Asada--The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling by Biria Lopez

This is a cookbook selection for my cookbook group, and it has been quite a while since I have cooked out of a cookbook that was this popular in my household. The authors are from Oaxaca and their first cookbook covers that regional Mexican food. This is largely about grilled food, and it is exceptional. The marinades are the true highlights, where the protein is marinated in a flavorful sauce, and usually for a pretty short period of time, so that if you made it ahead of time, it was an easy midweek meal. The three version of rice: white, red, and green--the colors of the flag of Mexico--and they are all stellar. The salsas are on the hot side, but the hotter chilies could be subbed for less hot chilies and the six we have tried are all very flavor. They use avocado oil in their flour tortillas based on the ones made by Carmelo's in Lawrence, KS, which are the best commercial flour tortillas I have had. I recommend this highly, and even if you have a robust Mexican food section in your cookbook collection, this one should have a place on your shelf.

Salsa de Piña Tatemada

We are loving cooking from Bricia Lopez' new cookbook called Asada: The Art Of Mexican Grilling--although we are taking the heat down several notches. This was a bif hit at a multiple protein grilled dinner we cooked. 3 garlic cloves, peeled 1 medium-size red onion, finely chopped (about 1 1/2 cups) 1 medium (about 3-pound) pineapple, peeled, cored, and cut into 3/4-inch-thick slices 2 fresh serrano chiles, stemmed 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more to taste 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley Preheat grill to high (450°F to 500°F). Place garlic cloves and onion on 2 separate pieces of aluminum foil; fold each to create sealed packets. Place packets directly on grill grate; cook, uncovered, turning occasionally, until garlic and onion have softened, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, place pineapple slices and chiles on oiled grates. Grill, uncovered, until pineapple is well marked, flipping once, 3 to 5 minutes per side, and skin on chiles is evenly charred, flipping often, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board, and let cool 5 minutes. Chop pineapple into 1/4-inch pieces and garlic and chiles to a mince, and transfer to a large bowl. Stir in grilled onion and lime juice. Set aside. Add chile paste to bowl with pineapple mixture. Stir in parsley, and season with additional salt to taste.

Plum Torte

This is amazing, and when plums are in season, it would be worth making a few and freezing them for future use. My spouse made this for a family dinner, and it disappeared immediately, and we would have made a serious dent in another one had it been available. It calls for a springform pan, but he made it in a parchment lined layer cake pan and it came out easily. 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 pinch salt 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 large eggs 10 to 12 Italian prune plums, pitted and halved lengthwise 1 pinch Turbinado sugar and ground cinnamon for sprinkling Heat the oven to 350° F. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer or handheld beaters, cream the sugar and butter until very light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the dry ingredients and the eggs all at once, and beat until combined, scraping down the bowl once or twice. Spread the batter into an 8 or 9-inch spring form pan. Arrange the plum halves, skin side up, on top of the batter in concentric circles. Sprinkle the batter and fruit lightly with turbinado sugar and cinnamon (I use about 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, but adjust these to your taste). Bake the torte for 40 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes, and then release the spring and let it finish cooling just on the base. Once it's cool, serve as soon as possible. Or, you can double-wrap the torte in foil, put it in a sealed plastic zip lock bag and freeze (for up to one year!).

Tin Roof, Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

This is our number one favorite place to eat in Maui. It is nothing to look at, and the food is available exclusively through take out, but there are daily specials and you can order and pay on line through a very functional website, so it is slick and easy to get food. We ordered when we flew in and drove to our Airbnb to eat it. It is owned and operated by Sheldon Simeon, who wrote Cook Real Hawai'i, which is an exceptional cookbook. If you eat here and love what you eat, you can get this cookbook for about the cost of an entree and make it yourself.

We loved the Garlic Shrimp and recommend it as is, no additional add-ons. It comes with 8 shrimp, perfectly cooked, replete with garlic, and the cost was $14 (to give a sense, we ate at a sit down place in Kula where we got 6 similarly sized shrimp in a dish for $39 and it wasn't even as good). The prices here are another thing that make it stand out--very affordable and very delicious food.

Tomato Curry Lentil Soup

This has a great number of things to recommend it.  First and foremost it is delicious and it goes together in no time.  It comes from Ottolenghi Simple, which is an incredible cookbook, even when judged against Ottolenghi standards.  He is a talented chef, who publishes a lot of his recipes in a number of forums, so it isn't necessary to own his cookbooks (although I do, every single one of them).  This also uses largely pantry ingredients, so it is a good winter soup, requiring little in the way of fresh ingredients.  So you don't have to look for things that are out of season and you don't have to shop for it, so if you are snowed in, no problem.

• 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 2½-inch piece ginger, peeled, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon medium curry powder (such as S&B)
• ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  2½ cups water or stock
• ¾ cup red lentils
• 1 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• ½ cup finely chopped cilantro, plus leaves with tender stems for serving
• Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
• 1 13.5-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk, shaken well
• Lime wedges (for serving)

Recipe Preparation

• Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium. Cook onion, stirring often, until softened and golden brown, 8–10 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, curry powder, and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add lentils and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add tomatoes, ½ cup cilantro, a generous pinch of salt, and 2½ cups water or stock; season with pepper. Set aside ¼ cup coconut milk for serving and add remaining coconut milk to saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil; reduce heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until lentils are soft but not mushy, 20–25 minutes. Season soup with more salt and pepper if needed.
• To serve, divide soup among bowls. Drizzle with reserved coconut milk and top with more cilantro. Serve with lime wedges.

Buttermilk Cardamom Slab Pie

I brought this to an early Thanksgiving dinner, and boy did I love it.  Simple, not nearly as dramatic as other recipes in Pie Squared, but really very good.  I took the leftovers to work and people were very impressed.
This is a slab pie, which is made in a 1/4 sheet pan (or a 9" x 13" pan would probably work).  

Filling:

8 Tbs. butter
1 c. (200 g) sugar
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 c. buttermilk
1 Tbs. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom


Butter Crust:

1 1/2 c. (160 gm) all purpose flour
8 Tbs. (113 gm) cubed butter
dash of salt if using unsalted butter
1/4 c. (60 ml) ice water

For the crust:
Ideally, weigh the ingredients.  Put the food processor bowl on the scale and weigh the flour, then the butter.  Use the blade and pulse about 15 or so times to cut the butter into the flour, leaving the butter in pea sized pieces.  Add the ice water all at once, and pulse until dough comes together, just barely.  Lay out a piece of plastic wrap and dump dough onto it.  Try not not handle it, using a bench scraper instead of your hands to form it into a rectangle.  Wrap and then use a rolling pin to get it into a thinner slab.  Refrigerate at least an hour and can stay there for days.
To bake, roll out to the size of a 1/4 cake sheet pan size, crimp the edges.
Oven on to 350 degrees. 
Filling:
Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time.  Add buttermilk, lemon juice, vanilla, and cardamom.  Beat until combined.
Add to pie crust, bake about 45 minutes on top of a pizza stone or baking steel.

Coconut Chicken with Chickpeas and Lime

This is a variation on the Alison Roman dish in her new cookbook Nothing Fancy.  The only deviation is to add a handful or two of chopped greens while it is cooking.

1 whole chicken, cut up into pieces
salt, pepper, canola oil
4 cloves garlin, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 Tbs. Gochujang
2 Tbs. grated ginger
2 Tbs. sliced fresh tumeric (or 1 Tbs. dried)
1 Tbs. ground cumin
2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
28 oz. coconut milk
3 c. broth
2 (15 oz.) cans of chickpeas
1 c. fresh cilantro
2 tsp. fish sauce
2 limes quartered
1/2 c. chopped peanuts (optional)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper.  Heat oil in a heavy metal pan.  Sear the chicken, about 10 minutes.
Remove chicken, and add garlic and most of the onion to the pot.  Add the gochujang, ginger, turmeric, cumin,  crushed red pepper flakes, and cook until there is caramelization.  Add the coconut milk and broth and simmer, add back in the chicken, add the chickpease, salt and pepper to taste.  Cook for 45 minutes, half of it uncovered.
Add the fish sauce, and serve with thinly sliced red onion, chopped cilantro, and sliced limes.

Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow

This cookbook was the November cookbook in the Food 52 Baking Club, and it was a real hit.  It is a collection of creative and ambitious-yet-approachable recipes that, in aggregate, argue that just about any dish can be turned into a slab pie. Presented are large-format pies, from biscuits and gravy with a Ritz cracker crust to giant strawberry and chocolate Pop-Tarts, alongside classics like chicken pot pie and pumpkin chiffon pie.
The first two chapters are instructive, from latticework tutorials to troubleshooting different types of crusts (the recipes call for everything from classic all-butter crusts to hash brown crusts), setting the home cook up for success.  I appreciated the detailed instructions, the pictures, and the addition of a gluten free crust into the mix.  She says that she got the idea from the Moosewood Cookbook, which I got when it came out in 1977.  The two recipes I have made to date were clearly written and easy to follow, and there are so many that I want to try!  If you have fear of pie, this will cure it once and for all.

Simple Cake by Odette Williams

This was the Food 52 Baking Club cookbook for October, and i wish that I had had something like this when my children were younger.  It is written by a good home baker, and the approach is to make easy cakes that look beautiful and can be brought to a birthday party or serve as dessert for a family dinner.
The book is a repertoire of tinkered and fine-tuned recipes that reflect the author's nurturing, easy-going sensibilities: unfussy, not overly sweet, endlessly flexible, and straightforward.   Their genius lies in how they are organized: 10 classic base cakes (Very Vanilla, Tangy Olive Oil, Cinnamon Spice) and 15 toppings (Nana’s Simple Glaze, Toblerone Ganache, Beautiful Buttercream), followed by 30 “Cake-worthy Moments” where the author illustrates the infinite creative possibilities for assembling these elements to suit any situation.  So you can mix and match cakes and frostings, do variations of each, or simply follow the basic instructions.  If you never want to make something that requires more tools than a handful of cake pans and a frosting kit, this is a great choice.

Mastering Pizza by Mark Vetri

This was the October selection for the Food 52 Cookbook Club, along with his book on mastering pasta.  One thing that I really like about this club is that the cookbooks are not always ones that are current or that I have even heard of.  Not that I have my finger on the pulse of cookbooks, but I am a very respectable home cook, and I give a few cookbooks as gifts during the holiday season.
This is a master class on different types of pizza dough.  The book is set up for total customization. Among the pages are almost twenty different pizza and focaccia dough recipes with dozens of variations and over forty different toppings and fillings. Vetri states, “My promise in this book is that I will help you make better pizza in whatever oven you have with whatever dough you want.” The dough is explained every step of the way, ingredient by ingredient and cooking method by cooking method, so you learn the complete process.  There are detailed explanations related to each type of dough, and the take away message from the group was that everyone made their best home pizza after reading this, regardless of what their level of experience was.  It made me want to get a home pizza oven.

Cheese Danish Slab Pie

My husband made this recipe out of Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow.  If you are looking for a cookbook that has some good technique coaching, this is a good one, and a slab pie is easy to make, less fussy than the round version, and you end up with more to eat, or the ability to serve more portions with the same effort.
This is a great sweet roll that were very popular with my family. You can use store bought puff pastry, but get one with all butter--Trader Joe's is an option.

1 sheet (200-285g) puff pastry, defrosted if frozen, but still cold
8 ounces (226g) cream cheese, at room temperature.  Whole milk ricotta can be substituted
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons jam
 Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Heat the oven to 400F. Place a baking stone or half sheet pan on the center rack to heat. (The half sheet pan is slightly larger than the quarter sheet pan used for the slab pie. Preheating a baking stone or half sheet pan and then placing the slab pie pan on it when ready to bake helps brown and crisp up the bottom of the crust. You can skip this step if you don’t have either.)

Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the1/4 sheet cake pan (9" x 13"). Dust lightly with flour and use it as a guide to roll out the puff pastry to size. With a sharp knife, score the surface of the pastry nearly all the way through the dough in a tic-tac-toe pattern, to mark off either 8-12 portions. Slide the parchment with the pastry into the slab pie pan and refrigerate.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the sugar, salt, vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and mix on low until completely combined. Taste the filling, and add a little more lemon juice if the flavor is dull. (The filling shouldn’t taste like lemon, but a little bit of lemon juice will add a bright note to the filling. When tasting, look for a bit of a zing in your mouth that doesn’t scream lemon.)
Use a small scoop or two spoons to plop cheese filling on top of each portion, no more than 1 – 1 1/2 tablespoons each. Less is more: Too much cheese will overwhelm the pastry and tamp down the layers, so hold back.
Use the back of a spoon to make a well in each dot of the cheese and spoon in a scant 1/2 teaspoon of jam. Place the slab pie (in its pan) on top of the heated baking stone or the half sheet pan. Bake until the cheese is beginning to brown here and there and the pastry is toasty brown, 21-23 minutes.
Cool the pie for no more than a moment. Dust with the powdered sugar. Ideally, slice and serve this pie barely warm, using a sharp scissors or pizza wheel to cut the portions along the score lines.