Posted by Lucy Baker, September 10, 2008 at 2:15 PM
When I was a kid, my mom often put a homemade brownie in my lunchbox along with a ham and cheese sandwich, a handful of grapes, and a small bag of Cape Cod potato chips. Not surprisingly, these remain some of my favorite comfort foods today. (Well, if you can replace ham and cheese with a croque-monsieur, and grapes with wine!)
Every September, right around back-to-school time, I get an insatiable craving for rich, fudgy, slightly under-baked brownies. When I bake at home I try to stay with recipes that are as low-fat as possible (if it calls for more than one stick of butter, I probably won't make it), and for a long time my go-to brownie recipe was for the Irish Cream Brownies featured in the October 2006 issue of Cooking Light. I think their trick of replacing about 3/4 of the melted chocolate with cocoa powder is ingenious—it cuts loads of calories, yet still retains that gooey mouthfeel.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a similar recipe in this year's September issue of Cooking Light. Dark Chocolate and Cherry Brownies call for 3/4 cup of cocoa powder and 1/3 semisweet chocolate chips. The cherry preserves add a unique note reminiscent of kirsch (the fermented cherry filling sometimes in fondue, cakes, and candy). This is one of those incredibly easy to make recipes, and you probably already have all the ingredients on hand. An added bonus? They stay fresh for days. I made my batch last week, and I'll be sure to treat myself to one with my lunch today.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 25, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I don't exactly know how I found this recipe for cherry sauce. It wasn't until I started tossing ingredients into the pot that I realized it was from the Washington State Fruit Commission website. Not a site I frequent often, but all I know is there was a pound of fresh cherries from the farmers' market to use, and pork chops lying around, so it sounded like a good idea.
I didn't strictly follow the recipe verbatim. It said to add cornstarch to thicken the sauce, a technique I try to avoid. So I just let the mixture reduce down for a few more minutes, and the success kind of surprised me. Most cherry sauces are too syrupy, yet this one had a wonderful acidic kick, and not much sugar at all.
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Posted by Amanda Clarke, July 2, 2008 at 10:45 AM
My paternal grandmother, a no-nonsense mother of seven and grandmother of more, was the master of simple, hardy crowd-feeding fare. Aside from slabs of ice cream—cut thick from half-gallon blocks—the dessert I associate with her most is the plop, a sticky, fruity cake-like concoction.
A less than appetizing moniker, plop is nonetheless illustrative of the dessert’s honest, homey simplicity. I’ve always supposed that the name refers to the fact that one just plops all of the ingredients into the baking pan, but it may also refer to the method of serving the often structureless dish: by plopping heaps of it into bowls or onto plates. Regardless, it’s a dead simple, versatile, delicious crowd pleaser that requires no refrigeration and only gets more moist and tasty in the heat and humidity of a summer’s day, making it just the thing for an informal 4th of July gathering.
Consisting of little more than pancake batter poured over a thick layer of fresh fruit, plops fall somewhere between cobblers and quick breads, sharing territory with dowdies and buckles. And, as with all those dishes, there are no hard and fast rules for making plops.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, May 29, 2008 at 2:45 PM
What's an ice cream sundae without a cherry on top? This week, I set out to learn the history of maraschino cherries, and also to make a homemade version on my own.
According to an article published last summer in the Seattle Weekly, maraschino cherries originated centuries ago on the Adriatic shores. There, small, extremely sour marasca cherries were pickled in a combination of sea water and cherry cordial. It wasn't until Prohibition in America that the candy-colored, super-processed adaptation of maraschino cherries was born—since booze was banned, the liquor was replaced with almond-flavored syrup.
To make real maraschino cherries, you need maraschino liqueur. I went to several liquor stores in Brooklyn and couldn't find it, so I decided to substitute regular brandy. And that's where I committed the fatal error: I went cheap. Really cheap. Like, dusty bottom shelf, plastic-bottle-with-a-handle cheap.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 1, 2007 at 11:25 AM
Mario Batali loves all forms of pork, so it should come as no surprise that he featured this nifty pork chop recipe in his book, Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style
. His tangy cherry barbecue sauce would also taste great on a simple roast loin of pork as well.
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