Taste & Create: Hollandaise Sauce

Can I be honest? Once again, I had a bit of trepidation about Taste & Create. Last time, it was less about the recipes and more about the flood and difficulty getting to ingredients. This time, I didn't have that sort of excuse, but I did notice that my partner Katie, of One Little Corner of the World, cooks quite a bit of meat. Normally, the obvious solution is to choose a dessert or baked good to make instead of an entree, but I've been trying to eat relatively healthy and my dessert budget was already full for the month. So what did I do? Give up? Of course not!

Luckily, I was able to find three or four savory vegetarian recipes, and one of those was fairly quick and easy and something I could serve with a vegetable: hollandaise sauce. Katie made this recipe from Good Housekeeping last Easter, and I thought it looked pretty tasty. Hollandaise with asparagus was a big Easter thing in our family, too. My mom used to make it from scratch, though lately she's been going the packet route (please don't be mad that I admitted this to the world, Mom! I love your hollandaise sauce!) I've never tried it myself, but we always did the stovetop method. When Katie said that she's only done it in the blender with raw eggs, I was surprised. I'm not afraid of raw eggs, but I've never heard of the method.

Anyway, the sauce was smooth, creamy, and lemony, just the way it should be, and perfect with entirely unadulterated asparagus, which I just did a few minutes in a pan of boiling water. This asparagus was so good, nice and sweet, that I can almost pretend it isn't from Mexico or somewhere. I know nothing locally grown would be ready in time for Valentine's Day, though. This last picture is kind of a funny story. See, when I first looked at Katie's post, I saw the roasted potatoes with aioli and thought that was the hollandaise. Hollandaise and fries? Wow. So when I ran out of asparagus, I used the rest of the leftover sauce on curly fries. Highest calorie lunch ever, but an interesting change from honey mustard.

A Cinnamon Celebration with Dim and the Dark Cookies

This recipe has been on my to-do list for at least two or three years. The lovely Miss Shelley Adams of Richmond, Virginia created the recipe in honor of the band Jump, Little Children's last full album, Between the Dim and the Dark, and when I saw the awesome mélange of ingredients I knew I'd have to try it some time. A couple of the members of the band were friends of mine (and music instructors!) and though I've moved past my indie rock kid days I do miss them all. I've linked to a song I've uploaded if you'd like to hear them (a live track so I don't get in trouble). It's one of their more fun crowd-pleasers, if not the most musically challenging, featuring my friend Matt on vocals, and it's actually a track from the first concert of theirs I went to back in 2003. Also, be sure to check out the lovely blog A Southern Grace for the Cinnamon Celebration round-up. Happy V-day to you all! I'll be celebrating with a mushroom stroganoff, a glass of wine, and the film Paris Je T'aime. It should be a fun Self-Love Night.

Dim & the Dark Cookies
recipe by Shelley Adams
makes a couple dozen, give or take

Ingredients:
● 1 cup flour
● 1/2 cup plus 1 T cocoa powder
● 1/4 tsp salt
● 1/4 tsp baking soda
● 1/2 cup sugar
● 1/2 cup light brown sugar
● 6 Tbsp butter
● 1/2 tsp cinnamon
● pinch cayenne pepper
● 1 tsp vanilla
● 1 egg
● 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks
● 1/2 cup cinnamon chips

Directions:


Sift together a cup of flour, ½ cup plus 1 T unsweetened cocoa powder, ¼ t salt, and ¼ t baking soda into a medium bowl. Combine ½ cup sugar with ½ cup light brown sugar and mix with the fingers to press out lumps. Add 6 T slightly softened butter, ½ t ground cinnamon, a generous pinch of cayenne, and 1 t vanilla. Mix about a minute on high, then beat in an egg. Slowly add the flour mixture on low speed. Stir in ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks and ½ cup cinnamon chips. Drop by tablespoons on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake 12-14 minutes at 350. Cool on a wire rack. Remove cookies to racks to cool.

This are super-amazingly delicious, soft and crumbly but not too cakelike for a cookie-lover like me. The cinnamon gives it a great spicy kick, and I would recommend a generous pinch of cayenne. I was kind of wimpy with it but that's not necessary.

Le Chocolat

I know, I suck at posting lately. I have been quite crazy busy. Anyway, I keep meaning to let you all know about my experience with Amano chocolate bars, two of which I won courtesy of Amano and Blake. I posted a photo of these on my photo blog in January, but I finally got around to tasting both of the bars recently. My thoughts? Well, I thought the Madagascar bar was fairly plain. It's obviously high quality dark chocolate, and it's good if you just want a simple dark tasting bar, but it was more like something I might use to bake if I were going all out as opposed to a favourite tasting chocolate. I preferred the Jembrana, which comes from Bali and has a more unique taste - bitter, but not unpleasantly so. It's a complex flavour, and though I don't have the vocabulary to describe chocolate properly, I'll just tell you that it was good. I would serve this as an after-dinner treat.

La Fête du Fromage: Apple Cinnamon Monterey Jack

I've been absent from Loulou's cheese event the past month or so, as the time before last in Kalona we (gasp!) forgot about the cheese shop. I wasn't about to pay regular price for any cheese beyond shredded cheddar and mozzarella, so I've had to abstain, but fortunately we returned to the joys of cheese this month. You can see a photo of the making of cheese curds at my photo blog, if you're so inclined. I didn't get any cheese curds, but I did get a few new cheeses to sample, including this lovely (on sale) apple cinnamon monterey jack.

Like any monterey jack, this one is soft and a good melter. I melted it on a tortilla for a snack, which is satisfying, and I also tried it as pictured on crackers with a green salad for a light supper. The apple cinnamon is stronger in smell than in taste, which is very subtle. The cheese is dotted with little bits of it, but you pick up more on the monterey jack's own cheesy flavour than the addition. That was okay by me, as super-sweet cheeses are much harder to pair with other things. This went well with my toasted wheat crackers, which at least gave me the illusion that I was eating healthy!

Can I Interest You in a Kiss?

I was super-bummed when my area for whatever reason didn't carry the Pumpkin Spice or Candy Corn kisses in autumn, because I love getting the different seasonal flavours, but it's all right because I think this is my absolute favourite, up there with peanut butter. I put these candy cane kisses on top of some chocolate cookies for a variation on the familiar peanut butter thumbprints. They were fortunately tasty and not super-dry à la Josh's taste on the West Wing, but I can't for the life of me remember where the recipe came from. I know it was a blog, and one I read frequently at that. I'll update this post when it comes to me. Anyway, I do think the cookie itself would be better with the white chocolate chips that were suggested, but when you press on a kiss and let it get all melty, it's a wonderful combination.

More Quick Hits

Since it worked well in the last post, here's another little dump of the random stuff floating around waiting to post, so that I can start getting into the bulk of my November/December recipes.

This is Leeks Simmered in Wine from page 386 of Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I'm not posting the recipe because I found it fairly so-so. It wasn't bad or anything, but it's basically just leeks with a bit of wine and flavour, not a real sauce. I have a habit of flipping through this cookbook by vegetable, but what Madison really does well is sauces and more substantial vegetarian meals, so I'm going to try in the future to do some more focused flipping to find her gems.

This was a very nice dish, just some curried green tomatoes that I served over some polenta. I used a recipe from The Perfect Pantry, but I thought I'd like the pairing with polenta a bit more than brown rice or adding tofu. I was right, and the slightly spicy preparation and the tart tomatoes went wonderfully with the smooth, buttery polenta. Try it with white wine!

Continuing in the chocolate chip cookie quest, I tried the Martha recipe with toffee again and this time had considerably more success. The cookies were perfectly chewy, and I was happy to take them to school for a treat to go along with my World AIDS Day presentation. They fall apart when warm, so you have to be careful when transferring them, but otherwise perfect. It's funny how on the first go of two recipes, one comes out heads and shoulders on top, but then on the second go they flip-flop completely.

This was my first time playing around with delicata squash, so I just sliced it into lengths and roasted it simply with a bit of salt, pepper, and olive oil. It was still sweet but the skin crisped up pleasantly and I like the texture of this squash better than the other winter varieties. I think this would be a great snack for throwing in the bento box if I had one.

Welcome, 2009!

A lot of people are posting year-end round ups, so I thought I'd chime in. These are my favourite recipes for each month of 2008 (posting month, not necessarily the month I made it). Happy New Year!

January: Chocolate Orange Custard Cups
February: Winter Friendship Soup
March: Red Velvet Cake
April: Granola
May: Chocolate Chip Cookies
June: Cheesy Tortilla Pie
July: Espresso Granita
August: Grilled Cheese
September: Coconut Angel Food Cake
October: Eggplant Rounds with Cheese and Red Wine Tomato Sauce
November: Grapefruit Yoghurt Cake
December: Macaroni and Cheese