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Most worth-the-work Family Holiday Recipe! Danish Pastry Wreath Recipe

Friday, December 24th, 2010

To pull my mom’s leg we joke that the Danish Pastry Wreath is my Aunt’s recipe and it gets my mom going because it was originally a recipe that she found in a 1960’s or 70’s cooking magazine. The proper credit to the right person for this Danish Wreath is a clue straight off the bat that the Danish is remembered and desired by all of my family members on Christmas. Admittedly, the Danish takes a couple of days to make unless you want to cram all day long. Also, it takes a bit of help from a friend with some baking experience if you haven’t done much bread baking in the past, but it’s worth it!

We typically serve the Danish with an egg casserole on Christmas morning. Enjoy!

Holiday Danish Pastry Wreath Recipe

Posted in Breakfast, Family Favorites, Home Cookin' | 2 Comments »
Tags: brunch, Danish Pastry, family recipe, Pastry, Wreath

Leftovers: Tri-Tip Hash made with Spiced Tomato Gratin

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

On Thursday night we had Tri-Tip, Spiced Tomato Gratin (CSA Box #22 Recipe), and a Balthazar inspired salad with Lemon Truffle Vinaigrette. Saturday morning we woke up and realized we could make Tri-Tip Hash with the leftover Gratin and meat! It was like stepping into a greasy spoon on a Saturday morning after a long night, knee deep at the bar, except you’re only 15 feet from a shower to wash away your hang over.

In a cast iron pan throw together the leftover potatoes and meat and cook it up until fairly browned. Serve with eggs and toast.

Posted in Breakfast, Home Cookin' | No Comments »
Tags: Breakfast, brunch, Hash, Home Cookin', recipe, Spiced Tomato Gratin, Tri-Tip, Tri-Tip Hash

Bon Appetit Homemade Strawberry Pop-Tarts Recipe: Fancy with Blue Chair Fruit Jam

Friday, April 30th, 2010

A high-class pop tart from Big Sur Bakery and a local artisanal jam inspired me to try this Bon Appetit Strawberry Pop Tarts recipe! Our uncle was working on a Northern California hand-crafted artisanal food show and picked up some great jam from Blue Chair Fruit up in the East Bay and I decided it was the perfect jam for the job.

You can use any jam for this recipe from homemade marmalade to a farmer’s market local jam favorite. We used Blue Chair Fruit, Aprium-Orange Jam.

Everybody oohhh’d and ahhhh’d over these buttery, sinful desserts. It made sense because they were essentially a flaky, buttery sugar cookie/biscuit recipe with sugary, fruity jam inside.

You can even see the step-by-step instructions on BonAppetit.com “How to Make a Pop Tart!”

Pop Tarts Recipe ->

Click to continue »

Posted in Desserts, Home Cookin' | 3 Comments »
Tags: artisan food, Breakfast, brunch, dessert, Home Cookin', jam, local product, recipe

More Than Just a Good Rolling Stones’ Song; Brown Sugar, Oakland & Day Trip

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Brown Sugar Oakland, CA & An Oakland Day-Trip Itinerary

• A Creative Soul Food breakfast joint so good that your old-school grandmother and your hipster cousin from LA can come together and love every minute of it. A bonus is also the fact that you won’t feel greasy or smell like the fryer when you leave. The décor is very modern and has an updated tasteful diner feeling with a brown sugar color palette all around you.

Brown Sugar offers such specialties as Cornmeal Waffles and Fried Chicken, Pulled Pork Sandwich with Lime Slaw, Black-Eyed Pea Salad, Roast Pork Hash, and the Mac & Cheese. You WILL wait in line to get a table at Brown Sugar because it is that popular even though it sits nearly by itself (at this point … hint, hint) in West Oakland. You can watch the chef, Tanya Holland, prepare your food with precision alongside her other cooks in the kitchen. I look forward to seeing the cook/chef who sports a green mohawk rockin’ out on the cooking channel with his own punk-rock palate show.

An Oakland Day Trip Itinerary:

(Must go on a first Sunday of the month)

1st Stop Eat breakfast at Brown Sugar @ 8-10am

Get Directions: http://www.brownsugarkitchen.com/

2nd Stop First Sunday of every month go to the Alameda Flea Market @ 10am-12pm

Northern California’s largest antiques and collectibles show
$5 to get in after 9am
Get Directions: http://www.antiquesbybay.com/directions.asp
Can grab a sausage (another line, I see a trend here)

3rd Stop Go on a tour at Hangar One Distillery Tasting & Tour in Alameda @ 12noon – 6pm

Get Directions: http://www.hangarone.com/visit.html
Taste Creatively-Crafted Flavored Vodkas, Absinthe, & Whiskey
Take a tour with the Vodka Vixen
You can bring a picnic lunch or snacks to eat out front on the picnic table and admire the view of SF from across the bay

Posted in Eating Out, Oakland, SF Bay Area Day Trips | No Comments »
Tags: Alameda Flea Market, Breakfast, Brown Sugar, brunch, Cornmeal Waffles, Creative Soul Food, East Bay, Eating Out, Hangar One Distillery Tour, Mac & Cheese, Oakland, SF Bay Area Day Trip

You Can Quiche Your Day Goodbye

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Bouchon Quiche Recipe: The Most Delicious Waste of a Day You’ll Ever Have

For a baby shower this weekend, a friend asked me to make a couple of quiches. As Northern California food bloggers near the home of Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Restaurant, we just couldn’t do it the simple American way with store-bought pie crusts and the “it’ll be ready in an hour prep, cook, and bake time quiche recipe.” Instead, we pulled out Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Cookbook and spent eight hours over three days assembling a couple of masterpiece quiches from the most labor intensive recipe we’ve ever found. Even with two people working the entire time in the kitchen it was intense, sweating bullets and hoping for success. We learned a lot from massive mishaps but in the end we were surprised to get some rave reviews from guests at the shower.

We made the quiche crust dough a day before we needed it and refrigerated it overnight. The recipe was similar to the way that you make biscuits with flour and pieces of chilled butter. We rolled the dough out on Friday morning and I got out my three pans with removable sides. The fact that the pans had 3” high sides instead of a 2” high ring mold didn’t faze me at all considering I thought it was a minor detail. In the end it made a huge difference in the ultimate success of our standup quiche shells. We freaked when we opened the oven after fifteen minutes of bake time to find the sides of our crust fallen into the pan (see the oven photograph). I immediately got online and googled Thomas Keller’s Quiche problems and found a few posts. Others had the same issue and thought it was because there wasn’t enough dough to go over the sides taller pans. They made extra dough to try and solve the problem, only to find out that the dough just can’t hold itself at 3” high so YOU HAVE TO USE A 2” RING MOLD PAN FOR BOUCHON QUICHE! We just continued and tried to patch the sides hoping it would all work out, and miraculously, it did! We had a bit of a filling leak on one of the three quiches, but it still turned out to be pretty decent looking and utterly delicious.

If you ever attempt this, you have to let us know how it turned out!

Recipe information after the jump….