Greek Honey Cake

Chef Sean Smith and I, besides helping others throw exciting dinner parties, like to throw dinner parties at our own home. He’s usually in charge of every course, but he asked me to make dessert for our Greek-themed party a few weeks ago. I searched through dozens of Greek dessert recipes looking for something without filo dough and for a dessert that I could make in a reasonable period of time as real estate is very valuable and limited in our tiny kitchen.

I found a Greek Honey Cake recipe on Allrecipes that I just loved and it’s definitely one we’ll make in the future for clients. Maybe next time I’ll remember to snap a photo before eating a piece as well!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp orange zest
• 3/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup cane sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3-4 tablespoons honey

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 inch square or round baking dish.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and orange rind. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and the 3/4 cup of cane sugar. Add in the eggs, one at a time.
4. Beat in the flour mixture alternatively with the milk, mixing just until incorporated.
5. Stir in the walnuts.
6. Pour batter into the pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool at least 15 minutes before cutting.
7. Drizzle honey over the top of cut pieces of cake and enjoy.

Fire Cider

We received a small bottle of something called Fire Cider for Christmas. I’d never heard of this before, so I immediately opened it up for a taste.

WOW! It’s incredible. It’s a savory, tangy, spicy vinegar concoction believed to have health benefits if drunk regularly. The ingredients were straightforward, I just bought a food processor (finally!), so I figured I’d start making my own so I can consume this daily.

What you see is what you get: Onion, orange, horseradish, ginger, lemon, garlic, habañero, turmeric, and apple cider vinegar.

I quartered and sliced the orange and lemon, and de-stemmed and sliced the peppers. Other than that, I peeled the other ingredients and shred them in the food processor. Add it all to a jar, add some peppercorns, cover in vinegar, and wait one month.

Here’s what I learned from the inter-webs: Plastic wrap prevents the lid from being corroded from the vinegar. It needs to be shaken up daily while it’s infusing over 3-6 weeks. Bragg raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar with the ‘mother’ is the ideal vinegar to use for fire cider. When it’s ready to be consumed, strain it in a colander with cheese cloth to squeeze every last drop and then transfer to a sterile jar and add local honey to make it as sweet as you like. It can be stored in the fridge for up to one year, though that will never happen in my house.

I’ll update this post in February when it’s done. I can’t wait!

Roasted Cinderella Pumpkin

Chef asked me to swing by the Munson Farm Stand for a Cinderella pumpkin he could roast and preserve for the winter. I LOVE pumpkin, so I was really happy he wanted to preserve some this year. I usually buy a few pie pumpkins to make my pumpkin peanut curry soup, and they’re much smaller- maybe smaller than a soccer ball. The selection of Cinderella pumpkins at Munson’s Farm Stand was impressive, and this one was larger than two of my heads put together.

Sean almost effortlessly sliced it in half. I would have needed a saw, I think.

Scooped out the seeds…

Drizzled olive oil on top and then some salt and pepper…

And then they BARELY fit into our miniature oven. We live in 600 sq ft, and our kitchen appliances reflect that. But, we shoved it in there and made it work.

It roasted at 450 for more than an hour and didn’t quite come out as brown as we had hoped, but that’s sometimes what happens with miniature appliances- the end product isn’t as perfect as it could be. It still tasted great, so that’s really all that matters.

We let it cool and then scooped out A LOT of pumpkin.

Sean then pureed it in the Vitamix, poured it into jars, and processed it to save it for a wintery day. It’s truly wonderful to be married to a chef who likes to cook at home.

Perfect Potatoes

There’s a technique that creates a perfect potato (in my opinion) which, upon trying it, has changed the way I cook potatoes at home. It doesn’t matter if it’s a red potato, Yukon gold, sweet potato, yam… just start with a potato, follow my steps, and see how it turns out. I’ll replicate this in future posts with different potatoes, but for this posting I had local Colorado red potatoes on hand.

First, par-boil them in salted water until a knife can pierce them without force.

Then, take them out of the water and let them sit until they’re cool enough to touch. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

When a potato is par-boiled, it’s not quite cooked evenly through, and you can see the difference in doneness when it’s sliced in half.

For this particular evening, I sliced the almost fist-sized potatoes in half, sliced the halves, and then cut them again in half to 2-inch long pieces. You could slice them into any length or width you want, but your oven roasting time might then vary.

I tossed the potatoes with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and spread them on a baking sheet.

After 10-15 minutes in the oven they’ll be sizzling, or as I like to say, “talking to you,” at which point it’s OK to check to see how brown they are on the underside. When they’re looking crispy, I flip them, repeat the process, and voila- a perfect potato.

They have the crust of something fried with the creamy interior of a french fry done correctly, yet are tossed in just a few tablespoons of olive oil. They’re not just a guilty pleasure of mine, but something I’m really proud of figuring out while chef’s out working and I’m preparing dinner.