Spirited Cooking Day

I was captivated by the Champagne brownies made by Kelli from Lovescool, but the price tag threw me off. One commenter said she'd paid over $50 for the ingredients. I'm just a little bit lush, so I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea: enact the brownies with all Oregon ingredients. Domaine St. Michelle Blanc de Noirs from nearby pinor noir country. Cremerie Classique butter from Clackamas, Oregon. Dagoba chocodrops.

I made the brownies almost following the directions, leaving off the champagne jelly (that seemed just a bit over-the-top to me) and replacing six ounces of the dark chocolate with a cup of first-quality cocoa and six extra tablespoons of butter. The texture? Amazing, fudgy, moist, absolutely transcendant. The flavor? A bit too rich and bitter for my taste. My three-year-old took a huge bite and then spit it out (it's not exactly preschooler speed). It's a recipe worth making, but I'd make certain your audience was properly prepped to appreciate the richness, the expense, the work.

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I'd been itching to try this recipe since it came out in October's Gourmet . I am a sucker for alchemy cuisine, anything that rises or changes color or shape and turns into something else, so the idea of purple wine-soaked spaghetti thrilled me. This recipe is basically a version of my favorite broccoli and ziti standby, only with the addition of red wine. I had assumed before reading the recipe that the noodles would be boiled in the wine but it was actually a process that involved parboiling both the pasta and the broccoli.

The wine is added to the partially-cooked pasta. The fun part is watching it slowly change color as you boil it. The recipe calls for a red zinfandel, and you could probably use any red, but I think a heavier wine like a zinfandel or a cabernet sauvignon adds a nice purple hue. I was curious to see if it would taste wine-heavy. It definitely had a wine taste although it wasn't overpowering.

Overall I'm not sure if it added enough bang for my buck to cook pasta this way again, but it was fun for novelty's sake. One caveat to those who are making this recipe is to have extra wine on hand if you want to recreate the deep purple shown in the Gourmet article. It's definitely festive for the holidays.

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I couldn't really find a specific recipe for cranberry sauce made with Campari, but this is something that will work with pretty much any cranberry sauce recipe. You just add a splash (or more) of Campari to a good, solid cranberry sauce recipe. Perfect for Christmas! Let's try a really simple recipe from Allrecipes.com: 

1 cup white sugar
1 cup orange juice
12 oz package of fresh cranberries

Put ingredients in a sauce pan and dissolve the sugar in the o.j. over medium heat. Stir in the cranberries and cook unti they start to pop, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, transfer to a bowl. Add splash of Campari very carefully. The sauce will get thicker as it cools.

I make chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons each year for the holidays but in honor of today's event I decided to perform a few boozy experiments. I am a firm believer that anything can be made better with a little booze. I think every cook who has experimented with cooking with liquor probably has a few bottles of half-finished liqueurs around the house. My recipe uses the same proportions as this one only I use almond instead of vanilla extract. In order to get the maximum flavor for my experiments, I upped the flour a bit so that I could include more liqueur. The results were mixed.

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This sounds like something Homer Simpson would have a wet dream over. 

1 cup cake flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3 tablespoons dried buttermilk powder
2 large eggs
3 oz. IPA beer
4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled

The recipe seems rather easy to make. Just make sure you pay close attention to the directions (especially when it comes to making sure you don't overmix and don't overbrown the donuts).

 

We at Slashfood love our French Onion Soup.

To be quite honest, I would be okay without the soup and just eating the crouton topped with the melted, bubbling, gurgling, broiled cheese, but then, all my guests would wonder why their soups were naked.

I tweaked a recipe for an onion soup that’s like a French onion soup, but has a broth base made with a lot of white wine and (specifically, Riesling) and chicken rather than beef stock. It was my first time ever making an onion soup, and though it was different from a regular brown French Onion Soup, it tasted pretty good. Then again, the extra Riesling I drank while the onions were sweating might have made me a more generous critic than normal.

I am all for quick and simple dishes - the freshest and best ingredients need little in my experience to shine. This recipe, a highly adaptable one I should add, comes from Rick Stein's Food Heroes:another helping. It is adaptable as the crayfish (he recommends fresh water crayfish which are abundant in the UK's rivers) can be substituted with langoustines, lobster or large prawns.

 

Linguine with Crayfish - serves 2

• 225g (8oz) cooked freshwater crayfish tail meat
• 225g (8oz) dired linguine
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
• 4 tomatoes skinned, seeded and finely chopped
• 50ml (2 fl oz) dry white wine
• 2-3 tablespoons double cream
• 1 small bunch of basil torn into small pieces
• salt and pepper

Cook the linguine for 8-9 minutes until al dente. Fry the garlic in the olive oil, add the tomatoes, white wine and some seasoning, Cook 4-5 minutes until the liquids have reduced a little. Add the crayfish, the cream and simmer for a minute until the crayfish is warmed through. Add the basil, check the seasoning, and toss into the drained pasta.

A note on the wine - I tend to use unoaked wines in cooking. Those heavily oaked chardonnays can add oak/woody flavours so I generally go for Italian whites or cheaper wines from the South of France. Sauvignon Blanc works well too.

[Photo Andrew Barrow]

If I could, I’d drink Bailey’s Irish Cream right out of the bottle as if it were a giant Starbucks Frappucino. But since it’s Spirited Cooking today, I restrained myself, poured it on the rocks, and waited for inspiration to strike.

Cheesecake.

I’ve done a pure Bailey’s Irish Cream Cheesecake before. This time, I swirled it with coffee. Who know's what else I would have swirled it with if I had a little more than two glasses?!?

The first thing that you’ll notice when you make your own eggnog is that it is not nearly as thick as store-bought eggnog. This is because the carton packaged drink is cooked, ensuring that there is no harmful bacteria in the drink, from raw eggs or otherwise. It is actually a sort of very thin pudding or custard, rather than simply a rich drink, as is traditional eggnog. If you choose to make eggnog at home, most likely you have decided to tempt fate by using uncooked eggs or paid the few extra dollars for in-shell pasteurized eggs, just in case. I looked at the .005% risk of finding an egg with salmonella and decided to use raw eggs anyway.

Eggnog is no health food, all salmonella concerns aside. I used Alton Brown’s recipe, which contains several egg yolks and a fair bit of heavy cream. It wasn’t difficult to put together and the 'nog was light, with a foamy, fluffy top, in sharp contrast to the heaviness of store-bought stuff. Feel free to increase it as you see fit. It might be a little rich for my usual tastes, but it makes a great once a year treat.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

I can't remember ever having a French onion soup that I loved. Sure, it was a dish I'd eat without complaint. But never have I longed for a cheese-crusted bowl of sweet oniony butteriness. Until now.

I was idly flipping through Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, my favorite coffee table cookbook, when I came across this recipe. I had a huge bag of onions and I was intrigued: evidently, Jacques preferred white wine for "extra flavor" in his onion soup, while Julia Child preferred red. As I identify more with Julia than Jacques - and I had a bottle of red wine at the ready - I figured, why not? Off went my hubby to the market to get Gruyere, and some more wine, just for good measure.

Little did I know I was only an hour away from addiction.