Chocolate Truffles

I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to discover, but chocolate truffles are really easy to make. And they really don’t take long, outside of rolling each individual ball (though you can cut down on that time by either eating them before you roll them, or just making rectangular truffles). I got a lot of compliments on the ones I made this weekend, so here’s what I did. I loosely followed the recipe in the Good Housekeeping Chocolate! cookbook I got from my bridesmaids.

Chocolate Truffles
1. • 8 ounces chocolate, about 75% sweet (In other words, some combination semisweet, bittersweet, and unsweetened. I used about half a bag each of Ghirardelli bittersweet, with 60% cacao and Nestlé Chocolatier dark, with 53% cacao. The recipe calls for 8 ounces bittersweet or 6 ounces semisweet and 2 ounces unsweetened.)
   • ½ cup heavy or whipping cream
   • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, broken into pieces (The recipe called for 3, but I don’t generally unwrap a new stick of butter for that one tablespoon.)
   • about ½ cup of something to coat your truffles, like cocoa powder or finely chopped nuts (We had ground almonds, so we used that and supplemented it with cocoa powder.)
2. 1. Bring the cream to a boil over medium-high heat. Turn off the heat and stir in the chocolate until it’s smooth. Stir in the butter until it disappears. Pour into a container lined with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least a few hours.
   2. When you’re ready to roll them, peel the slab of chocolate off the plastic wrap and cut it into 32 pieces. Make your hands as cold as possible and roll each piece into a ball. Roll each ball in the coating of your choice.

If you don’t like my instructions, or you like to look at pictures of what you’re cooking, go here.

Mary Ann asked if I thought I could make these truffles spicy. While I've heard a lot about spicy truffles and salty truffles recently, I haven’t ever tried one. But after doing a little research, it sounds like you could add between ½ and 1 teaspoon cayenne or chili pepper to the mix to spice these up. I’m thinking about coating them in powdered milk or cinnamon the next time I make them. You could also dip them in melted chocolate .

Cheddar Chive Scones

So, I'm not sure where Jess usually posts recipes - the couple of her blogs that I know about don't seem to have very many recipes, but she asked me to post about a recipe, and so here I go...

A while back, we started bringing snacks to church - it started off with the occasional "we made too many brownies for us to eat on Saturday night, let's bring some to church!". But then it became a more official office - we're now slated to bring treats every couple of weeks. One of the first official offerings from us were these Cheddar and Chive Scones. They received rave reviews! I couldn't have been happier with my first attempt at scone-age. They turned out to be a little fluffier than other scones I had had before, and almost tasted like scrambled eggs in bread form.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post of these delights, but give them a shot, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Bon Appétit!

Exercise

Back in February, Rich and I decided we were going to get in better shape. We looked into gym memberships, and settled on Orange Shoe. But I had a hard time justifying the cost. (If you've ever gone shopping with me, you know that I have a hard time justifying the cost of anything) I mean, I could just go out for a jog every morning and get the same results, just without paying. I just can't motivate myself to actually get my running shoes on and go outside. I could join a soccer team, but I wouldn't want to drive all over Madison to get to games. We could by our own machine. We had plenty of room in the basement and I could watch TV while I used it - making it easier to keep going. I didn't really like treadmills or ellipticals. I had used a Concept2 rowing machine at the rec center in college, and it seemed to provide a pretty good full-body workout. So we looked into it. And we decided to get one.

It was expensive ($850), but it will be more cost effective than the gym if I use it regularly. And so far I have. Quite possibly the most motivating thing is their online community - where I can log my workouts, participate in competitions, and chat with other rowers. Plus, I earn stuff every million meters I row (I hope to reach my first million by the end of the year). I'm not sure I've ever been this excited about exercise, but I like it.

10-Grain Muffins

I read a lot of food blogs. Whenever I find a recipe I’d like to try, I flag it. Then, once a week, I get out the pad of “grocery list” paper and pore over those flagged recipes until I’ve picked enough for one week. Then we go grocery shopping. The only part I’ve left out is that I tend to postpone making the list until we’ve run out of groceries and are desperate for some fresh produce. This is the very situation I found myself in this morning. We needed breakfast. We try not to buy much cold cereal. We had no eggs; no fruit. Oatmeal was getting old. I started sifting through condiments in the back of the fridge and found a bag of Bob's Red Mill 10-grain cereal. Lo and behold, there was a recipe on the back, which required only standard pantry ingredients and required just half an hour to make – so Rich would make it to work on time! Since they saved the day, I thought I'd honor the muffins with a post of their own – here’s my adaptation of those muffins:

10-Grain Muffins
1. • 1 cup 10-grain cereal
   • 1¼ cup milk
   • ½ cup sugar
   • 5 tbsp butter
   • 1 egg, room temperature
   • 1 cup flour
   • 1 tsp salt
   • 1 tsp baking powder
   • 1 tsp baking soda
   • ½ cup frozen blueberries
2. 1. Mix Bob's 10 Grain Cereal and milk and allow to stand for 10 minutes while preheating oven and assembling other ingredients.
   2. Cream sugar and margarine and egg together. Add dry ingredients and milk with cereal. Mix until just combined. Spoon into a greased muffin pan.
   3. Bake in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

Snow

It snowed this weekend. We were in Chicago when it happened, so we didn’t get a chance to shovel the driveway until around 10:30 Sunday night (sorry, neighbors!). We only shoveled wide enough to get the car through (we have a two-car garage and only one car), but even with such a steep driveway, it only took two tries to get the car into the garage. While we toiled to get through the snow, the cats seem to enjoy just looking at it. Charlie especially likes to try to catch snowflakes through the window, much like he does with bugs in the summer.

Loaded miso soup

I haven’t tasted many miso soups, but in my experience they have been quite minimal. The most elaborate contained a few tiny cubes of tofu and a few shreds of seaweed. In comparison, this miso soup (adapted from a Mayo Clinic recipe) is loaded with tofu, onions, mushrooms and watercress. And it tastes fantastic. The only difficult part was trying to find white miso at a reasonable price (I did find some near the refrigerated tofu at my local Whole Foods). If you want to try the recipe and you live nearby (or I’ll see you soon), let me know and I’ll share my tub of miso with you.

Loaded Miso Soup
1. • 1 tablespoon olive oil
   • 1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
   • 1 tablespoon peeled and grated fresh ginger
   • 3 cloves garlic, minced
   • 4 cups vegetable stock or broth
   • 2 tablespoons white miso
   • ½ pound firm tofu, drained and cut into ½–inch cubes
   • ¼ pound fresh shiitake mushrooms, cleaned with a damp cloth, stemmed, and thinly sliced
   • 1 cup watercress leaves
   • 1 green onion, thinly sliced
2. 1. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the yellow onion and saute until soft and translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and saute about 5 minutes. Add the stock and bring to a boil.
   2. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Whisk in the miso until dissolved. Add the tofu, mushrooms and watercress and simmer until the tofu is heated through and the mushrooms and watercress are softened, about 1 minute.
   3. Garnish with the green onion.

Fetapitas

I just realized (thanks to a request from Greg) that we haven’t posted this recipe yet. I found the recipe in the August 2004 issue of Real Simple, which was passed to me from my mom. At that point, I was in the habit of tearing out and cataloging all the recipes in her old magazines, then choosing and cooking from this selection each week. I don't remember when Rich and I first made fetapitas, but they were an immediate hit with us. One of us could make dinner for two in about 15 minutes. And it was nearly* foolproof - no matter how badly we estimated ingredients, the meal was always delicious. When discussing this recipe with Sarah, she referred to it as "fetapita", and the name stuck.

* The only time we've messed up the recipe was when we picked up an 8-ounce container of "plain yogurt" that was actually sweetened. So check the ingredients and make sure your yogurt is not sweetened. I complained to the company and got them to change their wording.

Fetapitas
1. • 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
   • 2 tablespoons olive oil
   • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
   • 4 ounces crumbled Feta cheese
   • 1 cup plain, unsweetened yogurt
   • Juice of half a lemon
   • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
   • 1 10-ounce bag cleaned spinach
   • 4 pitas
2. 1. Heat oven to 400º F.
   2. Toss the tomatoes with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and ¼ teaspoon of the salt. Arrange the tomatoes, cut-side up, on a baking sheet. Bake until they are just softened, about 10 minutes.
   3. Meanwhile, whisk together the Feta, yogurt, lemon juice, and ¼ teaspoon of the salt; set aside.
   4. Place a medium skillet over medium heat. Add ½ tablespoon of the olive oil to the skillet. Add the garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is softened and just turning golden. Don't burn the garlic! Add the spinach and the remaining salt. Cook, tossing occasionally, until the spinach is just wilted, about 4 minutes.
   5. Brush both sides of the pitas with the remaining olive oil. Place in the oven and heat until lightly toasted, about 2 minutes per side. (You can also do this on a medium-hot grill.)
   6. Place the pitas on plates. Top with the spinach and tomatoes. Dollop the yogurt-Feta sauce on top and serve.

Favorites

I keep thinking I’ve posted some of our favorite foods here, but I guess I haven’t. Let me start with links to a few of my favorite websites for finding recipes, and a some favorite recipes from each of these sites:

• Simply Recipes is my first stop when searching for a recipe for a certain food. Like I did hash browns. And Thanksgiving.
  • Mac and cheese
  • Hash browns
  • “How to cook and eat an artichoke” isn’t exactly a recipe, but I recently discovered my love of artichokes and this was how I prepared my first fresh one.
  • Italian sausage spaghetti
  • Need I link to my posts about Thanksgiving #1 and Thanksgiving #2? We used several recipes then.
• Slashfood is recipes and food news
  • This is where I first heard about the No-Knead Bread that I posted about.
  • Oven-Baked Latkes
  • I used this hot cocoa and marshmallows recipe for hostess gifts for a couple of Christmas parties.
  • Pumpkin-Pecan Muffins
• Coconut & Lime is a new find for us
  • Maki Sushi
  • Potsticker Dipping Sauce

Bread

I really enjoy baking bread - there's something about all the work that goes into it, that makes it so much more of a joy to eat. But the work is also what keeps me from baking bread more often. So when I ran across an article about no-knead bread, I was interested. My interest was piqued when I read that this bread would rival store-bought loafs in quality. I've never made a bakery-quality loaf! Needless to say, I made the bread and it was amazing. So here is the recipe, courtesy of the New York Times, as well as a video demonstrating how to make it.

No-Knead Bread
Takes about 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
1. • 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
   • ¼ teaspoon instant yeast
   • 1¼ teaspoons salt
   • Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed
2. 1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1⅝ cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
   2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
   3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
   4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.