Fondue Parties

I remember my last big Fondue Party.  We had 10 people and it was the new episode for Dallas-Who Shot Jr.   I'm not sure of the year, but sometime in the late 70's.   10 people as you can imagine was a big challenge.  We had boiling oil for the chicken & steak, three different types of cheeses and a chocolate fondue.  Also, at the stove top, was a friend making crab rangoon, deep fried.  There was a lot going on, but everyone had so much fun.  Oh, we also had a healthy Caesar salad, not much of that was eaten.

Recently, I went to the Melting Pot with friends in Las Vegas.  It was very expensive and disappointing.  The cheeses were adequate as was the service.  What happened to the Fondue Party's of yesteryear? To socializing and dripping cheese on your good tablecloth and losing your bread cubes in the cheese.  I think we need to bring back Fondue Party's.  And with that, I have a few good Fondue books for sale on my Amazon storefront, www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks and a couple of recipes to share with you.  And I encourage you to try a Fondue Party with your friends!

The Fondue Party Cookbook by Beth Merriman for $19.99
Fondue by Fiona Smith for $8.95
Fondue by Szwillus for $5.00
The Fondue Cook Book by Dan Callahan for $23.99
Better Homes and Gardens Fondue and Tabletop Cooking for $12.99
The Gold Medal Fondue Cookbook for $3.99
It's Fun to Fondue by M.N. Thaler for $21.99
The Beta Sigma Phi Fondue & Buffet Cookbook for $19.99

Now for a recipes:
from the The Fondue Party Cookbook by Beth Merriman
Cheese Strata
12 slices of day-old bread
1/2 pound shredded cheddar cheese
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 tsp prepared mustard
1 tbsp minced onion
1 tsp salt
Dash Tabasco sauce

Trim crusts from bread.  Arrange 6 bread slices in greased baking dish 12x8x9 or 11x9; cover with cheese and then cover with remaining bread slices.  Beat eggs, blend in milk and remaining ingredients; pour over bread.  Chill 1 hour.  Bake uncovered in a 325F oven for about 30 minutes or puffy and brown.  Serve at once.  Makes 6 servings.

from It's Fun to Fondue by M.N. Thaler
Fondue Suisse
1 pound Swiss cheese, finely diced
3 tbsp flour
1 clove garlic
2 cups dry white wine
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup kirsch
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/8 tsp nutmeg
dunkables

Place cheese in a bowl, sprinkle flour, mix lightly.  Cut garlic in halves, rub inside of fondue pot until well flavored then discard garlic. 
Pour white into pot and place over low heat until bubbles start rising to the surface (DO NOT BOIL).  Add lemon juice at this point if required.  Add cheese by handfuls, constantly stirring with wooden fork or spoon until cheese is melted.  Be sure each handful is melted before you add the next.  After last of cheese has been added and mixture begins to bubble, quickly add kirsch and seasoning, stirring until blended.
Serves 4

Happy Cooking!

High Tea

The "Victorian Railroad Ladies" & the "Victorian High Tea Society" of Las Vegas are meet-ups, devoted to having monthly or semi-monthly High Teas.  Complete with Sunday attire and fashionable hats.   I am going  to one in March called "Kiss the Victorian Easter Bunny" Victorian High Tea Potluck & Hat Swap.

There are quite a few rules regarding the amount of time spent or not spent at any High Tea.  I found many interesting items in my "Betty Crocker's Guide to Easy Entertaining" available on my Amazon storefront, www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks as a collectible for $29.99.

Specifically I was looking for food ideas, but found so much more.

Pinwheel sandwiches are made by cutting crusts from an unsliced loaf of tender fresh bread, and cutting 1/4" slices the long way of the loaf.  Spread each slice with softened butter and any well-seasoned filling mixture. The more positive the color of the filling, the more dramatic the pinwheel design will be.  Roll up the full length of the slice, secure with a couple of toothpicks and chill.  Cut in 1/4" slices just before serving.

Tiny tarts, are served hot, are among the most delightful of tea dainties.  These should be bite-sized, about an inch across.  They may be made the day before.

Tiny cream puffs are delicious with sweet fillings, also.  Try whipped cream sweetened with confectioners' sugar and flavored with almond, or mixed with drained chopped maraschino cherries or with finely chopped nuts.

Flower like petits fours with a variety of pastel-colored icings and decorations, dainty nut and date bars, shortbread made in star or rosette shapes with cooky press, macaroons, and icebox cookies make a tempting variety.

So for those of you considering putting on a High Tea, I would recommend getting this book- with lots of other entertaining ideas, or you could contact Trudy Platzer, founder of the Victorian RR Ladies & Victorian High Tea Society for more hints.

Happy Cooking!

Clos Montmarte

There's a vineyard that still exists in the middle of Paris, in Montmarte, the last survivor of the many, mostly abbey-owned, that were in the city when it had walls, few bridges and a great iron cauldron near the river in which counterfeiters were boiled in oil.

The vineyard is at the corner of rue des Saules and rue Saint-Vincent, a few streets from Sacre'-Coeur.  It is small, producing only five hundred bottles a year that are sold in the mairie of the 18th arronissement and also at auction.  It's called Clos Montmartre, not expensive and not great, but from the heart of the heart of France.
This is from "Life Is Meals" by James and Kay Salter.

Remember the Swiss Miss Chocolate Roll, the one with the whipped cream inside.  This is a version of a bigger Swiss Miss Chocolate Roll.  I found this recipe in the "Tektronix Employees Kookbook", which is available on my Amazon storefront www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks as a collectible for $19.99.  Tektronix is a company based in Beaverton, OR, that produces Oscilloscopes.  The employees put this together in 1965.

Chocolate Roll
1/2 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1/8 tsp. salt
chocolate sauce
2 rounded tbsp cocoa
5 egg whites
1/2 pint whipping cream, whipped and sweetened

Beat the yolks and stir into cocoa, with half the sugar.  Fold in well beaten whites and remainder of sugar.  Bake in a well-greased cookie sheet in slow oven (300-325 F).  When cool, remove from pan and spread with whipped cream.  Roll up like a jelly roll.  Slice and top each serving with chocolate sauce.

Happy Cooking!

Spiced Nuts

I like to cook, bake, etc what I like to make.  I have heard many things about spiced nuts and decided I needed to make them.  I am glad I did.  I can see a future for me and spiced nuts, developing new flavors and ideas.  And being adaptable.  The recipe that follows calls for Allspice.  I remember growing up with Allspice.  But when I went to the grocery store (s-I made an effort to find the correct spice), I couldn't find it.  Finally, I settled for a 21 spice deal found at Trader Joe's.  It worked.

When the nuts, first came out of the oven I tried them. Eww-not a good taste.  But after they cooled, I found a much better flavor and a favorite now at parties.  From "Party Atlanta", available on my Amazon storefront www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks for $9.99.

Spiced Nuts

2 cups of Almonds

1 egg white, beaten with fork

1/4 tsp each nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice

1/2 cup sugar

Mix almonds, spices and sugar together.  Blend in egg white, mixing well.  Spoon onto greased cookie sheet.  Bake in a 375 F. oven for 15 minutes.  Cool and store in airtight container. 

The recipe says that it serves 8.  I divided it in half for 2 different parties and with everything else served, this was plenty.

Happy Cooking!

The Perfect Basket

I have always thought I would want to open a Special Occasion Basket business.  I have never done it, but I'm still thinking about it.  In the meanwhile, I have two books for sale about this type of business on my Amazon storefront www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks .  They are "How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business" for $8.99 and "The Perfect Basket" for $9.99.  The first one tells you all the business end stuff.  The second for "The Perfect Basket" is a perfect book filled with ideas and recipes to fill the baskets with.  Here's one of them:

Let Them Eat Cake Basket-Marie Antoinette had the right idea when she uttered that famous line and your friends will love you for giving them a selection of blue ribbon cake mixes.  Use a bundt pan, large flour sifter, or covered cake plate as your gift basket and fill it with packets of your prepared cake mixes with recipe tags attached to each.

Carrot Cake Mix

2 cups sugar

1 tbsp. powdered vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Combine and blend the ingredients in a small bowl.  Store in an airtight container.

The recipe tag for Carrot Cake

1 package Carrot Cake Mix

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

3 large eggs

3 cups grated carrots

1 (8-ounce can) crushed pineapple

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a 13x9 inch baking dish.  Place the Carrot Cake Mix in a large mixing bowl.  Make a well in the center of the mix and add the oil, eggs, carrots and pineapple.  Blend until smooth.  Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool the cake and frost if desired or dust with powdered sugar.

Happy Cooking!

I'm back from the dead!

My cold is over and my head is out of the fog. It's been almost a week.  Thank goodness I didn't get the dreaded "flu"-this was bad enough.

I had some grammar comments on my last blog-and they were justified, please excuse me.  Remember my telling you that my old Dell was dropping "h's", now the "h's" are fine, but the "s" are dropping.  I will try and catch them all, but if I don't-oh well.  A new computer is in the making-soon, very soon.  Actually, a new computer is here, but then I have to set it up and my brain is only starting to function again.  I have been off work for the last five days, eating bread and Caesar's salad (yes, that's what I was craving).

I found an interesting book on my travels, called "The Gentle Art of Flavoring" by Robert Landry, originally written in French and translated into English by Chef Bruce H. Axler.  There are hundreds of entries in this delightful book from all over the world. This book sells on my Amazon storefront www.amazon.com/stores/oneofakindcookbooks for $79.99-definitely a collectible.  Here are only a very few new flavors I have never heard of before:
Fenugreek-it somewhat resembles a clover, which is why the Germans call it goat's horn club.  It i rather widespread on the periphery of the Mediterranean and is often cultivated as forage.  Its fruit pods contain several brownish-yellow, oblong, bumpy seeds.  Their aroma is agreeable.  lightly sweet, like sweet clover or Tonka bean.  All these plants contain coumarin.
The Indians dote on fenugreek, which they call helbet.  The dried, pounded seed is used in many condiment formulas (curry, chutney, etc).  They export it as well under the name of ground methi.  The Arabs eat the germinated seeds and the young sprouts of fenugreek, which are reported to be quite fortifying.  In the United States, an aromatic oil is extracted from them and used as a substitute for maple essence in making ice creams.
In the West, this aromatic (often imported from Morocco) is not highly rated.  It only flavors vinegar used for making pickle.  The sole meat to which it is suited is the domestic rabbit in a gibelotte, with many garlic cloves and a point of cardamon to counterbalance the sweetness of fenugreek.
Lacquer-A sort of cooking varnish that is the glory of Chinese cooks who possess a certain high gloss of knowledge.  It requires the use of a paint brush, as well as soy sauce, powdered sugar and great patience.
Molokheia-Also spelled mouloukheia andmeloukhie'.  A cooking herb, that is highly appreciated in Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia.  Fresh, it smells like melon: dried, like cut hay.
This herb is nothing other than edible Jew's mallow, corette, for the botanist, corchorous olitorius, belonging to Malvaceae.  In the last century in France it was called mauve des Jifs (Jew's mallow) or guimauve ptagere'. Arabs, North Africans, Jews and Hindus consider molokheia a plant between cress and sorrel.  It is eaten cooked in green, slightly limy sauces in chicken broth, even in the broth of Tunisian couscous. The gourmets on shore of the Nile's affirm that the smell is like that of snails!
Raventsara-A large Madagascan tree of the Lauraceae family whose leaves and nut are called cinnamon clove.  After leaves have been boiled, they are threaded on a string and dried in the sun.  The angular, oily units are dried for a long time on wattles.  This exotic spice is very worthy.  It's aroma is like a mixture of cinnamon and cloves, with cloves dominating.  Unfortunately, its taste i a little acrid, which is why it is rarely exported.  The Malagasy us it extensively , notably in zebra or squirrel stews.

That's quite a mouthful, but very interesting. 

Happy Cooking!

Julia Child

I love what Julia Child has done for cooking.  I don't own any of her cookbooks, but hope one day to own one.  I want her DVDs too.  She makes me laugh so much and I learn so much from her on those DVDs.  Whenever she can't figure out what to say or where to go next, she'll say in her big booming voice "And Now".

This is a little about her personal history from "Life is Meals" by Jame & Kay Salter.

On this day, August 15, 1912, Julia McWilliams who under married name of Julia Child would become a major figure in American cooking, was born in Pasadena, CA.  Her father was well-to-do.  The family always had a cook, and Julia did not begin cooking until she was 32.  Before that, he said, "I just ate".

She graduated from Smith College in 1934-tall, animated, and at ease with herself-worked as a copywriter in New York for a while, but then returned home.  When the country entered World War II, she signed up with the glamorous OSS-Office of Strategic Services-hoping to become a spy, all six feet two inches of her.  She was sent instead to be a file clerk in Ceylon, where, as it turned out she met her husband.

She and Paul Child were married in 1946 and soon moved to Paris, where, trying to learn to cook, she attend the Cordon Bleu, the only woman in the class.  She met Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, and the three of them started a cooking school of their own and collaborated on what was to become her influential work. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which took ten year to write.  It wa dedicated to France and it people, who through generations of invention and concentration, had created "one of the world's great arts."

Her true popularity came through television.  She whisked up an omelet on her first appearance and viewer loved her from the start, her manner and high, enthusiastic voice.  She established herself as a personality, lively and imperturbable.  "I fell in love with the public," he said, "the public fell in love with me, and I tried to keep it that way."

Fervent, dedicated to instructing, she was always so relaxed that it was often thought that she had been drinking.  She became a national figure and remained true to her principle, as well as to public television, where she had the freedom to cook tripe, kidneys, and other things, unthinkable on commercial TV.

During her career she wrote ten cookbooks, all of them noted for their clarity.  She once said that her ideal house would have just two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen, and when she was asked what her guilty pleasures were, replied, "I don't have any guilt."

She died in California two days before she would have been ninety-two.

My recipe today is from Rachael Ray 2 30-Minute Meals by Rachael Ray & the Food Network.  It sells for $8.99 on my Amazon storefront.  www.amazon.com/shops/oneofakindcookbooks   I love Tiramisu and this is actually a very quick & tasty version.

Quick Tiramisu

1 package lady fingers

1/2 cup strong black coffee

3 ounces coffee liqueur

2 cups Mascarpone cheese

1/2 cup powdered confectioners' sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Open the ladyfingers and separate them.  Paint the ladyfinger with coffee combined with the coffee liqueur using a pastry brush.  Line 4 martini glasses with a single layers of ladyfingers, letting the cakes overlap a bit in them.  Pres the cake down to fit the lines of the glass.  Beat Mascarpone and sugar together, 2 or 3 minutes and spoon into the glasses.  Top glasses off with a cap of coffee and liqueur-soaked ladyfingers.  Dust each completed dessert with cocoa powder combined with a touch of cinnamon.

Happy Cooking!