wshaffer

Every Christmas season, my manager gives her employees a little gift of herbs or spices of some sort. One year it was a little bag of mulling spices; another year it was a few little packets of spice mix from Penzey's. This year, it was some cinnamon, some vanilla sugar, and some unsweetened cocoa. I've been trying to think of some interesting things to do with the vanilla sugar.

My first attempt turned out very well. It was based very loosely on a recipe from Sally Swift's The Improvisational Cook. Very loosely in that I think the only ingredient that the two recipes share is the pears. But since the whole point of Sally Swift's book is to teach you how to tweak the same basic recipe to produce a variety of different things, I think Ms. Swift would be content.

This would be awesome served with vanilla ice cream, but I didn't plan far ahead enough to have any on hand.

Ingredients:
2 medium-sized pears, cored and cut into quarters (I used Anjou pears, because I had them on hand)
3/4 tsp. vanilla sugar
ground cinnamon to taste
2 tbsp Navan vanilla cognac
~1/2 tbsp butter

Steps:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Line a 9 x 9 baking pan with aluminum foil, and lay the pear quarters in it.
3. Sprinkle the pears with the cognac, sugar, and cinnamon. Cut the butter into little bits and dot it over the pears.
4. Bake for 30 minutes. Turn the pears over and baste with the pan juices and bake for another 30 minutes.

The pears get soft and gooey and beautifully caramelized around the edges.

Serves 2.

A few quickies to clear out of my blogging queue:

A laugh: I like big butts and I cannot lie, but is there some evolutionary reason as to why?. I think this may be the reason the internet was created.

A recipe: Quesadillas, with a twist. I actually haven't made this exact recipe yet, but the basic idea of scrambling an egg, adding it to a hot pan, and then laying a tortilla or other flatbread on top so that the egg gets bonded to it as it cooks is brilliant. And it provides an answer to that age old dilemma, "Do I want a quesadilla or an omelette?" Yes!

A signal boost: Vera Nazarian has sadly lost her battle to avoid foreclosure on her home, and is moving cross-country. If you'd like to help her out, you could a) buy a book or two from her Norilana press, and b) spread the word. Norilana has quite a wide selection of books - I'm pretty sure that if you're at all interested in SF/fantasy, you can find something there of interest. I went for the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies, which I've heard good things about.

Because posting entries over at my usual recipe blog seems to be broken, I record below for posterity today's cooking experiment, an Indian-spiced shepherd's pie.

( I know it's technically not a shepherd's pie if you use turkey... )

Tonight's beer recipe was cod fillets poached in hefeweizen with lemon, allspice, red chile, and coriander. It was good, but not so magical that I think I'll make the exact recipe again.

However, the roasted leeks that I served with the fish were definite winners. Although, I think the recipe must be assuming larger leeks or less hungry people than we had available: I used 6 (admittedly smallish) leeks, and the two of us polished them off.

Another welcome discovery: The smoke alarm in the kitchen has a "shut up, I'm cooking" switch that will stop it from going off for 5 minutes after you press the button. I have always wanted one of these!

So, one of the things that became apparent when I was unpacking the kitchen was that we have too much beer. See, every time we have a party, we buy beer, and we always buy a bit more than our guests actually drink. And we don't drink it ourselves. So, I've decided that I need to cook with it.

I have a couple of recipes for chili that use some beer, and zellandyne and I once concocted a beef braised with mustard and beer that was very tasty. And my mother has a tasty recipe for beer bread that I should get from her. But beyond that, I'm looking for ideas. Any of y'all out there have favorite recipes that use beer?