Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen

I have been baking cookies this week.  It is not one of my favorite pursuits, but Christmas seems to dictate the practice and I have done it every year for as long as I can remember.  When my Son was young, the baking was always Christmas cutout cookies and decorative icing.  Now, when I bake cookies it is usually on a whim.  The only constants are Scandanavian Tea Cookies ( shortbread crust cookie topped with chocolate and pecans) and the best chocolate chip cookie recipe that I know from Cooks Illustrated.

But these two cookie recipes are new to me and I enjoyed trying them.  The confectioners’s sugar covered snowball cookies are different than the standard pecan flavored wedding cookies.  These are flavored with lemon and coconut.  The recipe was in a Southern Living book that my DIL gave me for Christmas last year.  The Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies were in an old issure of Gourmet magazine.  I like them because they can be prepared ahead of time and the dough logs kept in the refrigerator until you are ready to slice and bake.  I did have trouble with them though.  The dough was very crumbly and they were not easy to slice.  Add a little water to your mixture when you are forming your logs and this should help them stick together.

LEMON-COCONUT SNOWBALLS

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. coconut extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2Tbsp. grated lemon rind
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut, lightly toasted

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; gradually add 1/2 cup powdered sugar and extracts, beating well.  Add flour, lemon rind, and salt, beating until combined.  Stir in coconut.  Cover and chill dough 30 minutes.

Shape dough into generous 1″ balls; place 1″ apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheets.  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 15 to 20 minutes or until goldern on bottom, but pale on top.  Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool 5 minutes.

Place 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar in a bowl, and roll warm cookies in powdered sugar, coating well.  Cool cookies completely on wire racks.  Roll cooled cookies in powdered sugar again, coating well.  Yield: 2 dozen.

PISTACHIO CRANBERRY ICEBOX COOKIES

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest
1/2 cup shelled pistachios (not dyed)
1/3 cup dried cranberries

1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup decorative sugar (preferably coarse)

Stir together flour, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together butter, granulated sugar and zest in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing until dough just comes together in clumps, then mix in pistachios and cranberries.  Gather and press dough together, then divide into 2 equal pieces.  Using a sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper as an aid, form each piece of dough into a log about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.  Square off long sides of each log to form a bar, then chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until very firm, at least 2 hours.

Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.  Brush egg over all 4 long sides of bars (but not ends).  Sprinkle decorative sugar on a separate sheet of parchment or wax paper and press bars into sugar, coating well.  Cut each bar crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices, rotating bar after cutting each slice to help keep square shape. (If dough gets too soft to slice, freeze bars briefly until firm.)  Arrange cookies about 1/2 inch apart on lined baking sheets.  Bake cookies, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until edges are pale golden, 15 to 18 minutes total.  Transfer cookies from parchment to racks using a slotted spatula and cool completely.
 
Printable recipe Lemon-Coconut Snowballs

Printable recipe Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies
  

Every December one of my favorite bloggers, Katie of Thyme for Cooking The Blog hosts a gift exchange between other foodies.  Katie lives in France and her followers are from all over the world.  Each of us is given a name of another participant and we are to send to them an herb or food item that is typical of the place that we live, along with a recipe or suggestion as to what to do with it.  We in return receive a food gift.  It is always so much fun to see what shows up on my doorstep.

This year I received this abundantly beautiful Ristra arrangement of drying chile pods.  It is not only an ongoing source of chilis to be picked, but it a beautiful addition to the kitchen decor.  I am looking for just the perfect spot to hang it.  It was sent to me by Dan who lives four miles from the Mexican border in El Paso Texas.  He does not have a blog but is known in his comments as Tiki Pundit.  Thank you Dan!  I love it.  If you would like to give a ristra to someone on your gift list go here for a good selection.

Dan sent me a recipe for New Mexico Red Chili which is a pork stew that uses lots of the chilis and is braised slowly to meld the flavors and render the pork succulently tender.  He also sent me directions on how to dry the pods to be used in the recipe.  The chili ristra’s pods were harvested in September and are not completely dried yet, so to use them in this recipe, the pods used had to be dried further in the oven.  Although it took me awhile in preparation, once this stew went into the oven, I could tell that it was worth the effort.  I used fewer pods than the recipe called for because I didn’t know how hot they were.  The recipe calls for 1 cup ground chilis.  I used 8 pods that I dried in the oven until they were crinkly dry and ended up with 1/3 cup of ground chilis.  It was perfect for us, although David felt it could have been a little hotter.  I served it with rice, but it would also be good in tortillas with sour cream and other Mexican condiments.

NEW MEXICO RED CHILE

3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 medium onions, chopped (about 3 cups)
6 large garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 pounds boned pork shoulder (butt), trimmed and meat cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes
1 cup ground dried red New Mexico chiles (I used 8 pods seeds removed which yielded 1/3 cup when ground)
4 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Heat 2 tbsp. oil in a large, heavy-bottomed, ovenproof pot over medium-high heat.  Add onions and garlic and cook, stirring, until onions are golden, about 6 minutes.  Remove from heat and transfer onions and garlic to a bowl with a slotted spoon.

In a large bowl, stir together flour, salt, cumin, and pepper.  Add pork and toss to coat.  Return pot to medium-high heat, add remaining 1 tbsp. oil, and working in batches, lightly brown meat on all sides, 5 to 7 minutes per batch.  Transfer meat to a separate bowl as you go.

Return onions and garlic to pot.  Grind dried chile pods in a food processor.  Sprinkle onion mixture with ground chiles and cook, stirring, 2 minutes (mixture will be thick).  Add broth, stirring to loosen browned bits from bottom of pot.  Whirl sauce in a blender until smooth.  Return sauce to pot and add bay leaf and reserved pork.

Cover pot, put in oven, and cook 1 hour.  Set lid slightly ajar and cook until pork is fork-tender, about 1 hour more.  Remove bay leaf before serving.

Katie will be posting all of the Season Eatings blog posts sometime between Christmas and New Years.  I am anxious to see what my recipient did with her Key Lime Juice and Southern Pecans.  Season’s Eatings everyone!

Printable recipe

There is nothing fancy about this except maybe the presentation.  When you want something besides a plain tuna fish sandwich for lunch this is just the thing.  The recipe is in Ina Garten’s new cookbook How Easy is That?  I would give you the recipe but The Barefoot Bloggers have requested that we not publish the recipes from this book unless they have already been posted on the food network.  But how hard can this be?  You just toast sourdough bagettes, spread them with store bought hummus, or homemade if you have it, and top it with your favorite tuna salad mixture.  The radishes give it a festive touch.  I would recommend using a good quality tuna though.  I no longer buy water packed tuna, even though it may be saving a few calories.  Oil packed tuna has a much better flavor.

When we are in Florida we tend to have people who stop in for lunch, so I am always on the lookout for interesting luncheon dishes.  Here are a few other suggestions from previous posts.

This four layer salad has a real wow factor.  Guacamole, tomato salad, cucumber salad, and shrimp form a tower of goodness.  I think the next time I serve it, I will put it on a bed of greens.  You can find the recipe here.

Soup is always a good choice for lunch.  Escarole, white bean and sausage soup is one of my easy favorites.  It is great served with cornbread.  You can find the recipe here.

Instead of having quiche for lunch,  try this tasty black bean tart with easy chili crust.  A refreshing salad with avocado and orange slices would be the perfect side dish.  The recipe for the tart can be found here.

These are a few of my favorite lunches.  After being under the weather for a week, I am ready to tackle Christmas.

My DIL Kristen’s brother David is the sous chef at Urbana Restaurant in the Dupont Circle area of Washington DC.  Urbana was voted the hottest restaurant bar scene in the area with it’s brick pizza oven and innovative Western Mediterranean cuisine.  The restaurant is both sophisticated and cozy with fires burning in two fireplaces near the entrance.

David reserved the private dining room for us and prepared a seven course tasting menu of dishes not found on the regular menu.  The only hint he would give me as to what he had planned for us was “root vegetables”.  Urbana’s kitchen relies on fresh, seasonal ingredients, so this made sense to me.  I took pictures of each course as it was brought to us, but I have to apologize for the blurriness of some of the pictures.  I couldn’t exactly carry my tripod into the restaurant with me.  The whole meal was an experience in good taste and an inspiration to me to concentrate more on sauces, reductions and seasonings.

Our amuse bouche was a toasted brioche with prosciutto, arugala and white truffle oil.  The brioche was crispy and paired well with the peppery prosciutto and arugala and earthy truffle oil. An excellent way to start our meal.

Our first course was a pierogi stuffed with rutabaga and saffron with a lemon honey gastrique.  I grew up with pierogis.  They are Polish in origin and are stuffed dumplings. They are usually stuffed with potatoes but  David’s version with rutabagas was far and away the best pierogi I have ever eaten.  The gastrique, which is a thick sauce made from a reduction of the lemon and honey, accented the mild taste of the dumpling.

Next we were served a sunchoke soup with smoked bacon lardons, goat cheese and thyme.  This silken soup was sublime.  Sunchokes have a taste similar to an artichoke heart and sunflower seeds.  Their nutty quality make them excellent in soups.  They are also known as Jerusalem artichokes.  Next time I am in the Supermarket I am going to buy some and try to duplicate this soup.  The bacon, goat cheese and thyme were the perfect additions.

Oh my!  What can I say about braised pork belly and scallops with celery root, skordalia and sauce Robert.  David braised the pork belly long and slow and it was so succulent.  The sea scallop was cooked to perfection and the celery root was coated in the skordalia, which is a Greek blended sauce of garlic, bread and olive oil.  The sauce Robert added a rich mustardy topping to the whole dish.  This was so complex and brilliant.  I am voting for David to go on Chopped.  I think he could make even the most esoteric ingredients work together.

The fish course was a roasted Pacific halibut with beet risotto and roasted beet with an apple cider butter.  The fish was flaky.  The beet was delicious, but the beet risotto was the star of the show.  The next time I make risotto I want to try to add beets to the mix.  What pulled this dish together was the apple cider butter.  David briefly told us that he reduced apple cider to concentrate it’s flavor and then added butter to enrich it. This is something that I have not tried before and I think it would also be great on pork.

OK.  Getting full here.  Our next course was grilled lamb loin, cauliflower, marinated royal trumpet mushrooms with fried capers and olive jus.  The lamb was cooked medium rare and was very tender.  The trumpet mushrooms benefited from their rest in a wine marinade and the cauliflower had a burst of flavor from the fried capers.

David even carried the root vegetable theme into dessert.  Have you ever had parsnip ice cream?  It is delicious and Rachel had seconds of it.  This is how David described this dish.  It is a gingerbread pudding with parsnip gelato, ginger anglaise, pear compote and a pear chip.  As full as I was, I managed to eat the whole thing.

What I didn’t mention was that Uncle David took the time the day before our dinner to talk to Kristen about what Rachel liked to eat and he fixed her a separate 4 course dinner with tomato soup (excellent) and grilled cheese sandwich and strawberries.  This was followed by a plate of perfectly cooked broccoli, tiny meatballs and macaroni and cheese.  I have never seen her eat so much.  The macaroni and cheese was the kitchen dinner that night and it was excellent.

Here we all are with chef David.  We applauded his excellent meal.  I am going to try to talk him into coming to Lake Lure for our traditional Labor Day weekend next year.  No ulterior motive involved.  Thank you David.  It was a perfect meal and a wonderful family get together.

It is good to be home in Florida again.  It is also good to be presenting to you the Second Annual Kitchen Reveal.  Last year I decided to challenge other food bloggers to show us their kitchens because I was curious about where all of them made their magic.  You can view all of the kitchens that were showcased last year here.  It is fine to cook and photograph beautiful food, but don’t you also want to know what the kitchens look like where that happens?  So I thank all of you who have taken the time to let us have a peek at your kitchens this year.

My Lake Lure kitchen is on my header so you all know what it looks like.  The pictures I am showing you today are of the Florida kitchen.  The above picture is the island that I added to the space where a kitchen table would have been. We have a table and chairs on the lanai so it seemed redundant to have another table in the kitchen.  This is where I roll pie crusts, prep extra dishes and serve buffet dinners.

My kitchen isn’t large but it is sunny and has a view of the intercoastal canals from the windows.  It is very different from the warm colors that I have in Lake Lure and because of that I love the difference.

I don’t have room for cookbooks in the kitchen so they are shelved in the bookcases in the living room.  I leave most of my cookbooks in Lake Lure, but for some reason the collection keeps growing here.  Can’t help myself.

But this is supposed to be about all of us.  You have shared more than your kitchens by participating in the Kitchen Reveal.  You have shared a piece of yourselves and I have a feeling that we have all benefited from your generosity.  I loved visiting Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian but I am just as happy to be visiting the kitchens of like-minded food enthusiasts like all of you.  Thank you for welcoming us into your kitchens.  Please click on the links to the names of the blogs to see more of the beautiful kitchens presented below.

Stephanie of Adventures in Contesting was actually featured in A&E’s Sell this House.  She is serious about competing in food contests and cooks lots of interesting dishes.  I am glad to have found her blog.  She has gotten over the staging mentality and now has a warm family kitchen.

Susan of Schnitzel and The Trout showed us her lovely kitchen which is also in Florida.  I admire her love of cooking and her husband, “The Trout” who is just as enthusiastic as she is about their culinary accomplishments.  Her kitchen is bright and sunny.

Karen of Karen Cooks  sent pictures of her very functional and organized kitchen.  I love the turquoise cabinets that she has for extra storage.  It kind of reminds my of the cabinets in Julia Child’s kitchen.  I love her gas stove too.

Larry of Big Dude’s Eclectic Ramblings and his wife Bev remodeled their kitchen so that it functioned better for them.  They have a beautiful 6 burner stove and lots of room for all of their different tasks from baking to canning.  Great kitchen design.

Robin Sue of Big Red Kitchen shared her famous red kitchen with us.  It is great to see more of this beautiful space.  Not only does she have a special chocolate cabinet and a chinning bar but she gives us the exact shade of Sherwin Williams red paint that she used.

Barbara of Moveable Feasts posted her beautiful kitchen with a Caribbean flair.  She has an interesting tale to tell about some of the artwork that she purchased in St. Lucia.

Bonnie of City Home/Country Home shared her renovated kitchen in her 1865 limestone farmhouse.  I love her soapstone island and her Viking range.  She has all of the modern conveniences in an authentic looking period kitchen.

Dave of My Year on the Grill just installed new granite countertops and added an island to his kitchen.  His kitchen reflects his witty personality from the snooty wine butler to his wife Jackie’s funny cartoon.  But make no mistake;  Dave is a serious and dedicated cook.

Mrs. Blocko of Tomatoes for Apples posted about her kitchen remodel.  She had very little counterspace before but with a little ingenuity she was able to add a peninsula and a pantry with much more space to store her bulk purchases.  The cabinets went from dark brown to a warm honey.

Lara of Lara’s Kitchen posted about her warm kitchen.  I love the Christmas decorations and the closed and open upper cabinets.  Makes me want to come on in and enjoy a special champagne and cranberry drink for the holidays.  She even gives us the recipe.

Pondside has posted more than images of her pondside cottage that she shares with her husband, The Great Dane.  She has shared memories of all the kitchens in which she has dwelled in a life of travel.  Sit back for a good read.

I will continue to add more links as the day progresses and you get your posts up.  It is not too late to join the fun.  Just let me know that you are posting your kitchen and I will include it here.  Even if you can’t post until tomorrow, that is fine!  I am having fun with this.

Thank you everyone.  This has been inspiring and a truly worthwhile experience.