serves 6)