Top 10 Best Things I Made in 2010

Leaving a year behind can mean a whole new start, new resolutions, shaking off the old bad habits and acquiring new ones (bad and good!). Not so with food. When a good recipe enters my repertoire, it bears repeating and improving.

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve without a top ten list, and like other food bloggers I've assembled my Top 10 Best Things I Made in 2010. Some of these I made for the first time in 2010, some are old favorites that were presented to other people for the first time in 2010. Some I've written about here and some I just never got around to writing about or never had pictures for. In any case, they are memorable and sure to be repeated in 2011 and beyond.

10. Silken Comfort Tofu

I thought about writing about this tofu dish many times. It is warm, spicy, sweet and nutty. It is truly a representation of its name of silken comfort. It's not the tasteless tofu that many people fear. It is a treat, and since someone else wrote about it before me, I'll just refer you to that blog.

http://www.food52.com/blog/420_silken_comfort_tofu

9. Raspberry Ribbon Shortbread
A simple shortbread with raspberry jam baked onto it is the perfect Christmas cookie. (See recipe below)

8. Roasted Potatoes from Cook's Illustrated


The trick, my friend, is to parboil the potatoes first, then toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, before roasting them. This gives them a crisp exterior, creamy interior, and great flavor and color.

7. Haitian Chicken Puffs

These make a great appetizer. They are spicy and savory and anything with puff pastry is bound to be a success.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001981753

6. Miso Butter

I just made this a few weeks ago and waxed effusively about it. I can't imagine making steak without miso butter now.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/12/warmth.html

5. Winter Cabbage Salad



I've got to throw a salad in here, and this is the best one of the year, edging out a nice Thanksgiving spinach and pear salad, a mushroom, fennel and parmigiano-reggiano layered salad, a frisee, ham and egg salad with dijon dressing, and any kind of salad with avocados.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-bad-rap.html

4. New York Style Crumb Cake

You will look for excuses to make this crumb cake. Suddenly you'll be throwing tea parties and showers, even though you're a celebrated hermit. You'll volunteer to bring in the cake for the office potluck and the 4th of July picnic. You'll invite yourself to your neighbor's annual summer luau and claim the cake is a Hawaiian staple. It's that good.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/New-York-Style-Crumb-Cake-358217

3. Chicken and Dumplings

This is the real thing. Boiling a whole chicken to make your own stock, gravy, and topping it off with dumplings is comforting and makes your feel a little like Martha Stewart or a settler of the old west or something.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001134065

2. Bacon Shrimp and Grits


I wrote about how decadent this recipe was, but it's also great because once you've made it you don't really need the recipe anymore. What could be easier than chopped onions and garlic, butter and olive oil, grits, bacon, and shrimp cooked in bacon fat?

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/05/decadent.html

1. Double Chocolate Mocha Brownies


Dense and chocolaty, they are my favorite kind of brownie. There was a time when I never made brownies from scratch. They always came from a box and they were perfectly acceptable. But let me remind you that desserts are a lot of calories and perfectly acceptable is not good enough. They need to be AMAZING. And these are.

http://cook-it-yourself.blogspot.com/2010/02/kind-of-brownie-i-like.html

Here's wishing for a 2011 with as many great new finds and rediscovering old favorites, in food, friends, and life. Cheers!

Raspberry Ribbon Shortbread
Yield: 4 dozen bars

Dough:

½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

½ cup vegetable shortening

½ cup powdered sugar

1 large egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour

¼ tsp salt

½ cup seedless raspberry jam for filling (stir until smooth in a small bowl)

Beat butter, shortening, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla in mixer bowl at medium speed until light and fluffy. With mixer on low speed, add salt and flour. Beat just until blended. Divide dough into four equal parts and flatten each slightly into a disk. Wrap each in plastic and refrigerate for a least 2 hours until firm or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, shape each disk of dough into a 12 inch long “rope” then flatten to 5/8 inch thick and about 2 inches wide. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, 2 inches or so apart. Using the handle of a wooden spoon, press a ¼ inch deep groove along the center of each rope.

Bake 12 minutes. Remove from oven and gently press grooves down again using spoon handle. Fill each groove carefully with jam. Return to oven and bake 8-10 minutes more until firm and light golden brown at edges. Remove pan from oven.

Let cool 10 minutes on pan, then gently cut into ¾ - 1 inch wide slices. Transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

Homey

I'm spending this last week of the year being homey. Which is not to be confused with being homely.
Homey: comfortably informal and inviting; cozy; homelike
Homely: lacking in physical attractiveness; not beautiful; unattractive; not having elegance, refinement or cultivation.

What I mean to say is, I'm spending some time at home at this week, making my place warm and cozy, comfortable and inviting, and part of doing that is cooking up some yummy food. Yummy is kind of a homey word itself. When you read a restaurant review, you see words like "delicious" and "tantalizing" and "excellent". But rarely do you see "yummy". And yet, as a home chef, I cannot think of a better word to describe the taste of cookies, cupcakes, stews, soups, bread puddings, and roasts that come from my homey kitchen.

Homey is like homely in that it is not aspiring to be elegant, refined, or cultivated. It is only aspiring to be yummy. It makes you feel good, and that is often just enough.

Happy New Year and enjoy this homey recipe for Pork and Wild Rice Soup. I ended up overcooking it a bit, and it turned into less of a soup and more of a pork and wild rice dish but the flavors are solid, and extremely yummy.



Pork and Wild Rice Soup (Cooking Light)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 pound pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/3 cup brown and wild rice blend
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 serrano chiles, seeded and minced
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
• 1 (32-ounce) carton fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
• 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoons crumbled queso fresco
• 1 sliced peeled avocado
• 24 baked tortilla chips

Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown pork on all sides. Remove from pan. Heat remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in pan, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add rice, onion, garlic, and chiles; sauté 3 minutes or until onion is tender. Add pork, 1 cup water, oregano, broth, and beans; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in cilantro, juice, salt, and pepper; simmer 2 minutes. Top each serving with cheese, avocado, and chips.

Warmth

December snuck up on me. I feel like I'm not quite over summer. Summer was good to me this year. It seduced me with warm winds and sunshine. It heated me from within. I think I walked around with a little summer glow for weeks after the last 80 degree day, pretending it was just gone for a day or two instead of months.

But there's no denying when December rolls around, the halls are decked and the first snowstorm descends, that summer is really gone. So I've been looking for a recipe that can heat me from within. There are soups and curries and braised meats that do the job nicely of course. But it's not just the heat of a spicy curry that I want. That hits your tongue and burns and titillates but doesn't last. It's a flirtation. I'm looking for a deeper warmth. Like being wrapped in a fleecy robe, the flavor permeates every pore.

What I found last week was unusual and amazing and completely unexpected. It was a steak topped with miso butter, and while you might think that sounds weird or interesting but not particularly warm, let me emphasize the butter part of miso butter. Because butter is warming. Maybe because it adds layers of fat to your body - I won't deny that possibility! But melt some butter over a good steak and it adds such a depth of flavor, especially when mixed with some salty miso, soy sauce, rice vinegar and ginger, that you are warmed from your tongue to your toes.

This recipe from Bon Appetit is for a Coriander Crusted Steak with Miso Butter, but I say you make that miso butter and put it on anything in the vicinity. A nice lean steak is best, otherwise it's too fatty to take the additional fatty topping. A note on buying miso paste - I had to buy a huge bag once as that was the only size I could find but it seems to last forever in the fridge. I've used it for salad dressings quite a bit, and now I'll be using it for miso butter as much as possible.



Miso Butter (Bon Appetit)
Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon red miso paste
1 tabespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sake

Mix all ingredients through soy sauce. Cook the steak in a skillet and reserve your skillet. Add miso butter and sake, and boil until slightly thickened and reduced to 1 /4 cup, whisking often, about 1 minute. Spoon over steak.