A few Wednesdays ago found me somewhere particularly unexpected: on the rooftop of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel with about a million bees. The bees are the project of Chef Gavin Stephenson, who was accidentally inspired after a chance meeting with Corky Luster, Bee Ambassador. I’ve heard that happens. What makes this particularly interesting though is that Stephenson, who shoulders the title beekeeper as well as chef, is allergic to bees, so epi-pens are always close at hand (luckily, he hasn’t had need of them yet).

The bees, I learned, all feast fairly close by, on the maples that are scattered around downtown. The bees all orient themselves by flying straight from the hive in a single direction. So, the best place to get stung is to stand right there. If you stand off to the side, they pretty much ignore you.

They are housing two types of bees at the Fairmont, although for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what kind they were. I was snapping, not taking down notes. The bees naturally segregate themselves into their own hives, and produce very different looking and tasting honey. One type is clear and golden, with citrus notes while the other has a greenish tint and I swear has a hint of freshly mowed sweet grass. Both are delicious.

I’ve been feeling a bit bee-like myself for the past few months. Flitting from project to project, and making the honey. It’s been chaotic and busy and pretty much wonderful. And, now, I finally have some great news to share from a couple of those projects!

First off, the food photography & styling book I began last year is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

I couldn’t be more excited about this book. While there are some great books out there on food photography now, I think this book is a bit different. Sure, there are lots of tips and techniques outlined by me on lighting and exposure as well as food styling basics that don’t require toxic chemicals, but what really makes me excited about this book are the case studies about some of my favorite food photographers and stylists currently working in the field. I had amazing contributions from Colin Cooke, Iain Bagwell, Lara Hata, Sara Remington, Lisa Golden Schroeder, Dennis Becker, Charlotte Tolhurst, David Land, Francine Zaslow, David Clancy, Valery Rizzo, Johan Vanbecelaere, Keiko Oikawa, Diane Cu & Todd Porter, each sharing their personal stories, tips and beautiful work. I know I learned a thing or two from them and I hope that you get as much from their insights as I did!

Right now, I’m just putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of my next cookbook! I’ve kept kind of quiet on this one, mostly because the publishing process is so long and I know that tempting you with something you can’t get for over a year is kind of crazy. But, the time has come to share a little and ask for some help. You might ask yourself what cookbook could possibly follow up one on Doughnuts. More doughnuts? Nope. But, definitely snack food!

But not just any snack food. After doughnuts, I started playing around with more whole grains and better sugars, and my next book is all about that: Real Snacks: Sweet & Salty Treats Made WIthout All the Junk. Think Twinkies, made with whole grains and no high fructose corn syrup. Or Doritos, with no MSG or Red #5. These are snacks that taste great, have the flavors we all crave, but made from real food so you don’t have to worry about consuming all those “ates” and “ites.” For those of you (or those with kids) with allergies, there are all sorts of suggestions for how to make version that are safe to eat, including nut free, gluten free and vegan options. There’s also a whole appendix on DIY pantry staples like powdered sugar, yogurt coating (for pretzels and the like), garlic & onion powder, vanilla extract, evaporated milk and chocolate syrup!

The book isn’t out until next fall (see, publishing takes a long time!), but I am looking for a few recipe testers to help me put the finishing touches on the recipes. If you are interested, send me mail with your favorite junk food and any dietary restrictions and I’ll send you a recipe or two to try.

There’s much more to come, including a little tour of my new food photo studio down here in Portland, and several other great cookbooks I’ve shot over the last couple of months, but now I have to fly!

You get the texture of a tea cake and the flavor of a doughnut. Drizzle with doughnut glaze and slather on some rhubarb orange compote. The perfect weekend treat.

Ever since I started telling people that I was going to write a cookbook on doughnuts, I’ve gotten questions about whether it was going to include any savory recipes. Like me, many of you out there love your doughnuts, but also tend to crave salty over sweet. I’ve been promising some savory doughnut recipes ever since, and I must say, I wish I had gotten around to it much, much sooner.

Since I basically started my whole doughnut obsession around Cinco de Mayo with margarita doughnuts, what better way to jump into savory doughnuts than this: green chile and chicken doughnuts! Oh, sure, it’s more of a New Mexican flavor combination than a true Mexican one, but then again, it seems that it is the US that has turned the 5th of May into a new reason to party. And really, can you ever go wrong with green chile?

You can do these doughnuts a couple of ways. If you want easy, just make raised doughnuts as usual (either with  one of the recipes in Doughnuts or one of the ones on the site), but use 1/2 of the sugar and twice the salt. I subbed in 25% whole wheat flour in these, and loved it. Cut them out as doughnuts (they’ll just fry easier that way!) And then, load up a couple with warmed up green chile with shredded chicken, a little diced onion, maybe some cilantro, definitely a fried egg, a sprinkle of cojita, and a good dollop of sour cream. Oh my. Breakfast fit for a Donut King.

Or, you can get fancy. And by fancy I mean stuffed. Roll out your dough a bit thinner than normal and cut out rounds (without holes), and then place a bit of the shredded chicken, green chile, cojita, onion and whatever else you like in the center. Be careful not to overfill though… you want it to be less than 2 tablespoons all in. Then, top with another round, and crimp closed (I use the same cutter, which trims off any extra and pinches the edges together well). Proof, fry and you have what I will call with no shame an Empanut. Sort of like a doughnut, sort of like an empanada, all kinds of delicious. You could, of course, then proceed as above and smother in more green chile and cojita. Or, you can simply take a bite.

Or, if you really want to get crazy… cut out a ton of holes, fry them up, and use them in place of the chips in your favorite chilaqueles recipe.

Oh savory doughnuts… what in the world took me so long!

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!

The same goes for her new book. Between the pages of relaxed and comforting light filled photos, are recipes that call softly to you. Even before I got the book, I was dreaming of the biscuits with their thousands of flakey layers. I can’t wait to make the soba, the oat cakes, the granola, the not so potato salad. Not to mention the book contains one of the best head notes for a recipe that I’ve ever read… the turnip chips that Heidi admits are “the least perfect chips you’ll ever make.” (but, of course, they are well worth it anyway).

So enthused am I by this book, that I didn’t want to take the time to go to the store to make something from it. Nor did I need to. I had a bag of pita bread left over from a party that sorely needed to be used, and what do you know, the recipe right next to the turnip chips was a recipe for pita chips. As someone who is really not allowed to sit within 2 feet of an open bag of pita chips (or else there will no longer be a bag of pita chips), this recipe is a blessing and a curse. For now, I’m sticking with blessing. At least until I’ve gorged myself on them. This recipe is definitely going to be dangerous.

Heidi’s recipe calls for garlic, olive oil, butter and sea salt, but that’s really just to get you started with creating your own flavors. Like most of the book, the recipes are there as a framework and inspiration for you to make to suit your own tastes (like I think all good cookbooks should). Having been completely garliced out a week ago after making a very potent chimichurri sauce, I skipped the garlic and made one batch with freshly chopped cilantro and salt, and another with sumac and chile powder. I used store bought pita (the thicker, fluffier kind rather than the almost all pocket kind) for my chips, but I think next time I’ll make the pita from scratch again.

Baked up in a 350F oven 10 to 15 minutes until crisp, they are fantastic with hummus or other dip of your choice, or for that matter just on their own. Do watch carefully on the baking… there is a very fine line between crisp and a brick. I preferred the chips that were just a bit golden around the edges rather than dark throughout. Three full sized pitas make enough for 4 as a snack, unless, of course, I am in the house.

By the way, Heidi will be in Seattle at the end of April for a book signing at my studio! I hope you’ll be able to join us to celebrate this gorgeous book.

I have to hand it to Kim Boyce, who’s Good to the Grain simply inspires me more and more. I was in the process of indexing the book on Gobbledybook (remember that? Yes, I’m still, very slowly, entering cookbooks), and bookmarking just about every other recipe to make, when I came across the Honey Hazelnut Cookies. They looked like the perfect little biscuits… just the thing for a cup of tea. And then, I thought, what if… what if I added some cocoa powder. Wouldn’t that be something?

Then I thought, what if, instead of the little tea biscuits, what if I used a basic chocolate chip cookie type dough instead. The biscuits (which I still want to make) are a drier cookie. I wanted more of a soft, moist dough. Chocolate chip cookie dough, especially the whole wheat version in the same book, could be just the ticket. Kim’s dough is 100% whole wheat, but given I was adding ground hazelnuts, I decided to go with a combination of whole wheat, graham and all-purpose flours. I’m sure you could do any sorts of flour combinations, depending on how your tastes run. I love the little extra richness the graham and whole wheat flours give.

Under-baked, just slightly, the way I like my chocolate chip cookies, they are crisped just around the edges and soft and just little gooey inside.

Today, I started simply. I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for 50% (by weight) of the all purpose flour in my Chai cake doughnut recipe (“Doughnuts”) topped with a honey glaze. Wow. The whole wheat pastry flour adds a lovely nutty flavor, but the doughnuts are still light and fluffy with a subtle and pleasing crispness to the crust. I’m quite sure you could make the same recipe with 100% whole wheat pastry flour for even more wheaty flavor.

Next I’ll be trying whole wheat raised doughnuts, buckwheat cake doughnuts and maybe something really crazy like chocolate pumpernickel!

What is your favorite whole grain to bake with?

I am not a stalker, I am not a stalker, I am not a stalker. Ok. Let’s be real here. I am a cookbook stalker, and my stalkee is the collection of cookbooks with Sara Remington’s photos. It started innocently enough with a book here, and a book there. Now, I know better, and I can pretty much count on, before even checking the credit page, that the cookbook that I just picked up and coveted was shot by Sara. So when Sara herself told me that The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook was one of her favorites to shoot, it was only moments before my One-Click finger got busy.

And then, of all things, at the Tom Douglas Cookbook Social last week, who was at the next table? Rachel Saunders, Ms Blue Chair Fruit Company herself, the author of this gorgeous tome of jams, and she was just even lovelier than Sara’s adorable photos made her out to be. (speaking of adorable, check out the photo on page 167… love!). And, she even bought copy of Doughnuts from me.

Making jams is one of those things that makes you feel like a kid playing scientist and I was one of those kids who played mad scientist a lot. I was always out collecting herbs or flowers and making my own “perfumes” (which was weird because I never was interested in wearing perfume). What I love about the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook (beyond the photos of course) is that it brings that same sense of wonder to each mixture… and encourages you to get the basic techniques of jamming, jellying and marmalading (is that really a word?) down so you can then make your own concoctions. That is just my style.

Particularly on days when I have a very large mishmash of left over fruits. This particular week, I had about 30 pounds of varying citrus fruits on hand. Mandarins, meyer lemons, Thai limes, yuzu lemons, pomelos, grapefruits, oro blanco, valencia oranges and quite a big bag of calamondin. Calamondin, if you haven’t seen them before look like the manadarin version of a kumquat. They are so adorable, they fool you into thinking you want to just pop them into your mouth… but unless you are a big fan of tart, I wouldn’t recommend it. Calamondin have the flavor of a lime, very very tart, with just a hint of sweetness. They make a fantastic mixer for tangy cocktails like mojitos or maragritas (or sans alcohol, make a very fine calamondin-ade). They also happen to be a fine choice for marmalade. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook (henceforth known as BCJC) doesn’t actually have a recipe for calamondin, but there are a considerable number of kumquat marmalades, so I started there. I was particularly struck by the recipe for a quick strawberry-kumquat marmalade (page 134) that cooks up in an afternoon (rather than the 3 day method that many of the other marmalades require). I thought I happened to have some strawberries in the freezer, but as it turns out, all I had were huckleberries and blueberries, which I decided would make a fine variation. And it was in fact, very fine indeed.

That is, until this year, and the little summer that couldn’t. I sadly pulled up my remaining tomato plants after the rains weren’t stopping, and picked the remaining green fruits. It was around this same time, I got a little treat in the mail… “Gifts Cooks Love: Recipes for Giving” (Sur La Table, Diane Morgan) from the publisher. Call it kismet, but there I was with a bucket full of green tomatoes and a beautiful book with a recipe to use them.

Before jumping to the recipe, I want to tell you a bit about Gifts Cooks Love. This is a beautiful book. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s packed with Sara Remington’s stunning photography, and charming styling by Kim Kissling, Tina Stamos, Kerrie Sherrel Walsh and Lori Engels. There are jars and ribbons, boxes and bags, and most of all beautiful, giftable food. There are recipes for candies, crackers, preserves, sauces, liqueurs and even cured meats. But most of all, I find the book inspiring to take dishes I already love and make them into something special to give, even if you aren’t all that crafty.

Now back to the green tomatoes and the chutney. Once you get through all the chopping, the chutney is easy to make. The ingredients stew for about 1 hour until the flavors meld. The flavors get even deeper and richer after storing for a week or so (I stored mine in the fridge rather than truly canning it). The chutney is sweet and savory, with a nice little kick from the jalapenos. Serve it up with some crackers or flat bread, and you have a fantastic appetizer.

]]> http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/10/19/green-tomato-chutney/feed/ 12 http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/09/21/raised-doughnuts-the-variation/ http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/09/21/raised-doughnuts-the-variation/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:58:51 +0000 L http://www.laraferroni.com/2010/09/21/raised-doughnuts-the-variation/ Did you know that it has been almost a year now since I sent in my final Doughnuts manuscript? Plenty of time to make more doughnuts and learn a few more things. One thing I learned during my dive into doughnuts is if you ask who makes the best doughnut in town to 10 different people, you’ll probably get 10 different answers.

For example, some folks don’t like a strong yeast flavor in their raised doughnut. Just one look at my yeast raised dough, the first one in the book, you’ll see that I’m not one of those people. I like the dough to have some flavor to it; I enjoy a little yeasty kick at the end (not to mention the insane lightness and softness it gives to the dough). And apparently, so do my recipe testers and neighbors. But, after a local taste test against the top doughnut shops in Seattle last June, I was inspired to give my raised dough recipe a little tweaking to see if I could get doughnut shop results with a less yeasty finish.

As it turns out, the variation is insanely simple: use less yeast and wait longer. In fact, I’ve tried it with 1/2 the yeast called for in the original recipe (and twice the proofing time), and gotten nice, light, well-proofed doughnuts without the yeasty finish.

Here’s cut…

to proofed in 37 minutes!

So, if you are one of those folks who prefer a less yeasty dough, give this one a shot. You can apply this same change to the chocolate raised and vegan raised doughs too.

Of course, it was far, far too late to add this variation to the printed book. Thank goodness for the blog!

Raised Doughnuts

Makes 8 to 14 doughnuts

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon active dry yeast, divided
1 cup whole milk, heated to 110˚F, divided
2 to 21/2 cups (320 to 400 grams) bread flour, divided
2 tablespoons (30 grams) superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup (1/2 stick or 2 ounces) unsalted butter or vegetable shortening
Vegetable oil for frying

In a medium bowl, dissolve 1 tablespoon of the yeast into 3/4 cup of the milk. Add 3/4 cup of the flour and stir to create a smooth paste. Cover and let rest in a warm spot for 30 minutes.

Combine the remaining milk and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the rested flour mixture along with the vanilla and egg yolks. Mix until smooth. Turn off the mixer and add 1 cup of the remaining flour and top with the sugar and salt. Mix on low for about 30 seconds or until the dough starts to come together. Add the butter and mix until it becomes incorporated, about 30 seconds. Switch to a dough hook and add more flour, about 1/4 cup at a time with the mixer turned off, kneading the dough at medium speed between additions, until the dough pulls completely away from the sides of the bowl and is smooth and not too sticky. It will be very soft and moist, but not so sticky that you can’t roll it out. You may have flour left over. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place for 30 minutes. Gently degass the dough, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (and up to 12 hours).

Line a baking sheet with a lightly floured non-terry dish towel. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to 1/2 inch thick. With a doughnut or cookie cutter, cut out 3-inch-diameter rounds with 1-inch-diameter holes (for filled doughnuts, don’t cut out the holes).

Place the doughnuts on the baking sheet at least 1 inch apart and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit in a warm spot to proof until they almost double in size, about 30 to 40 minutes, testing at five-minute intervals. To test whether the dough is ready, touch lightly with a fingertip. If it springs back immediately, it needs more time. If it springs back slowly, it is ready. If it doesn’t spring back at all, it has overproofed; you can punch it down and reroll it once.

While the doughnuts are proofing, heat a heavy-bottomed pot with at least 2 inches of oil until a deep-fat thermometer registers 360˚F. With a metal spatula, carefully place the doughnuts in the oil. Fry for 1 to 2 minutes per side, or until light golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain on a wire rack over a paper towel, and let cool slightly before glazing.

So here’s the reason to let your cake doughnuts go stale. Doughnut Truffles. Or, even better, Boozy Doughnut Truffles.

Bring these to a potluck, and you’ll turn some heads.

Here’s what you do:

First crumble up your cake doughnuts. Don’t worry about getting super fine crumbs. Just break up the big pieces.

Add a bit of moisture of your choosing. My choosing was homemade cherry liqueur. You might like Frangelico, Kahlua, Baileys, Grand Marnier, orange juice or espresso. Make sure it isn’t anything too sweet, particularly if your doughnuts are glazed already… you don’t want teeth cracking. And, just add a little at a time, stir it in, and then see if you can make a little ball that just holds together. Make a bunch of balls. You can chill them in the fridge for about 5 minutes, which will help the chocolate set faster… but it isn’t necessary.

Now, melt some chocolate. I like dark chocolate, but milk or white are great too. Ideally, you’ll temper it, but I didn’t bother. Just make sure you melt enough that you can submerge a whole ball. Then, drop a doughnut ball into the chocolate, and using a spoon, coat it completely trying not to move it around too much (or you’ll get crumbs in your chocolate). Use the spoon to scoop out the ball, lightly tap to get rid of the excess chocolate, and then roll the truffle onto a sheet of waxed paper to set. Repeat.

Let the chocolate set completely before touching them… you might want to set them in the fridge for a few minutes to speed this process along.

These are equally great with chocolate cake doughnuts, regular cake doughnuts, gluten free cake doughnuts, old fashioned doughnuts, you name it. Just crumble, moisten, dip and set. Then eat. Quickly. Before anyone else sees you.

(PS: If you are the crafty type, use the same crumble to make cake pops from doughnuts instead of cake!)