Jam-Filled Doughnuts

Maybe you need more excitement in your Saturday morning. Maybe you need a vat of hot oil and the worry that the jelly in the doughnuts is going to ooze out into the oil. Maybe you need your house to smell like Krispy Kreme. Or maybe you like really, really good doughnuts and don't mind a bit of a challenge. I thought these were totally worth it--but I won't be making doughnuts again for a while.

This recipe is adapted from a Kosher Hanukkah doughnut recipe from the December 2002 Bon Appétit. I only made half this recipe, and it was plenty for the four of us.

Jam-Filled Doughnuts

2-1/2 c. (7.5 oz.) flour (part whole-wheat is OK if you want to delude yourself)

5 T. (2.2 oz.) sugar

2 envelopes rapid-rise yeast

Grated zest of one lemon

1 t. salt

1/4 t. ginger

3/4 c. (6 oz.) milk

4 T. (2 oz.) butter, melted and cooled

2 eggs

1-1/2 t. vanilla

Jam of your choice (I used raspberry)

6-8 cups of frying oil (I used peanut)

Powdered sugar

I highly recommend making the doughnuts the night before.

In a large bowl (you can use a mixer with a dough hook or do this by hand), whisk together the flour, sugar, yeast, lemon rind, salt, and ginger. Beat in the milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla until a soft dough forms; knead on a floured board until smooth and elastic. Return to the bowl, cover with a towel, put in a warm place, and let rise about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

Roll out on a floured board to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut out 2-inch circles with a cookie/biscuit cutter. Go for an even number of circles. Put a scant half teaspoon of jam on half of the circles and cover them with the remaining circles. Press on the edges to seal and recut with the cookie cutter to seal the edges a bit more. Arrange the doughnuts on a cookie sheet, cover with plastic, and refrigerate until you're ready to fry.

When you're ready to fry, remove the doughnuts from the fridge and heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat to 325. It will take at least 10 minutes for your oil to heat up to that temperature. In the meantime, line a baking sheet with a brown paper bag and put a rack over that. Also, check the doughnuts to make sure they're sealed; crimp the edges of any that have become unsealed. Once the oil is finally heated, cook the doughnuts about 2 minutes per side; fish out with a slotted spoon and put on the prepared rack. Sprinkle both sides with powdered sugar and call the troops to eat them while they're hot!

Nutty Macaroni and Blue Cheese

I swear I'll get back to roasted vegetables--soon. I'm sure the walnuts in this add important antioxidants or what-have-you. But they were rather an unwelcome presence for the girls. Julia picked hers out--and she likes nuts normally. I kind of liked them. So use your judgement. Oh, and if you're a mac and cheese conservative (nothing wrong with that), leave out the blue cheese and walnuts and just put an extra cup of grated cheese (half Cheddar, half Parmesan?) in the sauce.

It occurred to me as I cleaned out the macaroni dish that if you put bread crumbs on the bottom as well as on the top of the macaroni, you could get a double crust. Either that, or a big clean-up headache. Next time I'm going to try that. We love that bread crumb crust.

This comes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Nutty Macaroni and Blue Cheese

2-1/2 c. milk

2 bay leaves

1 lb. macaroni or other tubular pasta

4 T. butter, divided

3 T. flour

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, red pepper...

1 c. (4 oz.) grated Cheddar

1 c. (3 oz.) crumbled blue cheese (I would use the cheaper, milder Danish kind)

3/4 c. walnuts, chopped

2 slices of whatever bread you have, to make about 1 cup crumbs

Heat the oven to 400. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan or its baking dish equivalent. Measure the milk into a 4-cup Pyrex measure, add the bay leaves, and microwave for about 2 minutes on high, until it's steaming but not necessarily boiling. Let that sit and steep while you take care of the rest. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. While you're waiting for that, melt 3 T. of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When it's melted, add the flour and whisk a bit for it to brown just a tiny bit. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and red pepper--or whatever seasonings you like. Fish the bay leaves out of the milk before gradually pouring it into the roux, whisking as you go. Cook this white sauce until it's thickened and bubbly. Take off the heat and add the Cheddar; stir until the cheese is melted. At this point, if not before, you'll cook the pasta a couple minutes less than the package directions call for. At some point you'll also want to put the bread and the remaining 1 T. butter in a food processor and process until you have crumbs. OK, now we're ready to assemble the mac 'n' cheese: Drain the cooked noodles and pour them into the baking dish. Top with the cheese sauce and stir that around. Mix in the blue cheese and walnuts. Top with the buttered bread crumbs and bake for about 15 minutes, until the crumbs have browned and the sauce is bubbly. Enjoy with a green vegetable and good intentions for moderation.

Oven Cioppino

Last week we had some friends from work over for dinner. The pressure was on, because one of the guests has been a restaurant manager. He told stories about Gordon Ramsay. Gulp. But everyone seemed to like this dish, which I made by heavily adapting a recipe from Joyce Goldstein'sThe Mediterranean Kitchen. This is a really nice dish for entertaining because you can make the "sauce" ahead and then pop in the fish/seafood right before you want to serve it. I served it with grits/polenta (no-one at the table had ever had grits before, and I have never heard the word "grits" spoken so many times during the course of one meal as I did then).

Use whatever kind of seafood you like and is abundant in your area. If you're in California/on the West Coast, use cracked Dungeness crab! Please?

Oven Cioppino

(for about 8 people)

3 onions, chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 red pepper, peeled and chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

4 bay leaves

4 sprigs thyme

1 T. red pepper flakes

1 T. fennel seed

Salt and pepper

3-4 T. olive oil

1/2 c. red wine

1 large can whole Italian tomatoes

Seafood of your choice: I used about a pound of shrimp, a whole monkfish, and about 20 scallops.

Heat the oven to 425. Line a large rimmed baking sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment or heavy-duty foil. Pour a bit of the olive oil on it. Then pile on the onions, celery, carrots, pepper, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, red pepper, fennel, and salt and pepper to taste (I probably used about 1/2 t. salt). Sprinkle with more olive oil and the red wine, and pour over the can of tomatoes (if you're more dextrous than I, squish up the tomatoes a bit with your hands). Mix that well and then put in the oven to roast for about 30 minutes, or until the vegetables have browned nicely. When you're just about ready to eat, arrange the seafood atop the sauce, sprinkle with a bit more wine and/or olive oil if you feel like it, and return to the oven for about 5-10 minutes, depending on what kind of seafood you're using. Serve with grits, polenta, and/or sourdough bread.

Indian Grilled Chicken

I made this as roast chicken, and it was really good. The recipe is adapted from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook. Spicy food is allegedly good for the hangover I may have had on New Year's Day...but this isn't all that spicy, just flavorful.

Masala Murgh

3 cloves garlic, peeled

About an inch of fresh garlic, peeled

Half a bunch of cilantro, washed and dried

Half a bunch of mint, washed and dried (remove the leaves from the stems)

1/4 c. cider vinegar

1 T. curry powder (tandoori seasoning if you have it)

2 t. salt

1 t. garam masala, if you have it--if not, use more curry powder

1 t. turmeric

1/4 t. cloves

1/2 t. ground cardamom

1/4 c. salad oil

2 T. sesame oil

Grind everything up in a food processor until you have a smooth paste. Now take

1 whole chicken, cut up or a package of chicken thighs or legs or breasts

Use a knife to poke holes all over the chicken. Put it in a big Zip-loc and rub the spice paste over it. Let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour. Grill the chicken (start over high heat and then move off the coals so that the chicken cooks without burning) or roast it at 400 for 30-45 minutes. Serve with rice and chutney.

Coq au Vin

Mmmm...chicken and a bottle of wine. A winter classic.

This is from my beat-up French cookbook. You can certainly find more complicated recipes for coq au vin, but this one does the job fairly simply.

Coq au Vin

2 T. olive oil

4 oz. bacon, cut into matchstick strips

12 pearl onions (do yourself a favor and buy them frozen), peeled

1 rooster (ha!) or chicken, cut up and sprinkled with salt and pepper

3 T. brandy/Cognac

2 T. flour

3 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

1 bottle cheap red wine (Shiraz would be good)

2 T. butter

1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Toasted bread (brush sliced bread with melted butter or olive oil and toast at 350 for about 7 minutes)

Get out your big Dutch oven or covered skillet--it needs to hold a whole chicken and a whole bottle of wine.

Heat the oil in the pan and then cook the bacon in the oil. It sounds crazy to cook bacon in extra fat, but it keeps you from getting burned bacon bits on the bottom of the pan. When the bacon is cooked, remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and brown the onions in the fat. When they're browned, remove them and brown the chicken. When the chicken is nice and brown, pour the brandy in the pot. If you like fire, flame the brandy. If you fear the flame like I do, just let the brandy cook down, scraping to get all the good stuff off the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the chicken with the flour, then put in the thyme, bay leaves, bacon, onion, and wine. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat so that it's gently bubbling. Don't put the top back on--you want that wine to reduce. Let it cook that way, perfuming your kitchen, for about an hour.

About 15 minutes before you want to serve this, get out a medium skillet and melt the butter in it (you could melt a bit extra and use it for your toast) over medium-high heat. Sauté the mushrooms and garlic until the mushrooms are tender and most of their liquid has cooked off. Add the mushrooms to the chicken, which should be tender and purple. Serve with something green and the toasted bread. Wear a beret. Play accordion music. Go on strike.

Fettuccine al Barese

Sami and I had a big Sunday lunch with some American professors who live in Paris, and this was the main course. Shrimp, butter, garlic, pasta--how can you go wrong? This took about 15 minutes to put together and was much appreciated, though the baked Mont d'Or cheese and the raspberry brownies afterwards rather outshone it...

This recipe is adapted from Joyce Goldstein's Mediterranean Kitchen. The original recipe calls for 2 T. olive oil plus 3 T butter per person. That just seemed a bit excessive. If you want "restaurant-strength" sauce, go ahead and use 12 T. butter and 1/2 c. olive oil.

Fettuccine al Barese

2 T. olive oil

1 lb. shrimp, shelled and deveined

Salt and pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 t. dried red pepper flakes (more if you feel like it)

1/2 c. white wine

12 oz. fresh fettuccine (you can usually buy this in the deli section of your grocery store)

4 T. lemon juice (that's about 1-1/2 large lemons)

6 T. butter, cut into pieces

Start a pot of salted water boiling for the pasta. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and cook them until they're just pink. Remove from the skillet with a slotted spoon and throw in the garlic and pepper. Stir that around for a minute, then add the wine and let it cook down by about half. At this point, you should probably be throwing the pasta in the water and cooking it according to package directions. When the wine has cooked down, add the shrimp, lemon juice, and butter and stir until the butter is melted and the sauce has thickened a bit. Drain the pasta and toss with the shrimp sauce. Serve with a green salad and some bread to soak up the buttery goodness. Serves 4.