National Cookie Day - Brownie Cookies (with coffee!)

Saturday (December 4) was National Cookie Day according to the National Day Calendar. For me cookies are homemade (or go home!) so I took a gander at the subset of cookbooks we keep at our weekend house and found a seldom used coffee cookbook which I assumed would include a choice of dessert items. Indeed it did, and I selected Brownie Cookies mostly because the ingredient list included nothing I would need to run to the store for. Although I did notice that it called for instant coffee, as did most of the other recipes. We never have instant coffee on hand, but since the instructions said to dilute one T. of instant coffee granules in 2 T. hot water James and I determined that brewing a small amount of super strong coffee would bring the same result - an excellent use for our Melitta single-serve pour-over brewer.

As cookies often do, this recipe required two mixing bowls. I mixed the dry ingredients together, and then everything else except the eggs and chocolate chips in a separate bowl as instructed. However, I accidently then put the eggs into the dry, rather than wet bowl at which point it seemed that the better part of valor was to simply beat everything together. 

The cookies did have more of a consistency of chewy brownies than crunchy cookies. A bit on the sweet side. I usually cut the recommended sugar in a recipe by 1/3 to 1/2 which I neglected to do. It really is something I need to remember.

Measurements for flour are 2 1/2 c.

for cocoa powder 1/3 c.

for brown sugar 3/4 c.

for chocolate chips 1 1/2 c.

Bake at 325 for 9-11 minutes

Mint Mocha Milkshake

James bought these funky flavored coffee beans a few weeks ago for fun. As coffee snobs it is anathema to us to do much with coffee flavors, but he knows I like mint chocolate ice cream, and I also like the visual appeal of the color combination of mint green and chocolate brown so he made an exception. We drank the coffee for our morning beverage the weekend before last, but didn't finish all the beans so I got the idea to use them in a milkshake (aka a "coffee cabinet") since we had some coffee milk (for those who don't live in Massachusetts or Rhode Island this is a specialty in these parts) and some vanilla ice cream. I ground the beans then added them to a blender with the ice cream and milk. I had hoped the grinding along with the blending would reduce them to something that wouldn't be noticeable in the final product, but in fact they left a rather grainy texture to the shake. It was good in any case and a fun way to use the beans.

Dos Nuevas Recetas that we invented ourselves

It has been over six years since we started this blog. We usually find our recipes within our collection of cookbooks, although lately we have be finding more on the interwebs. Last week, however, we collaborated on a meal in which each of us created a new recipe, with one shared ingredient. Pam made a pasta-berry salad; James' innovation came in the way of a new steak rub.

I had found a thick, grass-fed sirloin that I wanted to use as a main course. I set it on a plate, and pierced it several times on each side with a fork. Regular readers will know that I frequently prepare a rub based on something I learned from our friends at Equal Exchange -- a mix of black pepper and ground coffee (fairly traded and organic, of course). In this case, I used home-roasted, hand-ground coffee from East Timor by way of our other friends at Deans Beans. Something I learned the first time I used this combination is that the amount of pepper and the amount of time resting with the rub should both be limited, so that the pepper does not begin to pre-cook the meat. In other words, it is possible to over-do this. But using about 1:4::pepper:coffee and resting for 20 minutes or so seems to work well.

Just before grilling -- on the Big Green Egg -- I added a couple of ingredients to the steaks. First, I sprinkled each side lightly with Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Then I pressed fresh blackberries into each side, using a fork to get them stuck a bit better. This was a bit messy. I then grilled at about 450. One problem with the coffee rub is that it masks the steak, so there are no visual clues to doneness. I should have used the Thermapen, but instead ended up putting it back on the grill once I had divided it. No harm done.

We had decided to use bow-tie pasta in some sort of side dish with the steak, and Pam remembered that we had previously made some mighty fine fruit-and-pasta dishes (see Pasta with Grapes and Strawberry Pasta). We had just made a trek to Trader Joe's and bought blueberries and blackberries, so we decided try inventing a new recipe. The cooked pasta (about 2 cups) was mixed with a handful of each of the berries, along with a sliced banana. Pam made a dressing by mixing about 6 of each berry, a tablespoon of honey, and a tablespoon of blueberry balsamic vinegar (from L.O.V.E. Oil and Vinegar Emporium), and 2 tablespoons of chopped mint leaves in a blender. The dressing was tossed with the berries and pasta. An eye-pleasing, as well as palate-pleasing dish, and it turned out to be a perfect complement to the steak rub...

Love will keep us together.
But blackberries tied this meal together.

Final verdict: this meal was just a bit different, delicious, and fun to make. And of course it paired well with Malbec.

Yummy Valentine Fudge

For Valentine's Day, Pam found a recipe by searching in one of our several romantic cookbooks for recipes that would use ingredients we already had on hand. As the book sat open on the counter for a day or two, we each realized that it was a recipe we had enjoyed before -- Grape Snausages. It ended up being a little different this time,in a good way: I had purchased hot Italian chicken sausage without any particular plan, and it made for a nice hot-sweet main course.

For dessert, Pam (the brains of this operation, as careful readers will have noticed by now) suggested a recipe source that has served mainly as a decoration since we received it some while ago. Java Jolt is a cute little box of cards, each with a recipe or two involving coffee.

I looked through the entire box, and found just one that looked feasible for a holiday that was to fall on the busiest day of my week.

The card entitled Avalon Gold Rush begins with a story about real, old-school fudge like we still find here in New England. It then offers quite a simple recipe for a short-cut fudge.

I varied this only slightly. First, I knew that in my hands, the foil-lining method would just be a way to get shreds of foil into the fudge. So I used a silicon pie-pan liner that my mother had recently given us (and that Pam had remembered). Although we actually had Amaretto on hand, I decided to use cherry Schnapps (this was Valentine's Day, after all). We of course do not have instant coffee on hand, so I added about a half cup of coffee left over from the morning. (We usually do not have leftover coffee, but I had reserved some on purpose.)

The result was yummy, soft fudge that is so rich that we have enjoyed the tiniest of servings over the course of the rest of the week. My Valentine pronounced it extremely delicious.

Breaking in the Big Green Egg

A Day-Long Cooking Adventure in Three Acts
(Photo captions adapted from the Facebook posts with which James kept the rest of the world informed about our progress, whether they cared to be or not.)

Act I: James Builds
Last summer, we visited a friend in Colorado who had become a proud owner of a Big Green Egg -- a grill we had heard was special enough to be worth its rather high selling price. She prepared amazing ribs without standing over the grill the whole time, and convinced us that this might be just the thing for our weekend home. Like many people who are not very serious about grilling, we have had a series of lower-priced grills that eventually succumb to the elements.

We decided to wait until spring -- late spring, in fact -- to embark on our Big Green Egg adventure, and decided that it would be good to purchase it as my birthday present. Having a relatively empty Saturday schedule, I set off to the hardware store (these are only available from authorized dealers, one of which is already our favorite local store, Rocky's).

As with most purchases larger than a deck of cards these days, we were not actually buying a product: we were buying an assembly project. (Thanks, IKEA!) Fortunately, the weather was fine, we had not very much else to do, and we knew the end result would be worthwhile. And in general, the instructions -- combination of print and video -- were reasonably clear, though a few steps did seem like they would be easy to achieve only in zero gravity.

If Big Green Egg is a cult, then assembly is the hazing ritual. #whalinghouse#someassemblyrequired #worthit #mybirthdaypresent

The assembly process was not without risk. This warning really got my attention!

Do not taunt Big Green Egg.
(For SNL allusion, see Happy Fun Ball)

And although this step was not actually dangerous, the image was a bit alarming. I'm testing for airflow, once I lined up the inner and outer parts of the lower egg.

To at least one observer, these resembled carrots.  

By the time the Big Green Egg was ready to use, we had a bit of a conundrum. It was close to our normal evening-meal time, so we needed something relatively simple to prepare and that could cook quickly. Some recipes provided by the company require only 12 minutes of cooking time. But these are close to the upper end of its temperature range (which is 750F!), but the first couple of uses are supposed to be kept at 350F or below. So Pam did some investigating and improvising.

Act II: Pam Prepares
The folks at BigGreenEgg.com  would be well advised to have some simple "starter recipes" ideas readily available  for new users. Once you've spent all day putting something together, you don't need to look at online recipes that require you to have started a marinade "yesterday." As it was, I still had to go back to the place where James bought Big Green and buy some of the special fire starter needed to heat the Egg. And really, asking my butcher to de-bone my chicken is not an option when all I'm doing is running to the grocery store and picking up a whole bird.

I wound up making a coffee rub from some stale coffee ground and a variety spices including garlic salt, Chipotle pepper, ginger, and cloves. There were some other things as well, but I don't remember what they all were. I just started grabbing things from the cupboard and shaking them into the bowl. I covered the chicken with the rub, which we then put into the Egg.

We baked potatoes with it, which turned out to be some of the softest we've ever had.

Cookin' without gas!
And the cleanest this grill will ever be.

Act III: James Cooks

After all this, the cooking part was fairly easy. It took only seven minutes to get the coals ready, and from there just a few minutes to reach the called-for 350F in the closed grill. Just a little tweaking of the air vents allowed us to maintain that temperature. Once this was set up, "cooking" became synonymous with "ignoring" until the food was ready. For next time, we will have an thermometer to help us judge the doneness, because the chicken appeared to be done before it actually was. This was easily remedied, though, by returning it to the grill and reopening the air vents.

He is the egg man

Epilogue

The results were great -- moist inside and crispy outside, as EGGers promise. And of course the coffee made it even better!

While back at Rocky's, Pam had picked up a huge cook book for Big Green Egg cultists -- er, users -- and James has ordered a second cooking thermometer to keep at Whaling House.

So let the EGGing begin!

Chemex Crucible

We actually used our Coffee Love book as recently as Valentine's Day of this year, but it seemed longer. Over the past few days we discussed it, and finally got organized for a post-work, pre-lecture experiment.

The lecture in question is a presentation on coffee at the local public library, so this seemed a great time to try something new in coffee.

Author Daniel Young introduces this concoction:

The French word brûlot, from the verb brûler (to burn), can refer either to a small fire ship with enough fuel to incinerate an enemy position or a sweetened, flambéed brandy. In New Orleans, the café brûlot is pretty much both those things. 

I have never been to the Big Easy, though I have visited vicariously through Pam's visit, films, and food. Our success with this little beverage makes me want to get there all the sooner.

We made our café brûlot essentially the way Young describes it, except that he calls for orange peel and we had none. As readers of this blog well know, lack of orange is a good excuse to get out the Triple Sec, which I did. I later learned that a variation by Melissa Roberts on Epicurious does exactly the same thing.

Essentially, I made coffee in the Chemex (I'd make it a bit stronger than usual next time) and meanwhile gently heated some courvoisier with sugar, cloves, and a cinnamon stick. Once the coffee was brewed and the sugar dissolved, I lit the liquid on fire, and then slowly doused it with the coffee (which amazingly did not splatter anything) and continued pouring it in. Then I poured the whole concoction back through a sieve into the Chemex.

The result: smooth, spicy, and delicious -- and definitely on the list for next Valentine's Day.

Now that we have proven this recipe (or more precisely, proofed it) we will work on our technique so that we can try it table-side after a nice meal.

Lagniappe

From our friends at Atlas Obscura, Pam found a story about how café brûlot is done tableside.

The Secret Ingredient is L.O.V.E.

We planned our Valentine's dinner for over a week, with one overriding goal: no crowded restaurants for us. With a little work and forethought, we knew we could have a superior dinner with no reservations. Each year at this time, we recall an evening spent wandering from restaurant to restaurant, skipping a 20-minute wait only to find a 40-minute wait, eventually settling for a dinner that was made enjoyable mostly by our readiness to eat anything.

Once we established the Valentine's-Day-at-Home tradition, actually, we have endeavored to make it both a romantic and delicious experience, and this year we seem to have done quite well. We each prepared an entree, waited a bit, and then each of us created part of dessert.

James: A week before the event, I accidentally recycled the newspaper in which I had seen a very intriguing recipe for steak tips with mole (moh-LAY) sauce. Librarian Pam said, "Have no fear!" (or words to that effect), since newspaper recipes are all syndicated and will show up easily on some other paper's site. About 2.5 seconds later, I was looking at Beef Mole with Buttery Baguette, courtesy of The Oregonian.

Fans of this blog will know that we have an affinity for mole, more properly known as mole poblano, after the Mexican state of Puebla, where we spent the summer of 1989. Although I love making "real" mole, it was nice to find this "express" version of the recipe, a gringo simplification that required no pepper roasting and a simplified ingredient list. I followed the recipe as written, using our new immersion blender for the sauce itself. Just as I was bringing it to boil, I realized that two vinegars from our friends and fellow Retrievers at Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium (hence the L.O.V.E.) would make it even better. I added the dark chocolate and espresso balsamics, and as with our first mole encounter in July 2012, it turned out loverly, indeed! (Careful readers will recall that the chocolate balsamic also figured in the success of our award-winning mocha cake later that year.)

Pam: I knew that I'd find an appropriate Valentine's Day recipe in Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook, but Wow! How could we have imagined how great the strawberry pasta would turn out! This super simple recipe had only a few ingredients. To the 1/4 pound cooked spaghetti I added some shredded Parmesan cheese and then about a dozen pureed strawberries and some melted butter heated with 1/4 c. heavy cream. This was all tossed together in one bowl and then garnished with fresh chopped mint leaves. It was sweet, incredibly creamy, and a perfect complement to the chocolate in the mole sauce. It truly had a sensuous flavor and texture. Everything was served with sparkling Brut Curvee "RJR" from Westport Rivers Winery.

Pam: After allowing our fabulous dinner to settle a bit we made our dessert and coffee. A Facebook friend posted this recipe for "Cake Batter Ice Cream" (essentially an ambitious banana ice cream). We already had frozen banana slices in the freezer as anytime I have a banana go past ripe I slice it up and freeze it to use for smoothies. These had been frozen for several months and gave our blender quite the workout. It actually began to smoke. I modified the recipe a bit to use ingredients we had on hand, although James did go out and get romantic red sugar sprinkles to put on top! Smooth, creamy and sweet!

Proportions are 4 ripe, frozen bananas; a t. each of vanilla, and almond extracts, 1/4 t. baking soda; 1 T. agave nectar; 1 T Butter Pecan syrup; sprinkles to taste.

James: The two-shelf collection of cookbooks that got this blog started includes several that are specifically about the romance of preparing and sharing food. One of these is called quite simply Coffee Love (which is incidentally also the title of the PG-13 section of my Geography of Coffee web site). Leafing through the book, my eye settled quickly on Café de Olla on page 52. I started one cup of coarsely hand-ground Sol y Luna coffee from my good friends in the Corrales family. It is not dark-roasted, but it was grown and prepared with love, and just happens to be some of the best coffee on the planet. I added 1/2 teaspoon of anise seed and a two-inch piece of cinnamon stick to one quart of cool, filtered water in a saucepan. I had hoped to add four ounces of piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar), but had to substitute a half cup of regular brown sugar and a tablespoon of molasses. I brought all of this gently to a boil, while briskly stirring with our molinillo. After letting it simmer for 15 minutes, I filtered it. The recipe does not specify how to filter it, but no better method could be found than our trusty Chemex.

The result was surprisingly delicious -- I usually do not like to have anything at all in my coffee except for coffee, but this was an exception worth making. It was quite good while hot, though the flavor did not withstand cooling very well at all. Next time, though, I hope to use real piloncillo, and a real olla instead of our steel saucepan!

Starbuck's Spiced Holiday Coffee

I took this recipe from a free download called Christmas Gifts for Coffee Lovers. Since I am married to a coffee lover, I figured it was at least worth a look. There was nothing in it that I could imagine I would spend any money on that we did not either already own. However, it did include a bonus coffee recipe which I made over the weekend.  I played with the proportions a bit since I was making only two mugs-full.

Below is the recipe as it appears in the Guide:

2/3 Cup ground dark roast coffee beans
4 cinnamon sticks, crushed or broken into small pieces
6 Cup water
1/2 Tsp. ground cardamom
2/3 Cup honey
Half-and-half or milk

Mix together the coffee and cinnamon
sticks. Using the coffee-cinnamon mixture and
water, brew coffee by your customary brewing
method (we strongly recommend using a French
Press). Add the cardamom and honey to the hot
coffee and stir until the honey dissolves.
Serve warm. Pour about 2/3 cup coffee into each glass.
Pass the half-and-half or milk.
Enjoy!

I used two cinnamon sticks, and considerably less honey. I did put in the full amount of cardamom. This was warm, creamy, and spicy. It tasted like Christmas. A good treat for a snowy day.

Stirring Up Mocha Cake

This week's recetas nuevas are variations on two favorite recipes of long standing, made all the better with secret ingredients from our friends at L.O.V.E. -- the Lebherz Oil & Vinegar Emporium in Frederick, Maryland. As regular readers may know, this culinary treasure was recently established by a fellow alumna of UMBC, where Pam and I met a few years back. And don't worry: the "secret" ingredients are about to be revealed!

The first modification was a simple one. We were pleased to get some late-season eggplant, so of course made a bonus round of ratatouille (we thought we had put the season finale in the freezer a couple weeks ago). By adding a small hot pepper from our farm box and chipotle-infused olive oil from L.O.V.E. and cooking for four hours, this weapons-grade tomato stew was even more scrumptious than usual.

The genius part of the evening was the addition of dark chocolate balsamic vinegar -- along with a few other modifications -- to our favorite pound cake recipe. Our new creation is based on the Mocha-Swirl Pound Cake on page 191 of Mollie Katzen's classic Moosewood Cookbook (just try to find another two-word title with eight Os!). The result is a perfect use of Marley Coffee from Jamaica!

Our modified version requires

• Butter (or Crisco or Pam) and flour for a Bundt pan
• 1 pound (hence the name) of butter, softened. Yes, that is four sticks. I'm going rowing in the morning.
• 2 cups unbleached, granulated sugar, preferably fair-trade organic, which is available from Costco, believe it or not!
• 6 eggs, preferably from a local chicken. Ours were from Hanson Farm.
• 4 cups white flour (use the healthy stuff on another recipe)
• 1 Tbs. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup Buffalo Soldier Marley Coffee, strongly brewed. I used medium-roasted La Orchidea from my friend's farm in Nicaragua, because I did not have time to order the Marley Coffee, but I think the medium-dark Buffalo Soldier would be even better for this recipe! (Reserve the rest of the pot of coffee -- I used a Chemex -- to serve with the cake.)
• 2 tsp. pure vanilla (also available from Costco, by the way)
• 1/2 of a 3.5-ounce Ibarra Mexican chocolate disk, which lends just a hint of cinnamon  The next time I plan to use exotic pepper from Madécasse, which I happened to try the day after making this, and I think it would be even better. Melt the chocolate in microwave or on stove top.
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2-3 Tbs. dark chocolate balsamic vinegar (see above)

To prepare, first make the batter:

• Beat together butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat eggs into mixture, two at a time.
• Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
• Alternate mixing dry ingredients and coffee into the butter mixture, until blended. Do not beat or over-mix.

Then prepare to swirl:

• Separate one-third of the batter to a small bowl, blend in melted chocolate.
• Prepare Bundt pan with butter and flour and pour in plain batter.
• Dollop chocolate batter in clumps onto pan, and then use a knife to swirl gently into the plain batter. 

Bake and glaze:

• Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes, or less if using convection. Remove to wire rack to cool, and overturn gently onto a plate, using a spatula if necessary.
• Meanwhile, sift confectioners sugar and whisk in 2 Tbs. chocolate vinegar. It will be difficult at first, but avoid the temptation to add too much liquid. Eventually, a thick glaze will form, which will drip off the whisk. Use this to drizzle glaze onto upright cake.

Present:

• Use bread or cake knife to slice modest servings -- this is rich cake!
• Garnish with espresso beans and/or mocha chips (ours were from Hilliard's)

Serve with Marley Coffee and try to contain yelps of true bliss, as the tart glaze melts perfectly into the rich mocha cake!

UPDATE: Having a professional photographer involved in the baking means a lot of cool shots of Stirring Up Mocha Cake in progress. Enjoy!

FURTHER UPDATE: We actually won this contest!

We were modifying a fairly complicated recipe, so all members
of the team had to study the original version!

Yes, a pound cake does have a full pound of butter.
But not in each slice!

It's all about Jamaica.

Jamaica, coffee, and chocolate, that is!

The chef hat does not help the coffee,
but hand grinding does!

While going to the trouble of baking
from scratch and using good Marley Coffee,
one might as well use a Chemex or
other pour-over brewing method.

Two hats are better than one for adding the coffee!

Coffee-infused batter!

And the cocoa batter

Swirl the two batters -- with and without cocoa.

Dark Chocolate Basalmic Vinegar glaze is the secrete ingredient.

The final presentation -- with espresso and mocha chips!

Coffee Sirloin

We are always busy during the academic year, but the past week has been busier than usual, with outreach programs on many subjects for many audiences. Still, we eat dinner at home almost every night. Readers of this blog will know that we are not "box food" people, and will not be surprised that we do our best to avoid fast food, especially if we are at home. (We do sometime cheat and order a pizza, and did so once during the past week.)

Knowing the hectic schedule, we made a simple plan for quick dinners this week, and that plan involved Fresh Catch in Mansfield, a choice we find ourselves making a bit more frequently since this project began. Oddly enough, we visit this meat and fish store as part of our effort to reduce our consumption of meat, both for our own health and that of the planet. We sometimes skip meat for days or weeks (Pam does not eat it with breakfast at all), but we do not see ourselves giving it up altogether. We have decided to make it count when we do have it, which is why this blog from a low-meat family has a lot of good meat recipes on it.

On Tuesday I picked up locally-caught cod (real cod, not "scrod") for quick, simple, and delicious pan-fried fillets. I simply dipped the cod in a mixture of egg, milk, and Tabasco and then dredged it in a mixture of flour, corn meal, and Old Bay. At the same time, I got two small, thick sirloin steaks, with the intention of using a recent gift from my mother -- Cowboy Blend with Coffee Steak Rub from Rancher's Reserve (a private label of Safeway).

Between classes, advising, and our huge Kony 2012 event last night, there was just enough time to steam some frozen green beans -- the last item from our 2011 Colchester farm box -- and prepare the steaks. This was simple -- just brush on olive oil and rub in the mix. A grill would have been nice, but starting with high heat and reducing to medium-high, these steaks were done very nicely in about ten minutes. I err on the side of well-done, and I did not give these the rest time that they deserve. But for stove-to-plate timing, this was quite savory, and sustained me through a bit of a hectic evening in the public arena.

I had prepared coffee steak in the past, trying to replicate something the former chef at Westport Rivers had demonstrated when she hosted a special dinner with Equal Exchange. That evening a few years ago, she used very dark coffee and black pepper, and I believe the steak was paired with a stainless-steel Chardonnay. On my previous attempt, I used too much pepper, partially curing the meat before grilling, so it was very dry. This time the commercial rub was more sweet than spicy, and the coffee not nearly so dark. Still, we paired it with the biggest red we had in the house, a 2010 Pinot Noir we purchased last year at Travessia in New Bedford. This region is not known for reds, as the growing season is too short, but this one has reasonably good body and complexity, and paired nicely with the mildly spicy and sweet steak.

What to do at the end of a hectic week? At the time of this writing, there is no plan. As she left the house to celebration National Library Week in Boston, Pam said something that we almost never say around here: "There is almost no food in this house." We are grateful that this was not literally true, of course, but it does mean that dinner tonight will require some quick thinking -- or a bit more cheating!

Lagniappe:
A bit of wine haiku by Marco Montez appears on the Pinot label:

Parker sips my red
light body low alcohol
spits, screams: fifty points!


Epilogue:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/fiesta-mexican-restaurant-east-bridgewater

Loving Coffee

This is a bit of a departure for the Nueva Receta blog -- discussing a recipe a few days before we try it. The reason is simple: this recipe is for Valentine's day, and we think that some of our readers and friends might benefit (ahem) from having this post ahead of the holiday. As regular readers know, the purpose of this blog is more fully to employ the many books on our well-laden shelf. For this particular holiday, thoughts go immediately to Intercourses, a wonderful book we mentioned in Valentine's and anniversary posts last year.

Because Valentine's Day is also Arizona Day -- and this in fact is Arizona's centennial -- Tuesday's main course will be taken from a The Well-filled Tortilla, a book that somehow became our family bible when we lived in Tucson. While Pam searched out a recipe there -- check in Tuesday or Wednesday to read about that -- I perused the dessert "sexion" of Intercourses, with a special focus on coffee.

We chose "espresso cream" from page 32, for its simplicity and the promise of something a bit different than the usual. We will drain 1.5 cups ricotta cheese, and beat it together with 1/4 cup cream, until smooth. We will stir in 2T freshly ground, dark-roasted coffee beans (from Selva Negra, the most romantic coffee farm I know -- it has its own wedding chapel!) and 2-3 T sugar. The recipe calls for 4 t brandy -- we will use a coffee brandy, and probably be generous with those teaspoons.

This we will chill all day, and after dinner we will divided it into romantic cups and garnish with toasted almonds, a couple of coffee beans, and some mocha beans from Hilliards. (The recipe calls for chocolate-covered beans, but Hilliards was sold out and Star**cks has discontinued them. This seems a very reasonable solution!)

Next Valentine's Day, by the way, we hope to replicate the coffee martini we enjoyed recently at Imagine Restaurant and Bar in Granada, Nicaragua. We have the key ingredients (and will be sure to have fresh Selva Negra coffee on hand when the time comes), but we will need some coaching, which we hope to get next summer when Imagine's owner visits New England.

I have written elsewhere about the perils and pleasures of combining coffee and alcohol; this recipe seems to be well inside the pleasure zone!

NOTE: We ended up being short on coffee brandy (tragedy!), so I used about a tablespoon each of coffee brandy and 43, a Spanish vanilla liqueur. I did not grind the coffee as finely as I should have, but this still turned out quite nicely, and I am recommending it to my friends at Selva Negra.

Louisiana Yam Muffins

I make a traditional lasagna each year for Christmas dinner. Cooking the sauce is an all-afternoon affair, which is then layered with a ricotta cheese mixture, and shredded mozarella cheese, and lasagna noodles. This year, I added special muffins to the menu. I could not resist this recipe when I saw that it called for Tabasco and coffee - James' two favorite beverages. I also had half a sweet potato in the refrigerator, which after I steamed and mashed it, gave me the 1 cup that the recipe calls for (it does specifically say that yams or sweet potatoes can be used - I am not really sure what the difference is, anyway). The recipe also calls for 1 c. each of cornmeal and all-purpose flour; 1/4 c. sugar, 1T baking powder, 1 1/4 t. cinnamon and 1/2 t. salt. The dry ingredients were mixed together in one bowl, and in a smaller bowl I mixed 2 eggs, 4T canola oil, the sweet potatoes, coffee (1/2 c.) and Tabasco (the recipe says 1/2 t. but I just shook some into the batter. I am sure it was more than 1/2 t.). The wet and dry ingredients were mixed together, and then baked at 400 degrees for 16 minutes in the convection oven. There were a lot of flavors to be tasted in this. It was just sweet enough, and the coffee flavor came through. I probably could have added even a bit more Tabasco for more kick.

Coffee Banana Smoothie

The Hayes-Bohanan's have been drinking smoothies since before smoothies were cool. Back before people even used the word "smoothie" to describe a drink made of blended fruits, juices and yogurt, we simply called them "fruit shakes". And of course we were among the generation that made drinking coffee cool (see my coffee story). So when we recently were offered a free download of a Starbucks Coffee Recipe Book, we could hardly turn it down, and when I saw the recipe for the Coffee Banana Smoothie I knew what I wanted to try first.

The recipe calls for two peeled, sliced, and frozen bananas, so one must begin the night before in order to properly freeze the fruit. The bananas go into a blender along with 1 1/2 cups milk, 8oz. of coffee yogurt, 1/4 t. of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg. We did not have any coffee-flavored yogurt on hand so I substituted vanilla yogurt flavored with the morning's leftover coffee. The recipe also calls for optional mint leaves as a garnish. I walked out to my garden in the morning dew to cut same.

This was a refreshing drink for an summer morning. Next time, however, I will use less milk, as the coffee itself provides enough liquid to the mix. I will also blend the mint leaves right in, rather than using as a garnish.