Apple Tatin

Serves 8

1 sheet puff pastry (I prefer Pepperidge Farms)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2-3 pounds tart, firm apples (4-6 apples)

Preheat oven to 375°

In a heavy skillet (I use my 10" cast iron pan) over medium heat melt the butter. Add the sugar and stir. Just before the sugar is melted remove it from the heat and add the vanilla and cinnamon. Don't worry if the caramel separates, it will come back together.

Peel and halve and core enough apples to wedge them in tightly, face down in the caramel. Peel and thinly slice one more apple and shingle it in a layer over the other apples.

Roll out your puff pastry and tuck it around the edges of the apples, on the inside of the pan. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350° and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes. The puff pastry will be a deep, golden brown.

Let it cool for five minutes, but no more than 10 (lest it set up in the pan) and turn it out onto a large plate. Be careful, sugar burns are a bitch to deal with.

Recipe from: The Grand Central Baking Book, page 194

CHEATER METHOD:
The two most fragile ingredients in baking are, hands down, sugar and butter, which means caramel is tricky business. It can go from awesome to burned in the blink of an eye. If you don't feel comfortable giving it a go you can cheat. Get a high-quality caramel sauce (I used Mrs. Richardson's for this test) and pour about 3/4 of a cup into your pan. Warm it on low heat. When it begins to move freely around the pan whisk in 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch to help it set up. Remove from the heat and proceed to the apple step. Enjoy!

Sesame Beef

Makes about 1 cup of marinade

1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 sweet onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh ginger, minced

toasted sesame seeds

If possible make the marinade up the night before so that it has time to marinade itself before it has to marinade the meat. Slice beef paper thin and marinade at least 1 hour. When you're ready to cook put 1/4 cup of the marinade into your wok and heat it on high. When it's on the edge of boiling add your meat. Stir it around in the wok until the liquid is gone. Add sesame seeds and serve over rice or noodles.

Recipe by: Kelly Sink

West African Peanut Soup

Makes roughly 15 servings, and it freezes well

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, finely diced
2 yellow bell peppers, diced
10 cloves of garlic, minced
4 dried cayenne peppers (thin red pepper, about 4" long, usually available dried), diced with seeds
28 ounces (2 cans) fire roasted tomatoes, with juice
8 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup uncooked rice
18 ounces creamy organic peanut butter (Big brands, like Jiff, will add a lot of both sugar and salt to your soup and will skew the flavor profile.)
1/2 cup chopped plain peanuts (roasted or raw, your preference)
1/4 cup sugar in the raw (use light brown sugar if you need a substitute)
salt and pepper

fresh basil, chiffonade
roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped


Over medium/high heat, heat olive oil in a stock pot. Cook onion, bell pepper, and garlic until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in tomatoes with their juice, vegetable broth, pepper, and cayenne peppers. Simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Add rice and stir. Reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer for 25 minutes, or until rice is tender.

When rice is cooked, whisk in peanut butter, peanuts and sugar and return to a simmer for 10 minutes. Serve with a garnish of chopped peanuts and fresh basil.

This delicious and hearty soup keeps very well, but it does tend to thicken. Not to worry, just add a bit of water when you reheat it.

Recipe by: Kelly Sink

What's for dinner?

So it turns out my original idea of one-a-day blog postings is much harder to deliver on than originally anticipated. Which is cool, I guess. I mean it's not like anyone pays me to keep this up. The problem isn't writing the recipes, it's coming up with them. So I'm turning to you, readers of the blog, to come up with a few ideas for me. A bit of direction.

For instance, as we start the summer which would you appreciate more; 50 ways to dress up your salad or 30 days of grilled chicken? Light and fruity deserts or what to do with rice? Whatever it is that you want to know more about let me know. Unless it's fish, I don't do fish. I have a "no meat without feet" policy. So what'll it be?

Oh, and as for the one-a-day policy, that's gone now. I'm going to take a week off to get a couple buffers going, then starting May 24 I'll be moving to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule for posts.

One Minute Chocolate Frosting

Covers one 2-layer 8" cake

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa powder

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Completely cool your cake, then put it on a cake-board that is the same diameter and fill it. Lay out a sheet of foil to catch the drippings, then put your cake on a small stand (such as a bowl) in the center of the foil. Now you're ready to give your attention to the frosting.

Put all ingredients into a small sauce pan over medium heat and stir until everything is melted. Then bump the heat up to high and bring it to a full boil while stirring constantly. Boil and stir for one minute then remove from heat. Continue stirring for three minutes to cool it down a bit then pour it over your cake. It will set up into a shiny, fudgey coating of goodness.

Recipe by: found on allrecipes.com

Pork Grillades

Serves 6-8

1 large pork loin (about 2 pounds)

1 large (or 2 medium) onion

2 green bell peppers

12-18 cloves of garlic

2 cans of unsalted Roma tomatoes

1-2 tablespoons crushed red pepper

3-4 celery stalks

3 cups to 1 quart chicken broth

1 cup flour

salt and pepper

butter

Mix flour, salt and pepper in a wide bowl, plate or plastic bag. Cut the pork into 3/4 inch medallions, then pat dry and dredge in the flour mixture. Melt a pat of butter on medium heat and brown the loin slices. Just brown them, do not cook them through. Be sure to wipe the pan and start with fresh butter for each pan full. Set pork aside on paper towels.

Julienne the peppers and onion, mince the garlic, and cut the celery into thin slices. Sauté in butter in same pan as pork was cooked for about 8 minutes. Stir in 1/4 to 1/3 cup of the flour mixture. Transfer to a 2 quart sauce pot and add the pork medallions.

Add tomatoes, crushed peppers and 3 cups of chicken stock. Bring to a boil then simmer uncovered for 25 minutes. If mixture is too thick add more stock, if too thin then make a roux and slowly stir it in.

Serve over grits or rice and enjoy.

Recipe by: Dwayne Beliakoff of Violetta in downtown Portland

Prep Work: Cutting Boards

When I decided to write this I thought about suppressing my preferences and presenting facts about the two big cutting board camps, allowing you to decide which is right for you, but then I remembered that this is a blog, my blog, and I don't have to maintain any semblance of journalistic integrity. So I'll just be up front about it; I prefer wood and I always have. That's not to say that I didn't learn anything. In fact at the start this article there were two plastic cutting boards in my kitchen. Of course they were for emergency use only, or for use with sticky or hard-to-clean things that I just didn't feel like scrubbing, but that was before I knew that the grossness of plastic extended far beyond how it looks. Now that I do know, the plastic is out. I can hear some of you now, "Wait... what?!? But plastic is nonporous and you can put it in the dishwasher! No f'n way is it gross! How is that even possible?"

Well, yes way. Totes way. Scientifically proven way, by real live respected science guys and ever'thing. Way.

There are several obvious reasons (read: my original reasons) to choose wood over plastic. It's better looking, it's easier on your knives, and if taken care of properly a good wooden board can become an heirloom. But in a world with a pathological obsession with sanitation it all comes down to germs, and I have shocking news for some of you: Wood harbors far fewer germs than plastic.

Just how gross is plastic? According to a study done at U.C. Davis, pretty gross. They originally set out to find a method of cleaning wood cutting boards to a standard that would make them "almost as safe as a plastic board", but what they actually found out was that after contaminating the boards with either a cultured nutrient solution or just plain raw chicken juice, wood yielded fewer bacteria than the plastic. In fact, they "encountered unexpected difficulty in recovering inoculated bacteria from wood surfaces, regardless of wood species and wether the boards were new or used and untreated or oiled." It seems that while bacteria can be easily found on a plastic surface, you actually have to partially destroy the wood in order to get the same bacteria out of it.

The thinking on the street is that because a plastic board is non-porous it is easily sanitized. Turns out that's just not the case. When it's brand new a plastic board is non-porous and very easy to clean, unfortunately that's not when it needs it. Once you break the surface of the board with the edge of your knife (which you do every time you slice something) you create a valley of doom that is nearly impossible to clean. Dr. Cliver et al. found in their extensive testing, "that disease bacteria such as [E. coli and Salmonella] were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used. New plastic surfaces allowed the bacteria to persist, but were easily cleaned and disinfected. However, wooden boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred were impossible to clean and disinfect manually, especially when food residues such as chicken fat were present." Take that, plastic board beeyotches!

How's it do it? Well, it seems that there are a couple things in play here.

First off there's the oil. Conditioning your board with mineral oil helps preserve the 'self-healing' quality of the wood. What this means is that when the knife makes contact with the board and cuts the surface just a bit a well-oiled board will expand to fill in the cut. A dry board will also reseal itself, but it takes longer, plus it's just plain bad board maintenance.

Secondly, there's what the board absorbs. Yes, some of that chicken juice gets absorbed, and I'm pretty sure that's the idea that has perpetuated the myth that plastic is cleaner. Thing is though, once something has been absorbed the wood reseals and traps any bacteria well below the surface where they stagnate and die. The only way to find bacteria once it has been absorbed is to split or drill the board.

So, once you've finished cutting raw meat on your wooden board simply clean it with soap and water and then use a clean towel to dry it. When it dries completely your cutting surface is once again sterile. If you're one of those people who is über-paranoid about germs and you still don't trust that it's clean then you can wipe it down with white vinegar, but you should avoid bleach. Bleach dries the wood out very quickly and will shorten the life of your board. Also it will leach the natural color from the wood.

Finally, let's cover the dishwasher issue. I'll just break this to you quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. Most home dishwashers only reach temperatures of between 120°-140°F, less if your water heater has been adjusted to a more energy-efficient setting. Water must be much hotter than that—about 190°F for several seconds to make sure items are actually sanitized. Sorry, germophobes, but if you're counting on hot water to kill germs then your Amana just isn't cutting it the way you think it is. It does, however, do a very nice job of conserving water when compared to the running water method of hand washing.

So you've gone and gotten yourself a brand new butcher block. Mazel tov! Now what?

As much as I love wood boards, and as awesome as they are, they're sort of a pain in the ass when they're new. When you get your board home give it a quick wash. Don't scrub it, don't submerge it in water, and don't (now or ever) even think about putting it in the dishwasher. For this first time you're just looking to remove any surface debris so just give it a wipe with some hot, soapy water and then let it dry.

Once it's dry apply a thick layer of food-grade mineral oil, which is shelved with the laxatives in any pharmacy. (Sometimes I see a very small bottle of thin "cutting block oil" in the kitchen gadget section at Fred's for an outrageous price, but since that's also mineral oil I never purchase it.) Rub the oil over all sides of the board until it is completely absorbed. Repeat several times. By the fourth or fifth coat you'll notice the absorption rate slowing down. This is your cue to really slather it up and then let it sit for a few hours. If it takes less than two hours to absorb then add another coat. Repeat until it stops absorbing oil. Use a clean cloth to wipe off the excess and your new board is ready for use. You will need to apply more mineral oil periodically, about once a week for the first month, then once a month or so for the first year, then as needed after that. Treat it right and you will be passing it on to your children.

*P.S. - Just so they don't feel left out I'll take a moment to talk about other types of cutting boards that are currently on the market. Namely glass, marble, granite and steel. While one of these may strike your stylistic fancy and look great in your kitchen you should consider using them as serving platters as they are not appropriate cutting surfaces. They are much too hard and will blunt, and possibly chip, your knife edge. This is a one-way ticket to the cutler.

There are also a couple fresh horses in this race, but I don't know much about either one. First up is bamboo, and it is certainly good looking, though I'm not sure how well the laminate wears. Second is hard rubber. It is said to have the same healing properties of wood, but as far as I could tell that is just a rumor and not something I could confirm. And that literally exhausts my knowledge of them as cutting boards.

*P.P.S. - Unfortunately I could only track down pieces of the referenced study here and there because The Journal of Food Protection®, wanted $37.00 to download the entire article. $37.00?!?! So if you want to read all of the findings you'll have to pay for it yourself.

Kelly Sink

Fruit Scones

Makes about 24 2" scones

4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cold unsalted butter
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup buttermilk
About 3/4 cup good quality preserves or jam

Preheat oven to 350° and lightly grease your baking sheet, or cover it in parchment

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Dice the butter into 1/2 inch cubes and use your hands to mix it into the dry ingredients. (You can use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, but be careful not to over-mix.) You'll know it's ready when the texture goes from silky to mealy, but there are still dime- to quarter-sized pieces of butter floating around. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in 1 1/4 cup of the buttermilk. Mix just until the dough comes together. If you feel it needs more buttermilk then add it in small increments.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and kneed it a couple times before rolling or patting it out into a 1 1/2" or 2" thick sheet. Use a 2" cookie cutter to cut out your scones and place them on the cookie sheet, leaving about an inch between them. Use your thumb to press a well into the center of each scone and fill with a tablespoon or so of your chosen jam. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown.

Recipe by: Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson, page 22 of The Grand Central Baking Book

Quinoa Black Bean Salad

Makes 4 to 6 servings

1 cup quinoa
1 1/2 cups cold water

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups cooked black beans. If using canned beans, drain and rinse well
1/2 cup chopped celery
Optional: 1 carrot, peeled, halfed lengthwise, sliced thin diagonally
Optional: 1 cup chopped fresh yellow or green beans
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced OR 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced, OR 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 red pepper, sliced thin

1 green pepper, sliced thin
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
2 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro or basil
1/4 cup chopped scallions
Optional: 1 large ripe tomato
Optional: 1/2 cup sliced olives

Dressing:
2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground pepper
Pinch cayenne or chili powder

Directions:
The quinoa can be made ahead of time and refrigerated. Soak the quinoa 1/2 hour in cold water. Rinse very thoroughly in water several times. For each rinse, pour off most of the water and finish draining through a large fine mesh strainer. Place in 2 quart pot with 1 1/2 cups water and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, turn down to low, cover tightly, and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to sit 5 minutes, covered. Fluff gently with a fork and set aside to cool.

Sauté jalapeno or ginger, fresh garlic and celery in 2 tablespoons oil until the garlic is browned and the pepper and celery are softened. Add the green and red peppers and sauté briefly. Add the cumin and coriander, cook and stir 5 minutes. Blend dressing ingredients with a whisk or shake in a jar. Gently combine sautéed veggies, tomatoes, black beans, quinoa and dressing in a large bowl. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the dressing with the cilantro or basil and scallions, and garnish with fresh lime slices. Serve warm, or cover and chill.

Recipe by: Stacey Stromberg, who got it from her friend Kristina. It's really tasty!