This is my first entry in the new era for this blog - once a personal restaurant review site. I'm now moving towards reflecting my favorite hobby and passion for food in a more direct way. I'm not a writer, so this will be a learning process for me as I tune into my rusty composition skills, but I want to gain more flexibility to share my experiences, skills and creations with the world. I will probably get around to a proper introduction at a later time, for now I will focus on recent projects or events and give you snippets of my life through that lens.
What better opportunity to start on than Easter, which bridges the culture I grew up in for the first half of my life and the culture I've grown into over the second half so far. In the United States, Easter is marked on the calendar and celebrated in line with the Catholic date for the holiday - this year on April 12th. It's usually a time for spring break, community egg hunts and children enthusiastically gearing up for chocolate overdose from Easter Baskets and the plastic eggs they harvested. This year was quite different because of the times we live in. California (as much of the rest of the country), is under shelter in place orders so community events did not take place. Parents scrambled to order craft supplies and chocolate/other Easter basket goodies online hoping they could get them in time, and large family dinners were replaced by smaller celebrations within each household and video chats to make up for the extended family time we all missed out on.
Easter Part 1
As April 12th approached I did much of the same things as other parents I know - silently congratulated myself for saving the plastic eggs from last year (and checked if I needed to order a few more in advance), filling them with little chocolates and hiding them in the back yard the morning of. The kids were thrilled to get the rewards with the only competition being each other. Being home, however, gave us a bit more time than usual to focus on the food side of things :) I planned an Easter dinner menu enough ahead of time to gather the adequate supplies and employed the children's help in preparing it, especially the fun dessert parts that they enjoy engaging with (in preparing, but even more so in consuming).Hazelnut Chocolate Macarons
First in line were macarons - an all time family favorite. Over time I've learned that the ultimate secret to fabulous macarons is patience (who knew, hah!). Not just patience in whipping the whites to stiff peaks, or to folding the almonds and sugar carefully to not deflate the meringue too much, or in piping the cookies evenly. But a key step many forget is patience in letting the macarons mature in the fridge after assembly - this is something professional bakeries do and it allows you to bake the cookies a bit firmer than ideal consistency to ensure proper texture is set and that they don't crumble, lose their foot or become hollow, then fill them with care and store them in the fridge for a couple of days in an air tight container. This step will allow the cookies to absorb some moisture from the filling and the flavors to deepen, resulting in a much better cookie overall. Simply take out of the fridge 5-10 minutes before consuming. They'll keep fresh this way for up to a week!
Colored Eggs
This part is a bit of a given, and comes up in both rounds of celebration, but I wanted to document it since the kids did more of the heavy lifting. This was a simple robin egg style egg dye kit, with four shades of blue dye, gold paint, brown speckle dye and golden stickers. I only assisted, the eggs are entirely the work of the children and their creativity. You'll also notice the marks of a toddler at work through minor cracks and scratches here and there :) That's integral to the beauty of it all.
Bunny Waffles
To energize everyone for the Easter egg hunt, I made a fun, whimsical breakfast - bunny waffles! I used a simple waffle mix which called for milk only, but added in an egg and a mashed ripe banana to make them into banana waffles. After spooning the waffle mix into the waffle iron, I sprinkled some mini chocolate chips on top before closing it since they're always a fan favorite. Using some string cheese, strawberries and raspberries as garnish, I crafted these into makeshift bunnies as you can see below. The kids were very impressed, great payoff for a low effort creation!
Sugar Cookies
A fun and cheerful way of celebrating almost any holiday are themed cookies. After all, I have a giant bucket of different cookie cutters so I do in fact have shapes for every occasion. With an bit of extra creativity, some of these can be used for multiple decorations with the same cutout, but that's a project for another day. I picked out a tried and true recipe for sugar cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction, as well as her recommended royal icing recipe for decorating.
The royal icing (Sally's recipe here) is so incredibly easy to put together when using dry egg whites - you don't need to worry about raw egg whites in your royal icing and it's really as simple as measuring out everything and whipping it in the mixer until it comes together. I recommend a water dropper or even a spray bottle with water to use when thinning the icing, because it goes from too thick to do flood icing to way to watery so quickly! I separated the icing in a series of bowls, one for each color, I added tiny drops of gel colors until I got the desired pastel shade, then put a portion of each color in piping bags for outlines/detail. After that, I used the very gradual addition of water until I got the "flood" version of each color to fill in the cookie designs. You're basically looking for a consistency where if you pick it up with a spoon it smooths over when dripped back in the bowl in ~5 seconds or so. You might be tempted to go thin enough to blend immediately, but that will make it hard to handle, take too long to set, and most importantly it would spread too fast and thin on the cookie and likely soak in quite a bit too.
I won't lie, cookie decorating is not my favorite. I like to invest time and patience in a project where I can walk away when I need to and pick it back up later. Fondant is more flexible in that way but royal icing starts hardening in the piping tips if left for too long, a cookie has to be finished in one sitting so things blend/adhere properly and I don't feel like I'm a skilled enough artist to pull of a good design with only a couple of colors - so here I am with a full rainbow. The works paid off though, the kids enjoyed these for days and days.
Easter Dinner
I've been celebrating "American Easter" as my family calls it for nearly half my life, but I'm still not entirely sure what I'd describe as the quintessential American holiday meal for this occasion. A lot of families I know just make a larger, more abundant sit down dinner with family favorites, either a baked ham or turkey or some other larger centerpiece accompanied by sides, desserts etc. The kids seem to care about the egg hunt and the cookies most of all regardless. Inspired by the Romanian protein of choice, lamb, I went for a British slant on the dinner spread and included a favorite of the children so it was a treat and celebration for everyone.
We had the colored eggs, of course - the most fun for the kids is cracking and peeling them, the actual eating is secondary. The kid favorite was the mac and cheese (recipe at the end of this mini-novel), for which we made a broccoli version this time. Veggie infused mac and cheese is a household favorite and a great way to (not so sneakily) include extra vegetables in the children's diet. The beautiful spring green came from the mushy peas, not entirely authentic but a nod to our friends across the pond.
Leaving the best for last, the beautiful rack of lamb. I went back to an old reliable method for these, as described and demonstrated by Chef Ramsay in Masterchef time and time again (recipe) - sear the seasoned lamb on all sides until golden brown to seal in juices and enhance flavor, brush with mustard, crust with an herb, parmesan and bread crumb mix (I actually left out the bread crumbs, I didn't miss them), then bake in a hot oven for a few minutes. Rest the lamb - and this is very important - then serve at a perfect medium-rare to medium throughout. The kids call them meat lollipops and eat everything right off the bone.
Dinner was accompanied by a serving (or several) of Etoile brut champagne, while the kids had LaCroix from flutes as well to join in on the fun. The meal got topped off with a cheerful serving of sugar cookies.
Easter Part 2
Colored Eggs
We took a different approach to coloring our eggs this second time around - following a method learned from my family many years ago, we gathered different leaves from around our neighborhood, attached them to hard boiled eggs using tied up mesh fabric (something elastic and thin, like cheap pantyhose works great), then dunked them in dye. We used plant based dyes for a more natural look. The impression of the leaf was remained nearly white, with quite a bit of detail around the edges. The colors were quite bright from the vegetable based instant tabs I found. however, more remarkably, the color derived simply from boiling red cabbage and adding a splash of vinegar was so bright and BLUE! The kids were impressed. I suspect the blue plant based dye tab was also made from cabbage.
Paska
This year was one of the first when I followed the fast, albeit not as strictly as traditional observance in Romania (all vegan, additional restrictions around oil and alcohol use). This 40 day restriction is lifted at midnight as Easter begins, so typically there is a small meal shortly after midnight (as people return from the church service to their homes) which includes some classic staples - colored eggs, red wine, bread, paska. I've been experimenting with sourdough this year (more about that in a separate, future post), so I felt like in that spirit I had to use my beautiful starter to make the paska bread. The paska (pasca in Romania) is a traditional bread made with an enriched dough - egg, milk, butter in additional to basic bread ingredients - flavored with citrus zest and braided for presentation. It is somewhat less buttery and more dense than a brioche and ages well. The airy crumb dries gracefully and becomes a perfect vehicle for coffee or tea. Typically this is filled with a farmer cheese based combination, and I've seen "doughless" combinations that are basically cheesecake interpretations with a Romanian flavor profile.
I browsed many Romanian recipes to find the kind of filler I wanted to use since the sourdough recipe did not have a filling at all. I didn't have any farmer cheese on hand and cream cheese is a close approximation, so I started with that. I whisked it with a bit of sugar, mixed in some greek yogurt (for added tartness, one egg and one egg white (reserving the other yolk to brush on top) and key flavor ingredient: orange zest. Raisins are also traditional, but I'm not a huge fan of the gummy texture they tend to hold in baked applications, so i warmed up a handful of raisins in a half shot of rum to plump them up and infuse them with a flavor punch, then drained them and mixed them in. Now I was ready to get this assembled.
I divided the dough in four equal parts - one for the base (rolled out to a circle to fill the bottom of the pan), two for the long strands which got braided into the edges and one reserved for the decoration in the center. In retrospect I should have saved less for that accent as it was thicker/heavier than I expected, but lessons learned for next time. I brushed the edges with the whisked up yolk reserved from earlier, covered and let the whole thing proof at room temperature until nice and fluffy and slightly increased in size. I put the remaining dough in the fridge in the mean time so it wouldn't overproof. I then filled it with the cream cheese and raisin mixture until close to the top (most of it fit in, the rest made for a great individual snack of crustless cheesecake after I baked it in a small ramekin) and put it in a 375F oven for 20 minutes.
In the mean time, I pulled out the final piece of dough, rolled it in very thin strips and practiced 5 braid technique (poorly, I've never done this before) to get my centerpiece. I coiled it up in a braided bun-like shape, brushed it with a bit of yolk and added it to the middle of the slightly set cream cheese mixture. It sank a little, which I expected, but the cream cheese did not overflow which was the goal. Let this bake until cooked through - ideally another 25-30 minutes, but it took a bit more for that big braided bun in the middle to cook so the bottom got a bit overbaked. Gave it 5 minutes to cool slightly after it came out of the oven, then I popped it out of the pan and let it cool more on a rack. Key rule of bread making I've learned (applies to cakes too) is to never cut anything hot out of the oven. The crumb will not hold and you'll end up with a smooshed or crumbled result.
The timing worked out pretty perfectly - the paska came out of the oven around 9 pm so it had time to cool, then the sourdough boule went in around 10 and was done by 11. Everything was ready to cut and enjoy shortly after midnight with the colored eggs (served with mustard, our favorite) and paired with a classic and famous native Romanian wine - Feteasca Neagra (wiki). I'm quite happy with the results for the paska - the bread part cooked through, and it was dense enough to be authentic but light and airy enough to showcase the beautiful sourdough notes. The cream cheese filling hit all the right notes - light rum flavor and pops of sweetness from the raisins, lingering orange zest aroma and creamy pairing of eggs and cream cheese. Now that I conquered this holiday staple for the first time I'm looking forward to trying it again and making it my own.
Lunch
For lunch we went in a very traditional, very comfort food direction. Low effort but a classic combination that reminded me of the old country and transported my husband right back to memories of his visits there. Along with more of the hard boiled eggs (these are usually present at every meal until they're gone) I threw together a traditional Romanian deli spread - ham, feta, fresh sliced tomatoes with salt on top and thinly sliced red onion. That golden beauty in the middle is "mamaliga" - Romanian version of polenta cooked low and slow with water and salt until it pulls together. The mark of a good mamaliga is being able to turn it out of the pot in one motion and it coming out in one piece like you see it here. Old school method for cutting it at the table involves butcher twine - it should hold together as it cools slightly just enough that you can pick up the chunks with a spoon for a family style meal. I just use the lazier version of cutting and serving with the same spoon, it works too.
Bunny Cupcakes
Most Romanian celebrations I've participated in over time include the classics, but also a fun selection of desserts just to enhance the festive mood. I wanted to involve the kids the way I did with the sugar cookies the week before, so I found this cute idea on Pinterest to make "bunny butt" cupcakes - frosting to represent a bunny on its way into its burrow, and mini marshmallows for the tail and back feet. I colored some shredded coconut green to get the grassy effect, used some pink royal icing to paint toe beans on mini marshmallows cut in half and pulled out some jelly beans to make nest decorations as well to mix things up.A quirk of working with sourdough is that feeding your starter often produces "discard." More about his in my upcoming post about sourdough, but the idea is that unless you bake bread constantly keeping your sourdough fed and happy involves taking some out then adding fresh water and flour. This discard can be a wonderful flavor boost in many recipes that don't need the rise of a fully active starter. King Arthur has a great starter guide as well as a series of recipes on what to do with discard, and this one piqued my interest. I scaled it down to use up the discard from my paska recipe and scooped the dough in green paper liners, then baked for 18-20 until set.
The frosting is the easiest thing to make, many thanks to a dear friend for passing this on - equal parts cold cream cheese and powder sugar by weight (I used 6oz) - creamed until smooth, a minute or so in the stand mixer works great. Beat in another equal part (6oz) butter until well mixed and finally 1/3 cup of brut cocoa - mix on low until incorporated, then turn the speed up and whip until fluffy and light. This results into a rich and flavorful chocolate frosting with a pleasant tang from the cream cheese. I have made it every time I need chocolate buttercream on anything, it has so much dimension and flavor that it can't be beat - good quality cocoa is critical for this, I use a dark brut cocoa which is so rich in flavor and smooth in texture.
Easter Dinner, Romanian Style
If I had to describe Romanian cooking in just a few words, it would be "meat and potatoes". Meals get built around a choice of protein, usually cooked quite simply, paired with a starch (potato, rice or polenta) and occasionally but not always some sort of vegetable pairing or salad. As such, every holiday meal features a star protein (traditionally tied to the time of year) and a potato dish along with a handful of appetizers/sides to round out the meal. For Easter, the protein is lamb - in the usual operations of family farming lamb is in season in spring so large community celebrations often feature whole roasted lamb and many of the signature Easter dishes uses every last bit of the animal (see drob, which is hard to recreate in the states since the ingredients are hard to find).A mark of a festive meal is presentation, so even though I was only cooking for the four of us I wanted to invest some effort into making the food look as well as taste amazing. For a fun twist on a classic, I wanted to cook a colorful potato dish with the richness of butter and crispiness that only cast iron can produce. I thinly sliced red and purple potatoes as well as a small butternut squash and spiraled them in an alternating patters around the pan. while the potatoes were already similar in size, I had to find a cutter (I used a hexagon to fit in with the irregular potatoes better) to trim the butternut squash slices. It took some extra steps but it makes my heart happy how this looks.
The star of the meal was, in traditional fashion, lamb. The only cut I could find in these times was lamb chop steaks and I was ok with that - good amount of meat, tender cut and easy to portion. I seasoned each piece on both sides, then gave it a good sear in a pan - not overcrowding the meat in this step is important to allow for space to get a good amount of color. I placed each piece in a casserole dish in one layer and set aside. In the same pan where the lamb was browned, I then softened a whole thinly sliced onion and a handful of smashed garlic cloves (there's no such thing as too much garlic, the more the merrier) in the drippings, and deglazed with a cup of red wine. Use something you enjoy drinking - I won't use a fine wine bottle I'm saving for a very special occasion, but I still only use a wine I love, after all it will play an important role in the flavor profile of the dish. I poured the wine and onion/garlic combination all over the lamb, sprinkled with a handful of rosemary sprigs and added a cup of beef broth then covered tightly with foil. This went in the oven for 2.5-3 hours at 325F to braise. The meat came out fall-off-the-bone tender and incredibly flavorful. The liquid did not even need to be reduced to serve as a rich and flavorful gravy. Of note, check periodically for liquid level during braising. If too low (less than half an inch) add a splash of water so it doesn't dry out.
Last but not least, I cooked some swiss chard with shallots and garlic for a green side to the meal. The kids loved this version of lamb as well, and the potato chips were enjoyed by all. For the parents, the meal was accompanied by a glass of red wine and a bunny macaron as the crowning jewel.
This was a marathon of a post, but I wanted to start out this new adventure on a high note. For the same reason, the recipe I'm sharing is a dear family favorite, I make some variation of it (see notes at the end) every week for the kids and they eagerly eat the leftovers for lunch the following day as well.
Time for the recipe I promised!
Broccoli Mac and Cheese
Ingredients:
1 lb dry pasta
2 cups of whole milk
2 cups of steamed broccoli
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
8 oz sharp cheddar, shredded
salt
pepper
garlic powder (optional)
Method:
- Bring a pot of water to a boil, salt well. Boil the pasta to al dente texture - follow package directions as times vary, drain and set aside.
- Blend milk and broccoli until smooth.
- Melt butter in a pot (I use the same pot the pasta boiled in, saves on dishes!), then add flour and whisk well on low heat.
- Gradually add all the broccoli and milk mixture, whisking the whole time to ensure a smooth and creamy mixture (think of it as a veggie enriched bechamel).
- Simmer the sauce for a couple of minutes to thicken and for the flour to cook, and add salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste (1/2 tsp is great for a light flavor).
- Sprinkle in all the cheddar, mixing with a spoon until everything is uniformly melted, then remove from heat.
- Mix drained pasta in the sauce, then serve. Enjoy!
Notes:
- When you choose pasta shapes, consider ones that have grooves or twists for the cheese sauce to adhere to. My kids highly recommend dinosaur shaped pasta :).
- For extra rich sauce, consider replacing some or all of the milk with evaporated milk.
- This recipe works well with many veggies! I've tried butternut squash and carrots (also steamed first to soften) and spinach (fresh can be blended directly, frozen should be thawed and squeezed dry first) and the kids loved them as well.
- Cheese can be customized to taste, we most frequently use sharp cheddar but many other melting cheeses can work together for a great dish - consider including mozzarella (softer flavor, I wouldn't recommend using on its own), colby, fontina, or machego.
- Save leftovers in a covered container in the fridge, warm up with a splash of milk on low heat or in the microwave, mixing to soften the sauce and distribute the heat evenly.
