Author Archives: kaprise

Tick Tick Tick

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I like lists of all kinds…. mostly on post-its because they stick and come in fun colors.

Since it is the end of the semester, I have been making lists of things I need to do. Pages I need to read, outlines I need to make, classes I need to go to, the workouts I must do, and these little lists keep piling up. Sometimes I lose these lists. But the one list I never lose is the little one with neat lines of ingredients for my next kitchen project…. sometimes I have lots of little ideas. Like today…. beef stroganoff? beef wellington!? chicken pot pie?! almond butter croissants? Risotto with fragrant port wine mushrooms? Cabbage wrapped empanadas? gingersnap cheesecake? sour cherry hand pies? spinach feta triangles? roasted chicken? braised pork loin?

I’ll be back later tonight with my project.

Butternut Squash Bulgar Wheat Salad

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It just started getting cold in Baltimore this week, which coincides with the busiest time of the year for all law students. Well…. maybe not busiest, but absolutely the most stressful. And for a procrastination guru like myself, I find myself in the clutches of mini depression and annoyance because I am so drastically and embarrassingly behind. And of course, the only place I would ever admit this is here, because in law school it really is just all about hanging on.

Yesterday, after spending the entire day fooling around and then sleeping through class (how do you manage to spend 12 hours sitting around, and then manage to SLEEP in class?! How could you possibly be tired from doing nothing?? Well… it’s possible). So I ran to the grocery store for some much needed solace and then hurried back to my kitchen for some much needed therapy. Mind you, I was cooking 1 handed, at times with two but very gingerly. I made the fatal mistake of grating chocolate on my very new and very sharp microplane while drinking some delicious port (perhaps the bottle… but I can’t tell you that), so I am missing a grated portion of my thumb.

I have been looking at recipes for baked pastas and salads that keep well in attempt to study more and spend less time to my elbows in chopped veggies and bowls of flour. I couldn’t find anything that I really liked, so I picked two vegetables that I liked and then went from there.

The focus of this salad is really the wonderfully tender and beautiful butternut squash. I found an adorable and slightly smaller squash so I cubed and used the whole thing. I also found some fluffy curly leafed kale that I immediately paired with the squash.

I didn’t season the bulgar wheat at all, instead figuring if this giant bowl of food was supposed to last a week, then I would want different seasonings each day. I think the best thing to do is pick a different protein each day to toss with the salad and eat. I had mine with a little Italian dressing yesterday and some oil/vinegar this morning. Both were delicious. I’m planning on using this salad as the bed for my roasted chicken legs tonight.

Butternut Squash Bulgar Wheat Salad

(remember this is supposed to last all week, so the recipe is large. Feel free to halve or quarter as necessary)

  • 2 cups of uncooked bulgar wheat (you might consider quinoa or barley or any other whole grain)
  • 1 small butternut squash
  • 1 bunch of kale (or any other sturdy and hearty green)
  • 2 celery sticks, chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 1 jar of olives (I used little green ones, but I think black or any other variety would work just fine)
  • 1 small bunch of fresh chives or green onion (red onion works too), chopped finely
  • juice of 1/2 lemon
  • handful of chopped figs
  • 1 cup of toasted and chopped walnuts
  • salt, pepper, and olive oil as needed
  1. Cook the bulgar according to package directions (I would suggest under-cooking by just a bit because the texture and crunch of al-dente bulgar adds more dimension to the salad). Drain and cool
  2. Bring a salted pot of water to boil
  3. Roughly chop the kale (use more than you think necessary since this boils down quickly)
  4. Peel and cube your butternut squash (you can buy this pre-sliced in my grocery but I like chopping so I did it myself)
  5. Plunge the kale into the boiling water and cover for about 3 to 4 minutes. I left most of the steams in the kale, so I boiled a little longer to soften the ribs of the kale. If you prefer crunchier kale, feel free to blanch.
  6. Remove and drain the kale – when the kale is cooled, you will need to squeeze the moisture out of the leaves. I realize this removes a lot of the nutrition, but the salad needs to be as dry as possible.
  7. Bring the water back to a boil and plunge the squash into the water. Cover and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes depending on the size of your cubes. You want your squash to be soft but maintain the cube shape.
  8. Drain and cool the squash.
  9. While your bulgar, kale, and squash are cooling – chop and prepare the other ingredients.
  10. In a very large bowl, toss of the ingredients with a teaspoon of olive oil. Mix well.
  11. Taste and season accordingly

Keeps for one week in a well sealed container.

Fleece, rain, and papers

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I’m sitting in my adorable boyfriend’s apartment attempting to write my final paper for my research class. You know what writing a research paper is like? 17 pages of explaining your topic, how you researched it, and what the answer to your research question is. 17 pages?! That’s not nearly enough… and I suffer from the almost fatal addiction to last minute paper writing. In high school I wrote my junior and senior thesis in two sittings separated by a 3 hour nap. Both were due on the same day and I waited until 2 days before to write the combined 60 pages.

So this weekend, instead of actually doing work I played with friends and went shopping.

Easy Tomato Sauce

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(Whole wheat pizza with Easy Tomato Sauce, mozzarella and artichokes)

A while back there was a recipe for tomato and butter sauce that everyone was raving about. It was simple – tomatoes, butter and an onion. The result was a velvety sauce with the richness of the butter just shining through. It is a good recipe. It’s easy and all you need to do is stir. As a law student, I like easy recipes that stay delicious through multiple meals and that store easily. So, this recipe was my go to for quite some time. I used it on pasta, pizza, eggs, whole wheat tortillas, you name it.

However, like anyone who spends a lot of time puttering around the kitchen, I believe that there is always room for improvement. So I changed the recipe, but I didn’t want to spend more time stirring or chopping so only added one ingredient and condensed the steps so that I could put this sauce up, study, and when I’m finished reading my sauce is done. I love things like this, the kind you can set up and leave alone while you do your work. It makes me feel like I’m doing more.

This sauce freezes beautifully and pairs well with just about anything. I freeze 1/2 cup portions and toss it with fresh pasta as needed. I noticed that full cup portions are a little too hefty for me, and the 1/2 cup keeps me in check. I might run a lot, but not enough to burn 2,000 calories of tomato and carb.

Easy Tomato Sauce

  • 2 cans of 28oz of whole tomatoes, try to find cans that are lined and BPA free
  • 2 medium sized yellow onions, peeled and halved root to tip
  • 7 tablespoons of salted butter, sliced in 1 tablespoon increments (I have a feeling you could get away with as few as 5 tablespoons of butter and still have a great sauce)
  • 1 1/2 cups of good red wine (I wouldn’t open a good bottle of wine just for this sauce, but if you have a cup or two left over from your last bottle – the kind that is too good to chuck but too aired to save – this is the place to use it right up)
  1. Begin to heat your pot and pour in the tomatoes. (I like using my Le Creuset for this project). With a pair of kitchen shears, cut each of the whole tomatoes into 3 or 4 pieces.  I find that by cutting apart the whole tomatoes you can skip the pureeing and the squishing of the tomatoes during the cooking process.
  2. Add the butter, wine and onion. Stir until the wine is incorporated well.
  3. Cover the pot and lower the heat to just below a simmer.
  4. Set your timer for 2 hours.
  5. Read, do homework, clean your bathroom. Periodically (say every 30 minutes) take a peek and stir your sauce so nothing sticks to the bottom of your pot
  6. After 2 hours has elapsed, stir your sauce thoroughly, mashing any large bits of tomato that haven’t broken down (or leave them if you like more texture).
  7. Remove the onion halves from the sauce. The original recipe tells you to discard this. But as a poor as a church mouse and gaining debt by the minute law student – I make use of every single thing I can. Put the onion in a glass dish and store for later. I served the onion sprinkled with a little balsamic vinegar, heated with slices of buttered, crusty baguette at a wine party. It was delicious.
  8. Taste, and add salt and pepper as needed. I found that with the delicious addition of red wine that no other seasoning was necessary.

Enjoy!

Chop Chop

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There is a commercial on TV right now that says “there is nothing more therapeutic after a long day of work than chopping and cooking… NOT” but for me? That is exactly true. I sharpen my knives, set my cutting board on the counter and chop. I like the evenness. I like the systematic chops.

This potato salad is heavy on the chopping, but the end result is thoroughly satisfying and filling.

Kaprise Kitchen Summer Potato Salad

  • 3 large Yukon Gold potatoes – steamed, cooled, and chopped in 1 inch cubes
  • 2 large carrots – steamed, cooled, and chopped into 1/2 inch coins (feel free to leave these raw if you like more crunch)
  • 1 bunch of crisp radishes – stemmed and chopped into coins and halved
  • 1 bunch of basil leaves – stemmed and chiffonaded
  • 2 celery stalks – cleaned and 1/4 inch diced
  • 1/2 small onion (or a small shallot) – finely diced
  • 1 tbl of grainy mustard
  • a splash of red wine vinegar
  1. Prepare the ingredients
  2. Mix in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper accordingly.

* Makes about 6 servings. Store in an airtight container for no more than 2 days.

Almond Kolaczki

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I find myself in the kitchen, puttering around and measuring out cups of flour for a lot of different reasons… but I find myself leveling sugar and cracking eggs most when I’m hurt. Most people don’t realize the number of cookies and pies that I ease on to my counter is directly correlated to my happiness. It’s my way of healing myself… I put things together and make things whole and beautiful when I feel everything but. This summer has been a tough one, filled with lots of traveling and baking. Lots of baking. I have made hundreds of cookies, stewed pounds of fruit into jams and jellies, and whipped hundreds of eggs. So when a friend mentioned his grandmother used to make these cream cheese cookies that were light, flaky and dusted with snow white sugar I just had to try them.

I did a little research, and turns out the cookie he is talking about is “kolaczki.” The exact origins of the cookie is not known, but many countries claim it as their own and have their own variations. I only had a block of cream cheese and three boxes of butter in my refrigerator, so naturally I picked the easiest recipe that I had the ingredients for.

Instead of doing the traditional fruit filling, I rolled the dough into layers to enhance the flakiness and omitted the sugar and opted for almond paste. I took a tube of almost paste, dusted it with sugar and rolled it out thin. I sandwiched the thin almond paste between two layers of the kolaczki dough and cut scalloped circles dusted with raw sugar crystals. The result? A light cookie with a sweet almond layer, almost like a lighter and smaller almond croissant.

Kolaczki (Kaprise kitchen style)

  • 8 oz of cream cheese (I used Lucerne neufchatel cheese)
  • 12 oz of butter (3 sticks)
  • 3 cups of sifted all purpose flour
  • 7 oz of almond paste
  1. Let the cream cheese and butter soften at room temperature for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
  2. Beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy
  3. Add 1/4 cup increments of flour, blending well. The dough will be very soft.
  4. Turn out on a lightly floured surface and shape into a square. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 6 hours.
  5. After the dough has rested, roll out the almond paste and set aside.
  6. Roll out the dough into 1/4 inch thickness. Place the almond paste between two layers and roll once to adhere the layers.
  7. Cut cookies out of the dough. Re-roll as necessary.
  8. Bake at 350 F for 15-20 minutes.

🙂 Enjoy!

Before and After

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I like baking because I can make a few tablespoons of butter and a cup of flour turn into golden cookies. I can transform mushy peaches into tart jam filled pastries. The before and after of baking is beautiful.

I like that contrast in clothing too. The pieces you wear to work and then you can flip around and wear out to a party without going back home. I like finding things that no one else wants – and then voila… it’s mine and it’s beautiful.

A week ago, my mother received this dress as a gift. And no offense to the gift giver, but the dress is just really ugly. It’s made of this stretchy crepe and it is this weird shade of gray that isn’t quite twilight blue or just slate gray. It has this unfortunate length sleeves and it has this amazing ability to make a size 2 look like a size 10. See?

And just imagine… this dress hits 3 inches above the ankle. Such a weird length.

Well, my mother was intent of sticking it in the back of a drawer and never looking at it again… but curiosity got the better of me and I put it on. And then looked in the mirror. And, as always I had to fidget with it. So I grabbed a few pins and a silk triple wrap belt and voila!

The skirt is folded under and pinned in a bubbly skirt. The belt is wrapped around to give definition. And those sleeves! They were pinned just so to give interesting folds and texture. So… it’s not so bad.

Summer Love.

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I am officially done with my first year of law school. Not without the requisite tears and scars, but it’s over! So the minute my exams were over, I spent 2 weeks crazily writing for law journal, and then I worked for 2 weeks before I discovered that I needed to travel for some family stuff. So I promptly had to quit my job, and then traveled. I have a few more days before I’m back on the road. Because the summer has been so hectic, I have resorted to making larger batches of food – the kind you can throw into a container and it still tastes great cold.

Last week I made a fragrant soup and filled it with hearty grains so I could have a meal in a single bowl. I was home with my mother and sister, so we ate the soup for dinner and the single cup left at the end of dinner was devoured the next morning with egg and toast.

This is not the prettiest soup. In fact, I took 50 photos of the final soup and it still looked terrible. So, I’ll show you the ingredients I used and leave those pictures out, lest you change your mind about this phenomenal soup.

Green Lentil Soup (a Kaprise original)

  • 1 cup of French Green Lentils – picked through and rinsed
  • 1 cup of White Wheat Berries – rinsed
  • chopped steamed fingerling potatoes,
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • 1 cup of dried mushrooms, soaked in cold water (about 1 hour) and rinsed 3 times (or 2 cups of fresh mushrooms)
  • Herbs – basil, oregano, lavender, rosemary, grated lemon zest, salt and pepper (I like to make my own blends of herbs, this one is Provencal)
  • 1/2 cup of red wine
  • 5-6 cups of filtered water
  1. In a large pot, melt the butter. Saute the chopped onion lightly.
  2. Drain and coarsely chop the mushrooms. Add to the onions.
  3. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of your herb mixture over the mushrooms and continue to saute the onions and mushrooms.
  4. Add the red wine and stir to distribute evenly.
  5. Add 4 cups of water
  6. Add the wheat berries and bring the soup to a simmer.
  7. Add the French Green Lentils and chopped potatoes 15 minutes after the wheat berries.
  8. Add more water as necessary. The lentils and wheat berries will soak up some of the water, so adjust accordingly.
  9. Simmer for 40-50 minutes until the wheat berries are tender but retain a good bite.
  10. Adjust seasoning accordingly. A few extra cracks of black pepper and a dash of vinegar rounded out my pot, but a little kick from some red pepper flakes or extra rosemary might entice you more.

Notes:

  • Use a sturdy onion, or it’ll mush apart in your soup. I used a sweet Vidalia onion.
  • The mushroom blend that I used was supposedly preservative and additive free – however I thought it smelled like something was added. I soaked the mushrooms and rinsed them several times to make sure I got a true mushroom flavor.
  • The wheat berries, unless they are the “soft white” variety need to be pre-cooked and used. The soft white variety cooks within an hour, but regular red wheat berries take about 3 hours.
  • French Green Lentils are sturdy and provide a good bite to the soup. I prefer these over other lentils. They are exponentially more expensive but worth every single penny.
  • I steamed the potatoes before added them to the soup because I did not want to impart the starch into the soup.

Procrastination

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It is the end of the semester, and I should be frantically reading and studying for my exams. I have 4 of them. One of them is a 4 hour written exam… 4 hours. Thank you Professor B for keeping it old school and making it a written exam.

Instead of doing anything law school related, I took one look at the bright blue sky, jumped into my running gear and bopped my way through an easy 3 mile run. I had every intention of showering and walking to the library when I got back, instead I opened my refrigerator and saw the chocolate and cream cheese I had stashed. Two hours later? I was easing a pan filled with gooey whole wheat chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and easing a pan of cheesecake swirled brownies in. And the minute the brownies were out of the oven, I pretended not to be a bad law student, loaded my bag up. Then I hurried a plate of brownies and cookies to my concierge before guiltily walking to the library.

I obviously am sitting at the law school library and still procrastinating. I might have spent an hour popping the keys of my keyboard to clean the keys, and another 30 minutes posting these recipes…. but no matter. Theses brownies and cookies were well worth it. These cheesecake-marbled brownies were found on the veritable smitten kitchen website. I halved the brownie recipe and kept the cheesecake the same because I like a higher ratio of cheesecake to brownie in mine, however I am sure the chocolate lovers out there will prefer the original recipe. I also left the chocolate chips off the top, and swirled the brownies significantly less (because I was trying to get a heart shape in the pan…. which did not work very well).

Gooey Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies (interpreted from everywhere! everyone has chocolate chip cookie recipes that they swear by, and this is my take on chocolate chip cookies. You’ll notice that this recipe is large. You can easily halve the recipe, but I think that is unnecessary. I bake 12 cookies at a time, and make neat little 1 tablespoon balls of cookie dough and freeze them in 12 cookie containers. When you want cookies, you can just pull a container out and plop them on a sheet before baking. Just add one or two minutes to the overall baking time.)

  • 2 cups of all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour*
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 1  teaspoon of Kosher salt (the flaky kind)
  • 1 1/4 cups of  unsalted butter, softened (2 1/2 sticks of butter)
  • 3/4 cup of brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw)
  • 1 cup of sugar**
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
  • 10 oz of 60% chocolate chips***
  • 3.5 oz of almond paste, cut into small cubes and tossed in a tablespoon of flour****

* I use Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Flour for this round and the cookies were a pinch tougher than a normal cookie. I have had extremely good results with King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour.

**I used Organic Cane Sugar, but feel free to use regular white granulated sugar

*** I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Baking Chips in the dark brown bag. I like the largeness of the chips, but feel free to use anything else you like. I use almost the entire bag, save for a handful of chips that I eat while I’m baking.

**** I used Odense Almond Paste. (This is NOT marzipan). It comes in a 7 oz tube, I cut it in half and throw one side in the freezer to firm up before I cut it. I cut with an extremely thin and sharp knife and put the little cubes in a bowl with a little flour to prevent the little cubes from getting stuck together. Also, though I only use 1/2 of the tube, I think the cookies would benefit from the use of the entire tube. Some of the cookies were lacking the tangy almond paste, which I found disappointing.

  1. Cube almond paste (see ingredient notes)
  2. In a large bowl, whisk the butter, brown sugar, turbindo sugar, and white sugar together until creamy
  3. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each egg.
  4. Stir in vanilla.
  5. Add 1 cup of all purpose flour and baking soda and baking powder and salt still until evenly incorporated
  6. Add the remaining 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, and stir until smooth
  7. Add the chocolate chips and almond paste cubes and stir until just incorporated
  8. Turn the oven to 350 F
  9. Spread parchment paper on a cookie sheet and drop 1 tablespoon rounds of cookie dough on the sheet about 2 inches apart. Flatten a little with the palm of your hand.
  10. Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes until just brown (check your oven to make sure that your cookies don’t need less or more time. My baking sheet is an industrial aluminum pan and so it tends to bake a little faster)

General Notes

  • I used turbinado sugar for the crunch it gives the cookies. Sometimes, to enhance the crunch in the cookies, I’ll increase the volume of this sugar and lower the brown sugar. I also add a drop or two of water in the white sugar to make up for the lack of brown sugar. The water helps achieve a deep molasses flavor in the cookies during baking, just be sure not to go overboard with this step.
  • These cookies bake at a lower temperature for longer, be patient, they are well worth the wait
  • Like most cookies, if you store this dough covered in your refrigerator, the flavors of the vanilla and sugar are enhanced and the cookies taste even better. The gluten in the flour relaxes and you get these amazingly tender and chewy cookies. I’m sure there are better explanations than mine out there, but I imagine it’s some sort of chemical reaction that creates a better cookie after the dough has rested in the refrigerator for a while. In any event, I tend to be on the impatient side, so I always make a pan of cookies before the dough gets anywhere near the refrigerator.
  • If you do store your dough in the refrigerator, make sure it is tightly wrapped and stored away from any smelly foods (like garlic/onions and leftover dinner). I have a sensitive nose, so the minute my cookies smell like dinner, I chuck them. Also, do not leave your dough in the refrigerator for more than a week. I’ve been told they can be left for 2 weeks… but something about eggs in flour for 2 weeks skeeves me out.
  • Do not melt your butter. Something about melted butter absorbs more flour and your dough turns into this weird texture. Do not melt! I’ve been told that softening the butter in 10 second intervals in a microwave is helpful. I didn’t grow up with a microwave, so I tried this and ended up with really hot butter coating the inside of my microwave. I usually take the butter out of the refrigerator, go for a run and take a shower before I start making the cookies. The butter is still firm but creamy at that point. The moment you see transparent yellow, throw it in the refrigerator until it firms up again.
  • Even if you are using parchment paper, make sure your pans are squeaky clean. If you have any residual oil or food on them from another meal, the oven will bake that smell and taste right into your cookies as they bake. Scrub those pans!
  • For non-stick pan users, you might consider lowering the temperature 10-25 degrees. Something about that dark coating makes cookies bake differently.