French Fridays with Dorie - scallops with caramel-orange sauce

This is the first Dorie recipe that I thought might not go over well at my house.  While St. James and Ethan love seafood, for some reason they're not keen on scallops.  It's funny because I don't really like seafood but can abide scallops.

Ok, just an aside...funny story.  When I was about 18 (hadn't met St. James yet, that would be the following year), I was at a "fancy" french dinner with some relatives.  We were having a multi-course meal, all ordered in French...so I had no idea what we were having.  The second course came out and I took a bite.  It was something white and a little mushy (that's about the extent of my culinary descriptions back then).  As I was eating it, I asked my companions what it was.  I thought they said "shallots."  I started choking and gagging (because I was choking).  At that time in my life, I did not eat onions...at all!  As I was growing up, one great thing my mom did for me whenever what she was cooking had onions, she would make mine without onions.  I loved my mini-meatloaves without onions!  So, when I heard I was eating shallots...I couldn't get it out of my mouth fast enough.  I coughed and sputtered and gagged and made quite the scene.  Well, I'm sure you know where this is going.  It wasn't shallots, it was scallops.  Gotta say, if I had heard scallops, my reaction would have been the same.  That was my intro to scallops.  It was many years before I voluntarily ate one again and now look at me...actually cooking them!

Since I knew the boys weren't going to be thrilled with the scallops, I made them for our appetizer and served steaks for the main dish.  I loved making the caramel-orange sauce and decided to follow Dorie's Bonne Idee and make the candied orange zest also (because, what's a little more sugar among friends).

The scallops cooked up quickly and easily (and since I only bought 6, I did not break the bank this week either).  I actually took the time to shoot a picture while there was still a bit of light (thank you Daylight Savings Time) and then we sat down to eat.  I've got to say, given boys who don't like scallops...there wasn't a drop left on either of their plates (or mine).  Ethan used his bread to sop up the sauce and St. James poured the extra sauce all over his asparagus.  I actually dipped a spoonful of chocolate ganache that I was stuffing macarons with into the sauce after dinner.  Dang...that was good sauce!

So, another successful French Friday.  To see how all my fellow Doristas fared, check it out here.  Still on the fence about joining us?  Well get off and come play with us...the food is great and the group is really terrific!

Macarons...if I can...you can too!

I finally took the plunge!  Since returning from France, I have been yearning to make macarons.  We ate some amazing macarons while in France.  Not just the famous ones from Laduree, but some incredible ones from a local macaron lady (this was at our village's weekly farmer's market).  I've been dreaming about making them since we returned.  Alas, I've read so many blogs about how difficult they are to make, that I haven't attempted it.  I'm not big on planned failure.  At least not until now.

While reading one of my favorite blogs, Eat, Live, Travel, Write, where the amazing Mardi and Mr. Neil create amazing food, amazing pictures and amazing stories, I was again amazed at Mardi's incredible macarons (she participates in a monthly macaron challenge at MacTweets).   As I was reading various MacTweets submissions, I stumbled upon PastryPal's blog, which has a step by step tutorial for making macarons (all you have to do is give her your email and she sends you the link).  Once I read the tutorial, I was sold.  I even had almond flour in my pantry from a previous Dorie recipe.

Piped and drying

Macarons really aren't that difficult, as long as you follow a few simple rules.  Don't under beat your egg whites and don't over beat them.  Let your piped macarons sit until they are dry before you bake them and then let them cool before you remove them from the cookie sheet.


My first batch were the traditional almond macaron with a chocolate ganache filling.  Turns out my macarons were baby sized (the tutorial said to pipe them nickel sized, which I did) and I ended up with a lot of ganache left, so I tackled some chocolate macarons also.  So, in one day, I made about 200 macarons (which became about 100...no, not from my eating them...but from making them into sandwiches).  These puppies are quite addictive and we are going through the 100 or so quite quickly (plus I gave a few away).

Look at those beautiful feet!

I am over the top happy with my first attempt at the elusive macaron.  The first batch had the beautiful "foot" that is required for a proper macaron.






The only issue with them is they were a little tall for their small diameter, so they tended to tip over once they were sandwiched together.  Kind of like weebles...except when they wobbled they did fall over.  I made the chocolate ones a little larger, so their proportion was a bit better.  I am looking forward to experimenting with a variety of flavors now that I feel like I've got the basics down.  I know salted caramels are in my future and maybe a coconut concoction (that I'll have to eat all by myself since the boys are coconut phobes)!  If you've got a favorite flavor, let me know!

My favorite shot...the leaning tower of macarons!

Because, you can never have enough macaron shots!

French Fridays with Dorie - Salted Butter Breakups

Confession time.  When I got Dorie's book...I read the whole thing...cover to cover.  I loved the stories, the anecdotes, the recipes, the pictures...everything about it.  One downside of having read the entire book is that some of the recipes are stuck in my head and some of the recipes are a little jumbled up in my head.  Salted Butter Breakups is a perfect example.  I love all the different cracker recipes in the book and have been wanting to make some (especially for a friend who loves crackers).

Well, it was this friend's birthday two weeks ago and I was having her and her family to dinner to celebrate.  I thought, hey...I'll make the salted butter breakups to serve with a nice cheese as our appetizer.  I'll kill two birds with one stone (the Dorie assignment and making a nice cracker for my cracker loving friend.)  I never looked at the recipe when I made this plan...just assuming this was one of the cracker recipes in Dorie's book.

The day of the dinner party rolled around and I was busy cooking all day.  I made Dorie's Devil's Food White-Out Cake from her Baking book (which turned out great and tasted great and not a single damn picture of it was taken...just look at page 246 of her book...mine looked just like that.  Well almost, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)  I also made thick cut brined pork chops and home made sauerkraut.  All was super yummy.  And we started the evening with the Salted Butter Breakups and a wedge of St. Andre's cheese.

Some of you are probably laughing right about now.  Who serves cookies for the appetizer course?  Well, I guess I do.  When I don't pay attention and bake what I think is a cracker, but really turns out to be a cookie.  Half way into the recipe...which only has about three ingredients...I realized that perhaps this wasn't a cracker I was making...it had an awful lot of sugar for a cracker.  I finally looked closely at where the recipe was situated in the book and saw that it's in the Desserts section.

Oh well!  At that point, I was committed.  I love the Carr's Wheat crackers with brie...they're kind of sweet and go great with the creamy brie.  I decided the Salted Butter Breakups would be fine with the St. Andre's.  And you know what?  They were.  Or, at least I thought so.  Everyone else ended up eating the Wheat Thins I put out (which were the only real crackers I had).  I proceeded to eat the rest of the breakups all week long.  I loved the sweet, buttery crunchiness.  As you can see from the photo below, I rolled this cracker cookie a little unevenly, with the edges being thinner than the middle.  So, the edges browned a lot.  They were really crunchy...and almost had a burnt flavor (definitely a deeply browned butter flavor).  But the center of the cracker cookie was fabulous.  Another bonus was I got to use the fabulous sel gris we brought back from France (we bought a five pound bag for about $2).

One thing about this recipe.  When I saw the picture in the book, I laughed when Dorie said to take a fork and make the cross hatches (like you would on a peanut butter cookie).  I thought hers looked way to uniform to have been made with that method, plus there was a lot of real estate to press your fork into.  I also thought I could get the same result if I pressed a cookie rack into the dough before baking.   Um, not so much.  That didn't work well and my dough was a bit on the wet side (definitely needed 3 tablespoons of water, not 4), so it stuck to the cookie rack.  It was kind of a mess.  Once I got it unstuck, I tried the fork method.  Not too successfully.  I'm really looking forward to how everyone else made these and if they have any tips on making the hash marks.

When I made the cracker cookie, I was only able to get a shot of the whole thing.  I thought that was kind of sad at the time and thought I might have to make the recipe again so that I could get some photos of the broken up pieces, since that's really the magic of this recipe.  Low and behold, I checked out the bowl on my counter and found a few small pieces still left in a Ziploc (two weeks after making them).  So, I took them outside and took a couple of photos (sorry about the shadows...I was too lazy to go back inside and get my homemade light filter.).  And then I ate the pieces.  And you know what?   They were still yummy and not stale at all.  Yippee!