Little Bites | vmac+cheese

Recipe: Blue Cheese + Parmesan Gougères

Posted on March 15, 2012 by vmacandcheese

Have lots of leftover little cheese nubbins? Make gougères. Not only are these bite sized savory pastries the perfect snack, they’re also easy to make and a great dumping ground for whatever you have languishing in your fridge.

For me, that meant a sad hunk of blue cheese and the remnants of a tub of grated parmesan. That’s about all that was in my fridge, so with just a few other staples I always have on hand (flour, some butter, and two eggs), I was able to bake up a batch of these babies in no time. And really, I mean no time.

Confession: I made these this morning and am posting about them now. That’s how fast these are.

Use whatever cheese, herbs, or spices you want to make the gougères your own. Get creative! The sky’s the limit here. Another fun fact: if you can nail the technique for making this pastry dough, called pâte à choux, you can also make eclairs, gnocchi à la Parisienne, profiteroles…the list goes on. One dough, endless recipes. Kind of amazing, huh?

Get the recipe and more photos, after the jump! (more…)

Filed under: Appetizers, Cheese!, Food, French, Little bites, Recipes | Tagged: appetizers, Food, gougeres, Recipes | 15 Comments »

Confit d’ail

Posted on January 3, 2011 by vmacandcheese

Saturday night, home from the grocery store and happily settling in to a re-stocked kitchen, I suddenly realized I had four count ‘em FOUR heads of garlic. Joe and I love to cook with garlic, but getting through four bulbs would take a while, by which time they’d probably dry out.

My solution? I made garlic confit. Adapted from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook, garlic confit is a really fancy way of saying garlic gently cooked in oil. The end result are cloves so soft you can spread them on baguette, or incorporate them into mashed potatoes, or mix with butter and smear under the skin of a chicken before roasting. The possibilities are endless, really. The oil can be used too, any place that you’d normally use olive oil or vegetable oil (think amped up veggie sautés!). And it’s super easy to make.

To start, I used one and a half bulbs of garlic, and peeled all the cloves. This was the most labor intensive part, but only took ten minutes or so. You’re looking for around 20-25 cloves total.

After all the cloves are peeled, you’ll want to use a paring knife to slice off the rough end of the clove, which you can see on the left.

I placed all the cloves in a small saucier, then covered them with canola oil. Be sure all the cloves are completely submerged in oil — you don’t want the oil only reaching half way up the cloves.

Turn the heat to low, until little bubbles start to form around the cloves. The oil should not appear to boil, but gentle bubbles coming up is fine. The reason the cloves shouldn’t fry is that they will brown too quickly and may even burn. When that happens, the outside cooks faster than the inside, so they don’t get to that soft, smearable state.

Cook the cloves in the oil for about half an hour, or until you can easily pierce one of the large cloves with the paring knife, and the clove feels very soft.

Let the oil and the cloves cool completely, then transfer to a storage container. I poked at my cloves a lot during the cooking process, and also stirred a bit, which is why I think you see some garlic residue on the surface here. It didn’t bother me, but if you wanted, you could always strain this through cheesecloth. You can keep this in the fridge for several weeks!

Filed under: Food, Kitchen Basics, Little bites, Recipes | Tagged: appetizers, garlic, Recipes | 3 Comments »

Lady Marmalade

Posted on November 15, 2009 by vmacandcheese

Along with all the other essential kitchen items from the last post, I also devote one of my produce drawers to the use of onions. You might’ve noticed that many — in fact, most — of my recipes include onions. Joe likes to use red onions in his weeknight salads, so at any given moment, you could come over to my house and find a drawer full of those papery alliums in the refrigerator.

(*Tip*: I’ve found that refrigerating onions also mitigates the sulfury havoc they can wreak on your eyes during chopping.

Having onions on hand made it easy to pull together a simple onion marmalade yesterday, of which I made plenty to use as both a garnish for Sunday night pork chops, as well as an accompaniment to appetizers I might snack on this week. It was very simple to put together — all you need is a bit of time. This would make a great buffet item for holiday parties, or is good just to snack on at home with some crackers and cheese. To be honest, I can hardly wait to get home from work tomorrow. Some crostini with bleu cheese and onion marmalade is already calling my name.

To start, gather one medium red onion and a medium yellow onion. I also had half of a large yellow onion sitting in my fridge (wrapped in plastic wrap to keep it moist), so I used that too.

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Filed under: Appetizers, Food, Little bites, Recipes, The pig | Leave a Comment »

Sweet, Salty, Sour

Posted on September 10, 2009 by vmacandcheese

When I was little I had a brief love affair with radishes. I talked more about it here, but the gist is that I saw some show where one of the characters really liked radishes, and the next thing you know, I saw a beautiful red bunch of them in the store, convinced my parents to buy them for me, ate nothing but radishes for a month, then one day decided I hated them. For years, I wouldn’t go near radishes. It’s not that I really disliked them, they just…weren’t my thing.

Last week at the store though, bunches of French radishes were on sale. They looked so beautiful, so dainty, that I just had to take them. I’d figure out what to do with them later.

Turns out, the perfect thing to do was pickle them. With a few ingredients I had on hand, I pickled these suckers in no time at all, and they’ve completely reignited my love for radishes. One breakthrough discovery: these babies are un-effing-believable with thickly sliced applewood smoked bacon. I’m already dreaming up ways to make a canape with the pickled radish and bacon (and maybe something creamy? A spicy aioli?) for my next party or cocktail get-together. Beyond bacon, these would be great with just a little salted butter and fresh baguette. So French, so delicious. Recipe after the jump. (more…)

Filed under: Appetizers, Childhood, Food, Little bites, Recipes, Root vegetables | Leave a Comment »