The best things in life are …………………………………………………………………………fried. It’s true. Maximum guilt is intrinsically linked to maximum pleasure. Sex is good, but sex in an elevator is better. You may feel guilty that old Mrs. Crotchet and her poodle caught you doing it doggie style when the lift doors opened too soon, but that makes it all the more memorable. And devilish. Which is equally true of these Halloween-themed beignets. They are Halloween-themed because they’re made of pumpkin and I served them with black garlic-maple butter. Note the trifecta of sweet sin: Read more

*I would love your vote over at Foodbuzz’ Project Food Blog. Voting is open now, but just for two days. You can check out the competition and vote for my entry here. Merci a million!

Dear Nature’s Pride,

I am a from-scratch kind of gal; consequently I rarely have store-bought bread in my kitchen. I was extremely pleasantly surprised to sample your Country Potato Bread and to find it luscious both in flavor and texture. You might be extremely (pleasantly, I hope) surprised to see what I did with it. Bet you never thought something so humbly wholesome as Country Potato Bread could become part of a molecular gastronomy canapé, now did you? And I even managed to pay homage to the greatest children’s writer on the planet, that wacky, zany, stripey lively legend Dr. Suess.

Green eggs and ham is shockingly easy to make, easy on the eyes, and easy on the ol’ pocketbook as well. I guess you could say green eggs and ham is just plain easy, but I wouldn’t want you to mix it up with my cousin Suzy, so I’ll stop just this side of Texas on that one. It comes together lickety split, and the great part is wowing your guests with your mad science skillz in the kitchen. You see, the eggs are not really eggs at all, but are made from peas, using a process called spherification. Spherifica-what? How Seussian! Do you spherify your peas, oh yes please, give me spherified peas. I will eat them on my knees, in a cloud of angry bees, Linda, you’re such a dork oh jeez! Ok, I’m done lapsing into Seuss-speak- allow me to explain, all grownup-like, spherification. It’s essentially turning liquid into spheres by using two naturally-occurring, inexpensive, easily attainable chemical compounds- sodium alginate and calcium chloride. It’s a crowd-pleaser sure to enthrall, geeky fun times had by all turning pea juice into balls (that was a momentary relapse- sorry)!

But bright green science spheres alone do not an appetizer make, so we’ve got to pair, and pair well. Peas are good with- prosciutto, gadzooks, I’m a genius. And prosciutto is ham, so there you have it, green eggs and ham. But it’s gotta be served on something, otherwise it would be a goopy, pea-stained scientific mess. That’s where you came in and saved the day, Nature’s Pride. Your sweet slices of ambrosia- aka potato bread, served as the perfect shingles for my spheres, but not before I coated them in maple syrup, egg and cream then fried them to Frenched perfection. Yes, I maple French toasted triangles of your bread, and I’d do it again and again and again. This time I won’t stop short- it was orgasmic in the way that has you panting for more even though you’re still reeling from the first and second go-rounds. Did I mention that I added some sweet and sour shallots to these bundles of brilliance? Yeah, it was a good call. This is one of the best things I’ve put in my mouth in the last month, and believe you me, I’ve put a whole grip of crazy things in there.

So what do you say, Nature’s Pride? Don’t you think we should transport the attendees of the greatest food festival ever to exist, Foodbuzz Fest 2010, back to their childhoods and feed them green eggs and ham? What say you, attendees? Are you down with a bite of nostalgia to go with the copious amounts of wine you’ll be “sipping and spitting” (yeah, right) during the tasting pavilion portion of the festival? Because I would LOVE to make these for you. And I might even spout off crazy rhymes while I’m doing it- wouldn’t that be fun to watch? Here’s the recipe- enjoy, my pretties.

Green Eggs and Ham

Serves 8

Takes 30 minutes

For the sweet and sour shallots:

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• Salt, to taste

For the spherified peas:

• 300 grams frozen peas
• 12 mint leaves
• 375 grams water
• 2.4 grams sodium alginate
• 6.5 grams calcium chloride
• 1 liter water

For the maple French toast:

• 4 slices Nature’s Pride Country Potato bread, each cut into two triangles
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 3 tbsp heavy cream

For assembly:

• Two large slices of prosciutto,  cut into eight squares

1. Caramelize the shallot in a small saucepan over low heat in the butter. After five minutes, add the remaining shallot ingredients and stir occasionally until browned and very soft, about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, put the peas and mint in a blender.  Boil 375 grams of water and pour over peas. Blend until smooth. Pass through a mesh strainer, discard the solids, and measure out 500 grams of the remaining juice. Put one third of it in an immersion blender container and add the sodium alginate. Blend well, add remaining juice, and blend again. Let sit in fridge while you make the calcium chloride water bath. Add calcium chloride to liter of water in a shallow glass container. Stir with a fork until dissolved. In a separate shallow container, add an equivalent amount of cold water (for rinsing). Using measuring spoons of whatever size you want your spheres to be, spoon pea juice into calcium chloride bath in little spherical blobs. Using a slotted spoon, gently nudge the spheres around in the water. After two minutes, remove the pea spheres to the cold water. (You will have enough pea juice to make way more than eight spheres- roll with it. It’s fun.)
3. Mix the syrup, egg and cream until fully incorporated. Dredge the bread triangles in the mixture and pan fry in a nonstick skillet over medium heat on both sides until browned.
4. Assemble the green eggs and ham by arranging the toast triangles on a platter, placing a prosciutto square on them, a small dollop of caramelized shallot, and finally, very carefully, using a slotted spoon, top with the spherified peas. The peas are delicate, so be gentle. Et voila- green eggs and ham.

Never one to jump on the latest baking trend, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself unable to shake the concept of engineering a croquembouche.  Let’s start by answering the question, what is a croquembouche.  It’s essentially a tower of profiteroles glued together with caramel, often drizzled in chocolate, spun sugar, or all manner of fancy schmancy décor.  Not my type of thing. I like contemporary solid lines, bold colors, no frills.  So why can’t I get the damn thing out of my head? I’ve been making pate au choux with which to turn into profiteroles all summer, so I suppose architecting the croquembouche was the next inevitable step.  The problem is that I didn’t fully execute my vision since I only baked a measly 21 pate au choux, and what kind of tower can you really construct with only 21 building blocks?  So what that means is that this project is incomplete and must be revisited soon, at a time when I can whip up at least twice that many and construct my dream Barbie mansion from tiny pastry balls.

Knowing myself and my proclivity to take a perfectly good, classic thing and turn it all akimbo, I figured a classic croquembouche just wouldn’t do.  This is when I remembered seeing a method for turning foie gras into Chantilly crème recently.  Why not do semi-savory choux and fill them with goosey-oozy liver-y goodness then drizzle the whole thing in maple-balsamic reduction made to look like chocolate syrup? Yes, genius. Pure, diabolical, evil genius.  I considered not telling my lucky-number-13 guests that they would in fact be masticating goose livers rather than benign cream, but a vegetarian in our midst guilted me into full-disclosure.  I needn’t have bothered warning people, it seems. They well and truly were little bites of The Rapture. People popped them like it was 1974 and they were disco queens slamming back ‘ludes, so I’m pretty sure they needed no introduction after all.

To put the whole thing together I started with a good, sturdy batch of pate au choux.  Whilst my piped lovelies were puffing up in the oven, I contemplated the Foie Chantilly.  I did a bunch of internet research on how to fluff up the foie, and settled on mixing it with heated cream in a food processor for a few moments to sufficiently blend it. Then I passed it through a sieve into a mixing bowl over ice and proceeded to hand whisk it to stiff peaks.  In terms of quantity, for five ounces of foie, I used ¾ c heavy cream, a pinch of salt, and two tablespoons of superfine or caster sugar.  I heated the cream, sugar, and salt together in a heavy saucepan whilst I chopped the foie into ½” cubes and set reserved them in the food processor. Working quickly, once the cream was just nearing the boiling point, I added it to the foie and whirred it for ten seconds. I immediately passed it through the sieve and into the waiting chilled mixing bowl. It’s important to get it cool quickly so that it will whip properly.  I bet a pacojet would have been a really cool toy to employ for the whipping process, but I’ve got an official moratorium on kitchen gadgets here in the Salty Seattle household thanks to my evil husbandJ Once I whipped and chilled my cream and the pate au choux were cool, I piped each pastry full of a sufficient amount of choux using a star tip.  At this point I had savory profiteroles awaiting their drizzled fate.

For the sauce, I simply reduced equal parts balsamic and maple syrup in a small saucepan until it reached the consistency of thick molasses.  I then cooled it and dipped the butt ends of the profiteroles in the syrup to use as a binding agent.  I stacked a meager tower, though mark my words, this is only the beginning. My experimenting is far from finito.  In the meantime, enjoy this mini-tower knowing that I’ve created a monster in myself and I likely won’t stop until I construct a croquembouche the size of Frankenstein. And they make a movie about it.