April 13, 2022

Everything potato gratin

April 13, 2022/ Rebecca Davis

This easy side dish is the perfect way to make something that seems fancy (gratin!) while using all the shortcuts (barely any chopping!).

Take me to the recipe!

So, I used Jamie Oliver’s method for a quicker potato gratin. Gratin’s usually need up to an hour in the oven, but by combining cooking methods, you can get a creamy, crunchy, crispy dish in less than 30 minutes. Also, using everything bagel spice means that you don’t have to chop any onions or garlic or really measure much of anything.

Just a quick word of warning: Use oven mitts to secure the tin foil over your skillet or tin on the stove. You want a tight seal so that the potatoes steam a bit before going into the oven. ALSO, use caution when removing the foil as the steam is plentiful and HOT.

A note about SALT: I don’t add any in this recipe because most of the pre-made Everything Bagel spice mixes are pretty salty. Check your labels and then decide if you want to add more salt. I would recommend a sprinkle of sea salt over the top of the finished gratin if you feel like it needs more.

Everything Potato Gratin

1½ lbs russet potatoes (about 2 very large), peeled and sliced thinly
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup water
2½ Tbsp everything bagel spice, divided
5-6 sprigs of fresh thyme
1½ cups grated cheese (mixture of gruyere, asiago, gouda)

Time: about 30 minutes, mostly active
Yield: 5 side servings

Preheat the oven to 425.

In a large oven-proof skillet or tin, spread the thinly sliced potatoes.

In a large measuring cup, combine the milk, water, and 1 1/2 Tbsp of everything bagel spice. Pour over the potatoes in the skillet. Add the fresh thyme and stir well to combine and to spread out the dried and fresh herbs.

Over a medium-high flame, bring the liquid to a boil. The liquid around the edges of the pan will boil quickly. Look for the first few bubbles in the middle of the pan and turn down the flame to medium-low.

Carefully wrap a piece of tin foil over the top of the skillet or tin. I wear oven mitts to do this because I want a tight seal, but I don’t want to burn myself. Let cook over a medium-low flame for 6 minutes.

Turn off the flame and CAREFULLY remove the foil being sure to wear oven mitts and to remove the foil away from you to avoid the hot steam.

Top evenly with the grated cheese.

Cook, uncovered, in the oven for 15 minutes. Top with the remaining 1/2 Tbsp of everything bagel spice.

Let cool slightly and serve.

December 20, 2021

Maitake mushroom salad

December 20, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

This warm, simple salad is so special thanks to the maitake mushrooms and the variety of textures and flavors. Made from expensive ingredients, this salad is meant for special occasions (or just the occasion of treating yourself), but I promise it’s worth it!

Take me to the recipe!

This salad is based on my best memories from a tiny little restaurant in Brooklyn called Little Dishes that I used to frequent with my husband before it tragically closed. I remember running to this place in the thick snow when someone was having a craving for their Mac and cheese. Their food was so simple, but so thoughtfully prepared that the dishes ended up being much greater than the sum of their humble parts.

Maitake mushrooms, sometimes called Hen of the Woods, are my absolute favorite variety. They’re meaty and slightly herby with a wee bit of forest floor funk. I state from the outset that this is an expensive salad because maitakes definitely don’t come cheap and I wouldn’t substitute any other mushroom variety here. I mean, you CAN, but your salad with end up fine, instead of ethereal.

The original recipe used a local cheese that was somewhere between parmesan and gruyere. Use either in this recipe or any other favorite cheese that falls in the nutty, slightly dry realm.

A couple of notes:

Cooking the mushrooms: I like to leave the mushrooms in slightly large pieces. It will feel awkward to cook them at first because they’re pretty stiff until they heat up somewhat. Once you sear them on one side, the mushrooms will get much floppier and easier to cook.
Cooking the radicchio: I seared half of the bitter lettuce and left the other half raw for a bit of textural difference, but you don’t strictly need to do this step. I left the lettuce in pretty large pieces for the photos, but definitely slice them much thinner for the real salad.

Maitake mushroom salad

2-3 large maitake mushrooms, each cut into about 4 large pieces
1 small head of radicchio, sliced into very thin wedges
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
4-5 cups arugula (1 small bag of pre-washed lettuce is perfect)
Shallot vinaigrette (recipe below), to taste
Parmesan or gruyere cheese, to taste

Shallot vinaigrette
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp sherry or red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp minced shallot
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp mayonnaise
1 large pinch of salt

Heat the butter in a large skillet over a medium high flame. When the butter has begun to bubble and brown slightly, add the mushrooms and cook, turning every 1-2 minutes, until well browned on all sides and very floppy, about 6-8 minutes. Remove the mushrooms to a plate and sprinkle with salt.

Add the olive oil to the pan and heat until very hot, but not smoking. Sear half of the radicchio on one side and then flip to the other side and sear again. If the pan is hot enough, this should take about 5-6 minutes. Turn off the heat and sprinkle with salt.

Add the mushrooms back to the pan with the radicchio to warm back up, but don’t turn the flame back on.

Add the arugula and the raw radicchio to a large plate or bowl. Add half of the dressing and toss well. Sprinkle with sea salt.

Top with the warm mushrooms and radicchio. Pour on more dressing to taste.

Add large flakes of the nutty, salty cheese on top to taste. Serve immediately.

December 06, 2021

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

December 06, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Heading to the spice cabinet can up your cookie game considerably! A subtle hint of anise elevates this basic chocolate crinkle cookie, but is still chocolate-y enough to be a crowd favorite.

Take me to the recipe!

I used to hate the flavor of licorice. HATE with a hard H, long A, and hard T. Hate. But somewhere between kid one and kid two, I had a weird impulse to try black licorice again and…I love it. I can eat a whole bag in one sitting. I can’t explain it. Except to say that tastes change and I’m not sure I ate a piece of licorice between the ages of 5 and 37, so I may have been unnecessarily denying myself for years.

So, if you think you hate the taste of licorice, maybe try again? Or try these cookies instead? The anise flavor is VERY subtle. It’s just enough to make you take another bite and wonder, “What is that? Licorice?”

The chocolate is still the star of the show and the texture is her very talented co-star.

This recipe is BARELY adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s one for Snowy Topped Brownie Drops from her cookbook Dorie’s Cookies. I made about 1 million of these cookies before circling back to this base recipe. I swapped in bread flour for the AP, tried a combo of melted chocolate and cocoa powder, and fiddled with many ingredient ratios. Nothing beat the original, which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s baked or tasted one of Dorie’s recipes.

What I love about these cookies isn’t just the taste and texture. I also love how they are SO EASY to make. Nothing needs to come to room temperature. You don’t need a mixer. You only need one pan. There are only a handful of ingredients, all of which you probably have in your cabinets right now. They are perfect.

A quick note about oven temperatures: If I’ve said in once, I’ve said it 1,000 times: Get to know your oven. It will make you a better baker and save you heartache and wasted ingredients. I bought two cheap oven thermometers and placed one in the back of my oven and one in the front. Wouldn’t you know it, the back of my oven is about 25 degrees warmer than the front. So now I always set the oven slightly below whatever temp the recipe calls for and rotate my pans halfway through baking. Works like a charm!

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Time: 20 minutes of prep, 30 minutes of chilling, 12 minutes of baking
Yield: 12 cookies

2 1/2 Tbsp butter
4 oz chocolate chips
6 Tbsp granulated sugar (75 g)
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 - 1 tsp ground anise
Heaping 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
6 Tbsp AP flour (51 g)
Powdered sugar for rolling

In a large bowl, melt the butter and chocolate chips in the microwave or over a small pan with 1/2 an inch of simmering water. If using the microwave, start by heating on high for 30 seconds. Stir, and then heat in 10-second bursts until everything is nearly melted. Stir well to let the residual heat finish the job.

Let cool for about 5 minutes.

Add the sugar and mix well with a spatula. Add the egg and the vanilla and mix well.

Add the anise, salt, and flour and mix well. If you are feeling fancy, you can whisk the dry ingredients together separately and then add them to the wet ingredients, but I have not had a problem with distribution when dumping everything into the bowl together.

Cover and freeze for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350. (See note above!)

Scoop about 1-2 Tbsp of batter and roll into a ball between your palms. Drop into the powdered sugar and cover completely and liberally with the powdered sugar.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. The cookies should be slightly under-baked because we want them to have a gooey, brownie-like texture in the middle.

November 08, 2021

Pumpkin and persimmon butter

November 08, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Cooking down some canned pumpkin and a few persimmons with maple syrup and spices will make your house instantly smell like the holidays and spice up even the most basic meals.

Take me to the recipe!

I’m a sucker for persimmons. I can’t help myself when they arrive in the grocery stores. But I never know what to do with them. I love baking with them, but I’m trying to have fewer baked goodies hanging around in preparation for baked-goodies-hanging-around season. And if I’m going to eat them on their own or in a salad, they need to ripen, which, in my frozen kitchen, takes forever and a day.

This is my grand compromise: A cooked down “butter” that’s thick and slightly sweet that pairs with toast, graham crackers, apple slices, pretzels, Dutch babies, regular babies, cornbread, muffins, oatmeal. etc. One could also use this “butter” as a fruity addition to an autumnal cheesecake or mix it with an ice cream or other custard. My favorite way to use it is mixed with mascarpone and a couple of eggs and then baked with a pie shell for a spin on pumpkin pie.

The best part about this concoction is that you don’t need to ripen the persimmons. You heard me. As long as you use fuyu and NOT HACHIYA*, you’re fine with unripened persimmons. Of course, the more you let them ripen, the better they taste, so it does behoove you to wait at least a little while before making this butter.

*Why not Hachiya, you ask? Well, those are the larger, more ovular persimmons and if you don’t wait until they’re almost completely mushy to eat them, the tannins in the fruit make your mouth feel gluey and dry. It’s awful, trust me.

Anyway, whatever you choose to do with it, you’re only 20-30 minutes away from the endless possibilities, so get to it!

Pumpkin persimmon butter

Time: 25 minutes, mostly active
Yield: 2 cups, depending on how much you cook down the mixture

1 can pumpkin puree
4 fuyu persimmons
1 Tbsp dark brown sugar (light is also fine)
¼ cup maple syrup
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground ginger
1/8th tsp ground cloves
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1 large pinch of kosher salt
½ cup water

Peel the persimmons and cut into quarters.

Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Transfer to a large pot.

Heat over a medium-low flame until just beginning to bubble. Turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring frequently to prevent burning, until the persimmons totally break down and the mixture has thickened slightly, about 20 minutes.

June 28, 2021

S'mores ice cream sundaes

June 28, 2021/ Rebecca Davis

Combine graham cracker no-churn ice cream, milk chocolate magic shell, and freshly scorched gooey marshmallows to make the best and easiest ice cream sundaes to celebrate summer!

Take me to the sundaes!

Before we get to the ice cream, I need to vent a little. I haven’t been making these posts as person lately because there’s so much kerfuffle on the internet about how people hate reading food bloggers’ life stories. But I guess if you’re reading this, you’re one of the people who is, at worst, neutral on the topic, so here we go! (If you’re here by mistake, there’s a “jump to recipe” button above.)

I need a break from the mental load. We all have one. It’s made up of the stuff that weighs on us and feels like quicksand because there’s no way to think ourselves out of it, though we can’t stop trying. It’s made up of the constant to-do’s and the guilt when they constantly don’t get done.

I’m stuck under the mental load of parenthood and all the ways in which it affects my identity. Lately I’ve been thinking about how I invest too much in both parenthood and my blog/food photography to feel really masterful at either. I suppose one can argue that there’s no such thing as “investing too much” in parenthood, but I really enjoy writing and taking photos and that work helps me feel like I’m something other than “someone’s mom.”

But I also feel guilty about the times I let Z play by himself in his playroom (that’s part of our kitchen, don’t panic) when I want to work on a new recipe or catch a specific light. I’m sure someone would argue that I’m selfish while someone else would point out that kids need to learn independence. And, frankly, both of those people are me. But really, who added “constant playmate” to a parent’s job description?

Anyway, it’s hard to feel productive or creative when so much bandwidth is devoted to pediatrician appointments and camp drop-offs and nap times and making sure all the little things are accounted for. But when I do focus on work, I wonder if I’m depriving M and Z of quality time that will have lasting affects on their development? Maybe that’s way too dramatic. It feels a little dramatic as I write this.

And then I worry (maybe that’s my actual full time job?) that I spend SO MUCH time thinking about parenting and work that I neglect all of the other import things. Like, when do I think about my marriage? And developing new friendships? And nurturing old friendships? And exercising? And did we give the dog his heartworm medicine this month? And what do we do about that front porch pillar that seems to be sinking?

And then my brain short-circuits and I have to cool it down with an ice cream sundae. What a transition!

If, like me, your brain is a funny place to live sometimes, you want to combine elaborate and easy. This ice cream sundae is sort of a three-part recipe, but each part is dead simple. So, it feels like you’re doing something tricky but also not.

We start with a straightforward vanilla no-churn ice cream base that has soaked graham crackers in it. Then, we top it with a two-ingredient milk chocolate magic shell and freshly charred marshmallows.

You might be wondering, why wouldn’t you just combine the milk chocolate bits and charred marshmallows in the actual ice cream? And you absolutely CAN do that! BUT, frozen marshmallows bear no resemblance to fresh gooey ones. And why have plain chocolate bits when you can spend 30 seconds melting them with coconut oil and pour it over for some ice cream magic? And some of the magic shell probably won’t freeze, so you get the gooey marshmallows AND the gooey chocolate, which feels very much like the real s’mores deal.

ALSO, leaving the graham cracker ice cream alone makes it adaptable to soooo many other flavor combinations. Cheesecake ice cream? Yup. Key lime pie ice cream? Yup. PB&J on a graham cracker ice cream? You bet. The possibilities are endless.

So what are you waiting for???

A couple of notes:

You can let the graham crackers soak for as little as an hour or you can forget about them overnight. As long as the cookies are completely mushy, you’re good to go.
When making no-churn ice cream, i’m a big proponent of throwing everything together and whipping it in one step, but in this case, whip the cream/graham cracker mixture first and then fold in the condensed milk.
DON’T FORGET THE SALT! S’mores are a sweet affair to begin with. A nice pinch of kosher salt in the ice cream base before freezing cuts the sweetness just a bit.
For charring: if you don’t have a kitchen torch (but they really are super fun to use and you can get one at Target), roast your marshmallows over a fire or in the oven, but WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK. Marshmallows can catch on fire under a broiler, so I set the temp to about 400/425 depending on your oven and move a rack up to the top third.
For the magic shell: I like to use filtered coconut oil because it doesn’t taste like coconut. Virgin is fine to use if that’s what you have, but it might taste faintly of coconut.

S’mores ice cream sundaes

Time: At least overnight, but about 15-20 minutes of active time
Yield: about 5-6 large sundaes

For the ice cream:
8 full sheets of graham crackers (or one package if they come three packages to a box)
1 pint heavy cream (2 cups)
14 oz sweetened condensed milk (1 small can)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large pinch fine kosher or sea salt

In a large bowl, mash the graham crackers into tiny bits. I use my hands for this because the bits don’t have to be uniform. Pour the cream over the bits and stir to combine. Cover and leave in the fridge until the graham crackers have turned to mush, about 1 hour or up to 1 day.

Once the graham crackers have softened, remove the large bowl from the fridge. Using a hand or stand mixer, whip just until the cream makes stiff-ish soft peaks (see photo above), about 45 seconds.

Add the condensed milk, vanilla, and salt and fold gently with a spatula.

Transfer to a freezable container and freeze for at least 8 hours or overnight.

For the magic shell:
6 oz milk chocolate (chips, chopped up bars, whatever)
2 Tbsp coconut oil (see notes above the recipe)

Marshmallows to taste

Combine the chocolate and coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir well. Repeat in 10 second bursts until fully melted. (Mine usually melted within 30 seconds, but it’s really hot here, so my chocolate and coconut oil were already soft.)

Let cool for 10-15 minutes while you char your marshmallows (see note above).

Assemble sundaes with ice cream, magic shell poured over and topped with marshmallows and an optional pinch of flaky sea salt.

Me & The Moose

Me & The Moose

Elevated family food

Me & The Moose

Everything potato gratin

Everything Potato Gratin

Maitake mushroom salad

Maitake mushroom salad

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

Chocolate anise crinkle cookies

Pumpkin and persimmon butter

Pumpkin persimmon butter

S'mores ice cream sundaes

S’mores ice cream sundaes

Me & The Moose