Roasted Radiccio Rice Salad

How do you get a white rice fan to eat whole grain rices? Make it so he'll never know with this rice salad. Thick with flavor, this surprise dinner was hearty and comforting.

I've been using this organic Himalayan rice mix myself for a while, but George hasn't sampled it, preferring instead his gummy, five-minute white rice. Which I continue to buy for him. Anyway, this was one of those nights where time got away from me and I had to whip something up using ingredients we had on hand. Luckily, last week's Costco excursion garnered some artichoke hearts, a tub of pesto, and 2# of cherry tomatoes.

Roasted Radiccio Rice Salad

1 head radiccio, rinsed and drained, halved and sliced into 2" pieces
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 T EVOO
salt & pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
10 cherry tomatoes, washed and halved

2 cups cooked rice, preferably whole grain*
handful greek olives, pitted
handful chopped artichoke hearts
1 T pesto
chopped italian parsley, oregano or basil, if on hand
small handful cubed feta cheese

Heat the oven to 350º while you prep the radiccio. Toss the radiccio leaves with the balsamic, 1 T EVOO, salt and pepper and place in a deep baking dish coated with nonstick spray. Bake 10 minutes, stir, then add tomatoes over the top and sprinkle with sugar. Return to oven to bake another 10 minutes, until all radiccio is brown and soft and the tomatoes are losing shape. Set aside.

In a large saute pan, heat a teaspoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the rice and shake around to coat evenly with oil, letting it warm up gently. When warm, add the radiccio-tomato mix, olives and artichokes. Add the pesto and let it melt into the ingredients, stirring to combine. Take off the heat and add herbs, if using, and the feta. Toss lightly to combine, adding salt or pepper to taste.

Makes two oversized main servings or a side dish for four.

*Note: Any cooked rice will do for this. Mine is equal parts brown basmati, long grain red and brown rices and pearl barley. I cooked it according to package directions, except with half the salt plus a vegetable buillion cube with the water for extra flavor.

Two Danish Recipes: Results Compared

I normally make danish from the Williams-Sonoma recipe (cookbook photo inset), which I'm sure is a simplified version of a family recipe that took a few days. But because it seemed straightforward, I was inspired to try baking danish for the first time two years ago. My winning results helped me garner a baking job, and I'm therefore indebted to WS and a bit peeved at them for fostering my addiction.

The cheese filling from WS needed pepping up with flavoring — like lemon zest or vanilla or almond — but the dough is consistently tender with enough heft to carry any filling. While it's a pain to make at first — super sticky and unwieldy until the final shaping — it becomes the most compliant dough I've ever worked. It freezes beautifully, both shaped and unshaped, even baked off. I've used it to make cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, aside from every flavor of danish, and the final product always makes me look like a seasoned professional. It rises up flaky and golden, even if I've forgotten to thaw it completely or haven't the time to let it puff before baking. Just give her a nice coat of egg wash before baking or a brush of sugar water afterwards and I promise that this dough will not let you down. Ever.


But now that my pans and hands were more seasoned, I decided to step up to one of the complicated routes I see in every other book, setting my sights on Carole Walters' complicated Cheese Danish recipe. I say "complicated" because there are two pages of directions for just the dough, and then a few pages of fillings and two pages of assembly directions. But Walter offers advice for both hand and mixer prep, taking up a bit of space to do so.

The process of making the danish dough itself is similar in both books, but Walter's uses more butter and less flour in the packaging process. Right away, Walter's dough is easy to handle. To me it seemed more akin to croissant dough than danish, or at least how I like it.

Assembly was a bit overwhelming. In order to make the 24 cheese danish (using only half of the prepped dough!), I also needed to prepare six additional recipes. Yes, six. Cheese filling, danish pastry cream, butter spread, nut mix, sugar wash and a vanilla glaze. Each 4" square of danish dough received a daub of butter spread, spoonful of cheese filling and then a shaping. It puffed a little, then was poked and topped with pastry cream, brushed with egg wash, and baked. Baking went quickly, and then sugar wash sizzled over the tops as they set to cool. I was supposed to do vanilla glaze when the cheese had set, but decided immediately at the sight of pooled butter on the tray that they didn't need additional sugar or butter to be edible. (There was so much butter that I had to move them to a tray to stop the ew. It soaked through and entirely stiffened the parchment!)

The cheese filling was the very best thing about them, and I modified it by using homemade creme fraiche in place of the farmers cheese and sour cream. Fragrant with lemon zest, almond and vanilla, plus a bite of tang from the creme fraiche, it was just perfect.

The danish, however, I'll not be making. I have the second half of my recipe frozen right now, and I'm unsure what to do with it. I may recreate it without the pastry cream or butter spread, which oozed out onto the tray during baking anyway. The danish pastry did turn out croissant-like in texture, so it looked very pretty but it wasn't soft. It seemed more like a carrier for the cheese instead of a tasty part of the pastry.

Notes for the future
Make the Williams-Sonoma danish dough recipe, plus the alternate Walter cheese recipe for topping and the sugar wash, which made everything shiny in the waxed fruit vein. Mmmm.

Birthday Cupcakes, Part 2: Owl Decorations

Happy birthday to me!

My sister Amy bought me the sweetest book, Hello, Cupcake!, for my birthday late last month. I decided to reward myself and my first birthday in Kansas (sans the traditional celebrations and celebrants, sniff) with some adorable cupcakes. The choices were fantastical: specific dog breeds, monarch butterflies, ears of corn, an alligator! I settled on owls, partly because I love their stupid faces and partly because I had oreos on hand.

My owlish favorite, Franco, died in the making of this blog, above.

Start with the glorious PB cupcakes from my previous post and two cans of chocolate frosting (or your own recipe). I didn't have a few of the other candies required — no thanks to George for eating all of my possible banana runt noses before I could use them. But, hey, I am a creative professional trained to improvise. In desperation I turned to skittles, which didn't taste so lovely with my chocolate-pb combination. The book's recipe calls for Junior Mints over the Oreos as eyes, but they were very brown with brown frosting. I opted for the holiday-colored Reese's Pieces instead, and they were the perfect choice to reinforce my pb-chocolate flavors!

A passel of owls, some wary, some befuddled, watches over the dining room.

If you haven't seen this book and you are a cupcake lover, run to find it immediately! The decoration ideas in here will keep you a popular party guest (or simply the best mom ever) for years to come.

Hello, Cupcake! gets four licks for tantalizing and creative use of materials.

Birthday Cupcakes, Part 1: Peanut-Butter Cupcakes

What could be better than the age-old peanut butter and chocolate combination? Nothing, in my opinion. For my birthday, I made a gorgeous set of mouth-watering pb cupcakes to be frosted later. One or two cupcakes may have been accidentally lost to a fatal mouthing prior to the frosting stage, but we're not here to point fingers.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

1-1/2 sticks butter (3/4 cup), room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (your favorite variety)
1-3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350º and line two pans of cupcake tins with paper liners (24 regular-sized cups or 12 large cups).

Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugar until smooth and light. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix to combine. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the batter in two parts, mixing completely each time. Last, pour in the milk, and fold lightly until combined.

Divide the batter between cups, about 1/4 cup per cupcake, so each hold is about 3/4s full. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until browned on the edges and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Set aside to cool.

**Cute decorating idea tomorrow from my birthday gift: the adorable Hello Cupcake book!**

The Great Pasta Sandwich

Mmmm carb overload. I am aware of the danger. But this becomes irrelevant at, ahem, certain times in a girl's cycle. Plus, I got these hamburger buns from the local market and they were just pillowy soft in the perfect way. So I was already craving them, and then I saw leftover pasta with olive & artichoke tapenade smirking at me from the top shelf. What's a girl to do? Here's what: toast up a bun and slather it with butter and garlic salt, then pile on reheated pasta, sprinkle with parmesan and eat.

Not a dish I planned, but it was exactly what I was craving — smooshy, garlicky bread with salty pasta and oozy cheese. A feast this laden with adjectives must be good, right? Cheers to taking some culinary risks in 2009!