We’re now taking orders for Valentines Day! Each box is 4 oz.
Chocolate Covered Bacon ~ $4.00 a box
Chocolate Covered Caramel w/Sea Salt ~ $4.00 a box
Chocolate Bacon Truffles ~ $8.00 a box
Regular Chocolate Truffles ~ $4.00 a box
Contact us today at ckloscak@sbcglobal.net
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My facebook friends saw this coming. When Cleveland writer and major foodie, Michael Ruhlman wrote a post featuring Chocolate Bacon Truffles, well I just had to try them. I tweeked his recipe a little bit and rather than using brandy, I used Grand Marnier (an orange liquor w/brandy in it) Well, the results were nothing shy of AMAZING!! They do take time but if you’d like to try my version, send me an e-mail or give us a shout out on facebook at Chef In Attendance. You can find the original version at www.ruhlman.com I’ll let the picture speak for it’s self! See the step by step on facebook.
Here’s the scene: It’s the holiday’s and you’d love to make some cookies to take to work, or for friends, or for the kids, or the church coffee hour, or to curl up in a chair with and watch The Bells of St. Mary’s for the 100th time, but you’re too put off by the daunting task of making them. Or, worse yet, you start making them only to find out once you’re half way through mixing everything, that you’re missing a key ingredient. Well have I got a plan for you!
Mise en place! You’ve heard me say it before but until you try it, you’ll never know what a time saver this simple step can be. It’s a French culinary term that simply means “to put in place”. In addition to my business, I work an 8 hr, 5 day a week job. The last thing I feel like doing after being at work all day is to come home and bake. And, the last thing I want to do all weekend is to bake. Yet, I do love to bake so how do I solve my dilema? I take a few moments and pre-measure the ingredients for whatever it is I’m wanting to bake. The above picture are the ingredients I’ve assembled (15 minutes from start to finish) for 2 different types of cookies; oatmeal raisin and tollhouse chocolate chips.
The butter needed to be softened which means I’m not going to even begin cooking for a good 60 minutes. So, rather than set the butter out and go on to something else, I took the additional time to pre-measure all of my ingredients. Now, when the butter is soft, all I have to do is dump and mix. Don’t have a dishwasher for bowls? Simplify even more, use paper cups or bowls. Mix the dry ingredients (except the sugars) together and the eggs and vanillia, nuts and chocolate or oatmeal and raisins. Done!
I’m going to mix the dough up tonight and do the baking tomorrow. You can even use a small cookie scoop and line the finished dough up on a parchment lined baking sheet. Freeze the un-cooked dough. Once frozen, pop them into zip top bags and viola! cookies anytime you want them. Better than slice and bake to be sure!
What are you thankful for? Here, at Chef In Attendance, we have many reasons to take a moment and give thanks. It’s been a good year. Joe and I are thankful that Joe and Hannah are well, healthy and working. We are thankful that my mom is home (just yesterday) from 3 and a half weeks of being in the hospital, and thankful that she is healing beautifully. We are thankful for my sister Pam with whom we’ve spent an awful lot of time with in waiting rooms and hospital rooms, sharing our prayers and laughter with. She’s a blessing unto herself, we make a pretty good team. We are thankful for all the wonderful care givers, many whom are working today, who took such great care of mom, first at Fairview Hospital and then at the Greenbriar extended care and nursing facility. We are thankful for our clients, loyal reader’s of this blog and our Facebook friends. You invite us into your home or attend classes in our home and allow us to do what we LOVE to do. We are thankful for our vendors/friends who help us to purchase the best, freshest and most local product we can get. Take time this day and often through out the year to remember and reflect just what it is that you’re the most thankful for. To each of you Joe and I send our thanks and a heart felt wish that your year ahead is one of Joy, Happiness and all Good Things. Stay tuned for some exciting news!!
My favorite autumnal lunch!
I love pumpkin! It’s such a versatile vegetable. I wasn’t always a lover of this squash. In fact, I wasn’t a lover of any squash. But, as we age so do our taste buds and as our palates expand, if we’re open to it, we find that those flavors we once shunned can be pretty terrific. Pumpkin and Squash are on that list for me. I love it just diced, sprinkled with olive oil, salt & pepper and roasted in an oven. In fact, that’s just how my soup recipe starts out. Once the pumpkin has been roasted, I scoop the flesh away from the shell. I put it in my food processor along with a saute of mirepoix (25% carrot, 25% celery & 50% onion, all diced). I like to round out the flavor by also peeling, dicing and roasting a butternut squash. Back into the soup pot it goes along with a deep vegetable stock or some homemade chicken stock, enough to reach the consistency you like best, thin or thick. When I’m ready to serve it, I like to top it with a few of the roasted pumpkin seeds. These I do in the oven, salt, pepper, olive oil and a pinch of cayenne for heat. Warning though, if you roast these seeds ahead of time you may find by the time your soup is ready, the seeds are gone. They’re addictive! Here I’ve served my soup with a fresh sirloin burger, topped with some fresh Parmesan cheese. Try this soup for something different. You can even place a spoonful of heavy cream on top for an extra smooth cup. Without the cream this is a great soup for freezing. When the last of the pumpkins have gone and the ground is frozen solid, this is a great winter’s evening treat! Need better instruction or have pumpkins you just don’t know what to do with? Drop me an e-mail at ckloscak@sbcglobal.net, I’ve got tried and true pumpkin recipes that I’m more than happy to share with you.
This past summer I had the pleasure of teaching a kids class to two of the cutest kids you’ve ever seen and their dad. When dad told me that the family was having a big get together, we started brainstorming ideas that they could use to feed a crowd. Well, the meal went off without a hitch and everyone was happy. As often happens with my clients, a friendship bloomed an we’ve been in touch several times since July, exchanging recipes and brainstorming for special events. One of those events is chronicled below. So here’s a big shout out and 3 cheers to the Westside Tailgaters 563 and their Kansas State Wildcats ~ may your winning streak continue on the field and at the grill!! You guys rock!
That’s Coach D in the white T, front left. : ) 
Today was the last day of a 3 day weekend and here in beautiful NE Ohio, the weather has gone from a stiffling 94 on Saturday, to a balmy 64 on Monday and now, at last I am happy. You can keep your 94 degrees, I am a cool weather girl. If we could stay this way through to the winter months I’d be content. When the temp is in the upper 80′s or beyond, cooking is the last thing I want to do. But today, today was ideal for playing in the kitchen. I started the day with a big pot of homemade chicken barley soup and then, cleared the decks and got busy. First up was coffee ice cream (my hard working hubby’s absolute favorite). A simple process, made simpler by always having my ice cream machine in the freezer and ready to go. This recipe called for steeping a cup and a half of fresh beans in 1.5 cups of milk (I use fat free) 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup cream.
Temper in two egg yolks place back on the heat and stir until it thickens. From here you simply strain the mixture into a bowl where you have 1 more cup of cream, put some plastic right on top to prevent a skin and chill the whole thing down over an ice bath and then in the fridge. Churn in your ice cream machine, remove to freezer proof container and freeze. The entire process takes less than 20 minutes not including the chill down time. Now even though our chicken barley soup was a humble and simple dinner, I wanted the dessert to be worthy of a 3 day weekend so I went for an equally simple dessert that would still say WOW. I began by melting 4 oz of good dark chocolate and 1.5 oz of unsalted butter into a heat proof bowl over simmering water. Be careful you use a paper town to keep the condensation down or your mixture will sieze up and be useless.
A word here about ingredients. If you are thinking that you can use semi-sweet morsels, margarine and imitation vanillia in this reciepe and get good results, please STOP. There are no substitutes for great ingredients. I only use Madagascar Vanillia that I purchase at UrbanHerbs at the West Side Market. You can order from them on line at www.urbanherbsonline.com or find these products near you. You can expect to pay $8 to $12 a bottle but you will not be disappointed. Real beans are $10 for one in the grocery store but I buy 5 at a time for $1.99/each. You will transform your baking by paying attention to ingredients.
Once the chocoalte and butter have melted I added some instant coffee and vanillia that I had mixed together along with a pinch of kosher salt. While this mixture was cooling, I buttered and sugared 4 ramekins, drawing the butter up the sides with a pastry brush creates lines that the sugar adheres to. This then creates little channels for the souffle to climb up. A great trick I learned from one of my culinary instructors. Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks are then gently folded into the cooled mixture and placed into the ramekins. I only baked 2 of them and wrapped the other two in plastic for a treat tomorrow after a hard days work. Here are the souffles before and after the oven.
The final step was to place two small scoops of the coffee ice cream into the center of the hot souffle. The results are a fabulous, light as air dessert and a part creme anglaise, part ice cream extravaganza! With a minimum amount of time and effort, you too can make this stunning dessert. Send me an e-mail for the complete recipe.
For Father’s Day I brined a turkey (see post below). That got me thinking about dry rubs and what would the difference be for a dry rub vs. a brined bird. So, I concocted my own dry rub using good smoked paprika, granulated garlic, granulated onion, thyme, sage, salt, pepper and just a hint of cayenne. I cooked it slowly over a nice combination wood/charcoal fire and the results were pretty awesome. In fact, I couldn’t tell you which method I prefer. Both helped maintain the moisture in the bird, don’t let the blackened skin fool you, and both birds were super flavorful. For sides you just can’t beat a sweet potato cooked on the grill. A quick scrub and on it goes. I start them right on the main rack and them move them up when I’m ready for that space. We also did a pan of fresh snow peas, snap peas and red bell pepper. Again, I like to cook them right on my grill top. My kitchen stays cooler that way. Our dinner was fabulous! So get out there this summer and try something other than burgers, dogs or beer can chicken. Get creative and if I can help with hints or recipes, drop me a line!
To say my hubby is a turkey fan would be the understatement of the year. You ever see the dad in the movie A Christmas Story? Yeah, that’s Joe. So for father’s day I wanted to make him a fabulous meal, turkey with all the fixings. Joe looks forward to Thanksgiving all year long and he’d have me cook a turkey once a week if he thought he could. So to celebrate this awesome man of mine I wanted the best bird ever. I called my friend Andy Dionne, owner of Dionne’s Poultry at the West Side Market and asked him if he could get me a nice bird and remove the backbone so I could lay it flat on my grill. With some great advice from Cleveland Heights writer, Michael Ruhlman,I soaked the bird in a salt & water brine for 24 hours. He also suggested I build my fire up around the perimiter of my grill. I use hardwood charcoal and wood when I grill. I put the bird in the center, closed the lid and let her cook. The results were amazing. The meat had a smokey ring and flavor and the brine made it amazingly moist. If you’d like to know more about using a brine, drop me a note. For even more pics, check us out on facebook.
I’ve been making bagels lately and I’ve got to say, I don’t think I’ll ever buy them again. They’re so simple to make and just take a bit of planning ahead. The night before I want them, I set a sponge of flour, water and yeast. It sets out on the counter and I make it right in my mixing bowl. If I’m really feeling organized, I measure out my other ingredients, salt, honey, molasses, flour, and set them aside so it’s just a matter of dumping them in in the morning.
Then it’s a simple matter of mixing, resting, dividing, resting and then boiling in a mixture of water and baking soda. The end results are fantastic and well worth the time and small amount of effort. Drop me an e-mail and I’ll be more than glad to share the recipe with you!
