The recent issue of Haverford magazine featured a cover story on Tamar Adler ’91, writer, chef and cooking teacher whose new book, An Everlasting Meal, was just released to much acclaim. We also wrote about four alumnae food bloggers who are also combining their loves of the written word with their foodie leanings. You should bookmark their sites (listed below) for help with those “what should I make for dinner?” quandaries, cookbook recommendations or international food related news. But to get you started we asked each of our bloggers to provide an easy, original recipe to share with the Haverford community. We got hungry just typing this up, so we know you are in for a treat. Enjoy!
Pan And Ink
Former teacher and stay-at-home mom Lis Fogt ’96 has applied her love of learning to the kitchen. Teaching herself to cook, she learned she especially loves to make her two young sons whole-grain baked goods, like these cookies, which were originally featured on her site, panandink.blogspot.com.
Dark Chocolate-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground sea salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz. chopped bittersweet chocolate (or chocolate chips)
1 cup roughly chopped dried cherries
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk the dry ingredients (flour through salt) together in a medium bowl. In a mixer or by hand, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy, about two minutes. Add the egg and mix until well blended, scraping the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until everything is well combined. Stir in the chocolate and cherries, finishing the mixing with your hands if needed. Using a tablespoon and your fingers, form the dough into roughly two-inch balls and drop onto the cookie sheets, leaving three inches between cookies. Use your fingers to gently flatten each ball into a disk. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets mid-way through the baking. These are done when the edges appear set and the cookies remove easily from the baking sheet. Be careful not to overbake. Allow cooling for a minute or two on the baking sheet and transfer to a rack to finish cooling.
5 Second Rule
Professional food writer Cheryl Sternman Rule ’92 attended culinary school before she began her writing career, but the recipes on her blog, 5secondrule.typepad.com, and in her recently published first book, Ripe: A Fresh, Colorful, Approach to Fruits and Vegetables, are easily undertaken by non-professionals, as this soba noodle salad proves.
Soba Noodle Salad With Mixed Vegetables, Peanuts and Mint
Serves 4
2 bundles (about 5 ounces) soba noodles
3 cups (packed) fresh spinach leaves, rough chopped
2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons (packed) freshly grated ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Persian cucumber, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
2 scallions, finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped peanuts (I use roasted peanuts from Trader Joe’s with 50% salt)
Handful fresh mint leaves, cut in chiffonade
Sriracha for serving, optional
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in noodles and cook for 3 minutes. Add spinach and cook with noodles for one minute longer. Drain and rinse under cool water. Give the spinach a squeeze to remove excess water.
Meanwhile, whisk the oil, vinegar, ginger, and garlic in the bottom of a large salad bowl. Dump in the noodles and spinach and toss to coat. Add the cucumber, carrots, and scallions, and toss through.
Garnish with the peanuts and mint, and serve room temperature, or even cold, passing a bottle of Sriracha, if desired, alongside.
A Kitchen in Brooklyn
Intellectual property lawyer Sasha (Rieders) Coffiner ’00 offers her own take on the popular Japanese ramen craze that is sweeping New York on her site, akitcheninbrooklyn.com.
Sasha’s Shoyu-Chicken Ramen
1 whole chicken, cut up, about four pounds
1/2 cup of low sodium soy sauce
1 large onion, cut into quarters
4 garlic cloves
4 quarts of water
four small pieces of kombu
2 oz fresh ginger, peeled
soba, lo mein or ramen noodles
3 large soft boiled eggs, soaked for an hour in equal parts soy sauce and mirin
three diced scallions
In a large stockpot, combine the water, chicken, onion, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and kombu. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and simmer, partially covered for two hours to allow the broth to get a delicious flavor, just like if you were making chicken stock for matzo ball soup. The when the two hours are up, strain the broth and reserve it of course. Prior to simmering, but after boiling, you’ll want to skim the chicken fat from the top of the broth so the end result will be clear. Shred some of the chicken for serving in the ramen soup.
Boil the noodles according to package instructions and add to the broth and chicken. Hard boil three eggs and soak for an hour in a mixture of mirin and soy sauce, and chop up some scallions for serving. Optional – add some corn or steamed spinach.
Sneeze!
Anita Verna Crofts ’92, a lecturer in the the University of Washington Department of Communication, keeps a rare food blog that isn’t focused on recipes or stories from her kitchen. Pepperforthebeast.blogspot.com is focused on issues of food and identity, but Crofts dug up this delicious and easy dessert recipe for us anyway.
Orange Cornmeal Cake
This is a simple recipe that yields delicious results: I have been known to consume nearly an entire cake in one sitting! You can swap out gluten-free flour and cornmeal to make a gluten-free dessert.
1/2 C olive oil, plus more for pan
2 large eggs
1 C sugar, plus 1/3 C for topping
1/2 C orange juice
1 and 1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 C yellow cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
finely grated zest of one orange
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Brush bottom and sides of an 8-inch round cake pan with oil (you can also use 9″ square in a pinch), line bottom with a round of wax or parchment paper, and brush paper with oil.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together oil, eggs, 1 cup sugar, and juice until smooth. Add flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and orange zest; whisk gently to combine.
3. Pour batter into prepared pan; sprinkle top evenly with remaining 1/3 cup sugar (topping will be thick). Bake until cake begins to pull away from sides of pan and a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes.
4. Cool in pan 20 minutes. Run knife around the edge of cake, invert cake gently on to a plate and remove parchment paper. Reinvert cake onto rack to cool further. Serve!