Lettuce Bundles with Spicy Peanut Noodles

I admit that I'm a huge geek about keeping files of recipes from years and years of food publications. These are physical, paper files of pages that have been cut from magazines, and in some cases, the pages were copied if I needed to file the front of the page in one folder and the back in another. Yes, there are folders to categorize drinks, appetizers, salads, soups, sides, seafood, holiday menus, etc. I said I'm a geek about it. I get that. Now, there are two types of searches that happen in these files. One is the frantic search in which I remember a dish, and I know the recipe is filed in there somewhere, and I flip through every folder trying to find it. The other search type is the meandering, happy, just browsing search. That happens when it occurs to me that I haven't dipped into the files in a while, and I take a breezy stroll through food ideas of the past. It was that kind of search that led me to these lettuce bundles, and this gem of a fresh, light meal came from Living magazine in January 2001. Noodles in a spicy peanut sauce are cupped in butterhead lettuce leaves and topped with fresh, crunchy vegetables and chicken, and the big, pretty head of butterhead lettuce I had from my CSA was ready and waiting.

This is a versatile kind of meal. You can set out all the possible fillings and let everyone involved put together their lettuce bundles as they choose. You could use a rotisserie chicken, or grill some chicken, or skip the chicken entirely. Duck was also suggested in the original recipe. I went with soy sauce-marinated chicken that I roasted in the oven. Next, the peanut sauce should be made, and this is a pretty simple one compared to others I've tried. Into the food processor went garlic, ginger, chile paste, peanut butter, soy sauce, a little sugar, oil, lime juice, and water. It seemed like it was missing something, so I added some fish sauce and extra chile paste. For the noodles, I used vermicelli-style rice noodles which cook in boiling water in approximately one minute. Once drained and rinsed, the noodles were tossed with most of the peanut sauce. Some sauce was set aside for drizzling on top of the bundles. Then, you just have to slice and/or chop all the vegetables for toppings. I julienned cucumber, carrot, and serranos and thinly sliced green onion. I had some Thai basil leaves from my herb garden, so I used those as well.

For a meal on the light side, this packs lots of flavor thanks to the peanut sauce. And, those perfectly cupped leaves of butterhead lettuce are easy to bundle up with fillings. Everything can be served at room temperature, or if made in advance, it could also be served chilled. In fact, for a summertime lunch, the cold noodles and sauce from the refrigerator the next day were delightful in the crisp lettuce cups.

Chunky Peanut, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Cookies

Baking cookies, most cookies anyway, is supposed to be easy. There aren’t too many things that can go wrong with making cookie dough, forming it into cookie-sized portions, and baking the cookies. That is to say, not much can go wrong if the recipe actually works. Last week, I grabbed a book off the shelf that I knew had some interesting options for peanut butter cookies. I didn’t imagine anything could possibly go wrong as I picked a peanut butter cookie recipe that I’d never before tried. As I made the dough, it seemed a little soft, the amounts of both butter and sugar seemed off to me, and the dough tasted like it needed more salt. Like a fool, I was sure I was wrong and went ahead and baked the cookies. The suggested oven temperature was lower than usual, and the baking time was only eight minutes, but I proceeded. When the cookies were not baked through, I gave them more time. It didn’t matter. The cookies were soft, crumbly messes. They fell apart easily and didn’t taste great, and this was a big problem. Some friends were coming to town, and I intended to put some cookies in a welcome basket for them. The rest of the cookies were going to be mailed off as a birthday present. I needed good cookies. Rather than fiddling with a recipe that didn’t work and trying to change it for a second attempt, I ran directly back to the source that has never disappointed. I started over with these chunky peanut, chocolate, and cinnamon cookies from Martha Stewart’s Cookies. The texture of the dough was right, the flavor was good, the baking temperature and time were correct, and the whole process was as easy as baking cookies is supposed to be.

Butter and peanut butter were creamed together in a mixer. Brown sugar and granulated sugar were added followed by eggs. The dry ingredients were mixed together in a separate bowl, and those included flour, baking soda, the right amount of salt, and some ground cinnamon. Those sifted together dry ingredients were then added to the butter mixture, and then chocolate chips, salted peanuts, and vanilla were folded into the dough. I used a mix of bittersweet and milk chocolate chips. The finished dough was chilled while the oven was heated. Balls of dough were placed on baking sheets and flattened slightly before baking long enough to be crisp on the edges and tender in the center.

It could be that I especially liked these cookies because I’d just experienced ones that weren’t nearly as good, but I think you would really like them too. The cinnamon was a nice addition to the chocolate and peanut butter flavors, and the ratio of chunkiness of chips and nuts to cookie was just right. Sometimes, recipes seem weird but actually work, and sometimes, a trusted source saves the day.

Pretzel, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Candies

This looked a sure-fire idea when I saw it in the January issue of Living magazine. There’s no way a mix of salty pretzels, creamy, fresh peanut butter, and rich, melted chocolate could go wrong. The one-page article was about fresh hard pretzels sold at farmers’ markets. I’d never seen pretzels at our local markets, but I definitely would have bought them if I had. I checked with my friend Kristi, from Austin Farm to Table, who visited several farmers’ markets in different parts of the country last year, and she had only seen pretzels at a market in New York. I’m curious if anyone else gets to buy locally made pretzels at farmers’ markets, or if it’s just the lucky people of New York? Well, regardless of where you get the pretzels, and I found some very good ones at the grocery store, these candies are still going to be outstanding. They’re simple to make and highly addictive.

So, I bought some big, crunchy pretzels and proceeded to smash them which just seemed wrong even though it was necessary here. The crushed pretzel bits were combined with creamy, natural peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, and a little room-temperature butter. All of that was stirred together, and then one inch balls were formed and set on a tray. The tray was placed in the freezer for 30 minutes to let the peanut butter become firm. Then, it was chocolate dipping time. I used milk chocolate, but you could use whatever you prefer. I like El Rey milk chocolate which has a slightly higher cacao percentage than others. After dipping each candy piece and before the chocolate completely set, I sprinkled sea salt on top.

I’ve been craving peanut butter lately anyway, but still, these candies were especially delicious. The little chunks of pretzel encased in mounds of peanut butter inside a chocolate coating were snacking bliss. I should probably conduct some experiments with almond, cashew, and pecan butter just to determine if any one of those is better than peanut butter. And, if I locate any locally made hard pretzels, I’ll try those too.

Peanut Butter Clouds

You might not think there would be much to learn at a cooking class about cookies, but that really depends on who’s teaching the class. I signed up for a cookie class at Central Market Cooking School last December that was taught by Alice Medrich, and I walked away with a few pages of notes. She was demonstrating cookies from her new book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies which combines some of her all-time, favorite recipes with updates for what everyone likes to cook today. I shared some photos from the class on my Facebook page as well. Throughout the class, little, eye-opening details, the kinds of things that don’t always get mentioned, were pointed out and explained. She talked about how a home cook needs to decode a recipe. When a cookie recipe states to whip or cream something “just until,” it’s important to pay close attention and not overdo it. There are times when the butter and sugar should not be creamed to a point where it’s too light and fluffy as that can add too much air to the dough. She continued to talk as she worked, and turned a square baking pan upside down, cut a piece of foil, and wrapped it over the bottom of the pan. Then, she flipped the pan over and placed the foil inside it. I’d never thought of doing that to get the foil to the right size and shape to line the inside of a pan for brownies. Then, she spoke of flavors and adding different spices to brownies or chocolate cookies. Rather than mixing the spice into the batter or dough, it can be sprinkled on top after baking. That way, you have a different flavor experience. You smell the spice as soon as you lift the item toward your mouth, and it’s more pronounced. Also, then you can flavor one batch several different ways. So, the evening progressed with several different cookie recipes being prepped and then tasted. Every cookie we were served was fantastic, but the one I couldn’t stop thinking about over a month later was the peanut butter cloud.

This is in Medrich’s new book, and it’s a simple meringue cookie with a swirl of peanut butter running through it. Ordinarily, a meringue serves as a vehicle for other flavors, but here, the added peanut butter was mixed into the sweet, crisp, light as air cookie and chopped salted peanuts were sprinkled on for added crunch. Egg whites were whisked in a mixer with cream of tartar and eventually, sugar was added. During the class, Medrich pointed out that if you add the sugar too early while whisking the egg whites, you’ll get a glossy but limp meringue. For firmer meringue, add the sugar, after the whites have become opaque, very slowly over a two minute period. Then, dot the top of the meringue with well-stirred, natural peanut butter, and just barely fold it into the egg whites. The peanut butter should be streaked throughout the meringue. I piped the meringue into small cookie-cloud shapes onto baking sheets and topped them with the chopped nuts. The cookies baked at 200 degrees F for one and a half hours, and then they remained in the oven after it was turned off until they were cool.

The crackly texture and the sweetness of the meringue mixed with peanut butter and salted chopped peanuts just worked so well together. Thankfully, my home-baked versions stood up to my memory of them from the class. And, now I need to finish reading through the book to get several new ideas for what to bake next.

Fruit and Nut Energy Bars

We’ve gone out to the desert again. When we plan a vacation, more often than not we choose to go back to the desert to hike in the rocky landscape and snap photos of saguaros from every angle and play as many of the hundreds of golf courses as we can. We like it here. This time, we decided to add something new to our itinerary. We’d never been to Sedona, Arizona despite how many times we’d been told we should see it. Sedona is north of Scottsdale, where we usually stay, and it’s also at a higher elevation at around 4500 feet. We drove up from Scottsdale and eventually realized that the saguaros disappear at around 3000 feet and are replaced by scrubby shrubs and short trees. Shortly thereafter along the drive, you begin to see the amazing red rocks. I knew we’d be hiking for several hours in those rocks, and when we got back to Scottsdale, we’d be hiking in the brown rocks there as well. So, I planned ahead and packed these homemade fruit and nut bars so we’d have healthy snacks whenever we needed them. These are from the June issue of Food and Wine and were included in the article about visiting America’s national parks.

The first ingredient in these bars is kamut flakes, and I really tried hard to find them. I put forth a thorough ingredient hunt complete with multiple grocery store visits and phone calls around town. When none were to be found locally, and I’m still considering opening my own shop to sell every ingredient I haven’t been able to find, I used a grain blend with oats, barley, and rye flakes instead. Those mixed grains were combined with pecans, cashews, honey, peanut butter, dried figs, flax seeds, canola oil, and lemon zest in a food processor and were coarsely chopped. Then, dried cranberries were added and pulsed just to combine. The mixture was formed into twelve bars on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and they were baked at 325 degrees F for 25 minutes.

The bars were packed with chewy, crunchy goodness with great flavor from the nuts and peanut butter, and wrapped well in foil or packed in an airtight container, they last for several days. Now that I know how easy they are to make, I’ll be trying all sorts of grain, nut, nut butter, and dried fruit combinations. I may never buy a pre-made granola bar again.

We brought these along as we hiked to Devil’s Bridge in Sedona. When we arrived at the top of the trail above the red stone arch, Kurt was crazy enough to walk out on it. I sat watching nervously, taking photos, and yelling ‘get back here.’ Then, we drove over to Boynton Canyon which offered an easy walking trail with incredible red rock views.

Later, in Phoenix, we hiked the summit trail at Echo Canyon which eliminated any need for time on a stairmaster that day. It’s straight up for just over a mile with stairs built into the trail in places, a couple of steep rock sections that require handrails, and a few places where you have to clamber over rocks. Last, we jogged at Pinnacle Peak in Scottsdale which is a smooth trail with both uphill and downhill sections, and it proved to be another good workout with a great view. Now, it’s almost time to leave the desert and return to reality. We’re taking home lots of new desert photos, and we’ll be back soon enough to discover other trails and hike our favorites all over again.

Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies and Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

You know I love it when I get to bake some cookies and then promptly get them out of my house. I don’t need those little, tempting treats sitting on my kitchen counter taunting me every time I walk through the room. And, putting them in the freezer is no better. In this weather, frozen cookies are just as irresistible as the ones on the counter. So, when my brother sent me his cookie wish list, I was game. It was an opportunity to whip out the Martha Stewart's Cookies book again, try a couple more recipes, and then box up the results and ship them away. The book has 175 cookie recipes, and I’ve joked that I’ll eventually try all of them. I just counted, and I’ve made sixteen so far. Although not all of them are mentioned on my site, I haven’t encountered a disappointment yet. My brother’s list went something like this: oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies, brownies, chocolate chip, peanut butter cookies. I took some liberties with flavors, naturally, and decided to make the iced oatmeal applesauce cookies and peanut butter swirl brownies.

The iced oatmeal and applesauce cookies are a rather healthy option with only half a stick of butter, one egg, and a half cup of applesauce. Those ingredients were mixed with brown sugar and granulated sugar before the dry ingredients including oats, of course, were added. Last, golden raisins were folded into the dough, and the cookies were baked and cooled. If they weren’t delicious enough on their own, the drizzled maple glaze on top made them stellar. These could easily be one of my favorite cookies from this book.

Up next were the peanut butter swirl brownies. Making a simple batter in a bowl with no need for a mixer is always fun. Unsweetened and semisweet chocolates were melted with butter and then combined with the dry ingredients. Sugar, eggs, and vanilla were added, and that was set aside. Peanut butter was mixed with melted butter, confectioner’s sugar, salt, and vanilla for the filling. Part of the chocolate batter was poured into the prepared, square baking pan. The peanut butter filling was globbed here and there on top of it, and then the remaining batter was poured over the filling. The filling was swirled into the batter with a knife, and the brownies baked for 45 minutes. They came out looking decorative all on their own with no need for added embellishment, and with swooping peanut butter throughout the chocolate brownies, the flavor was perfect. Getting to bake some cookies, have a little taste of them, and then, poof, have all traces gone from the house is my ideal arrangement.

Candy Bar Cupcakes

I think I’ve started a tradition, and I think it’s a good one. You see, every year my spinning instructor starts dropping hints about his birthday a couple of weeks before it arrives. Last year, I took the hints and decided to bring some cupcakes to class on his big day. Having cupcakes in the spinning room was so wrong, so antithetical, so naughty, and so great. One year later, I had to do it again, and this time, I looked to Demolition Desserts for a completely decadent cupcake. The candy bar cupcake is intended to taste like a Snickers bar. It’s a brown sugar cake with caramel filling, a rich chocolate and peanut butter frosting with roasted peanuts on top, and a sprinkling of sea salt. A woman at the front of the room, near the tray of cupcakes, said: I love smelling chocolate while on a spinning bike. It is very good motivation.

The cakes themselves are made with dark brown sugar and were tender and nicely flavored by themselves. As they baked and cooled, the caramel sauce was made from water, cream of tartar, sugar, and light corn syrup. After that mixture came up to temperature, butter and cream were added, and then it was simmered briefly. I chilled the caramel in the refrigerator before piping it into the cupcakes. The technique is a simple one. You push a one-quarter inch tip on a bag filled with the sauce into the top of a cupcake and squeeze in the caramel until the top of the cake just begins to rise a bit. A little caramel dribbles out on top, and that’s fine. The frosting was next, and that was made with milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, peanut butter, and buttercream frosting. I thought it was a little strange that one of the ingredients in the frosting was a half cup of buttercream frosting from another page in the book. Instead, this recipe could have just called for enough butter, confectioners’ sugar, milk, and vanilla to make up one half cup. At any rate, I mixed a little buttercream separately and added it to the chocolate peanut butter frosting, and the finished product was delicious. That was swirled onto the cupcakes and topped with roasted peanuts and sea salt.

These were definitely adequately decadent. Using a natural peanut butter with no added sugar, the bittersweet chocolate, and a touch of sea salt kept them from being too sweet. And, the chocolate, peanut, and caramel mix was reminiscent of a Snickers bar in the best way. Now, I just need to find a way to propel a tray of cupcakes in front of me when I’m out running.

Peanut Butter and Jellies

For special occasions, I like to sends friends off from our house with a little something, a goodie bag if you will. Sometimes it’s just a few cookies I baked the day before, or during the holidays, it might be homemade candy. For the dinner party I’ve described all week, I wanted to send our friends off with a little something particularly American, and I remembered this pairing from The French Laundry Cookbook. Fruit jellies served with peanut butter truffles is a charming twist on a classic flavor combination.

This is the first time I am able to say that I prepared something from The French Laundry Cookbook, and it’s kind of exciting to get to say that. Opening that book in the kitchen and actually following the recipes felt a little like cooking from kitchen scripture. I kept the book a good distance from the mess as if it were placed on a pedestal, and I wondered if I should have bowed before measuring out the first ingredient. All jokes aside, this is a really excellent book, and I learned a great deal from reading it alone. To begin this treat, I set about making the jellies. The two suggested flavors are yuzu and concord grape. I searched high and low and did not find yuzu juice in this town of mine, and by comparison concord grape just seemed a bit pedestrian. I decided to make just one flavor, and opted to use acai juice. Next, the suggested apple pectin was as elusive as the yuzu juice, so I used an equal measure of citrus pectin and it seemed to work fine. Keller does note that apple pectin is the key to the jellies delicate texture, so I’ll try harder to procure it next time. For the truffles, I used El Rey milk chocolate and organic, freshly ground peanut butter. Once the truffles are formed, they are then dipped not once, but twice in melted chocolate which can be either milk or bittersweet. I found a 53% cacao El Rey which is somewhere in between and used that.

So for jellies, a combination of juice, sugar, and corn syrup was simmered and skimmed. Pectin was combined with more sugar and dissolved with some of the simmering liquid. All was returned to a pot to simmer a bit longer, and then it was poured into a pan and left to set. The truffle filling was made by blending peanut butter, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Melted milk chocolate was added and then some softened butter, and they were blended into the mixture. This was then refrigerated until firm. I formed the truffles by using a melon baller, and then they were chilled. More chocolate was melted, and the truffles were dipped once, allowed to set, and then dipped a second time. For presentation, the truffles were dusted with cocoa powder.

For me, the truffles were like the best Reese’s peanut butter cups ever made. The jellies were delicious, albeit sticky due to our humidity, and the combination of the two was fun and cute and a good food pun. The truffles were far and away the better half of the duo, but I will definitely make this again with both parts.

Peanut Butter Chocolate and Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

We were invited to a bbq today, and I volunteered to bring cookies. Being the indecisive sort and hoping to please everyone with one flavor or the other, I made two kinds. These are from Barefoot Contessa Parties!, and she actually shows three types of cookies in that book. I skipped the basic chocolate chunk cookie because I only had so much time and chocolate, and I really wanted to try the other two. The chocolate white chocolate chunk one drew me in because white chocolate is just the best, and the peanut butter chocolate chunk would obviously be delicious too.

I used Callebaut chocolates for these cookies. Their white chocolate is far and away better than other brands I’ve tried, and their 60% cacao bittersweet worked perfectly with the peanut butter. These are very straightforward cookies, and once the chocolate was chopped, it was all downhill. My peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies didn’t spread quite as much as the white chocolate chunk ones, but other than that there were no issues here. Well, there was one issue. Which flavor was better? Kurt decided the white chocolate narrowly edged out the peanut butter. I also loved the big chunks of white chocolate nestled into the cocoa-rich cookies, but the savory peanuttiness with the dark chocolate was just as appealing. Let me taste them one more time, or two more times, and I’ll get back to you about which one is better.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

It's fair to say that I bake a lot more cookies than I eat. Usually, the fun is in the baking and the sharing. These cookies are different. I first tried this recipe when it appeared in Living magazine, and it became a favorite of mine. I typed it into my file, with one small change, and kept it for future use. My little change was to increase the amount of whole wheat flour to 3/4 cup to bring the dough together a bit more. Something I wouldn't change is the use of natural peanut butter. Most recipes assume regular, sugary, hydrogenated oil-filled peanut butter will be used, and when I use natural instead I have guess at the right amount of sugar and make other alterations. It's so rare, but fantastic, to see real peanut butter used. This weekend I purchased a copy of the new Martha Stewart's Cookies book and was delighted to find the recipe included in it. Apparently, everyone at MSLO knew it was a keeper too. I baked a batch yesterday, put several in the freezer to enjoy as needed, and brought a few to work to share. Kurt completely disagrees with me about the use of peanut butter in baked goods. He gave this cookie a seven out of ten after eating four of them and claims to only ever want chocolate chip. No matter, this is a cookie I enjoy eating as much as baking.