Oozalicious Cheese Scones

As Justin mentioned in this pizza post, we are addicted to The Cheeseboard Collective, a co-operative cheese shop and pizza place in Berkeley, California. As we currently live in Modesto, California - which is an hour and a half drive away - we've made very few trips to the actual Cheeseboard shop as of late. Luckily, this has forced us to make increasingly frequent forays into their awesome cookbook. This week's adventure? Warm, buttery, oozing cheese scones.

One of my favorite parts about this book is the anecdotes about working for, well, a cheese collective/co-op bakery, which is just as strange and inspiring as you would imagine. There are quirky quotes from former members:

"I do a lot of baking by sound. The scones have a sound they make when they have mixed the right length of time and have the right amount of liquid. It's a smacking, kissing sort of sound. You have to make the scones many times to get to know what that sound is."
- Carrie, p49

As well as notes about each recipe and scans of the original cards used at the shop:

Awesome, right? My only note about this cheese scone recipe is 1) use the best quality, sharpest cheddar you can find - it seriously ups the quality of the dish, and 2) feel free to add some herbs into the mix. I was inspired by Peter Reinhardt's Herb & Cheese Popper recipe in this month's Bon Appetit magazine, and I threw some fresh chives into this batch of scones. De-lish! My only regret is that I didn't put in more, and try some thyme, basil, sage, etc.

But I know what you really came here for - the recipe.

Cheese Scones adapted from The Cheese Board Collective Works
(makes 8-12 scones, depending on size)

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons fine yellow cornmeal
• 1 stick plus 1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 1/2 pound sharp orange cheddar cheese, cubed
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup buttermilk
• chopped fresh chives
  
• 1 egg, beaten
  

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place silpat or parchment paper on flat baking sheet and sprinkle with some cornmeal.
2. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and cayenne pepper into a large bowl.
3. Stir in salt and cornmeal. Cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture is the size of small peas. Stir in chunks of cheddar and chives.
4. In center of flour mixture, make a well. Pour in milk and buttermilk, and stir until just combined, careful not to overmix. The cheese should still be in big chunks, and there should be a bit of flour left at the bottom of the bowl.
5. Transfer dough to a generously floured surface, and pat it into a 6 by 9 inch rectangle.
6. Using a serrated knife, cut the dough in half lengthwise and then cut the smaller rectangles into even triangles - six, if you want twelve scones, or four, if you want eight larger scones.
7. Place scones on pan several inches apart. Brush the tops of each with beaten egg.
8. Bake on middle rack for 30 minutes, or until scones are lightly browned and cheese has burst forth into glorious, crusty pools.
These have been a staple in our house lately, and are an excellent companion to a bowl of soup on a cold fall night. They're also excellent in the morning, at lunch, or in the no-one-is-watching-and-I-want-cheesey-goodness-now hour. Also known as every hour.

These bunnies are about to hunger your mind hole. Wait. That got away from me.

Are you ready for this? Let me answer that one for you. You're not ready. Because what you are about to see is so Legen...

wait for it...

dary* that it is going to blow your mind right out of your skull, it is going to make your eyeballs leave on vacation and decide never to return, your jaw will drop so far it will penetrate and destabilize the center of the earth. I ask you again. Are. You. Ready?

You're still not. But here it comes anyway.

We told you about discovering the Rogue Creamery on our trip back from Spokane but we alluded to something in that post and never filled you in on the rest of the details. In fact, we've been anxiously holding on to those details ever since, just waiting for the right time. That time, you see, is Halloween, and the item we've been waiting to unveil is this:

They're called Voodoo Bunnies, and if I had a yearly list of favorite things, these little rascals would be at the top of it.

You see, Lillie Belle, the amazing and tiny chocolate shop (Blue cheese truffles? Yes!) next to the Rogue Creamery had windows from the main floor into their working space. On cursory first glance at these little guys, Dana just saw bunnies and so passed on to ogle the dastardly delicious confections lining the shelves. Macadamia Ginger Chew! Lemon coconut buttercream! The almost nefarious-sounding Dark Star! At the time, I was invested in staying still enough to take long exposures of a vat of chocolate running silkily through a mixing machine that I wished I could be.
When I made it to the window overlooking the bunny work area, I was so anesthetized by the swirling of chocolate it took me a minute to notice something odd was going on: these bunnies weren't all right. In fact, they were all kinds of wrong. The more I looked the more their grotesqueries became clear. One had a hole where an ear should have been and a tiny marzipan brain showing through its chocolate skull, a white chocolate bunny had a chunk of shoulder ripped out and miniscule musculature and bones showing clean below its unconcerned face, the worst though was the bunny with its head thrown back and its throat absent all the way to the tiny candy spine.

photos above courtesy of Lillie Belle Farms

These are the logical yet stony extension of thought for anyone who's had a sudden flash of empathy for the dismembered hollow chocolate easter bunny, who's ever suppressed a shiver after snapping off the head of an animal cracker lion. You wanted to have your anthropomorphised animals and you wanted to eat them too.

Well you just got your wish.

D and I are big fans of zombies. For years now we've hosted a Zombie Prom every halloween, have washed cakes of fake blood from our hair or scrubbed it from our skin more times than I can even remember. And if we're forsaking all that this year for a turn of the horriblest of screws, well it doesn't mean we like zombies any less. Although if one more person tells me about this book, I swear to God I will consume them.

So, okay, I know, you're totally like ho hum, I thought this revelation was going to blow my mind and yet it was so... pedestrian.

But check this out. The folks at Lillie Belle weren't just working on these bunnies idly. Oh no, they certainly were not.

In honor of the holiday, the voodoo bunnies are now for sale!

Just a simple click here and you too can revel in the majesty, the wonder, the sickening reality of your very own disfigured candy rabbit! And I assure you that you can't go wrong with anything else from the store, either. Even the chocolate covered bacon I had there was a hit!

Enjoy in chocolatey, disgusted good health!

*: It's really not my fault, How I Met Your Mother season 4 just came out and we've been mainlining it in a tube pulled straight from Netflix. By the way, if you haven't seen the series, let me ask you one thing: Haaave you met Barney?

Pumpkin Pie With Brown Sugar Pecan Topping & No Evaporated Milk

When I saw a picture of this topping-ed pie in November's Bon Appetit, I got understandably excited. And it wasn't just because this is a twist on a classic, because in all honesty, I was a little dubious about the necessity of topping on a pumpkin pie. I mean, it's a classic for a reason - you pretty much throw some whipped cream on that baby and call it a night.

But I decided to try it, mostly because my mother-in-law requested a birthday pumpkin pie on the same day this issue of Bon Appetit arrived at my door, and I took that as a sign. The Universe is trying to tell me something, I thought. Something... about pie. And so I listened, because The Universe doesn't often speak to me about pies, and it turns out the thing it was saying was Daaaaaannnnaaa [echo echo echo].... This recipeeeee.... is deeeeelicious.

In case you were wondering, The Universe also tends to echo its vowel sounds.

I did make a few changes along the way, including subbing in pecans instead of walnuts and changing a few spices to taste, but I stayed pretty faithful. Oh, and I used the Moosewood Book of Desserts pie crust recipe, as it's my Old Faithful. And I topped it all off with some awesome cinnamon whipped cream. Okay, so actually I changed a lot more than I thought I did. It was delicious, anyway.

Pumpkin Pie with Brown Sugar Pecan Topping adapted from Bon Appetit (serves 8-10)

1 12-inch pre-baked pie crust

Filling

• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  

Topping

• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• pinch of kosher salt
  

1. Pre-bake your pie crust of choice until it's golden brown, then set the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, begin preparing the filling. Whisk together brown sugar, eggs, kosher salt, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg. When well mixed, whisk in pumpkin and cream until the ingredients are smooth. Pour into (cooled) pie crust.
3. Bake until filling is firm, but not fully set, approximately 30 minutes.
4. While filling is baking, prepare topping. Combine pecan pieces, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl. The original recipe calls for this mixture to be processed into "fine crumbs," but I preferred mine more chunky.
5. After filling has firmed, pull pie out of oven and reduce temperature to 325. Sprinkle on the pecan/brown sugar topping. Return to oven and bake until filling is set and pie has puffed up, approximately 15 minutes.
6. Transfer pie to cooling rack and cool completely. And if you're feeling adventurous, top with cinnamon whipped cream.

I found the lack of evaporated milk in this recipe to be particularly refreshing, and I have to admit, dubious though I was, the topping added a lot to the pie's flavor. It was sweet, the tiniest bit salty, and a perfect compliment to the spicy pumpkin filling. In fact, it was so good that the recipe will likely be making an appearance at this year's Thanksgiving dinner.

Golden cheddar cheese soup with roasted tomato bread

One of the great things about having a food blog is it keeps us working.

I mean, it's easy to fall into a rut, to discover that though you meant to keep a variety coming, you've been eating the same thing or variations on the same thing, for weeks. Tell me if this sounds familiar: as you get busy doing other things--I don't know, life things, whatever--cooking takes a back seat. Food goes through that less than magical transformation from fascination to fuel, you find a couple of dishes that are fast and tasty enough and you stick with them. As we've been working with the almond harvest and living--let's face it--kind of hand to mouth, we've been guilty of succumbing to this trap. It's been like this lately around the house: cereal for breakfast, a hot dog for lunch, a wrap for dinner. I'm not talking microwave burritos here but still, anything taken often and without pleasure is a chore. This sort of thing used to happen to us a lot, actually, we're prone to it, but since we started ETH we feel just enough responsibility to you, the people reading this blog--our bleaders, to steal a phrase from Julie & Julia--that it can break us out of this rut.

So here is this week's rut-breaker, a quickish dinner that is familiar but still outside of our everyday menu: Golden cheddar cheese soup and roasted tomato bread.

The soup comes from a recipe in Moosewood Cooks at Home (can you tell we have an affinity for these books yet?) and is creamy and wonderful and just tastes... well, Moosewood. At their best, they can manage to make a bowl of vegetables--which is really what this soup is--taste both like itself and like something you want more of. As someone who didn't grow up a huge fan of vegetables, this is a revelation to me. The soup is pretty simple:

Golden Cheddar Cheese Soup
Serves 4 good-sized bowls

• 1 cup chopped onions
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 medium potatoes, thinly sliced (I didn't even peel them, frankly)
  
• 1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
• 1 medium yellow summer squash, thinly sliced(though I used like 4 small)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper (or to taste)
• pinch of turmeric
• 2 cups vegetable stock or water
• 1 cup buttermilk or milk (we used nonfat and it still turned out super creamy)
  
• 1 cup grated sharp yellow cheddar cheese (the quality of the cheese makes a huge difference here so go for some big flavor, you won't regret it)
  
• salt to taste
• minced fresh scallions, chives, or parsley for garnish

In a 3-5 quart soup pot over medium heat, cook the onion in the oil until translucent. Then add the squash, potato, carrot, and broth along with the black pepper and turmeric. Simmer for 20 minutes until vegetables are soft then add milk and cheese and, using either a standard or immersion blender, blend until silky. Salt generously, throw on some chives, and serve.
As you can see from the ingredients, the soup is well named. The pinch of turmeric and the cheese combine to make a lovely golden hue specked in places by bits of darker potato peel and orange dots of carrot and the two cups of dairy make for a very filling, very rich bowl.

The bread, though, is what I really wanted to tell you about.

Last time we made focaccia, it was kind of a mini-disaster. Even after we got the fire alarms to stop screeching like jungle birds gone mad, we were left cleaning piles of charred oil out of the bottom of our oven for months. This time, armed with a thick rolled-edge sheet pan and the steely eyes of true determination, we managed to not only deliver a sheet bread sans catastrophe, it came out really beautifully to boot.
Though this bread shares the dense olive oil flavor of a traditional focaccia, I found the consistency and ease of it to be more akin to a biscuit, especially given the addition of milk as a major liquid ingredient.

Roasted-Tomato Bread
from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook
makes one 17-by-12-inch bread

• 4 pints cherry tomatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
• 3/4 cup plus 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 4 tsp coarse salt
• 3-1/2 cups milk
• 1-1/2 lbs AP flour
• 10 oz semolina flour (I used bread flour because I didn't have semolina on hand. I'll definitely have to pick some up, though, as its graininess would be welcome here)
• 1-1/2 oz fresh yeast (frankly, I don't even know where I can find fresh yeast so I subbed in a tsp active dry yeast and doubled the rise time)

What you do is lay out the tomatoes in a couple of pans, drizzle with 1/4 cup olive oil, and sprinkle with 2 tsp salt. Roast the tomatoes in a 300 degree oven until they're shriveled and the juice on the pan has reduced, about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring milk to a simmer over low heat. Combine 2 tsp salt, the flours, 3 Tbsp olive oil, and the yeast. If you're using active dry, it might be a good idea to proof the yeast beforehand in a bit of water but I didn't think of it until too late. Mix on low speed with the paddle attachment, gradually adding the hot milk bit by bit. When it's combined, increase speed to medium and mix for a minute.

Transfer to a heavy baking sheet brushed with a bit of olive oil. Spread the dough to fill the pan and cover tightly with plastic wrap.
Let rise for 30 minutes to an hour then, using your fingers, dimple the dough in an uneven pattern leaving a little space between. Arrange half of the roasted tomatoes on the dough, drizzle with 1/4 cup of olive oil, and sprinkle liberally with salt.

Bake at 425 degrees until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and drizzle with remaining oil and cover with reserved tomatoes.
So, there you have it, a way out of the ordinary meal that's totally scratch and totally ready for company in maybe an hour of active time. Not bad for a rut breaker, eh?