Strawberry Pavlova

Hey guys,

I've had pictures of this dish for a while. It's a lot of fun to make and absolutely delicious.

Firstly, you need to make meringue. This really requires either a stand mixer or a hand mixer. Beating egg whites stiff by hand is not a fun thing to do. You want soft peaks, and make sure that the egg whites are still glossy.

Then, sketch out a circle on a piece of parchment paper and put it drawing-side down on a cookie sheet.

Now, this is the really fun part: scoop the meringue out and form it in to a cake inside the circle. Make sure your cake has nice bowl in the middle, you're going to fill that up later.

Doesn't it look so pretty? Then bake it in your oven on really low... low like 250 degrees. In fact, check on it after 15 minutes. If it's starting to get really dark brown, turn the oven down by 25 degrees. Oh, an bake it for a really long time. What's happening is that the oven is evaporating all of moisture out of the meringue. Specifically, it happens from the outside in. So, the outside is getting crunchy like a cookie, while the inside stays moist and squishy like a marshmallow.

Is your mouth watering yet?

When it's done baking, leave it in the oven until it cools completely. This prevents extra moisture from getting in. In fact, don't make this on a humid day, the meringue will melt.

Then, when you're ready, transfer it to a plate.

The cake gets really tall in the oven, then as it cools, it falls down a bit. That's okay, don't worry. 

Fill the center with whipped cream and strawberry sauce and serve. Let the strawberry sauce cool, which I forgot to do, so that the whipped cream doesn't melt.

This is not as pretty as it should be.

For a full recipe, look on Smitten Kitchen, where she uses a combination of recipes from Ina Garten and the Joy of Cooking. Her results are prettier than mine.

Enjoy!

French Onion Soup

All of the Eastern seaboard is going crazy over Hurricane Irene, expected to hit New York City on Sunday. I had planned to spend Sunday at the beach, but given the weather I’m quickly reevaluating my plans and a cozy home-cooked meal suddenly seems like a great idea. I loved Sam's summery gazpacho post earlier, so here's a complementary recipe that's perfect when it's rainy. But I have to warn you that your apartment – and yourself – will smell like onions for days afterward. Not exactly ideal when you’re cooped up.


French Onion Soup
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Makes about 8 cups

Ingredients:
5 medium white or yellow onions
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons dry sherry or cognac
3 ½ cups broth
French bread
1 ½ cups Gruyere cheese
thyme
salt
pepper

Directions:
Thinly slice 5 medium onions.

Put 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a pot and heat over medium-low heat until the butter is melted.

Add the sliced onions and a pinch of thyme (dried or fresh). Keep cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes.

When the onions start to brown, reduce heat to medium-low and cover. Keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the onions are a rich brown (about 40 minutes).

Stir in 2 tablespoons dry sherry or cognac, increase heat to high and cook to evaporate the alcohol.

Add 3 ½ cups of your favorite broth. I use chicken, but beef is traditional and has a fuller flavor. Vegetable broth works too if you’re serving vegetarians.

Turn up the heat and cover to bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer partially covered for 20 minutes.

Add salt (about 1 teaspoon) and pepper (about ¼ teaspoon).

Note: Everything up to this point can be done in advance, since it takes so long to cook down the onions. I like to make it the day before when I have guests coming to dinner, then finish with the final steps right before people arrive. Trust me though that you don’t want to rush the onion-cooking process – it’s what gives the soup such great flavor.

Take about 8 ramekins and pour in the soup so that each is about ¾ full. Add a slice of good toasted French bread to the top of each, and sprinkle (or heap) grated Gruyere cheese on top (about 3 tablespoons per ramekin).

Put the ramekins on a cookie sheet and broil until the cheese is melted and starting to brown. Serve hot!

Hello there

Where's your kitchen? It varies. There was a time when I had a two-oven kitchen in Charlottesville, VA (those were the good times), then I had a pretty terrible kitchen in Green Bay, WI, which I never used, and now I have been accused of taking over a kitchen in the UES.

What's your signature dish? Anything involving a wok.

What's the best thing you ever ate? That is an impossible question. I will say that a restaurant in Charlottesville, Mas Tapas, makes these bacon wrapped dates which are, technically speaking, delicious.

What's your favorite item in your kitchen and what does it say about you? The wok. Let me tell you why the wok is brilliant. 1) You can cook things really quickly - throw in a little oil, a little whatever-you-want-to-stirfry, turn the heat up to high, and a couple minutes later you've got yourself something to eat. Patience is not a virtue in my world. 2) You can cook many and a lot of things in a wok, which cuts down on cleaning time later. 3) The wok is a perfectly legitimate instrument to cook chinese and thai-inspired food, which I would describe as delicious.

What's your kitchen resolution(s) for 2011? To have a kitchen? Alas, life on the campaign trail is not 100% conducive to being able to cook.

Coming up - an important examination of the deliciosity of Ricotta Salata. Don't touch that dial.

Sam's Intro!

Where's your kitchen? A tiny little thing in Highland Park, NJ
What's your signature dish? I am a one pot cooking kind of gal, as I mentioned time management isn't my strong suit, so if it is all in one pot, it is harder to mis-time things. I don' think there is one particular thing though...maybe my vegetarian chili!
What's the best thing you ever ate? This is hard too, I can't think of one thing, but I will say most recently I guess, this amazing fresh spinach pasta in a shrimp scampi dish at a restaurant in Redbank, I had dreams about this garlicy delicious pasta.
What's your favorite item in your kitchen and what does it say about you? My immersion blender! Why? It is red, i is versatile, and everything is more fun when an immersion blender is involved! What does it say about me? It says that I love a little adventure, and soup!
What's your kitchen resolution(s) for 2011? I really want to start making my own ice cream, or pasta...but honestly don't see either of those happening.

Kitchen Experiment: Gazpacho

Lovely thing about my new apartment is that I am right across the street from a farmer's market every Friday. Alas in the month + I have lived here I have never managed to actually make it there during operating hours. But this past Friday I finally made it. And after using most of my market bounty for fixings for a picnic at my local petting zoo (now don't you wish you lived in New Jersey), I found myself left with: a 1/4 of a cucumber, 3 plum tomatoes, several day old baguette, a chili pepper (type unknown, large, like a poblano, but smaller than a bell pepper, and red, I believe a fresno pepper), and half a red onion.

What to do with such an assortment, in my hot apartment, that gets hotter when you turn on the stove? I vaguely recalled an episode of "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef" while at the gym (yes I watch food network at the gym) where Anne Burrell is making sexy noises (you know what I mean if you watch the show) as she is throwing chunks of bread into her tomato concoction and thats when it hit me...GAZPACHO

So I googleed gazpacho recipes. Most required things I didn't have, in amounts I didn't have, so I decided to sort of wing it, me and my immersion blender. I warn you this was an imprecise science, non traditional, things I had in my house, mimicking recipes I read...

1/4 of a cucumber, seeded and cut into chunks

3 plum tomatoes, cut into chunks

1/4 several day old baguette cut into crouton size pieces

Fresno? chili pepper, in chunks

1/4 red onion, in chunks

3/4 lemon

olive oil, enough to drizzle over vegetables, and then another splash or two to taste

salt, pepper...and if I had it, homemade celery salt I think would go nicely, I will attach that recipe below

Honestly, throw it all in a food processor (I didn't want to bother getting mine out so I used my immersion blender, which worked but was very messy. Puree the veggies and olive oil first, then add the bread. Blend until smooth, add lemon juice, salt and pepper and olive oil to taste, and chill! Delicious!!

Top with celery salt! I mentioned Smittenkitchen in my previous post, but this is from my other favorite food blog: 101cookbooks. Also beautiful pictures, mostly vegetarian, and usually a little more complex/using things you have never heard of, but still excellent.

Mango Smoothie

When making smoothies, it’s all about the blender. My trusty Oster Counterforms has been pulverizing ice for several years now at about a quarter the price of bigger, fancier machines. The blade pauses and reverses a couple of times when you first start blending, which greatly reduces the chance of cracked carafes or broken blades. Very nifty!

Ingredients

6 ounces of mango nectar

1 cup of ice cubes

1 cup of frozen mango chunks (Trader Joe's are the best)

½ cup of plain or vanilla yogurt

Makes enough for one smoothie

Directions

Combine all ingredients in your blender. Pulse a few times and then blend on high. Stand nearby with a little bit of water just in case. Ice cubes and frozen fruit chunks are unpredictable and you may need to add a little more liquid while blending to get the perfect consistency.

Additional notes

Pear nectar makes a good alternative to mango. It mixes well with almost any fruit and, unlike orange or apple juice, allows the flavor of the frozen fruit to be the thing you taste the most. You can use any frozen fruit but I would avoid raspberries. A raspberry smoothie tastes great, but those little seeds will drive you crazy!

About Me

Name: Andrew

Where's your kitchen? Montclair, NJ

What's your signature dish? Chicken with vinegar, pan roasted potatoes, apple pie

What's the best thing you ever ate? A small, perfectly roasted piece of lamb consumed in a tiny restaurant on the outskirts of Lucca, Italy

What's your favorite item in your kitchen and what does it say about you? My iPod radio. I like a little music or baseball play-by-play during a long, leisurely afternoon in the kitchen!

What's your kitchen resolution(s) for 2011? To perfect my technique for making pasta from scratch

Since I already posted my first recipe, here's my introduction...

Name: Rebecca

Where's your kitchen? Up 4 flights of stairs in Manhattan, NY

What's your signature dish? Poached eggs. Chocolate cake with mocha frosting.

What's the best thing you ever ate? Lobster miso soup at a restaurant in San Francisco. Tragically, I forgot the name of the restaurant and can’t go back for more.

What's your favorite item in your kitchen and what does it say about you? My Sol LeWitt plate, a gift from the artist’s widow. That I’m an art snob?

What's your kitchen resolution(s) for 2011? Get it together to pack lunch for myself every day.