pistachio – AT-AT Everywhere

Pistachio Macarons

Leslie and I went through a serious macaron obsession in the early 2010’s (is that what you call that decade?). I mean – a SERIOUS obsession. I’ve had them from just about everywhere in LA, several places in New York, and even hot off a plane from Ladurée in Paris. I took a couple of classes to learn how to make them, since these are not for the weary at heart. They are a lot of work!

Fortunately, Leslie shared my fondness and my wedding gift to her and Tri was a couples cooking class to learn how to make these as well. She invited me over to help give these a whirl at her house, and I have to say – it was a lot easier making these with a partner than by myself. We made these about 3.5 years ago, so this post is a wee bit overdue.

Here is the recipe Leslie found as adapted from All Recipes! Because there is so little room for error in the chemistry of macarons, you should definitely use a kitchen scale to measure out your ingredients. Weights are included in the ingredient list below:

INGREDIENTS:

Macaron Cookie

1 1/4 cups (220g) powdered sugar
1 1/4 cups (125g) almond meal
100g egg whites
1/4 cup (60g) caster sugar
20 drops green food coloring (optional)
30g unsalted blanched pistachios, ground

Pistachio Ganache

40g caster sugar
40g unsalted blanched pistachios, ground
2 egg yolks
100ml heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
20g butter, softened
5 drops black food coloring (optional)

NOTE: You can grind the pistachios in a food processor, but just pulse a few times until you get the desired consistency. Don’t overdo it or you’ll end up with pistachio “butter”.

DIRECTIONS:

MACARONS: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper or a Silpat.
In a bowl, mix together the pistachios and almond meal then sift in the powdered sugar.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff then add one tablespoon of sugar. Continue to whisk then add the remaining sugar while whisking on high speed. I recommend using a stand mixer, as long as the whisk attachment and bowl are completely clean and dry.
Stiff Peaks!
Carefully stir the almond mixture into the egg white and gently fold with a spatula. This is where having a partner really came in handy! Add the green food coloring (optional).
Gently Fold!
Put the mixture into a pastry bag with a round nozzle. Pipe 2″ mounds onto the prepared baking tray ensuring there is about 1.5″ of space between each.
Quickly Pipe 2″ Mounds
Tap the tray on a table or a work surface to remove any air bubbles and set the macarons aside for 30 minutes, which will allow a crust to form on the macarons. Leslie ground some extra pistachios to sprinkle on top of some of the macarons as an embellishment before we let them sit. Bake in the preheated oven for 14 minutes.
Panache Before the Ganache
To see if your macarons are ready press lightly on top. If they are still soft and moving, then they are not cooked through yet.
PISTACHIO GANACHE: Mix the sugar with the pistachios.
Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat then add the pistachios and vanilla. Bring to the boil then add the eggs and cook keeping a 185 degrees F, if you have a candy thermometer. If you don’t, just keep a close eye on it so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs.
Remove from heat, stir in the softened butter and food coloring then refrigerate.
Ganache – After
ASSEMBLY: Peel the parchment paper off of the cookie (instead of the other way around). Take one macaron and spread the pistachio ganache on the flat part with a butter knife then “twist on” a second macaron on the ganache. Think of it as the opposite of twisting apart an Oreo. Repeat until no macarons are left.
Peel Parchment Off of Cookie
If you somehow manage not to eat all of them immediately after, you can refrigerate these in an airtight container for up to three days. Just let them come to room temp again before you indulge.

We were so proud of ourselves for the way these turned out. Delish!!!

Apricot Pistachio Squares

Finally, a more recently made treat. I went on a solid 3-month hiatus from baking to try and have less temptation laying around the apartment. Our pre-wedding healthy eating habits went out the window during our honeymoon trip to Big Sur and Napa. It was the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon, and I had the biggest hankering to bake something. With it being summer (my favorite time of the year to make desserts), I thought I’d give this recipe a try.

Pistachio is hands down my favorite flavor in both sweet and savory dishes, and it had been a while since I last whipped up a pistachio dessert I really liked. I had never had anything with fresh apricots before, but I’ve taken a real liking to minced dried apricots in my stews or with some plain oatmeal. I saw this recipe on the ever-faithful Smitten Kitchen and had to give it a whirl:

INGREDIENTS:

Crust

1 C all-purpose flour
1/4 t table salt
1/4 C granulated sugar
1/2 C (or one stick) unsalted butter, cold is fine

Filling

3/4 C shelled unsalted pistachios
1 tablespoon (10 grams) all purpose flour
Few pinches of sea salt
6 T sugar
5 T unsalted butter, cold is fine
1 large egg
1/4 t almond extract (vanilla extract will work too, but almond extract really tastes the best for this recipe)
1 pound firm-ripe apricots

DIRECTIONS:

Heat your oven to 350 degrees F. Cut two 12-inch lengths of parchment paper and trim each to fit the 8-inch width of an 8×8-inch square baking pan (I used my handy dandy Pyrex). Press it into the bottom and sides of your pan in one direction, then use the second sheet to line the rest of the pan, perpendicular to the first sheet.
Make the crust: Combine the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Cut the butter into chunks, and add it to the bowl, then run the machine until the mixture forms large clumps. It should take 30 seconds or so for it to come together.
Transfer the dough clumps to your prepared baking pan and press it evenly across the bottom and 1/4-inch up the sides. Bake for 15 minutes, until very pale golden. For the sake of speed, transfer to a cooling rack in your freezer for 10 to 15 minutes while you prepare the filing.
Make the filling: In your food processor bowl (which does not need to be washed between these steps), grind your pistachios, sugar, flour and salt together until the nuts are powdery. Cut the butter into chunks and add it and the egg and flavorings to the machine. Run the machine until no chunks of butter are visible.
Filling Hungry?
Spread the filling over mostly cooled (warm is okay but hopefully the freezer will have firmed the base enough so you can spread something over it) crust. Cut the apricots in half (or, you might find that you can tear them open at the seams with your fingers) and remove pits. From here, you have a few decoration options: you can place the apricot halves in facedown or up all over the pistachio base. You can do as I did, which is cut them into strips, then slide each cut half onto a butter knife or offset spatula, tilt it so that it fans a little, and slide it onto your pistachio filling decoratively. (With this method, I ended up not using all of my apricots.) You could also arrange the strips like petals of flower around the pan, like the apple tart I did a few years ago).
It was pretty going in…
Bake the bars for 60 minutes, or until they are golden and a toothpick inserted into the pistachio portion comes out batter-free. This might take up to 10 minutes longer depending on the juiciness of your apricots and the amount you were able to nestle in. Let cool completely in pan; you can hasten this along in the fridge.
Cut bars into squares. Chilled bars cut with a sharp knife will give you the cleanest cuts. Keep leftover bars chilled.

Hands down the most hideous looking thing I’ve ever made. Ever.

But as tasty as they were ugly!

Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For Valentine’s Day (YES…still backlogged!), I was charged with making dinner for Kevin and I, and wanted to make something a little out of the ordinary. I remember really being wowed by the porcini-rubbed delmonico that I had at a work dinner at The Capital Grille a couple of years ago. After some googling, I found a video tutorial on how to make the porcini rub Mario Batali uses at his amazing restauraunt, Osteria Mozza. The sugar in the rub helps develop the char and “steakhouse” crust you want while cooking, and the porcini powder adds a divine earthy flavor.

The original recipe calls for one 3 1/2 pound steak, but I decided to do two 1 pound steaks (which was still pretty aggressive). Here is a recipe as adapted from Mario Batali, Food & Wine magazine, and several gchat sessions with my dear friend Chef Seong. I had always made steaks using a nonstick frying pan and had gotten by just fine, but for a rib-eye, I really wanted those steakhouse-style char marks. We don’t have room for a real grill, but after a number of persuasive conversations with Shirley and Spencer, I decided to buy a cast iron grill pan to try and cook these steaks with. I also had been thinking of getting a kitchen scale for some time, and read that this compact Tanita one had great reviews. What better excuse to buy it than for weighing the porcini mushrooms for the rub! Okay it ended up being a more expensive dinner than originally intended.

Brand New Scale

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz dried porcini
1/2 T red pepper chili flakes
1/4 C sugar
2 T kosher salt
2 T freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning
good quality olive oil
Two 1 pound bone-in rib-eye steaks (about 1″ thick)

PORCINI RUB DIRECTIONS:

Roughly chop the porcini, and then grind in a blender – slowly at first, and then gradually increase the speed.
Add in red pepper flakes and blend to mix. Mix salt, pepper, and sugar together and then add the porcini-chili flake mixture together. You will have plenty of rub left over to make these steaks again – and you will want to!

RIB-EYE DIRECTIONS:

Dust your rib-eye with the rub. Wrap a piece of kitchen twine around the steak, and drizzle on some olive oil and rub that in too. The rub will turn into more of a thick paste with the consistency of wet sand.
Flip the steak and repeat. Tie a piece of kitchen twine tightly around the perimeter of the steak. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight.
About 1 hour prior to grilling, remove the steak from the refrigerator. Brush off the excess marinade paste with a paper towel (THIS IS IMPORTANT). Place on a plate and let come to room temperature. I forgot to do this and my steak ended up pretty spicy from the chili flakes.
Pre-heat a gas grill or grill pan. If you are going to use a charcoal grill, preheat that but use enough coals to keep the fire going for about 20 minutes.
Put the steak on the hottest part of the grill, cover and cook, turning every 5 minutes, for about 12-13 minutes for medium-rare doneness. The internal temperature should be 127-128°F (thanks Seong!). Transfer to a carving board and let it rest for 30 minutes or more. The steak will continue to cook another 5-7 degrees internally once it’s off the grill, and if you cut into it too soon, you’ll let all of those delicious juices out.
Almost done!

Steak newb’s note: If you use a meat thermometer, make sure the end is smack dab in the middle of the steak. I think I stuck the point in a little too deep so it measured the temperature closer to the grill pan than it should have. Our steaks were actually a bit undercooked when all was said and done, though still tasty.

I paired these with some “smashed potatoes”. Quick recipe is as follows: Boil a pound of small potatoes (yukon gold in my case) for 8 minutes (until fork tender) in generously salted water. After draining and cooling the potatoes slightly, brush some oil onto a baking sheet lined with foil. After lightly crushing each potato on sheet with your palm into 1/2″ thickness, brush potatoes with oil. Roast until golden and crisp about 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about halfway through the cooking time.

Mario Batali's Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye — Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For an appetizer, we had a DELICIOUS beet and burrata salad atop some prosciutto and arugula. I found the easy recipe on The Organic Kitchen and admittedly this was more of a me dish than Kevin because it had all of my favorite things in it – roasted beets and burrata, prosciutto, and it even called for pistachios to be sprinkled on top! And thank you Thomas for our lovely serving dish!

Beet and Burrata Salad with Prosciutto and Arugula!

So… I probably bit off more than I could chew making everything in between work and dinner time. I admittedly did not make the perfect steak (overspiced, undercooked), but with less ADD next time I’ll get it right. In all it’s imperfect glory, the steak was still delicious and there were no leftovers. Most importantly, we topped off the meal with mini molten chocolate lava cakes a la mode that I will for sure post separately about at a later time. They were too good not to!

Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies

Alex, Lingie, and I made the trek up to the Pacific Northwest back in December to visit our beloved Andrew. The four of us, being the laid back yet eccentric group that we are, decided that the first bullet point on our itinerary was for us all to cook a meal together. Nothing else was planned til less than week before our departure date.

Here’s what we came up with!

Andrew's Salmon Prep — Andrew’s Salmon Prep

Andrew taught us how to do a pan-fried salmon, and Lingie helped prep. We liked the recipe so much, we made it again the next night.

Ain't Nobody Got THYME Fo Dat... — Ain’t Nobody Got THYME Fo Dat…

Andrew also made a linguini vongole with bacon lardons.

We all contributed to a salad consisting of julienne pink lady apples, grated pecorino, and candied walnuts all topped with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Salad with Grated Pecorino, Julienned Pink Lady Apples, and Candied Walnuts

At the request of our gracious host, I made a batch of Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc Chocolate Chip Cookies in Andrew’s oven, which had convection capabilities at the flip of a switch (which I used, obvi). I live quite an exciting life. Alex helped me with the cookies.

I liked these cookies because they used two kinds of dark chocolate, so they weren’t too sweet (which is my issue with most chocolate chip cookies).

However, if I made these again, I would use the organic chocolate I’ve recently discovered at Trader Joe’s. It’s deliciously 85% dark and cocoa buttery smooth. It’s also quite bitter… like me! You are what you eat, right?

Thomas Keller's "Ad Hoc at Home" Chocolate Chip Cookies — Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies

We paired the cookies hot out of the oven with pints (yes, PINTS) of Ben and Jerry’s “Pistachio Pistachio” ice cream, and I used the dust remnants of the chocolate I chopped to sprinkle over the ice cream.

Not going to lie – pistachio and dark chocolate were made to be together. The beauty of pistachio ice cream with any form of dark chocolate (bars, warm cake, cookies, anything!) brings me tears of joy every time.

This recipe was also my inspiration for what I ended up baking yesterday in preparation for Valentine’s Day… which I probably won’t post about for another 3 months at this rate. More to come on that front!

Ingredients – Notice the Seattle Specialty Dark Chocolate!

Pan-Fried Salmon with Sauteed Swiss Chard

French Macaron 201

I took an intermediate macaron class as a follow-up to the intro class I took Thanksgiving weekend.

In the class, we made three different types of macarons and fillings: pistachio with a lemon curd filling, hazelnut with a chocolate ganache filling and candied crushed hazelnuts, and vanilla with a ispahan buttercream filling (however, the photo below is showing the vanilla with a rose buttercream filling). My favorite was the ispahan flavored filling, but I actually liked it best with the pistachio cookie.

Pistachio, Hazelnut, and Vanilla Macarons

What is ispahan?

Oh, well you gon’ LEARN today.

It’s one of the signature flavor creations developed by Pierre Hermé, which includes a surprisingly awe-inspiring combination of raspberry, lychee, and a wee touch of rose that blends together to form a delicately complex flavor trifecta that is just plum to die for. The ispahan is the name for a type of rose, although it doesn’t look the ones you get on Valentine’s Day along with other random sweet nothings.

Pierre Hermé actually came up with the flavor combination when he was young, producing an early version of the Ispahan for Ladurée (which is still sold in their boutiques).

All in all, I think I’m going to try to make the macarons on my own at home in the very near future. I love macarons far too much not to give it a go. Just need to focus!