Rosemary Apricots: Toute de sweet

I just found out about Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly event created by Kalyn over at the popular Kalyn’s Kitchen. So when I came across some particularly nice looking rosemary at the produce market, I thought I’d toss my toque in the ring.

Rosemary is probably my favorite herb. Every year we grow some in the yard and some in a pot on the back porch, and I always watch it impatiently, waiting for it to get big and hardy enough for me to start harvesting occasional sprigs. Even when I’m not clipping bits to use in some dish or another, I like brushing against the plants as I pass, catching a whiff of the big, distinctive fragrance they release. Rosemary does wonderful things to lamb, chicken, pork, roasted potatoes—and to apricots, in this wonderfully simple French dessert.

I think there is a perception among many cooks and non-cooks alike that French cooking is complicated and daunting. And while much of classic Gallic cuisine can be, the essence of a great deal of French cooking [to me, anyway] is taking a handful of carefully chosen ingredients and preparing them simply in a way that brings out the best flavors in each of them and blends them into something that isn’t just delicious, but somehow exactly “right.” This recipe [adapted from one found in Laura Calder's excellent French Food at Home] uses just three ingredients—four, if you count water. It is quick and brainlessly easy to make, and its elegant simplicity never fails to impress. Ever.

Rosemary Apricots
Serves six

6 firm ripe apricots, halved and pitted
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
leaves from 1 large sprig, rosemary

Gently heat sugar in a sauté pan with water and rosemary. When sugar is dissolved, bring to a simmer. Place apricot halves in pan fanny side down, as Ms. Calder so charmingly puts it [the rounded side down, for the less poetic among us] and poach until tender, about 3 minutes—maybe 4 minutes if your apricots are on the firm side of ripe. Don’t let them get too soft.

Remove fruit with slotted spoon and place two halves on each serving plate. Increase heat to medium high and boil the cooking liquid down to a syrup, about five minutes. Spoon around apricots and serve. It may seem runny as you spoon it around the fruit, but it quickly thickens as it cools—essentially as it contacts the plate.

CAUTION: Be careful about the plates you choose for serving this dessert. The syrup gets very hot and can crack delicate or antique plates, particularly glass. Seriously. I speak from firsthand experience here.

Kitchen Notes

Cooking with Rosemary. You can cook many dishes that call for fresh rosemary with dried rosemary leaves [or needles, as they're often called], using about one third the amount called for. Not this dessert, however—it demands the softness of fresh leaves.

When preparing a dish that calls for a whole sprig rather than the leaves, I often bruise it with a rolling pin or the side of a glass. This releases more of the rosemary’s oils and flavor. But the act of plucking the leaves from the stem, as you do for this dish, sufficiently roughs them up.

SPECIAL NOTE: Be sure to check out the rest of the Weekend Herb Blogging at Kalyn’s Kitchen this coming Sunday.

Chocolate cake: Easy on the flour, easy to make

As much as I love to cook, when it comes to dessert I’m often all too ready to follow the advice given with so many main course recipes in cooking magazines: Cap off the meal with a nice store-bought dessert. With all the premium ice creams out there and lots of little bakeries churning out a dazzling [sometimes almost daunting] assortment of goodies, it’s an easy default. But there’s just something so nice about finishing a great meal with something homemade.

Fortunately for me, Marion is far more ready than I am to ignore the easy charms of store-bought and whip up something sinfully sweet and delicious at home. This decadent, rich, nearly flourless chocolate cake is a perfect example. So I’ll get out of the kitchen and let Marion tell you how to make it.

Can I get that to go?

A quick heads up—today’s post is potluck. After you read it, I expect you to bring a comment to share with everyone. Also, I’m doing a double post today, the second in honor of Valentine’s Day. So be sure to scroll down.

If you’re a regular at Blue Kitchen, I figure you either like to cook or are a friend or family member who feels honor bound to visit. Or maybe you’re C.) all of the above. But there are times even those of us who loooove to cook either don’t have the time or the energy or C.) all of the above. What do you do then? Drive through? Pizza? What are your defaults? Your delights? I’ll go first.

For us, if we’re not up to cooking, it’s usually because we’ve worked late or have umpteen things to accomplish after dinner. If that’s the case, we also don’t have the energy or time to go someplace and sit down for a nice relaxing meal. So it’s got to be fast and on the way home. Cheap is good too. Our defaults, driven more by geography and speed than desire, are usually Chipotle or Taco Bell. I know. Shut up.

But then there are the guilty pleasures. We recently rediscovered one: Egg foo yung, those pancakelike deep-fried patties of egg, vegetables and meat or seafood. A longtime staple of rather suspect Chinese American restaurants, they’re often found next to those ersatz Chinese dishes, chop suey and chow mein on the menu. And in St. Louis, they’ve even invented something called the St. Paul Sandwich—an egg foo yung patty on white bread with lettuce, tomatoes, mayo and pickles. So I was stunned to recently discover that egg foo yung is actually based on an authentic Shanghai dish.

Before going any further, I have to say that Marion and I are regulars at more than a couple of restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown, places where we would probably not be allowed back if we ordered egg foo yung. And we tend to avoid generic food court Chinese food at all costs, in no small measure because the foods they serve tend to feature the same gloppy brown sauce that is a key ingredient of egg foo yung. But there’s something about egg foo yung that transcends national origin to become one of the world’s true comfort foods.

And never was it more comforting than one night a few years ago. In a fit of temporary insanity, we had agreed to our older daughter’s request for a sleepover birthday party with six guests. A total of seven girls, including the birthday girl, who needed all the caffeine and sugar buzz we’d also intelligently provided like a shark needs swim fins. They weren’t being bad, mind you—it was just the perfect storm of noise and energy and gross out humor. Silly me. I thought having daughters, it would be all Barbies and tea parties and I would escape the various bodily function jokes of my own childhood. I’ll wait while my women readers enjoy a good laugh at my naivete about now. That’s okay. I deserve it.

Marion and I were hunkered down in our room, grimly watching Saturday night TV and each privately longing for a tranquilizer dart gun as the party raged on outside our door.

And then we remembered the late night Chinese take-out place not two blocks from our house.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in our room with wonderfully satisfying plates of egg foo yung, steamed rice and gloppy brown sauce. I think we must have also had a couple of glasses of some modest white wine. The world was suddenly a better place.

Okay, your turn. What’s your default take-out or delivery? What’s your guilty pleasure? Try to stick with fast and cheap and, if at all possible, greasy this time. I’m sure we’ll talk about fancier options in a future post.

Note to self: Get organized

I keep promising myself to put together an editorial calendar for Blue Kitchen, mapping out topics I want to cover, especially around the holidays. If I’d done that, last week you would have read about some romantic Valentine dinner or a sinfully rich dessert in time to perhaps actually plan for it tonight. But I didn’t. And if I’d gone ahead and written about something like that for today’s post, you’d just be pissed that there was no time to get things together. So instead, I wrote about egg foo yung.

Just so you know I’m not a total doofus, Marion and I won’t be eating egg foo yung tonight, assuming the winter weather cooperates. I made dinner reservations at one of our favorite little Chicago bistros, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe. Sharing the kitchen with the [only slightly] more formal Cafe Bernard, the tiny Red Rooster offers exquisitely prepared simple French cuisine in a relaxed country atmosphere. If you ever find yourself in Chicago for dinner, you could do far worse than this cozy, friendly place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Be sure to check out the special Valentine’s Day editions of Kitchen Boombox and WTF.

Instinct and Improvisation

Okay, this is the second week in a row I’m talking about pork. For those of you who don’t eat it for religious, cultural or dietary reasons, please bear with me. I promise next week’s post will be 100% pig-free. For those of you who don’t eat pork because “I just don’t like it” [picture someone delivering this line with a pinched face and a whiny voice], what’s not to like about a one stop source for chops, ribs, roasts, a dazzling international array of sausages, hams and bacon, for crying out loud?

This is also the second week in a row I’m using fruit in a savory dish, this time pears. As far as I’m concerned, another reason to like pork is how nicely it plays with fruits and fruit juices.

As a quick aside, Mimi of French Kitchen in America just featured pears in a savory treatment, sort of, at her blog. A delicious sounding Pear-Ginger Crisp with Salted Almond Topping. I’ve had a link to Mimi’s blog in my Food Stuff section for some time now, but I’ve been remiss in not flat out telling people to visit it. You’ll find lots of great food and great writing there, including wonderful memories of her French grandmother. Mimi is a generous, charming hostess. Go there.

Another quick aside. See Other Notes at the end of the recipe for a tip about another great food blog.

Okay, back to the kitchen. Mimi recently did a post on chef James Haller’s instinctive approach to cooking. The more I cook, the more I understand instinct. More often than not, as I look at recipes these days [in cookbooks, online, in magazines], I find a technique or an intriguing pairing of ingredients that will have me improvising a completely different dish in my head. That’s one of the things that keeps cooking exciting for me.

It’s also how this recipe came about. Normally, I’m a stovetop kind of guy. Searing, sautéing, braising, stewing—anything you can do in a good, heavy pan over a gas flame—I’m all over it. But we had a couple of pork tenderloins that weren’t getting any younger, and Marion wasn’t finding time to do anything with them. And yeah, I could have sliced them into medallions and sautéed away, but I thought I should work on some roasting skills. Besides, it’s as cold as a witch’s, er, bazoom in Chicago right now. Firing up the oven to a toasty 400ºF for a while sounded like a good idea.