Blue Cheese Update . . .

. . . because I know you're oh so curious to find out how this

became this.

It wasn't easy.

After the marginal blue cheese bites and the quite wonderful pear and blue cheese salad, there were

these cute little blue cheese tartlets: a buttery crust, blue cheese filling, topped with walnuts. Tasty but not terrific.

Effort expended greater than results achieved.

Next.

Blue cheese salad dressing.

Kahuna: "This tastes a lot like mayonnaise."

Me: "That's because it is mostly mayonnaise."

Note to self: adding cranberry balsamic vinegar with deep red color to white mayonnaise-based blue cheese salad dressing gives food a creepily lumpy-mud look.

Next.

Blue cheese sauce.

To serve over grilled steak.

Easy.

Delicious.

A keeper.

Recipe to come later this week.

Thank you, Kim at Easy French Food, for so generously sharing.

Since the blue cheese sauce recipe made lots, I had plenty left over to experiment with, using a Fettuccine with Blue Cheese Sauce recipe provided by Kathryn at Full Life, Simple Heart, as a start. To Kim's sauce, you add pine nuts, slivers of ham, and julienned raw spinach; serve over cooked fettuccine. Another keeper. (Unfortunately, all evidence of said meal has disappeared.) Thank you, Kathryn.

So there you have it. Lesson learned. In the near future, do not buy a hunk of cheese bigger than your face.

Unless, of course, you find a really good sale.

Honey Almond Scones

This delicious recipe comes from Julie Hyzy's fun culinary mystery, State of the Onion (see post below). The recipe makes eight scones, but they're quite large, so you could probably cut it into 12 or even 16 pieces if you like.

And the frosting? Yum.

SCONES

1/4 c. buttermilk or plain yogurt (I used milk and added about 1/2 t. lemon juice)

3/4 c. honey

2 eggs

1/4 t. almond extract

3 c. flour

4 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. butter, chilled

1/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. finely chopped almonds

FROSTING

3 T. butter, melted

1 t. vanilla

2 drops almond extract

1 T. hot water

1 c. powdered sugar

Put a sheet of parchment paper on cookie sheet. Set aside.

In small bowl, stir together buttermilk or yogurt, honey, eggs, and almond extract. Set aside.

In large bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in butter with a pastry blender, until the butter is well distributed in small bits throughout. (You can use clean fingers to finish the job, if you like.) Add sugar and almonds and mix.

Add wet ingredients to dry, and stir until a ball forms. With floured hands, knead 5 to 6 times until it's well blended.

Plop dough onto parchment paper and pat down into circle (maybe 9 inches across). Smooth it out so it's evenly thick throughout. Cut into wedges. (Hyzy recommends 8, but you can cut into 12 or 16 pieces if you like. I made 8, but we ended up cutting most of the scones in half before eating. But then we ended up eating two wedges anyway, so I suppose it all works out in the end.)

Bake at 375 degrees until medium golden brown. The recipe says for 25 minutes, but my oven runs hot so I took mine out after 17 or 18 minutes.

For frosting, mix together butter, vanilla, almond extract, and water. Add powdered sugar and stir well. You can add more hot water, 1 t. at a time, until the glaze has the consistency of thick syrup. Spoon over warm scones.

Now kick off your shoes and enjoy your scone with a good book (like State of the Onion).

Food Books

Aside from making food and eating food, I love to read about food.
Is this what you'd call an obsession?
A few titles I've been enjoying lately:
Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater by Calvin Trillin. I haven't read anything of Trillin's that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. This book of funny food essays by the self-acknowledged "genial glutton" is no exception. It's grand fun to join in his zealous quest as he scours Kentucky, for example, for that perfect barbecued mutton.
It Must've Been Something I Ate (The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything) by Jeffrey Steingarten. Steingarten, who writes about food for Vogue magazine, has a completely different style than Trillin. An attorney by training, he thoroughly investigates subjects that intrigue him, often turning what for most of us would be mild curiosity ("I wonder if all these different types of salts are really all that different?") into quantifiable experiments that would earn him the blue ribbon in any state science fair competition. Fascinating stuff.
State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy. This culinary mystery, complete with recipes in the back, features fictional White House Assistant Chef Olivia Paras. Along with the entertaining "cozy" mystery come details about the White House kitchen and its goings-on that make for a super enjoyable story for food fans.

Now I'd love to hear your suggestions for good books about food. Mysteries? Essays? Fun cookbooks? Other food genres?

Watermelon, Part Two

Well, in answer to SAH in Suburbia's question about how you make this beautiful creation, I had to ask my friend Angie, whose creation it is.
First, you'll need a v-shaped knife, something like this. (You can probably get one at a kitchen supply store. I'd never even seen such a knife; had you?)
Next, Angie scores lightly around the center of the watermelon, to make sure she keeps her cuts level. Then you stab the knife all around the watermelon's center, poking in the knife as far as you can, and making sure your cuts connect. Once you've cut all the way around, it should break in two (especially if you've purchased a small-ish watermelon).
Even if the middle part isn't quite perfect, don't worry because you scoop out the middle to make a"bowl" that you fill with cut up fruit.
To serve your creation, make a cut from the top toward the bottom (like you'd cut a piece of pie), making your cuts just two or three inches long (not all the way through the bottom of the watermelon). Rotate the watermelon a bit and make another two/three inch cut, and do this all the way around. Then to extract individual pieces, you just use your regular knife to cut side to side (horizontally, connecting between your vertical cuts). Does that make sense?
Then, of course, you eat. And thank the good Lord for the beautiful creation sitting in front of you.

Wordless Wednesday

Even though it's Thursday already.

So sue me.

Beautiful watermelon courtesy of my dear friend Angie.

Now I'm really pushing the definition of "wordless." I'm stopping now.

I've stopped.

Note: See more Wordless Wednesday (or Thursday) entries here.

Chocolate Rice Krispie Bar Cookies

Is there anything sweeter than getting a surprise package in the mail? Unless maybe it's getting a surprise package from your college-aged son who's in the throes of majorly intense end-of-the-year projects. But who still took time to remember his mom for Mother's Day.

Sweet.

CHOCOLATE RICE KRISPIE BAR COOKIES
1 c. chocolate chips
1 c. butterscotch chips
1/4 c. peanut butter
4 1/2 c. Rice Krispies

Put first three ingredients in large bowl and microwave "until creamy." Add cereal and stir. Press into 8 x 8-inch pan and let cool. (Let cool is underlined twice, so I'm assuming this is the most difficult part of the process -- you know, the waiting to eat it part.)

Recipe from cooks.com.

Happy Salad Month!

And happy Wordless Wednesday, too.