Guest Post: The Seventh Sphinx talks Ginger

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Kathy

Ginger is such a great flavor. I know many people who are head-over-heels for it. Next Monday I will be eating my weight in Ginger while I support a good cause: the Joslin Diabetes Center at Spoonful of Ginger – their annual benefit at the MFA to support the Asian-American Diabetes Initiative. I love to help out places like Joslin because Diabetes research is SUCH AN IMPORTANT CAUSE. We all know someone affected by either type 1 or type 2 Diabetes and it’s becoming more of a problem all the time. So go, get a ticket, eat some delicious ginger infused dishes and help Joslin find a cure.

My big sister, who you’ve heard me talk about here in the past, has recently started her own blog, called donatio olfaciendi causa – a lifestyle blog, she writes on style, perfume, makeup, books, and other miscellany. She and I share a very similar palate so when she was talking about writing a post on ginger as a condiment and flavor I suggested she do it as a guest post for me. I love it almost as much as she does!

I like ginger a lot.

A relative of turmeric, cardamom and galangal, this spicy rhizome can play for both the sweet and savory sides. Compelling and versatile, it is available in many forms, most of which I have in my life.

Here are some favorite incarnations:

raw: The spice impact is at its best. Peel it with a spoon and then: steep it to make tea, put matchsticks in your stir fry or curry (or salad!), add peelings to mixed drinks…and pretty much anywhere you add garlic, just add ginger, too. Ginger is good for you.

ginger juice: A great way to add a touch of ginger to beverages and soups.

minced ginger: The tough fibers make it kind of difficult to puree ginger yourself, and I find I’m more likely to use it if I have something ready to go. I like the Ginger People brand for being organic and having really powerful spicy flavor across their range, but I’ll take anything I can get.

pickled ginger: This is the classic sushi accompaniment but I could eat it anytime, anywhere. I maintain that it plays well with any combination of rice and soy, and is a wonderful palette cleanser as well. It’s not too difficult to make yourself, either. The only difficult part is cutting the ginger thin enough, a job for a mandoline.

powdered ginger: Get high quality and it will show in your baking. I like Penzey’s best so far.

[powdered galangal: Galangal is a relative of ginger but more powerful, spicier, entirely distinct. It comes up in Asian cuisine, and is for me associated predominantly with Thai notes. Substitute for ginger sometime and see what happens.]

tea: Great when you’re sick, a good alternative to lemon for a toddy, and just…good. Provided you like ginger. Especially with honey. Straight or blended, I like. Can also be added to certain soup stocks (think ramen, or chicken soup) for a great, diffused flavor.

cookies: There are snaps, of course, which I love, but lately I gravitate toward these Ginger Thins from Trader Joe’s. Dead ringers for Anna’s ginger thins. These are what made me realize what great friends ginger and cheese can be. On a slightly unrelated note, the Coconut Thins are also extremely good.

crystallized: Snack on them or chop them up and put them in cookies.

jam: you know, jam… (mix it with a berry jam to make things in the world of toast more interesting)

lip balm: If you like ginger or mango, this lip balm is the one: Kiss My Face Ginger Mango lip balm

fragrance: Ginger is, sadly, not the most popular perfume note. I don’t know why, though. It’s spicy and fresh at once, unisex, akin to citrus but more interesting, on account of not being citrus… Have found one I like, this Marc Jacobs Cocktail Splash. Dominant notes of ginger, citrus, and rhubarb (Rhubarb! Really! Go smell it.). Unfortunately only sold in this enormous bottle. I am testing out a lot of other supposed ginger fragrances, some of which have potential, but this is the only one I own so far. Origins also do a ginger line (perfume, lotion, etc), though I say it is too sweet, and not gingery enough. That said, this Paul Mitchell wild ginger line smells just like the Origins ginger perfume, and I am loving it. [Finding great smelling hair products is a bit more difficult, I think, so my standards are lower.]

And of course there is ginger ale, ginger beer, ginger chews, ginger liqueur, ginger essential oil, ginger soap, ginger syrup…

Look for my follow-up post next week where I’ll share my recipe fro candied ginger! So good!

Browned Butter Rice Krispy Treats

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Kathy

I have a confession: I love rice krispy treats. I love them in an unabashed I will gorge myself silly on them if they are in the house kind of way. I love them in a “these are made with breakfast cereal so they totally count for breakfast” kind of way.

I’ve been making these little snacks for at least three years, every six months or so I get a hankering and cook up a batch. It takes ten minutes at the most and you get to have a super classy and delicious dessert/snack/breakfast at the end. I made these ones with my sister and she took all the pictures for me, I also made her some salted caramel sauce that same night so we got creative with the drizzling.

Now go grab the ingredients and make these. They’ll cost you less than $3 and they disappear within twenty four hours. I promise.

Browned Butter Rice Krispy Treats
This recipe is adapted from Flour:Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery and Cafe by Joanne Chang – I love this book, you should too.

9 cups of rice cereal (generic Rice Krispies are totally fine)
1 bag of marshmallows (I use Jet-Puffed Mini Marchmallows becasue they melt better)
1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 a vanilla bean (optional but it really does make it better)
1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt

Lightly grease a 9×13 pan with butter, just to coat. Measure out the rice krispies into a large bowl.
Add the butter and the caviar from the vanilla bean (all those seeds inside when you split it) to a medium pot. Melt the butter over medium heat and keep a close eye on it. The butter will go from browned to burnt in about two seconds. Wanna Be a Country Cleaver has a great How To for browned butter over on her blog if you want some pictures and a step-by-step tutorial.
Add the marshmallows to the browned butter and stir to combine and melt. This will be a bit sticky and not all of the butter will blend with the marshmallows, that’s ok.
Pour the butter/marshmallow/vanilla bean mix over the cereal and stir quickly. The sugars in the marshmallows cool fairly quickly so being well prepared and stirring fast is key here.
Press the rice krispy treat mixture into your greased pan. I frequently use a piece of parchment to smooth out the top of my treats without getting my hands messy.
Sprinkle your coarse salt on top of the treats. The salt can be added to the cereal if you prefer but I always find that it falls to the bottom of the mixture when that happens.
Enjoy with a drizzle of caramel you made for your big sister, because she asked for it and you just couldn’t say no.

Broccoli Mac and Cheese

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Kathy

Last night my sister came over for dinner. I made the broccoli mac and cheese, she made the gin and tonics. Not a bad plan.

This mac and cheese is my standard recipe, I added broccoli in in the last two minutes of cooking the pasta so it wasn’t raw after being baked.

Tropical Thumbprint Cookies

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Kathy

Right before Christmas my dear friend Jess celebrated her birthday and I refused to let it pass unacknowledged. So I took the day off, ~~brought her out to a nice seafood dinner and never called her again,~~ brought her out to brunch at the Deluxe Town Diner, shopping for treats, and finally home where I gave her my favorite cookbooks and told her to pick a treat. She chose an adult thumbprint cookie from Baking by Dorie Greenspan. It looked easy enough but then I realized I didn’t quite have the ingredients it called for but had a few other things that would work as substitutes and made it work.
What came out were perfectly bite sized cookies with a lovely yielding texture and bright non-winter tropical flavors of coconut, mango, and passionfruit. Dorie Greenspan’s recipe called for hazelnuts, but I didn’t have any so I swapped in a combination of finely ground pepitas, pecans, and coconut – hers were also raspberry jam filled but Jess wanted something tropical and as all I had that could be considered tropical was coconut milk we went to the store and ended up getting this in Medley of Fruits. It made perfect curd (thanks Ina Garten!) and was just right in our thumbprints. There’s something truly indulgent about making cookies on a whim because it’s a friends birthday and it just feels right.
These were a perfect birthday treat for Jess and I sent her home with most of the leftovers, knowing full well that I wasn’t going to finish them and she would be MUCH better served by having them at her home.
My point? Go make these cookies for yourself, right now. It’s cold and snowy outside and, honestly, all you want is a little bite of the tropics to make you at least fantasize about warmer weather and longer days, AMIRITE?
Tropical Thumbprint Cookies
The cookies are adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. The curd is straight from this recipe by Ina Garten but I substituted finely shredded unsweetened coconut (about 3 Tbs) for the lemon zest and fruit juice for the lemon juice (1/2 cup).

For the Cookies

1 3/4 cup Finely Ground Nuts (I used 1 cup of ground pepitas and pecans and 3/4 cup of finely shredded unsweetened coconut)
1 3/4 cup AP Flour
1/2 cup Sugar
1 cup Unsalted Butter, softened
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1/2 tsp Almond Extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Whisk the nuts, coconut, and flour together
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment beat the butter and sugar together for 3-4 minutes on medium, until light and fluffy. Add the extracts and beat to blend them in, another minute.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour/nut combination. Mix the dough just until the flour is incorporated, about 2 minutes.
working in scant tablespoons create dough balls in your hands. Once the dough is shaped using your thumb (or the rounded handle of a utensil) press dimples into the cookies.
Bake the cookies for 15-18 mins, they will be a little bit browned and crispy, don’t worry about under baking these though as the lack of eggs makes the dough fine to eat on it’s own. Also, I enjoyed the tenderness the cookies had when they were a hair underdone.
Allow the cookies to cool completely after removing them from the oven.
Fill the dimples in the cookies with your homemade curd, or jam, or whatever thick, treacly thing you want to put there – but the curd went a LONG way.
Enjoy, with a cup of tea and a friend on her birthday.

On My Shelf: Baking: From My Home to Yours

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Kathy

It’s pretty apparent that I bake a lot. I make cookies, cakes, cupcakes, quick breads, anything that will encourage a sweet tooth. So I pretty much always keep an eye out for the next awesome baking book. I’m always looking for a book of fail-safe recipes that will offer consistent and reliable baked goods that I will love, because here’s the thing – there are a LOT of cookbooks out there, each more complicated then the last and some not offering good or reliable information. That’s one of the reasons I started this series on the blog. I want my readers to know what I bake from because it’s what I find reliable consistently. I never give you a book I’ve only cooked from once, I must have cooked a couple of things from the book and liked them. There’s no point in sharing a recipe I’m not in love with and there’s ABSOLUTELY no point in telling my readers to spend money on something without making sure it’s perfect. I feel this way about a lot of things – kitchen ware, cookbooks, electronics, I like consistency and reliability. I like Dorie Greenspan.

Every time I look for a new baking recipe I turn to Baking: From My Home to Yours, from cookies to cake to cheesecake, the girl owns her recipes. They are well tested and reliable, but not represented as practically perfect – because lets face it, none of us are. This book offers real recipes, and real variations that make sense. She doesn’t suggest you use fifty bowls for one cake or ask for weird, obscure ingredients that are hard to find, or worse, expensive. These are tested recipes for early morning baking and perfect birthday cakes.

When I bake from this book it’s the cake portion of the black and white celebration cake, or the black and white banana loaf, or the basic cheesecake, or, well you get the idea. I can’t choose a favorite recipe because everything I’ve made from it has been successful, and I’ve never received a complaint on something I made. Is there a better recommendation than that?