Brunch -- it's not JUST for jerks...

So the New York Times had a headline a couple of weeks ago that will go through my head and those of many readers for years to come.

Brunch is for jerks.

Not true. I have always loved brunch, mainly because when I was a child we hosted two great brunch events every autumn: a family Thanksgiving brunch and the high school girls' swim team brunch. At both events we ate quiche lorraine and my mother's fabulous yeast coffee cake and fruit salad, and we played touch football and enjoyed autumnal weather. Excellent memories.

Later -- especially after the kids arrived and it became necessary to eat early in the morning, even on weekends [sometimes as early as 5:30 or 6 AM] -- brunch became an excuse to have breakfast food again, post-Cheerios, at lunchtime.

It's also my favorite meal for entertaining. So this past Sunday when my sister and her husband were headed out to visit us, I took the opportunity of inviting a couple more friends so as to have enough people to eat my adult brunch menu from the Frog Commissary Cookbook. Here goes.

Indian Scrambled Eggs with Fragrant Rice and Minted Tomato Sauce

Three recipes in one, really, but if you eat slowly this is SO delicious and filling. Not, though, low cholesterol or low fat.

Minted Tomato Sauce
2 T. butter
2-4 cups of coarsely chopped onions (to taste)
4 t. curry powder
2 t. minced garlic
2 t. minced fresh ginger
2 t. ground coriander
2 t. ground cumin
2 t. turmeric
1 1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
1 (20 oz.) can crushed tomatoes (if you use a regular large can you will have about double the sauce and be able to put some in the freezer for a second round later in the month!)
1/4-1/2 c. chopped fresh mint.

Heat the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onions and curry powder and sauté until the onions are tender. Add the garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin, turmeric, and salt and cook two minutes. Add the pepper, crushed tomatoes, and mint. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until very thick. Set aside.

Fragrant Rice
1/2 c. red lentils
1/4 c. butter
1 1/2 c. chopped onions
1 1/2 t. curry powder
2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 1/2 c. white rice
2 T. lemon juice
2 1/2 c. water

Pour boiling water over the lentils to cover by an inch and let soak 15-30 minutes or until tender. Drain and set aside. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onions and sauté until tender. Stir in the curry powder, salt and pepper. Add the rice and sauté 2-3 minutes. Add the lemon juice and water, cover, and cook about 15 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed. Add the reserved lentils, stir, and cover tightly. Keep warm in a 250 degree oven until ready to serve.

Scrambled Eggs
16 eggs, lightly beaten
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1/8 t. cayenne
1/8 t. nutmeg
1 1/2 t. sugar (or leave this out)
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. butter
2 1/2 t. minced fresh ginger
1/2 c. sliced scallions

Have the tomato sauce hot. Combine the eggs with the seasonings. Cut the cream cheese in bits into the eggs. Melt the butter in a large non-stick skillet. Add the ginger and sauté 1 minute. Add the eggs and cook until barely set. At the last minute, stir in the scallions. Serve at once accompanied by the sauce and rice.

My platter is brown, but it's every bit as beautiful as this one!

The seasonings can all be approximate -- 2 t. of everything in the rice makes life easier. I have a large platter from Michael Jones and I spoon the rice onto one side and the eggs onto the other, with a stripe of tomato sauce down the middle. Beautiful.

Now, although that is plenty to eat, the meal can be capped off with coffee, tea, and

Espresso Walnut Chocolate Chip Muffins
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar (or reduce both sugars slightly)
2 T. instant espresso powder
2 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2/3 c. mile
1 3/4 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 T. baking powder
3/4 c. semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 c. coarsely chopped walnuts.

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease and flour 12 muffin pan cups. Cream the butter with the sugars, espresso powder and vanilla. Beat together the eggs and milk. Combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Alternately add the wet and dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Stir just to combine. Add the chips and walnuts. Fill tins full. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool five minutes, then remove from the tins and cool on racks (or not -- eat while still warm!).

Gluten Free Chocolate-Espresso Cookies

Baking gluten free is tricky. But when your best friend discovers she has celiac disease, and somehow you don't want to ice her out of social situations because of it, you have to adapt. And adapt your recipes.

The Epicurious "Chocolate-Espresso Cookies" recipe (originally from Bon Appetit in July 1997) adapts well if you remember the most important gluten free rule: your baking time needs to be significantly shortened. (I learned this the hard way trying to make gluten free cheesecake crusts using Pamela's GF baking mix. Threw several cheesecakes away before I adjusted. But it's also a lesson that needs repeating -- it's too easy to blindly follow the recipe.)

So here's a new version of the recipe with the lack of gluten in mind:

Gluten Free Chocolate-Espresso Cookies

Ingredients:

• 6 T. almond meal (that's what I used -- I bet you could experiment)
• 1/4 t. salt
• 6-8 oz. baking chocolate -- a mixture of unsweetened and semi-sweet, broken up
• 1/2 c. unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 to 3/4 c. sugar (I err on the less sweet side generally)
• 2 1/2 t. instant espresso powder
• 2 1/2 t. vanilla
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350. Mix almond meal and salt together in a small bowl. Stir baking chocolates and butter in a heavy large saucepan over low heat until melted. Remove from heat. Use a hand mixer or Kitchenaid to beat eggs, sugar, espresso powder and vanilla until well blended. Stir egg mixture into warm chocolate mixture. Stir in dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips and chopped walnuts.

Immediately drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto non-stick baking sheets (or use parchment paper), spacing 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until tops crack but cookies are still soft inside (about 7 to 9 minutes -- make sure to check so that they don't burn!). Transfer baking sheets to racks; cool 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks (carefully so they don't break!); cool completely.

Things to keep in mind:

• Let your chocolate mixture cool if you want the chips to retain their integrity -- if you put them in too soon they will melt!
• Since GF cookies tend to spread, it may be worth just letting the chips melt and grinding the nuts rather than leaving them "coarsely chopped." You get the taste without the idea of nuts -- and frankly, when my cookies are tending toward the lace-thin, individual pieces of chips and nuts may make them break more easily.
• Baking time: The original recipe (with 6 T. flour instead of the almond meal and 1/4 t. baking powder) calls for a 12 minute baking time. Know your oven, and experiment with your GF timing.
• Also, if your cookies turn to crumbles, it's no terrible loss -- they are fabulous sprinkled over vanilla ice cream.

Pretty delicious.

Angela's Best Cookies

The first recipe I ever felt confident about modifying is this one, and these became my very best cookies. I've baked them for school treats, for lecture series (when my budget didn't reach to snacks), for cross country pasta parties. I've had people ask for them by name. When are you going to make more Angela's Best Cookies?

But of course, I stole them -- or rather tweaked a recipe I found in one of my go to cookbooks, the Frog Commissary Cookbook.

I wasn't in Philadelphia when this place was still retail, but I appreciate their description of these cookies: "We sell this cookie the way McDonald's sells burgers: they fly out the door." What they don't say is that they also made money on these cookies by stretching the dough -- basically we are talking Toll House cookies plus a LOT of oats, so that the recipe makes a LOT of cookies fairly inexpensively. I added dried cranberries to make them even yummier.

It's great to make a whole recipe and then stash half in the freezer for later, but after my teenaged son figured that trick out, it's safer to just make half a recipe at a time: 2 1/2 dozen.

Enjoy!

Angela's Best Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar (or reduce)

1 cup white sugar (ditto)

2 t. vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 t. salt

1 t. baking soda

1 t. baking powder

2 1/2 c. old-fashioned oats

12 oz semisweet chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

3/4 cup dried cranberries

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Let sit one minute, then remove to cooling racks.

Before

After

Mac & Cheese -- it's what's for dinner

Whenever anyone asks why I married my husband, I have a few stock answers: 1) he was the first good boyfriend I ever had; 2) I was looking to date an American; 3) he knew how to cook.

That last one is not insignificant. In the pre-tenure days when I was working from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in my office and dining on Snickers bars, his "I make dinner every night, just come over" was a real turn-on. In fact, it was true: I will never cease to be amazed that he can come home from work and have a yummy, healthy meal on the table within twenty minutes. Without going to the store for more ingredients. (Indeed, without following a recipe.)

Tonight, I almost achieved parity. I made a pretty decent baked macaroni and cheese without running to the store. In fairness, I've had this in mind for a few days and I've been accumulating ingredients -- but I resisted leaving the house at 5:05 to get more cottage cheese (a good portion of which said husband had eaten) and instead began to put the meal together. What's more, though I didn't do without a recipe, I did make up my own version, based on two different recipes. Here goes:

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

12 oz. elbow pasta
1 cup large curd cottage cheese
2 cups milk
1/2 t. salt
1 t. dried mustard
1/4 t. each nutmeg and black pepper
about 14 oz. cheddar cheese, grated
dried Italian bread crumbs (or panko -- whatever you have on the shelf)
1 T. dried flat leaf parsley (courtesy of a neighbor)
1/4 c. grated parmesan

Butter an 11 x 7" glass pan and begin preheating the oven to 375. Cook the pasta about 7 minutes and drain. Whiz the cottage cheese, salt, pepper, mustard, nutmeg and milk in the blender. Grate cheese.

Pour the pasta into a bowl and add the cottage cheese/milk mixture. Sprinkle on 3/4 of the cheddar and mix. Pour into prepared pan. Now mix the rest of the cheddar with the bread crumbs, parsley and parmesan. Sprinkle on top.

Cover tightly with foil and bake about 20 minutes.

I also threw together a black bean/corn/tomato/scallion salad with some corn we'd cooked and taken off the cob on the weekend, with a garlic and onion powder seasoning (don't know how that landed on my spice shelf, but it's okay in a pinch).

The reviews from kids and husband were good. If I ever find my camera cord, I'll begin recording these things in living color again -- for now, just use your imagination.

A nice way to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary tonight.

ADDENDUM 10/29:

I wanted to make mac and cheese again this week, and couldn't recall which two recipes I had melded together. And then I remembered that I had chronicled the project here! I was so glad, I eked out a photograph from my still-cordless camera... This time I used rotini and maybe a bit too much dried mustard (emptied the jar), but it was still very yummy, and there were enough leftovers for three lunches!

Black Gold: Summer Salad for a Fish Taco Feast

Recently a friend added me to a facebook group: Friends who Cook. Last night I tried my first recipe from the group -- I liked the tagline, "Black Gold: Addictive AND Healthy."

Black Gold

Ingredients:
1/3 cup fresh lime juice (about 2 limes, squeezed)
1/2 cup olive oil
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 t. salt
1/4 t. ground cayenne pepper
1 (15 oz.) cans black beans, rinsed
10 oz. bag of frozen corn or corn cut off 3 cobs (cooked)
1 1/2 red bell peppers, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
6 green onions, chopped
1/2 -1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Directions:
1. Place lime juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and cayenne pepper in a small jar. Cover with lid and shake until ingredients are well mixed.
2. In a salad bowl, combine beans, corn, avocado, bell pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro. Shake lime dressing and pour it over the salad. Stir salad to coat vegetables and beans with dressing and serve (or refrigerate for an hour or two before serving to allow the flavors to blend).

I went ahead and made the salad about 1 1/2 hours in advance. Pretty yummy, but especially because we took it as our contribution to a fish taco feast at our friends' house. I need to get that recipe -- they grilled rubbed swordfish and the corn tortillas, and spread a spiced mayonnaise on the tortilla, added a cabbage slaw and the fish -- fantastic. 

Tuna Chickpea Pasta Salad

My friends invited us to stop by at a cookout they were having to celebrate their new (and newly renovated) home in West Mount Airy. I was excited to go, but the "potluck" aspect stopped me -- in the middle of painting jobs and reading and cleaning and so on, did I have time to throw something together? I really didn't want to spend too much time going to the store. On the other hand, I always want to show up with something yummy to share.

I looked in the cupboard and found two cans of tuna in olive oil, two cans of chick peas, and a box of orecchiete. Voilà.

Pasta Salad On-The-Fly

1 box any pasta, 16 oz.
2 cans of tuna in olive oil
2 15 oz. cans of chick peas
1/2 - 1 cup sweet or red onion, diced
1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half
4 T. olive oil
4 T. (or more) lemon juice
2-4 T. flat leaf parsley, chopped finely (or as much as you have -- I have a pot of herbs outside and harvested as much as was ready)
salt and black pepper to taste

This makes a LOT: good for a potluck, to leave some with the hosts who will not want to make lunch the next day after cleaning up, and to take some home. Unless no one else brings anything to the potluck, in which case it should feed a crowd. (You can also make just half a recipe, which works just fine if you have the right bowl to present it in!)

The Perfect *Ricotta* Cheesecake

Okay, so I've perfected my summer cheesecake: light and fluffy, AND I get to use Uncle Roland's zester, AND it helps to have access to my 9" springform pan (and to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods for the ginger snap cookies -- though I imagine any cookies would do).

In short:

Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake with Ginger Snap Crust

Take about 2 cups of crushed ginger snaps and pulse them in a Cuisinart with about 6 T. melted butter. Press into a greased 9" springform pan and preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

5 eggs, separated
2 8 oz. pkgs of cream cheese
1 15 oz. container of ricotta
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2/3 cup sugar
1 T. flour.

Beat the egg yolks until light with a mixer or in the Kitchenaid mixer; add cheeses, lemon zest juice, and 2/3 c. sugar and beat until smooth. Pour out into another bowl and stir the flour in with a spoon. Wash the bowl and whisk up the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Gently but thoroughly fold them into the cheese mixture (with a rubber spatula). Turn the batter into the pan and place pan in a baking dish large enough to hold it comfortably. Add as much warm water as you can to the larger pan; you're baking the cheesecake in a water bath. Transfer carefully to the preheated oven and bak until the cake is just set and very lightly browned, about an hour.

NOTE: This summer I have used my cast iron frying pan for the water bath, which has worked brilliantly.

Turn the oven off, take the cheesecake out of the water bath, and return to the oven to cool for 30 minutes to an hour. Then cool on a rack and refrigerate until well-chilled before slicing and serving. (Unless your family is too impatient. Then explain to them as they are eating how much better it will taste on the next day.)

No huge innovations here -- I am happy with the ricotta substitution and increasing the eggs to 5, which makes the cake light and high, and I've adjusted the crust to get the right proportions. This might be yummy with ginger instead of lemon in the cheesecake -- I'll try that this autumn.

For Tucker and Kayty -- enjoy!