i have a recipe for a flourless chocolate cake, found years ago in a ny times sunday magazine, that is unbelievably good. if baked with all the best ingredients, it costs $40 to make and serves 20 generously, weighing in at over 2 lbs.

i rarely make it. and now there’s a good chance that i never will again…

because i’ve found a new chocolate cake. and it’s the one for me. as in forever.

except for one thing. and it’s a very funny thing. you see, the recipe calls for 6 tablespoons of butter. and i don’t know how it happened, but i used 16. yes dear readers, the entire package of plugra butter went into my cake. as in more than double the called for amount. hee.

i keep wondering how i slipped up. granted, it was the 5th recipe i’d made that day. so maybe i was tired – or perhaps even momentarily distracted. but somehow, regardless of the miscalculation it was ‘screaming crazy’ good. it was ‘call each other on the phone and talk about it the next day’ good. but now i’m thinking that this particular incarnation of my new favorite chocolate cake has sadly fallen into the ‘once a year only’ good category…

on the upside, at least now i have learned that 1 T butter = 1/2 an ounce…

new bittersweet chocolate cake
adapted from alice medrich’s pure dessert

8 oz 70% bittersweet chocolate
6 tablespoons unsalted butter (i used 16, as in 8 oz. – hee)
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
scant 1/4 t salt
1 t vanilla extract
1/3 cup plus 1 T (1.2 ounces) all purpose flour
whole nutmeg for grating

position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350. line the bottom and sides of a 9" round baking pan with foil

place the chocolate and butter in a double boiler that is barely simmering and melt until smooth. stir frequently. when quite warm, set aside.

in a medium bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla with a hand-held mixer on high speed until the eggs are thick and light colored about 2 minutes. whisk in the warm chocolate and then fold in the flour.

scrape the batter into the lined pan and spread evenly. bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. cool on a wire rack.

invert the cake onto a rack and peel off the foil. turn right side up on a cutting board. while still warm, grate liberally with the nutmeg.

there is something about a 9" round, single layer, simply adorned cake that appeals to my inner aesthetic. it feels elegant to me. and so although medrich offers this cake recipe as her "new bittersweet brownies", made in an 8" square, only suggesting as an afterthought the round pan with the grated spice, i for one, could not imagine serving it any other way…

the question is, when i make it again, i wonder how much butter i’ll use?

*authors note – i posted once again on thursday night smackdown while michelle is on a short hiatus. please click on over and read about my foray into ‘cheater bbq’.

weatherwise, nashville autumns can be a mixed bag. last week it was in the mid 70′s going down to the low 40′s at night – and today it was 83 and glorious. during this schizophrenic transition into cool weather and comfort foods, sometimes it can be hard to get a handle on ‘seasonal’ eating. but i had some d’artagnan buffalo short ribs burning a hole in my freezer, and awhile back i’d run across this recipe, somehow, somewhere, on someone’s blog - perhaps even a year ago - and i bookmarked it.

so when i was clicking through my favorites - the recipes all meticulously categorized, and fell across this one, i thought – perfect. and then when i saw that it was a giada/food network dish, i threw up a little in my mouth. ok not really, it was more of a gag – ok, maybe not even that. but i definitely cringed. i mean, i was hoping for batali, even emeril would do, but when i saw who it was i realized that i’d have to actually tell you, my dear readers,that: i would be making a ‘giada everyday italian’ dish. i mean, it’s not like it was that yummo chick or that woman who resides in my own personal version of hell – but still… i don’t do giada. well, i didn’t.

this dish was a homerun. it was earthy and complex, and even surprised me just how well and how fast it came together. but best of all, it was not only all those thinga but  it was pasta…

the bittersweet chocolate shavings at the very end send an already excellent dish to another dimension. i’ve done this for years on pumpkin ravioli’s with browned butter and sage…

buffalo short ribs with tagliarelle
adapted from giata de laurentiis everyday italian

3 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces chopped pancetta
2 pounds short ribs
salt
black pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 medium onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 (14-ounce) can tomatoes (whole or diced)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
2 1/2 cups veal stock
1 cup red wine
1 pound fresh or dried tagliarelle 
about 3 tablespoons shaved bittersweet chocolate
 
place the olive oil in a large heavy soup pot over medium heat. cook the pancetta until golden and crisp, about 4 minutes. meanwhile, season the short ribs with salt and pepper, and dredge in the flour. using a slotted spoon, remove the pancetta from the pan and set aside. add the short ribs to the pan and brown on all sides, about 7 minutes total.
meanwhile, combine the onion, carrot, parsley and garlic in a food processor and blend until finely minced. then add the tomatoes and tomato paste and pulse.

once the short ribs are browned, carefully add the mixture from the food processor to the pot. return the pancetta to the pot and stir. add the rosemary, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, beef broth, and wine. bring the mixture to a boil. reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour and 15 minutes. remove the lid and simmer for another hour and a half, stirring occasionally. remove the meat and bones from the pot. discard the bones. shred the meat and return it to the pot. season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 3/4 teaspoon pepper, or to taste.

bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes for dried pasta and 2 to 3 minutes for fresh. drain pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking liquid. add pasta to the pot and stir to combine. add reserved pasta liquid 1/4 cup at a time, if needed, to moisten the pasta. transfer to serving bowls, top each bowl with about 2 teaspoons of chocolate shavings. serve immediately.

so ok, i’m having issues with the heritage of this dish. but giada is ok. really. totally not offensive. and the woman can actually cook…

it’s just well, ok, nevermind.

(if i’m going to whine, ice cream is the very least i can offer…)

dear readers…  ceF is 2 days shy of turning one year old and well, i must tell you that as much fun as this is, in the short time that we’ve known each other i have recklessly and pitifully packed on some serious poundage. i have tried to be better about keeping it all in balance, but to date am failing miserably. i have tried to do all the things i know to do. but i am weak in the face of good food. 

to keep us all entertained here, i have been also trying to achieve some semblance of excellence with my cooking. ok, maybe excellence is going too far. but i am aiming high, and honestly, most of the time we’re eating pretty well here at kitchen central. but i’ve still got a lot to learn, and that means practice. and repetition. using it or losing it. and this tends to involve churning out a fair amount of food if you ever want to call yourself a cook.  and i aspire to that…

right now i’m in santa monica for 3 weeks. and guess what? i’m not going to any great restaurants or cooking. i’m in semi-radical cleansing mode drinking fresh juices and eating fruit and plain salads. as in vegan raw without the frills of nuts or seeds or oil or seasonings of any kind.  as in yes, you’re right this is not easy – and no, i don’t recommend you do this.  unless you want to. which you probably don’t. and man, i so do not blame you. because if i could find a way to eat the way i wanted to eat all the time, and not look and feel toxic, i’d be all over it.  you see, i am the quintessential plate cleaner. i love to eat and i can pack it away but good.  but i am terribly vain – and that’s a tricky combo to balance. so here i am – paying for my salty high-caloric intake.  because the fat lady has sung and it’s time to pay the piper. 

interestingly enough, the older i get the more he charges – the little flute playing bastard…

but to keep the blog fires burning, i have a few things that i recently whipped up and then stockpiled, knowing i’d be away from the kitchen.  and this is one of them.  fresh mint custard ice cream with pralus 75% chocolate.  i used david lebovitz’s recipe for the ice cream, always adding an extra egg yolk as a sacrifice to whatever god that thomas keller worships (i do believe he uses up to 12 yolks in his ice creams).  and then i went a little too heavy on the chocolate because well, one bar is 3.5 ounces and david calls for about 5 ounces (i don’t have the book with me) and i think i may have used over 1 1/2 bars.  but next time i think i’d stick to the one, as that’d be plenty. this batch was a bit heavy on the chocolate. not that it’d hurt your feelings, because the chocolate is so spectacular and plays well off the minty custard…  but still, live and learn.

the fresh mint is steeped in the warm milk/cream mixture and then the custard is made and chilled. to make the stracciatella, you add the melted chocolate in a steady stream at the very end of the churning process, keeping the chocolate away from mixing blade.  being a stracciatella making virgin, i did a so-so job… but it was really very, very awfully good. and i guess one day i will have to try again. and again. but not for a little while.

my inner child had hoped for the ice cream to be a bit on the greener side - but when thinking about the steeping/straining process, it seemed unlikely that the leaves would give up much color. but david had promised an emerald hue and dear readers, that just was not happening. also and for the record, i’m not a huge mint fan. and now i know why. because most mint things that we buy are made with some kind of extract that is way not my thing. this ice cream was minty, but subtle. it tasted real, because it was.

and i’ll be posting here and there, but for now, i’ve gone west to where the ‘beautiful people’ are. to where you are pretty much always – comparatively speaking (to like, anywhere) - too fat, too old and too poor.  i kind of never "got" LA but i want to.  and i am willing to love LA – if it will let me.  i will hang by the beach and soak up the califiornia vibe and then i am back to nashville for a night, only to take off the next day to nyc to do my usual thing – which totally revolves around food.  and as one might imagine based on my last trip home, i am still going to dine quite well. and so this is when i will get to practice balance. and then i get to practice even more balance a week later in chicago at alinea and trotter’s.

so, it’s looking like if all goes well i will be one helluva balanced woman come july.  and then i will throw a party and invite you and i will make this mint stracciatella for everyone and only eat one scoop.

which brings us back to all of you summer loving, ice cream eating people out there.  why not go and make yourself this minty custardy ice cream?  it is truly wonderful.  the recipe is in david’s book and if you’re an ice cream aficionado and don’t own it, i urge you to get it.

and oh by the way – if there is a next life? 

i am so coming back as a person with the metabolism of a hummingbird…

there are times when the mere thought of whipping up a dinner is just more than i can bear.  and although you may have guessed this about me, the act of cooking  – just being in my kitchen and creating something delicious – is in my world, one of life’s most wondrous pleasures. 

but still…

instead of a full blown production including a trip to ‘whole foods’, there are those times that dinner begins with a simple charcuterie plate. these days it’s mostly all about d’artganan’s saucisson sec and duck prosciutto. but i’ve also become somewhat enamored  with this smoked liverwurst - and with an exceptional cheese or two and some white truffle honey - coupled with the latest greatest cracker find, what more could you ever ask for?  oh, except these crazy olives that i somehow fell upon last year… i urge you to try them.  they are meaty and addictive and most definitely unique

or maybe instead,  a bowl of some interesting artisan pasta with some amazing olive oil and the best parmegiano you can lay your hands upon, grated liberally with perhaps an anchovy or two thrown in with some very finely minced garlic.  or that same pasta with a tin of really amazing smoked piquillo peppers stuffed with tuna, the can thrown into the boiling pasta water to heat.  i’d happily take either of these alongside my favorite salad of romaine, arugula, walnut oil and – well, the best salt that you can lay your hands upon…  it’s all about the pantry, people.  it’s the power of the pantry.

i look forward to these simple dinners more than you might expect.  they are borne of the immediate options at hand, with the added bonus of a light cleanup, all the more reason that they most definitely have their place within a life that is sometimes a bit too busy, sometimes a bit too lazy – often numbering a few times a week around here. 

but, quite honestly, another aspect that motivates me is that i’m perpetually curious about what extraordinary products exist in the universe.  and it can be overwhelming.  so much great food, so little time… the grocery bill goes relentlessly over budget, guiltlessly spilling into the restaurant allowance.  as it should…

recently we had a pantry dinner and afterwards, i was craving something sweet.  so i dug deep into the ‘way back’ – and came up with some italian organic candied orange peel and a bar of pralus single note chocolate.  nothing unusual.  nothing complicated.  but for me, it’s as good as nearly anything…

i may not be jetting off to europe this spring, but my pantry is quite the culinary wonderland.  and you know, i feel pretty damn good about it all…

on sunday, day 3 of a 5 day quasi-fast that consisted of tea and agave with an occasional tangerine,  i decided on a whim to make my guy some chocolate sorbet.  it’s about his second favorite thing to eat, rice pudding being way ahead of just about anything else on the planet.  i knew i had all the right ingredients on hand – it only takes a few - and that it’d be a pretty simple thing to whip up.  my ice cream maker bowl was in the freezer wrapped in a plastic bag and ready to go.  and this kind of thing is easy for me to make when i’m not really eating.  no strong smells.  no onion or garlic.  no roasting meat.  or even worse, that boiling pasta smell that turns me on…

this is all it is.  this and some water.  oh and sugar,

which then turns into this…  a velvety smooth liquid that gets chilled for a few hours in the fridge.

which then turns into this. 

it’s liebovitz’s recipe from ‘the perfect scoop’.  after making his salted caramel ice cream, he’s my go to guy for all things frozen.  i used what i’d consider to be pretty fine ingredients.  the retail value on this quart and a half of sorbet was enough to kinda make me giggle in a wondrous kinda way because i can buy a pretty good rendition for about a fourth of the price.  cary said mine was less grainy than our fave market brand ciao bella but after accepting the complement and thinking on it, suddenly i realized why.  mine had a ton of fat in it from the cocoa butter in the pralus chocolate bars while ciao bella’s version is 100% fat free using only the dutch processed cocoa powder. 

so this sorbet, made with some of the finest chocolate money can buy falls under the category of sheer decadence.  it’s holiday sorbet.  certainly not yer every day sorbet…  nope, this is top notch restaurant sorbet.  thomas keller sorbet.  yeah thomas, how ya gonna beat this?  i can’t imagine one upping this icey confection.  for what it is, a plain, pure unadulterated chocolate sorbet, we’ve hit the pinnacle.

wow

the pinnacle…

wow

that and this:  the phone rings and it’s my mom’s voice. “hiya honey, i just love the blog – it’s so wonderful.  i sent it to my friend marie who is my food guru and she says you write like james beard.” my reply was a somewhat muffled “oh, that’s nice” due to a mouthful of chocolate zucchini muffin while trying to imagine what james beard writes like, all the while knowing that this was most probably quite the stretch for just too many reasons to list.  to which my mom then asks “what are you eating?’ and i say “you’ll read about it in my next blog entry.  it’s a chocolate zucchini muffin.” to which she immediately responds “oh claudia, don’t gain all that weight back that you worked so hard at losing…”. 

it’s a wonder that i can function on this planet…

but that all being said and moving right along,  i do eat my fair share of dark chocolate and i had all this zucchini, so i had that vision of the guy rounding the corner with the peanut butter and the other guy with a zucchini except the peanut butter was a jar of let’s say fudge and… ok, i’ll stop.

after a quick google search and sizing up about half a dozen variations on the theme, i found a july ’05 blog entry from “101 cookbooks” and it felt right.  especially her suggestion of using coconut oil instead of vegetable oil.  the coconut oil that i use is raw and unrefined – extra virgin if you will – just wonderful.  and it’s much better for you than cooking with the wesson type highly processed oils.  spread it on your toast and you will be very happy.  it’s better than butter!  ok – it’s different than butter but i couldn’t resist saying that…

and they came out excellent!  totally moist and devils food cake like.  i used raw unprocessed cocoa powder that was mucho expensivo – bought during a phase when i thought i could be all raw all the time – and the chips were a vegan all natural bittersweet mini-chip.  the cinnamon and allspice along with the chocolate and coconut oil gave off an aroma that was intoxicating .  it all totally worked together. and there is no way one could ever guess they were loaded with zucchini.   i made 6 muffins and one loaf.  after plugging all the info into my food/diet/nutrition program that i sporadically obsess over, they came out to about 265 calories each and 15 grams of fat.  i allotted myself 2.  cary got 3 and i gave one away to my dear friend jesse who meets me on most mornings on belle meade blvd to ride my bike.  (i eat therefore i ride – my mantra while climbing the hills).  the loaf is going too – my friend dave is going home with that tonight after i make him dinner.  so, bye bye chocolate zucchini foodstuff.  it was nice to meet you…

BUT howzabout this?  just how serendipitous could it be that heidi fom 101 cookbooks had a brand spanking new blog entry entitled ‘my special zucchini bread recipe’.  i mean, wouldn’t you have to take this as a sign?  so today or tomorrow i am baking this one too and that should about cover my baking stint for the season. 

i just can’t handle the guilt.