Remember when I was on Martha's show back in February?  I still have the photo of me and Martha laughing on set as my desktop wallpaper.  When I was there she gave me a copy of her 'Baking Handbook' with a note in it.  I have decided to try as many recipes as possible!  And I'm going to chronicle my experiments.  I'm not going to re-print the recipes because that's a lot of typing, and I don't think I can, legally, anyway.  Lol - get the book!  It's fabulous! 

Saturday is now cooking day.  Ha!  Ben loves helping me cook too - he has one cupboard he can access - the one with the Tupperware and unbreakable stuff.  He loves pulling everything out of the cupboard, and then he puts it away again.  And he's an excellent taster of my finished products!   

Anise-Almond Biscotti 

I had most of the ingredients in my pantry.  (which always gives me this weird sense of pride, you know?  That I have the right things in my pantry.)  Anyway, I had to run to the grocery store for the Anise extract & anise seeds the recipe calls for.  Which I suppose defeats the purpose of having all the other stuff handy, but all that aside, I finally had my ingredients lined up and ready to cook.  (It's a bummer to be your own soux chef, but, it helps so much when baking to have everything a ready to go.  I highly recommend the prep work in advance.)I couldn't find Anise seeds at the market.  Which was weird, I went to a nice store.  Oh well, I bought Fennel seeds since they have that similar black-licorice flavor... which I don't really like at all, but Dave loves.  I often bake things that I don't like to avoid the temptation of the nibbling at the batter.   I don't like nuts in my cookies either, so this recipe was made for me. Lol.  (Dave loves nutty cookies too.) 

Alright, I got the nuts toasting - that did make the kitchen smell yummy.  Always a good sign when baking.  I went to work sifting the flour & cornmeal together.  Hmm.... My cornmeal just wouldn't sift down.  On Martha's show, she always sifts with a nice bowl shaped sieve, and she makes it look like a careless flick of the wrist.  Well, the flour went through quite nicely, but I was left with a pile of cornmeal.  Perhaps cornmeal was not intended for that type of sifting.  Me being me, (Martha don't read this -) I just dumped the remaining cornmeal into the bowl and continued to the next step. 

The butter/sugar became light and fluffy easily.  I love my Mixer.  It's honestly the best kitchen tool ever.  I remember my babysitter when I was a kid making us mix cookie dough with a wooden spoon - such an exhausting exercise!  My KitchenAid is used frequently.  I put the almonds into the freezer to make sure they were good and cold before adding them to the mixture (ha.  I've made that mistake before.  You can't come back from melted batter. Trust me) 

I followed all the instructions about shaping the dough with no problem.  But as I tried to slice the logs into biscotti shaped pieces, the ends kept braking off.  I'm not sure what I did wrong there - the biscotti turned out tasting great, but only a few actually had the perfect biscotti shape.  And again, the kitchen smelled great as the anise flavor heated up.  It doesn't call for it in the recipe, but I dipped them in melted chocolate just for fun.  Dave says they turned out delicious.  And the best indicator of all?  The fact that they are rapidly disappearing from the cupboard.  Lol. 

Happy baking!

Xoxo

Ali

I am strangely fascinated by Deal or No Deal.  What is it about that show?  I love watching it, and I get so crazy, seriously yelling at the people to TAKE THE MONEY!!!  I think Howie is so great too.  He's a fun host, and somehow he seems like such a cool guy too.  Ha ha - I just won 579,000 on the computer game on nbc.com.  love it.

Did you all see Celebrity Cooking Showdown last night?  It was such an awesome show to be a part of.  First of all, Govind is such an amazing chef, and it was so incredible to have the opportunity to learn from him one-on-one.  We talked a lot about what my menu should be and I was so excited to learn from the best. 

When I was a kid, my Uncle Bill used to prepare a delicious lobster dinner for the family.  It was such a decadent meal, but a really special treat.  I always associate lobster with those fabulous family get-togethers.  The lobster appetizer that Govind created was delicious - the avocado/cucumber salsa and the onion/jalepeno vinaigrette was light, but just tangy enough to make the meal interesting.  After practicing preparing this meal for several evenings, I finally managed to do it in enough time to add in the Cilantro Salt as a nice finishing touch.  Perfect!

I think Filet Mignon (or tenderloin) is such a delicious cut of meat.  And Dave and I like to prepare it for special occasions.  Usually, I make a marinade for it and then Dave BBQ's it.  So when Govind suggested teaching me a more gourmet way of preparing steak, I was thrilled!  I love ordering blue cheese with filet mignon at fancy restaurants - in fact, (Gael), Wolfgang offers that classic combination at his restaurants too.  So, as you can imagine, not only did it shock me to have Gael say she doesn't like the combination of blue cheese and steak, but it seems completely unreasonable to take such an uncommon, personal prejudice and base your score on it.  Setting aside the outcome of the judging (because I'm so not competitive), I was so proud of myself for learning such a complicated and challenging menu.  Even if I'd known store-bought ice-cream would score better than me, I still would have decided to take advantage of the hands-on training from a professional chef.  I wasn't going to take any short cuts.  The crepe was really hard to do under pressure -  and I suspect that it suffered the most of all the dishes, having to wait while the judges tasted and reviewed and scored everyone else first.  But when I made it at home for my husband, and I also took some into the studio, and made it for some of the other actors and crew, I got great feedback from them!  Deidre loved it and practically demanded the recipe! 

It was so sweet - everyone helped me by eating my menu several times.  Poor Dave literally ate those dishes every night for a week getting ready for the show.  So I suppose it'll be a while before I can test out those recipes again, but now that I know the techniques, chopping and so forth, I'm already applying them to other recipes.

It was also really neat to meet Wolfgang Puck - my mom taught me to use his cookbooks a long time ago - he has wonderful recipes, and his restaurants are so fabulous.  Who doesn't love Iron Chef America??? Meeting Cat Cora was so cool because I just love that show and I had so many questions about it to ask her. 

All in all, it was such a great experience. And it's a really cool show.  I have made a new friend, Govind, and I absolutely love his restaurant, Table 8.  Govind was so patient and helpful.  I am so lucky to have worked with him!

Xoxo

Ali