Oy…I’ve got to get better about posting a little something more often than once a week. My excuse for this week: I was out of town for the weekend. Lame, huh?

I dragged my rear out of bed 2 Saturdays ago to go to the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market…since it’s still early in the season for lots of fresh produce, I came away with only basil and strawberries. The basil was turned into the pesto pictured above. I’ll be making more as the summer goes on…if only I could have my own basil plants right now. I made the bread pictured above as well…Sally Lunn bread from the Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. The bread was nearly a failure due to some yeast I managed to kill…but I did a little internet research and attempted to re-yeast the dough with some live yeast. It mostly worked…the bread was only a tiny bit denser than it should have been. I’ll be making it again soon as it made a great breakfast (and late night snack) for me all week.

I grilled/smoked/barbecued these pieces of pork the same day I went to the Farmer’s Market…really, I spent that whole weekend cooking. I had nowhere to go and nothing on my agenda other than cooking. It was rather fantastic.

So, the pork…I rubbed it with a mixture of brown sugar, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, chili powder and some other spices I can’t recall. Then I smoked it over charcoal and hickory chips for 5 hours or so. I didn’t expect the charcoal to last through the entire cooking process and I was prepared to move the pork to the oven…but I didn’t have to do so. I’ll be making some ribs this way the next time I have a whole day off with no need to leave the house.

Cookies! Oatmeal cookies! With butterscotch chips! And maple syrup! Yum. The last oatmeal cookies I made were a little overdone and crunchy. These were not. They were moist and chewy and wonderful. Enough said.

Cherry Streusel Coffee Cake…from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook (another book I kind of want right now). This used the last jar of Morello cherries I had from Trader Joe’s. I guess that means I’m going to have to go soon…because I love those cherries. I added a bit of amaretto and almond extract to the cake batter…and slivered almonds to the streusel. In case you haven’t noticed it, I love the flavor of almonds in my baked goods and I’m a bit heavy handed with my use of amaretto. This cake wasn’t as good as the Campton Place Coffee Cake from Desserts by the Yard but it was still more than decent.

I have a fair number of pictures I need to post to Flickr…when I get around to that, I’ll post a bit here as well. I’d post some pictures now but the boyfriend is doing real work on the internet so I can’t hog all of our bandwidth uploading food pictures

We went to George Washington National Forest camping over the weekend with friends…I’ll have some pictures of that eventually as well…but not today. It was fun but we spent too much time in the car and practically no time outdoors during the day (and the weather was perfect). Kind of sad, huh?

I went strawberry picking last week with a couple of work friends. I picked 3 gallons of them…and I now have 16 jars of jam sitting on my counter…plus plenty of sliced strawberries in the freezer. I can’t wait for blueberry picking and peach picking and whatever other kind of picking I can do this summer. I’d never canned anything before and it wasn’t really that hard so I’ll be doing it again. I kind of feel like my mother…but in an okay sort of way. More about the strawberries and jam soon…with pictures.

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Creamy Tomato Soup

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me and the Atlantic Ocean

How do I fall behind in posting so easily?

First, the picture above is me looking at the Atlantic Ocean. We went camping in the Outer Banks last weekend…our second camping trip of the year. Other than the cold shower I had to take the next morning, all was well on this trip. The boyfriend’s new tent continues to work well…we’ll test it again Memorial Day weekend…we’re supposed to go camping in the mountains (Shenandoah National Park, I think) with some of his friends (and some of their friends).

Here’s the boyfriend and I at our campsite…which sat up on a dune. The ocean is off in the distance…too bad you can’t see it in the picture.

A few weeks ago, I made the raspberry rhubarb tart pictured below as an experiment. I’ve claimed not to like strawberry rhubarb pie for a long time…I’ve always blamed the rhubarb. Recently it occurred to me that it’s probably the cooked strawberry part that I don’t like. So I made the raspberry rhubarb tart and loved it. Rhubarb is fine. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have realized it was in the tart…despite having used as much rhubarb as raspberries.

The last food picture to catch up on for the day are Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies…these have a couple of kinds of chocolate in the dough and I used 4 differents kinds of chips (including white chocolate). These were great…almost like a brownie cookie. The recipe was found in Baking Illustrated. Have I mentioned my love of this cookbook?

That’s it for food for today. I’m sick today but I hope to feel better tomorrow so that I can cook again. I’m thinking about no-knead bread. I should probably hold off on a dessert for a few more days…until more of my birthday cake is gone. The boyfriend made red velvet cake for me.

My birthday itself was good. I had lunch at the Blue Talon Bistro with my dad. Then the boyfriend made dinner for me…grilled ribeye steaks. And the red velvet cake. I got a good number of thoughtful cooking related gifts…including my own copy of Desserts by the Yard and a trifle bowl I spotted and wanted a while ago…now to make the hazelnut and Kahlua trifle recipe I found a couple months ago.

I need to get the boyfriend to figure out how to add flickr and twitter badges to this page…I think it can be done but it requires his assistance with the plugins for it.

I guess I’m done for the day…two recipes and a real post are pretty good for me.

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S’mores Tart

The idea for this one came me to when were camping last month…I was eating real S’mores (with the fantastic substitution of Nutella for the chocolate bars) over the campfire.

I came home and did a little bit of research for the recipe. I didn’t find any S’mores Tarts anywhere on the web. So I made up the crust based on S’mores bar recipe I got from a friend many years ago…it’s more buttery and more like a cookie than a normal graham cracker crust. The boyfriend and I decided that a Chocolate Chess Pie filling would be good for the chocolate part of the tart…so he gave me his recipe for the filling (source unknown). Then I found a marshmallow meringue topping recipe on epicurious.com (from a 2007 Bon Appetit magazine). I went a step further and torched the top for a bit more toasted marshmallow flavor.

Be warned…this is very sweet, very rich, and very decadent. A small slice is enough. I got in trouble with the boyfriend for giving too much of this away to my coworkers. He’s usually fine with me giving things away…not this time.

Here’s the recipe:

Graham Crust Ingredients:

• 1/2 box graham crackers, crushed
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 large egg, beaten

Chocolate Filling Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 7 tablespoons unsweeted cocoa powder
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Marshmallow Meringue Topping Ingredients:

• 1 7-ounce jar Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme
• 3 large egg whites
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar

For the crust:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix graham crackers, flour, and sugars together in medium bowl. Cut butter into dry mixture using a pastry blender until it resembles a coarse meal. Stir in beaten egg.

Press crust into an 11″ tart pan (or you could use a 9″ pie pan if you’d prefer a pie). Set aside.

For the filling:
Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, mix all ingredients for chocolate filling in the order listed.

Pour filling into prepared tart pan and bake for approximately 45 minutes.

Cool to at least room temperature. If you have time, refridgerate before adding marshmallow meringue topping.

For the topping:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using rubber spatula, scrape marshmallow creme into large bowl.

Using an electric mixr, beat egg whites and salt in another large bowl until foamy. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time and beat until stiff and glossy peaks form.

Add 1/2 cup beaten egg whites to marshmallow creme and stir with rubber spatula until just incorporated. At this stage, the marshmallow creme will be very sticky and difficult to blend, but it will become easier as the remaining egg whites are folded in. Fold in remaining whites in 2 additions until just incorporated. Spread or pipe meringue over top of cold pie. Swirl with a knife to create peaks or use the pastry bag to do the same.

Bake pie just until peaks and ridges of marshmallow meringue are lightly browned, about 4 minutes. If desired, you can use a kitchen torch to lightly brown some of the peaks (I did!). Let stand at room temperature until meringue is cool.

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Maple Walnut Bars

I got an idea to make these and figured I’d find a recipe for them online. But I didn’t. So I adapted the “Pecan Bars” recipe from Baking Illustrated.

The inspiration for these came from the giant jug of Grade B maple syrup sitting in my fridge. My dad buys gallons of it at a time from an online source. I asked for a syrup refill and he brought me a partially full gallon jug of it. At this point, I either had to start eating a lot more pancakes and waffles or bake something with it.

I thought these were a failure because I didn’t think the bars were going to set properly…the boyfriend was being impatient and wanted one while they were still warm. He kind of scooped one out of the pan…while it was delicious, it didn’t hold its shape. So I put the pan in the fridge to fully chill. After that, they held their shape when cut into bars. I do recommend storing these in the refrigerator as they are pretty gooey.

These may be my favorite baked good of 2008. The boyfriend thinks the S’mores Tart was better. Go figure that both of them are hideously rich and sweet.

The recipe is below and it’s adapted from the “Pecan Bars” recipe on page 496 of Baking Illustrated.

Crust Ingredients:

• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Filling Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6-7 tablespoons maple syrup (I used Grade B)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 3/4 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse

Crust Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line baking pan with two sheets of aluminum foil arranged perpendicular to each other. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Place the flour, baking powder, salt, brown sugar and 1/4 cup walnuts in food processor. Process the mixture until it resembles coarse cornmeal, about five 1-second pulses. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles sand, about eight 1-second pulses. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan and bake until the crust is light brown and springs back when touched, about 20 minutes.

Filling Directions:
While the crust is in the oven, whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, maple syrup and salt in a medium bowl until just combined. Add the egg and whisk until incorporated.

Pour the filling on top of the hot crust and sprinkle the remaing 1 3/4 cups walnuts evenly over the top. Bake until the top is brown and cracks start to form across the surface, 22 to 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Transfer to refrigerator and chill completely. Remove from pan and cut into bars of desired size.

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Lovely fresh asparagus…

I grilled it and it was delicious. I really liked knowing where it came from…we ate the asparagus with fajita spice rubbed tuna steaks…also grilled. Too bad I delayed that dinner for a while in order to take pictures of the asparagus.

I didn’t follow through on my promise of posting lots of recipes this week. I did a little work on them and then they never made it to the blog. If we don’t end up going camping this weekend, I will post at least a few. I promise.

Work has been a little of a challenge this week as we’ve lost a couple of employees with little to no notice AND it’s the end of the semester for W&M so none of the students want to work because they seem to think they should be studying. Silly students. So it’s been a little bit of a scramble both for shifts this week and for scheduling shifts next week…more of my hours than usual have gone into writing next week’s schedule. But I think it’s done…and I avoided needing to schedule myself to work on my birthday.

I haven’t gotten to cook much this week…which is no fun.

Just wanted to say hello…now I’m off to work.

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