use real butter

Recipe: dark chocolate tartelettes

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! Gong Xi Fa Tsai! Jing Nian Quai Le!

It is the year of the Rat and in case you didn’t know, it’s Peabody’s year. Last year was the year of the Pig, which was my year. Since I made it through more or less in one piece, I’m going to assume that I was working the good juju. Peabody tells me she’s sharing the good juju with me into this year. I love that girl. In turn, let’s just say good juju all around for everyone! I sincerely wish each of you everything your heart desires in the new year – health, happiness, luck, fortune – all of it and more. xxoo

I began my morning quite early because I was behind schedule on making dumplings. Well, let me explain why. I spent yesterday telemark skiing with a bunch of awesome tele babes on the mountain. I felt well enough to tele all day with my D70 in tow too.

a bluebird day

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Recipe: zebra torte

It’s a battle for time, energy, and daylight hours. I haven’t endeavored on many of the more involved baking projects since I’ve been well enough to ski. After my initial ski whore phase where I was willing to tele any thin veneer barely covering grass and rocks, I have now reached the picky phase – only if there are freshies. We had no such freshies yesterday and so you get the recipe for Zebra Torte.

slice layers from the vanilla chiffon cake

I made this once before in my pastry skills course last spring. Problem with that course was that we crammed as much as we could into each 5.5 hour class and wound up divvying duties between partners which meant I didn’t get my hands on each step of the torte.

folding in the dry ingredients for the chocolate roulade

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Recipe: roasted goat cheese-stuffed squash

I haven’t been cooking lately, unless you count reheating food in the nuker, on the stove top, or in the toaster oven (hey – that toaster oven is my redneck heritage). Why? Because I made too much food in the past week and now we are in the frenzied mode of trying to finish off those leftovers before they expire. Just hate to waste food… I can tell I have fallen into a rut of sorts. We were walking through our local mountain grocery store in search of hoisin sauce because we ran out. [Tangent: Let me tell you, I won’t make that mistake again… I shall henceforth maintain a proper store of genuine hoisin sauce from a reputable Asian grocer because the stuff they carry in my little town is really really narsty. Not nasty, but narsty. All of my ancestors were crying out in horror the moment that stuff touched my lips.] I wandered down the baking aisle in search of ?? Jeremy, in his effort to move us along, asked what I was looking for or rather what I wanted to make. I stopped and realized that I had filed into the recesses of my brain a todo list of sweets: raspberry almond tea cake, baklava, zebra torte, chocolate mousse…

I’m so lame. I have all of the ingredients ready to go, I think I’m just tired after skiing or maybe I’m still tired after my surgery? We went skiing today and I managed one of the most fabulous face plants. Because my left arm is not completely healed, when I fell, I kept my arms back to avoid injury. Except I biffed with my face. Funny how I was so impatient to recover from surgery so I could launch my body down the mountain. Gravity sports are great!

Anyway, I do have a lovely recipe to share with you today. I made this shortly after Christmas. It is another one of those foods I had years ago and loved and am finally getting my lazy bum around to replicating it. The evening before we left Ithaca – five years ago, our dear friends Mike and Carrie took us out for a special farewell dinner. One of the appetizers we ordered was a goat cheese stuffed squash. At this point, I can’t honestly recall anything about the dish other than it had squash, goat cheese, and tasted amazing. So that’s what I started with.

herbed goat cheese, squash, roasted garlic

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