Vanilla Citrus Cocktail

We’re excited to announce that we’ve started writing a new cocktail column for Whole Foods, called Locally Mixed.  We’ll focus on seasonal cocktails made with fresh local flavors.  Here’s our first one – the Vanilla Citrus Cocktail!

The winter seasonal staple of citrus is mellowed and sweetened with fresh vanilla bean flecks and high quality (local) vodka in this lovely and simple cocktail.

Check out the full recipe here, in our first Whole Foods column!

Ganache

This very week, Two Tarts turns one year old! And what does our yearling blog deserve other than a chocolate cake? Well, we think it deserves a chocolate cake covered in rich and decadent ganache.

I'd never made ganache before. I'd never even considered making ganache. It is one of those confections that sounded so fancy-pants that I figured it was reserved for accomplished pastry chefs only. Turns out that it is really, really easy. 

Ganache involves only two ingredients: heavy cream and bittersweet chocolate. A little heating and a little whisking, and you've got yourself a very impressive and surprisingly versatile finishing touch for your dessert. While it is still warm you can use it as a glaze, or you can let it come to room temperature and use it as a frosting or filling. You can even use it to make truffles. Keep an eye out for the cake that we covered with ganache later this week.

Ganache

Adapted from French Farmhouse Cookbook

• 2 cups heavy cream

• 15 oz bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces

Heat the cream over medium-high heat to just below a simmer. Remove from the heat, and add the chocolate piece by piece, stirring as it melts, until blended. While it is still quite warm, use as a glaze, or let cool for a few minutes until it is the consistency of a thick but easily spreadable frosting.

Lentil Goat Cheese Salad

Discs of plump brown lentils are tossed in a dijon vinaigrette alongside thinly sliced sweet carrots, fresh parsley, and tangy goat cheese. It’s the goat cheese crumbled over the top that makes this one special. And in second place is the dijon vinaigrette.

But honestly you can’t do without the sweetness of the carrots or the fresh parsley either. So don’t try to leave anything out, ok? I like this one because it’s a salad (toss everything together, exact quantities really don’t matter) and it can be served right away warm, or saved in the fridge and eaten cold anytime you want.

I got this from a Runner’s World a few years ago (so it is basically health food and appropriate for any of you marathon trainers out there). I don’t remember the exact recipe, but this is my rendition of it after making it many times over the years.

Lentil Goat Cheese Salad

• 1 cup brown (or Le Puy or Beluga) lentils, cooked
  
• 1 cup thinly sliced carrots (about 4 carrots)
  
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
  
• 1/2 cup crumbed goat cheese
  
• 1/2 cup dijon vinaigrette (recipe below)

Cook the brown lentils in simmering water for approx 45 minutes, or until tender but not mushy.
Slice the carrots thinly, chop the parsley finely, add to a large bowl. Add warm cooked lentils, then drizzle the dijon vinaigrette over everything. Toss well, then sprinkle with crumbled goat cheese. Season with salt to to taste. Serve.

Dijon Vinaigrette

• 1/3 cup olive oil
  
• 2 Tbsp dijon mustard
  
• 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

Whisk the mustard and red wine vinegar together in a large bowl, then continue to whisk as you drizzle in the olive oil. 

Baked Eggs with Crispy Hash Brown Crust

One of the highlights of our winter brunch menu was this dish:  Eggs topped with cheese, baked in a cast iron skillet, with a crispy hash brown crust hidden below.  This one is much simpler than it looks. It’s really only three ingredients: potatoes, eggs, and cheese. I love recipes that use ingredients I almost always have stocked.

The key to this one is pressing the freshly shredded potatoes between dish towels or layers of paper towels to get them as DRY as possible.  That dryness is what aids in their transformation to the crispy hash brown crust.  Once they’re dry you press them firmly and evenly into the bottom of a hot cast iron skillet. 
After the first side is browned you flip the whole crust over to brown on the other side.  The shredded potatoes are so intertwined that the flip is actually pretty easy to do.

I’ve made this multiple times over the past few weeks.  It feels special and fancy for a weekend morning breakfast, but it’s so easy to pull together. 

Baked Eggs with Crispy Hash Brown Crust

• 1 1/2 – 2 cups fresh shredded potato (about 4 medium sized red potatoes)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 eggs
• 3/4 cup shredded cheese (we used sharp white cheddar)
• 2 Tbsp olive oil for cast iron skillet

Shred the potatoes (I used my food processor to make quick work of this).  The quantity of potatoes you use is flexible – less will create a thinner crispier crust, more will create a thicker crust that’s soft in the middle.  I’ve done it both ways and I think I like the thinner/crispier crust… Toss the shredded potatoes with the salt, then press them firmly between two dish towels or a few layers of paper towels.  The goal is to get as much moisture out of the potatoes as possible so they’ll brown up nice and crisp.
Heat a cast iron skillet with the olive oil over medium high heat.  Add the potatoes and use the back of a large spoon to spread them evenly and then press them down firmly into a flat pancake.  Let them sit and brown, undisturbed, for about 3-4 minutes.  Make sure your heat isn’t so high that it burns the potatoes – you want them to get golden brown but not burn.  You can use your spoon to lift up an edge and take a peek to monitor progress.
When the first side is brown, use a large spatula to flip the whole thing over.  They shredded browned potatoes should be interwined with each other enough that this isn’t too difficult to do.  Let the 2nd side brown for an additional 4 minutes.
When both sides of the crust are browned, remove from heat and crack the 6 eggs evenly over the top.  Season with a little salt and pepper if desired, then sprinkle the 3/4 cup of shredded cheese over the eggs.
Pop in the oven on broil for 5-7 minutes, depending on whether you like your eggs to be soft or hard.  I like mine hard, so I let them broil for the full 7 minutes.  Slice, serve, enjoy!

How to Make a Citrus Twist Garnish

There are many ways to use citrus to garnish a cocktail, but lately we've been excited about adorning our drinks with a pretty cascading spiral. A citrus twist (whether a spiral or not) adds visual interest, but the citrus oil that it imparts also gives your nose and palate an extra kick.

The citrus spiral takes a little more finesse than your average twist, and it also requires a specific tool. I recommend this Trudeau zester which is very inexpensive and can zest as well as create garnishes. So grab your zester and a lemon (or orange or grapefruit) and let's dress up that drink.

How to Make a Citrus Twist Garnish

1. Grab your citrus fruit of choice. I recommend organic if possible, because pesticides end up concentrated in the peel of non-organic citrus, and that's all you're using here.
2. Using the channel knife feature of your zester, cut the top layer of peel in a spiral around the fruit. Apply the zester with even pressure, carefully removing mostly zest and as little of the white pith as possible. (At this point you can take the peel and rub it along the rim of the glass. This touch of citrus oil on the rim is particularly effective for drinks such as the martini or other less fruity cocktails.)
3. Take the length of peel and wrap it around your finger in a tight spiral. Hold it for a few seconds, and then carefully remove and place onto your cocktail. (You can also create a tighter spiral by wrapping your peel tightly around a skewer instead of your finger.)

Blood Orange Sunrise

Here’s our spin on the classic Tequila Sunrise.  Fresh orange juice, tequila, and then we’ve swapped the traditional grenadine for a drizzle of our homemade blood orange syrup. I love this blood orange syrup – it has such an interesting flavor when it’s concentrated in this syrup form. We’ve been sipping this cocktail ever since we made it, while pretending we’re about to jet off to Mexico for spring break. 

Oh wait, Dulcie actually IS on spring break. Sort of.  She’s visiting her family in Florida where it is 80 degrees.  Meanwhile I’m trudging through the snow to give her cat insulin shots twice a day.  I’m trying not to be jealous…

Now here’s a cool trick about making a beautiful Blood Orange Sunrise cocktail.  You need to add the ingredients in a specific order to create the striations of color.  It’s really easy:  first ice, then tequila, then orange juice, and then the cool part:  you slowly drizzle the syrup over the back of a spoon.  This helps it gently disperse, but not mix into the drink too much, and arrive on the bottom of the glass in a pretty layer of red. Give it one gentle stir, and you’re done.

Garnish with a citrus curl, which we’ll show you a tutorial on next time!

Blood Orange Sunrise

• ice
• 1 1/5 oz tequila
• 3 oz Orange Juice
• 1/2 oz blood orange syrup

Add ingredients to your cocktail glass in the order above, drizzling the blood orange syrup last (and over the back of a spoon, as shown).  Give everything one quick stir, and serve.

Blood Orange Syrup

Here’s another simple but special wintery recipe.  Somewhere along the line we came up with the idea to reduce beautiful (and delicious) fresh blood orange juice to create a syrup.  Probably because we’re always on the lookout for something unique to use in a seasonal cocktail.  This is a winner – sweet and citrusy, but with a slightly bitter piney background note that I really loved.

The recipe is so easy.  Juice a couple oranges, add a little sugar, and simmer until reduced by 1/2.  My main warning to you is that blood orange juice is very…vibrant.  I encountered a few splattering issues.  I had to stop juicing after 1/2 an orange and run to find my apron.  And I may or may not still be finding little red splashes in far flung nooks and crannies of my kitchen.  That may be due to the fact that I’m a bit of a messy cook, though, I’m not sure it’s fair to blame these oranges.

We’ll be back on Thursday with our favorite cocktail (so far) featuring Blood Orange Syrup!

Blood Orange Syrup

Note that this recipes is very flexible – the ratio of ingredients is the most important part.  2:1, juice to sugar.  Reduce by half.  Done. 

• 1/2 cup blood orange juice (we used about 3 oranges to get this much)
• 1/4 cup sugar

Combine in a saucepan and simmer for approx 15 minutes, stirring regularly, until reduced by half.

Oh, and another editorial note.  This recipe is very similar to our recipe for Homemade Grenadine, which is pretty much a Pomegranate Syrup.  Also highly recommend for delicious seasonal cocktails!

Winter Brunch Party

After getting over 12” of snow overnight here in Colorado, we decided to celebrate with a bright and sunny winter brunch party.

We kept it simple; Dulcie and I each made a dish to share (and we made the Rosemary Honey together earlier in the week). I highly recommend having a friend like this…being able to throw together a low stress brunch party  with good friends, in the dead of winter, and where you don’t have to cook everything is priceless. Here was our menu:

Winter Brunch Menu

• Sweet Potato Biscuits (recipe below)
• Rosemary Honey
• Baked Eggs with Crispy Hashbrown Crust
• Orange Juice
• Hot Coffee

Bright citrusy colors mixed with turquoise made the party feel cheery and warm. 

We lit a few candles (which the toddlers desperately wanted to blow out instantly), brewed a pot of hot coffee, and poured ourselves some fresh OJ.

The sweet potato biscuits were flakey and delicious; especially when topped with the sweet and complex rosemary honey. The baked egg skillet, made in cast iron with a crispy hashbrown crust, is deceptively easy to make and so perfect for a winter morning.

We relaxed and chatted to a low key mix of classic jazz and enjoyed the sparkling snow drifts out the windows. Happy winter.

Soundtrack for a Winter Brunch:

Our recipe for Sweet Potato Biscuits was inspired (and simplified) by Martha Stewart.  

Sweet Potato Biscuits

• 1 3/4 cups flour
  
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
  
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1 tsp salt
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
  
• 6 Tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
  
• another 1/2 Tbsp melted butter and more, for pan
  
• 3/4 cup mashed sweet potato
  
• 1/3 cup buttermilk (we used 1 Tbsp yogurt mixed with scant 1/3 c of whole milk)

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. With your hands or a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. In a small bowl, whisk together sweet potato puree and buttermilk; combined with flour mixture. Do not overmix.
Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead very gently until dough comes together but is still slightly lumpy, five or six times. If dough is too sticky, knead in up to 1/4 c additional flour. Shape into a disk, and pat to approx 1”thickness. With a biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits as close together as possible. Gather together scraps once, and repeat to cut out more biscuits.
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Butter an 8-inch pie pan. Arrange biscuits snugly in pan. Brush with melted butter. Bake until golden, 20 to 24 minutes.

Rosemary Honey

Lately, I have really been loving Bon Appetit: gorgeous photography, modern style, and solid recipes. In the current issue, the southern issue, there were a couple of easy little recipes hidden among the pages that immediately caught my eye. The first was a recipe for rosemary honey.

In the dead of Colorado's winter, there isn't much produce to be playing around with, and it is time to look into the depths of your pantry for inspiration. A rosemary-infused honey is just the thing to keep my palate interested. I did have to run to the store for some rosemary sprigs, but by this time next year I'm hoping to have a little rosemary plant in my kitchen.

While delicious, Bon Appetit's recipes don't tend to be simple. So I was pleased to find a recipe like this one: less than 5 ingredients (all easy to find) and just a few minutes at the stove. They included this recipe as an embellishment for their skillet-fried chicken, but we have plans for drizzling it over some tasty biscuits (stay tuned). But with all this drizzling, I did realize that my kitchen is sadly lacking one of these.

Rosemary Honey

• 1/2 cup honey

• 1 tbs unsalted butter

• 1 rosemary sprig

• pinch of salt

Bring everything to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Remove from heat and let steep for 30 minutes. Serve right away, or pour into jar and refrigerate.