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Chile Con Queso Dip for the Ravens (and the Saucy Dipper’s Dipstock!)

January 31, 2012 by Jennifer Walker

Cheese dip for the Baltimore Ravens

I am so freakin’ sad about this year’s Super Bowl. More than a week has passed since the Ravens lost the AFC Championship, and I still cringe every time I hear someone talk about the big game.

In my mind I see Flacco, who played an awesome game despite weeks of enduring endless ridicule from the press, and Ed Reed, who so often looks cramped and hobbled and in pain after a play yet still managed to deflect that third down pass that gave the Ravens one more chance.

I see Evans dropping the game-winning pass (or was the ball stripped??), then the faces of Rice and Suggs and Smith, eyes and mouths wide after Cundiff missed that 32-yard field goal that would have let us hang in there a little longer.

Those last several seconds of the game were just crushing.

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Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

A Lesson in Dough Perseverance

January 24, 2012 by Jennifer Walker

Pierogi with farmer's cheese

Sometimes I absolutely love making dough. When I made this babka and the dough felt smooth and elastic as it should and it rose in the pan and then in the oven, I was beyond happy with myself. I felt like a baking goddess when I lifted the three hefty, chocolatey loaves from the oven. And I felt even more impressed with myself when my family ate the babka on Christmas Eve, even when faced with an entire table full of other delicious desserts that also wanted their attention.

Then other times I find myself sitting on my kitchen floor in agony, heart beating rapidly, because I have just tried to make dough – in this case pierogi dough – and it didn’t work. The dough was too dry to roll, so, after cutting out discs with a cookie cutter, I had pierogi shells that were much too thick. I also neglected to cover the dough with a towel, so a lovely flaky film was forming on top, one that felt a lot like dry skin.

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Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments »

Ukrainian Cheese Blintzes and Farmer’s Cheese

January 19, 2012 by Jennifer Walker

Cheese Blintzes, Martha Stewart

I’m not a fan of farmer’s cheese. I love the idea of it because it is popular in Poland, and I am Polish and I have Polish pride.

But the taste? Not so much. I like my cheese to be bold. I want salt and I want intense flavor. I wouldn’t reach for a slice of, say, mozzarella because it’s too mild. But next to farmer’s cheese, mozzarella looks like aged Parmesan.

In the past I described farmer’s cheese as a less-salty version of feta, but that’s not accurate. It’s sour, like plain yogurt, and soft. It’s also a bit firmer than cottage cheese. In fact, farmer’s cheese was once cottage cheese – it’s curds were simply drained longer to remove more water from the final product.

Still, I would never want to eat farmer’s cheese (or cottage cheese, for that matter) on its own.

But in these blintzes? It’s lovely. With sugar and raisins folded into the batter, the blintzes are sweet patties that smell like French toast when they’re frying. When cooked, the texture is dense, as if flour was the main ingredient. But it’s not. The blintzes are primarly made with farmer’s cheese and eggs.

Ever the salt lover, I like to sprinkle some coarse salt on these blintzes before serving. It perks up their flavor and gives them a nice crunch.

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Posted in Ingredients, Recipes | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments »

Chocolate Babka

December 30, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Chocolate babka

Seinfeld taught me this about chocolate babka: A chocolate version is better than cinnamon, so much so that one cannot possibly go to a party with a cinnamon babka when one knows that a chocolate babka, the better babka, will be present.

But even though I’ve seen this episode, one of my favorites, dozens of times, Jerry and Elaine left out one important fact: what is a babka, exactly? Is it a bread or a pie? A pastry with a flaky dough and a creamy filling? A layer cake with fluffy frosting?

I found out years later, when I wandered past a bakery in Grand Central Station that had a typewritten sign advertising its chocolate and cinnamon babkas. This was the first time I had ever come across a babka in real life. I snatched a chocolate loaf (yes, a loaf!), took it home, and immediately cut myself a slice.

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Posted in Ingredients, Recipes | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments »

Homemade Bacon

October 17, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

homemade bacon

My condo smells like bacon. I don’t notice it unless I’m outside first. The other day, walking up the stairs that lead to my floor, I smelled salt and pork, heavy and smoky like the air wafting a short distance from a summer barbecue. I thought a neighbor was having a party.

But the lovely scent was left over from the six strips of bacon, cut so thin that they were almost translucent when raw, that I fried up that morning. This, finally, is my homemade bacon.

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Posted in Charcutepalooza, Ingredients | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments »

Pluot Crumble Pie

September 5, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Pluot Crumble Pie

If I order dessert at a restaurant, it’s never chocolate.  If it’s winter or one of those rare occasions I’m just not in the mood for ice cream, my favorite after dinner sweet, I will always order fruit desserts.

And I don’t mean a bowl of fruit. No matter how fresh and bright and in-season a bowl of peaches or blueberries or strawberries is, and no matter how much whipped cream glistens on top of them, this is not dessert. When I say fruit dessert, I mean pie, crisp, cobbler, or cake packed with warm, syrupy fruit.

So last week, when Kenny and I made our first trip to Dangerously Delicious Pies in Baltimore, I turned away from the Baltimore Bomb, a pie made with our local Berger cookies, which are discs of cakey sweets slathered with a thick coating of dry chocolate icing. Instead, I turned to fruit pie: the cherry crumble pie, a one-crust pie topped with a buttery layer of crumble, most likely made with brown sugar, oats, flour, and butter.

We brought the pie back to our place and I ate a bite here, another one there, until my big piece of pie was gone by the next morning.

But I still craved more.

So I headed to Whole Foods to buy some cherries. At $6 or $8 a pound, I can’t remember which, they cost more than I wanted to spend. My craving for a pie that was both tart and sweet was strong though.

That’s when I saw the pluots.

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Posted in Ingredients, Recipes | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments »

Icelandic Chocolate

August 22, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Noi Sirius chocolate from Iceland

Four years ago this month, Kenny and I took an overnight flight from New York to Reykjavik in Iceland for a 10-day vacation. Because it was August (and not because we checked a weather report), we expected some sunny weather. So we decided to save some money and camp out on a grassy lot behind the city’s youth hostel. We bought our $30 tent at Target and packed two L.L. Bean sleeping bags to stay warm.

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Posted in Travel | Tagged , , | 18 Comments »

Peach Muffins

August 18, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Peach muffins

Last year I wrote about what has become one of my favorite summer field trips: picking peaches at Bennett Orchards in Delaware.  The orchard is on our way home from Ocean City when we take the Delaware route, so we stopped in again this year after our early August vacation.

Field trip actually isn’t the right term to describe peach picking.  It’s more like a pleasant stopover or an errand.  That’s because peach picking is fast.  Five of us – and two people didn’t do much work – picked 27 pounds of peaches, an entire box, in five minutes.  Really.  My mom timed it.  And Kenny and I took home more of the haul than anyone else.

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Posted in Ingredients, Recipes | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Rhubarb Shrub

August 15, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Making rhubarb shrub (a homemade soda with vinegar)

Back in early July, the heat was sweltering here in Baltimore.  One Wednesday, around 5:30 p.m., I left my apartment in the central part of the city and walked to Bad Decisions, a bar near the water in Fell’s Point, to research a story about culinary cocktails.  More cars than usual packed the streets, thanks to the U2 concert at the M&T Bank Stadium that night. The air was thick and unmoving and engulfing, the kind that leaves sweat stains on your clothes. (It certainly left a lovely mark on the front of my dress.)

When I arrived at the bar, John Reusing, the owner, made me four cocktails to sample for my story. (Get recipes for his bacon habanero mojito, pickletini, and smoky margarita here.) They all had a lingering heat, which I love. But what my overheated body really wanted, I learned, was Reusing’s rhubarb shrub.

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Posted in Ingredients, Recipes | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Big Summer Potluck and What’s Next for MMC?

August 6, 2011 by Jennifer Walker

Big Summer Potluck 2011

Scenes from the Big Summer Potluck 2011

I didn’t plan to stop blogging for an entire month.  It just worked out that way.

I could tell you that it’s because I was busy with my move or my summer class or my thesis.  Or that my new place has a very old stove with two ovens that are covered in splattered grease inside, which doesn’t make for pretty, appetizing photographs.  Or that I write for work and for school and that writing for the blog sometimes feels like a bit too much writing.

All of these reasons are true, but at the same time they’re excuses.  I stopped writing here because after two years of blogging, I’m unsure where I want to go next with My Morning Chocolate.

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Posted in Fun Food Bites | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments »

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