I am a four-season child.

By that I mean I have to live somewhere that has four distinct seasons. I can appreciate the allure of a place that is sunny and warm all year long, perhaps I might even visit said place for some rest or relaxation, but to live there permanently?

Don’t think so.

Spring is pretty. I love watching as nature wakes itself up from its long sleep, but after a few weeks I become impatient for the summer heat that means our garden’s bounty will soon be ready.

And while I love eating the fruits of that garden, in the midst of Toronto’s hazy, humid summer heat, I need to know that soon the trees will explode in colour and that I will wake up every morning to a crystal blanket of frost on our lawn.

And when the beauty of Autumn turns into the incessant rainy weather of November, I need to know that the bone-chilling cold, wake-you-up-no-matter-what, freeze-your-toes cold is around the corner. You may not like the winter but I would argue that there is very little as beautiful in life as stepping out your front door on a frigid winter morning with snow everywhere, a blue sky and brilliant sun. That’s a breathtaking sight.

The best part of that cold is the knowledge that you can seek warmth at any moment. You can run inside, kick off your boots, and curl up under your favourite blankie with a cup of hot chocolate.

Or, in my case, you can bake a cake.

In the middle of winter, I bake cakes.

Not just because I love to eat them, but also because I love to imagine crawling into them.

While it is shockingly cold outside, I can imagine myself crawling into a layer of the most beautiful, warm thing in the world made of butter and sugar and flour and spices.

And I would just nestle there, in my sweet, sweet bed, and be perfectly happy.

My companion in this lovely dream has been Lauren Chattman’s spectacular Cake Keeper Cakes: 100 Simple Recipes for Extraordinary Bundt Cakes, Pound Cakes, Snacking Cakes and Other Good-To-The-Last-Crumb Treats. Proof that beautiful things do come in small packages, this precious little book is filled with recipes for cakes that make you ask yourself, “Why don’t I bake more often?”

Simple cakes. Pleasing cakes. Cakes for people who are bakers at heart. Cakes that come together in the blink of an eye. Cakes that make you happy. Cakes you can put in a cake keeper (if you have one).

You may already be familiar with this book as it was featured in the October 2009 Food & Wine issue which highlighted the Nutella-Swirl Pound Cake. (I blogged about it here.)

I feel so lucky to have been given the chance to have this book and to write about it. Take my word for it. You’ll love it.

Everyone else may dream of heading south this cold winter, but not me. I’m dreaming of being wrapped in warm, puffy, just-baked cake.

How delicious.

Ciao!

Note: Besides the fabulous Nutella-Swirl Pound Cake, I tried the World’s Quickest Yeasted Coffee Cake on p. 39 (pictured above). Heaven!

And on the sixth day of the 12 Days of Cookbooks, I give you Mario Batali’s Holiday Food.

Published in 2000, this book has been around for almost ten years but I only discovered it earlier this year while perusing some titles on-line. I immediately snapped it up and haven’t been disappointed.

Besides being the perfect size to slip into someone’s Christmas stocking, it’s the perfect special book to have on your bookshelf when the holidays come around.

From what I can tell the recipes are a collection of ones that Mario Batali has presented on the Food Network so you can probably find most of the recipes on-line. Still, though, it’s nice to have them all collected in one place and they are fabulous recipes!

Based heavily on Italian holiday traditions, the book walks you through Christmas to New Year’s so this is the perfect time of year to buy it.

I made it my Flavour of the Month for December 2009 so I’m hoping to try many recipes, but for today, you’ll have to settle for the Gamberoni All’Acqua Pazza (Shrimp in Crazy Water). I apologize for the quality of the photo. I was basically drooling as I put the shrimp in the dish and couldn’t wait to dig in so my patience for snapping a photo was limited to say the least.

This would be a perfect dish as part of a traditional Italian Christmas Eve feast, which is usually comprised of fish and seafood only. It’s really easy to make and it’s fast so you can put it together quickly.

Besides having a lot of sweet recipes, what I especially love about the book is that there’s a heavy emphasis on fish and seafood.

It’s a gem of a little book so I hope you pick it up, if not for yourself, then for someone special!

Ciao!

Jumbo Shrimp in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Adapted from Mario Batali Holiday Food.

Serves 4.

1 pound jumbo shrimp, cleaned and deveined
olive oil
1/2 a large onion, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (or you can use fresh hot pepper)
2 cups tomato puree
1 cup white wine
salt to taste
roughly chopped parsley (optional)

In a saucepan, pour in enough olive oil to just cover the bottom of the pan (at least 3 or 4 tablespoons). Heat the oil.

Once the oil is hot, add the onion, garlic and red pepper. Saute until softened. Adjust the heat so that you don’t burn the garlic or onions.

Add the tomato puree and the white wine and simmer for 10 minutes until the mixture thickens.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Add the shrimp to the sauce and cook for 5 to 8 minutes, until the shrimp is cooked. Don’t overcook the shrimp or it will be tough.

Plate the shrimp and sauce and sprinkle with parsley if you like. Serve hot.

Enjoy!

When I first flipped through Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories from a Life in Food by Andrew Carmellini and Gwen Hyman, I of course started with the dessert section. And the recipe that made me stop was this one: Nero Cookies.

At first I smiled because I thought “mmm … chocolate cookies … word for black in Italian is nero and these cookies are so lusciously dark and black … mmm”.

Forgive me. I’m not up-to-speed on my Roman history so much these days.

Once I read the headnote to the recipe, I discovered that the cookies were named Nero Cookies because the cracks that develop in the cookies as they bake reminded the author of the ancient walls in and around Rome. Being that the cookies are dark and dense, he called them Nero Cookies after one of Rome’s most notorious emperors.

Consider me worshipful.

Hail, Cookie!

Ciao!

These are an intense and delicious version of crinkle cookies. I’m sure you can find a version of Chocolate Crinkle Cookies in many different baking books. Here’s a version that I found on-line that you might enjoy: Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

I cannot believe April is more than halfway over and I have yet to even mention my Flavour of the Month: Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Lemon Desserts.

I adore Lori. I love her recipes and all her cookbooks are just so good. I count them among my most treasured books.

The warm weather has (finally) arrived here in Toronto and it’s just too beautiful outside for me not to be out there. So I’m going to keep this short.

Do you know that I have never made sugar cookies?

Isn’t that crazy!

I had bookmarked Lori’s recipe for Old-Fashioned Lemon Sugar Cookies and I just had to try them.

Something about the lemon and old-fashioned, rustic look to these cookies made me think of a pretty farmhouse in the country with flowers everywhere and budding trees and blue skies and gingham curtains for the windows and a lemonade stand out front and cute gardening clogs by the back door and a nearby pond and chicken and dumplings bubbling on the wood-burning stove. You know, back when life was simpler.

Mind you, I have no idea where this specific farmhouse is located. I’m pretty sure that I don’t own a scrap of gingham and I know, for a fact, that I would look horrid in any manner of clog. I’ve never had a lemonade stand nor have I ever had chicken and dumplings. And wood-burning stoves scare me. A little.

Never the less, a Cream Puff can dream.

And whilst she’s dreaming, she can bake these delicious cookies that have a lemon hit that gets you right where it counts: in the imagination.

Ciao!

Note: I don’t have a recipe for you, unfortunately. As regular readers will know, I don’t like reproducing recipes from cookbooks unless I have adapted them into my own recipe. But if you have a favourite sugar cookie recipe, try it out with lots of lemon peel and a hit of lemon juice. You’ll love it!

So here’s my dirty little secret: For almost all of my 20s and part of my early 30s, I regularly skipped breakfast.

And by regularly I mean, almost all the time.

So there you have it. I don’t have a particularly good reason for being such a habitual offender beyond the most basic (and perhaps saddest), which is that I simply didn’t care enough to organize myself, to make time, to plan ahead and to prepare.

You see, they don’t call breakfast the most important meal of the day because they feel like it. It is the most important meal of the day. And any meal that’s the most important does require organization, time, planning and preparation.

My lack of all of the above led to the usual laundry list of ills associated with skipping meals: mid-morning hunger, low energy, snack attacks, weight gain and sluggishness.

In place of a fulfilling breafkast, I enjoyed a parade of mid-morning snacks purchased from the nearest coffee shop. These snacks involved coffee and some sort of sweet. I rationalized this terrible habit by telling myself that it was okay since I did manage to eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and I always had a decent dinner.

It is amazing to me that someone that prides herself on being a good cook and baker, someone that prides herself on her family’s culinary traditions and that someone that prides herself on having a responsible attitude towards food could possibly have been so stupid.

But I was.

I’m not exactly sure what initiated my breakfast awareness, but shortly after I turned 30, it began to sink in that breakfast was a necessity and that with a good breakfast I’d be arming myself to have a good day.

I am happy to say that now, in my mid-30s, I have breakfast almost every day. (I still have about a handful of days a year when time gets the best of me and I don’t eat anything. Never said I was perfect!)

From Monday to Friday, my breakfasts are simple, straightforward and delicious. I will eat everything from cereal with fruit, yogurt with granola, yogurt with fruit, hot cereal and toast with butter and jam. What I have really depends on how I’m feeling. There are, however, a few common denominators regardless of what I’m having:

I always have fruit in some form every morning. Whether it’s berries in my cereal or an apple after I’ve had a slice of toast, I eat fruit every morning.

I always have dairy in some form every morning. A glass of milk. A cup of yogurt. Whatever the case may be, dairy for breakfast is good.

I only eat things that I like for breakfast. No matter how “healthy” something is, if you don’t like it, trying to force yourself to eat it is usually not going to end successfully. Over the years, I have learned what foods I like to eat in the morning and those are the ones that I enjoy. I love toast with butter and jam. But rather than eat refined white bread, I enjoy a variety of wholesome breads made with grains, nuts and seeds. And yes I still put butter and jam on my bread because butter and jam are beautiful things and a life without them wouldn’t be much fun (for me).

What do I do on Saturday and Sunday, you ask? Like most people, I have more time for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays, which means that I can be a bit more elaborate in my preparations. Also, as I believe that indulgence (in moderation) is good for the soul, Saturdays and Sundays are the days that I like to make pancakes, waffles, omelettes, breakfast pastries and french toast. I don’t have these all the time, mind you, but if I do have them it will be on the weekend.

Making time for breakfast on a daily basis has changed my life. For starters, the urge to fall asleep at 11:00 every morning has disappeared. I feel better. I don’t feel like I’m 110 years old. I’ve lost weight. I look better. I’m healthier.

So what prompted this confession? After all of the indulgences of the holidays, I found myself thinking about what I would be cooking and eating during the month of January and that of course led to much contemplation about what I would choose as my Flavour of the Month.

I found myself perusing The Overburdened Bookshelf and my eyes settled on a book called Morning Food: Breakfasts, Brunches & More for Savoring the Best Part of the Day by Margaret Fox and John Bear. Here’s a book that I’ve had for several years but never used.

I suddenly found myself imagining a month of delicious breakfasts so I knew I had to choose this book as the Flavour of the Month. For the first recipe that I tried, I chose one called Kaiserschmarren (The Empoeror’s Omelette). I’m not a huge omelette fan but I chose this one when I realized that it’s actually a cross between an omelette and a pancake that I enjoyed when I was in Austria in 2006.

During my trip, I had the chance to have dinner with Angelika of The Flying Apple and for our dessert, we tried a very traditional dish that was a pancake of sorts that’s then torn apart with forks and served with various accompaniments like stewed fruit. Angelika strongly recommended that I try it (even though I was stuffed) and I did and certainly didn’t regret it.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to try this dish at home, but this time for breakfast.

If you’re a breakfast eater, I congratulate you. If you’re a breakfast skipper, I’m not going to lecture you. I know what it’s like and believe me, you have to come to accept breakfast on your own terms. But take it from this reformed Cream Puff, you’re missing the best meal of the day!

Ciao!

Here are some recipes for this dish (can be enjoyed for breakfast or for dessert) that you might like:

http://www.thecookingadventuresofchefpaz.com/2008/01/27/kaiser-pancakes-kaiserschmarren/

http://www.austrianfood.net/2008/01/07/kaiserschmarren/

http://www.sheries-kitchen.com/recipes/german/kaiserschmarren.htm

http://www.hsn.com/wolfgang-puck-recipe-kaiserschmarren_at-2740_xa.aspx

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Kaiserschmarren

I have a serious thing for olives.

In fact, I don’t know very many people who do not, on some level, appreciate the olive.

Wait a minute.

Let me think.

Yes. It’s true. I can say that I am not (knowingly) aware of anyone in my life who does not like olives.

How can you NOT love the olive?

The fruit of the olive tree (did you know the olive was a fruit?) is a snack unto itself but then consider that you can use it to make sauces and spreads, not to mention the fact that you can add it to any dish imagineable (pasta, fish, meat … ).

And don’t even get me started on olive oil!

Okay. Before I commence a love poem to the olive, let me just say that this is the time of year that I most appreciate the olive and that’s for two reasons.

The first is Olive Ascolane (post to follow one day soon).

And the second is marinated olives.

I don’t think I can even count how many pounds of marinated olives we make at this time of year. We serve them if guests pop in to pass along Christmas wishes, we serve them during every holiday meal, we snack on them and we generally just eat them constantly.

You can’t go wrong with marinated olives for a party and there are about a million different ways to prepare them. Essentially you’re taking the olives of your choice, mixing in the flavourings of your choice and then heating them in the oven to allow the flavours to meld and be absorbed.

This particular version is an orange/oregano one that I picked up from Trish Magwood’s Dish Entertains.

I see myself making many batches.

Hope you make one, too!

Ciao!

Orange and Oregano Olives
From Trish Magwood’s Dish Entertains: Everyday Simple to Special Occasions.

3 cups mixed olives (you can use any varieties that you like, just make sure that they’re not already marinated)
1 orange, halved and sliced
1 tbsp. orange juice (preferably freshly squeezed)
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (more if you like it spicy)
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 tbsp. olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl and then spread onto a baking sheet.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the olives are heated through and the orange slices begin to caramelize slightly.

Let cool and enjoy!

New month, new flavour!

This month the Cream Puffs in Venice Flavour of the Month is Trish Magwood’s Dish Entertains: Everyday Simple to Special Occasions.

I’ve owned this book for quite awhile now and as is the case with most of the cookbooks I own, I’ve never tried a recipe. It’s a good thing there’s no such thing as the cookbook police checking to see if I’ve tried any recipes or not. Whew!

Anyway, if I had to describe Trish Magwood I guess I’d describe as a food businesswoman. She’s the owner of a very popular cooking school in Toronto called dish cooking studio. She also starred in a very likeable program on Food Network Canada called Dish (at least I loved it) where she’d cater parties ranging from intimate gatherings at home to picnics at the cottage. My favourite episode was an engagement party where all the food that was served was some form of dessert.

(Why don’t I ever get invited to those types of parties?)

Her cookbook features the recipes that were prominent in her television show and I couldn’t be happier as there are some really good recipes in here. And I’m hoping to finally get down to trying some of them.

There is one recipe in the book that I’ve been making ever since I saw it on her show. It’s essentially a loaf of bread that’s given an olive oil bath and then patted down with rosemary and sea salt. The loaf is baked until you have a crusty, rosemary-scented piece of heaven.

I was intrigued by the idea because it reminded me of a party hall, just outside of Toronto, that used to be very popular at one time for Italian weddings. The start of the meal was always indicated by the emergence of servers from the kitchens with loaves of Italian bread that had been drenched in olive oil and baked with salt and rosemary. No matter how much you swore that you’d avoid the bread during the wedding meal (everyone knows that bread is a killer duirng an Italian wedding meal), you just couldn’t help snatching up a piece of that bread and digging in.

This is so easy to make and it’s perfect for a family dinner or a larger gathering. It goes well with any course and it’s also a great way to use day-old bread.

Okay, people. December is here. Time to party.

Ciao!

Rosemary Bread
From Dish Entertains by Trish Magwood.

1 large loaf of good bread (Yes, I know, that’s vague but what can I say. I like to use a loaf of sourdough bread or a loaf of Italian bread like Pugliese.)
extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp. finely chopped rosemary
1 tbsp. sea salt (I use coarse sea salt)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Prepare the loaf by cutting 1-inch slices but do not cut all the way down (cut about three-quarters of the way down).

Drizzle a bit of olive oil (about a teaspoon) in between each slice of bread and then drizzle a few more teaspoons over the crust of the bread, rubbing it all over with your hands.

Sprinkle the rosemary in between each slice and over the top. Sprinkle the salt over the top as well.

Wrap the bread in aluminum foil and bake for 25 minutes.

Serve while hot.

Enjoy!

What attracted me to Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites was the idea of small snacks throughout the day to sustain me.

Wouldn’t that be amazing … if at any time of the day you could bite into something tasty, yet not filling?

I’ve spent most of October dreaming about what I’d try from this book and yet never getting around to it. That’s most of the month spent dreaming about snacks with almost no snacking.

Until I made these little babies.

Do you know what taralli are? Have you ever seen them in your local Italian bakery or grocery store? Ever bitten into one?

No?

You’re missing out.

I’m not sure where or when I was introduced to taralli but they have always been around. They’re not a traditional food from either of my parents’ areas of Italy, but my neighbour makes them, and the grandmothers of a lot of my friends made them and I can’t visit a bakery or grocery store in this city without seeing bins of them.

They are taralli.

So what are they?

Taralli are like a sort of breadstick shaped in a ring. They’re not quite crispy like a breadstick but they’re not soft or chewy either. Taralli can be savoury or sweet depending on what you add to that basic recipe. My favourite taralli are savoury ones dotted with fennel seeds, but I also love taralli spiced with red pepper flakes. Growing up, we would often eat sweet taralli that had been dipped in a glaze or icing.

The recipe for taralli in Field’s book caught my eye because I’ve never made them before and have always wanted to try them. And because I love them. If I can learn to make something I love, then why not!

The dough for taralli is very similar to making a pizza dough. You start with flour, yeast and water (and a bit of salt) to which you add the flavouring of choice. The taralli that I buy are almost always flavoured with fennel seeds so that’s what I used.

After allowing the dough to rise, the dough is rolled into log ropes that are then divided into three. From each segment, you make a ring.

Then, much as you do with bagels, you drop the rings into boiling water very briefly. As soon as the rings float to the top, you remove them to drain and cool down a bit.

The taralli are then baked until golden and somewhat crunchy.

I say somewhat because the taralli that I’ve eaten have always had this interesting texture. It’s a cross between something crispy and something flexible. I know that sounds odd, but trust me, if you try one you’ll understand what I mean.

I was very proud of my taralli. While they don’t compare to the homemade taralli that I’ve had from those who are true experts, they were good for a first try and rather easy to make.

As with most worthy snacks, they prove that homemade is usually best.

I’m having so much fun with Field’s book (and my daytime snack imaginings) that I’m not ready to say goodbye to it yet. I’m keeping it around for the November Flavour of the Month.

And now back to my snacks …

Ciao!

Here are some interesting posts about taralli as well as recipes for taralli that you might want to read or try:

Various taralli recipes
Inside a Pugliese Taralli Maker
Taralli
Street Food from Napoli: Taralli

It’s hard to believe that half of October has already passed and I have yet to talk about my Flavour of the Month for October 2008: Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites.

I’m a big fan of Carol Field. I have a number of her cookbooks and have always had great success with them. To me, she’s one of those cookbook authors who just knows how to write a good recipe.

Italy in Small Bites is among my favourite Italian-themed cookbooks.

I chose this book for two reasons. First of all, ever since returning from my summer vacation, Italy is never far from my mind. And secondly, since Italy is never far from my mind, I seem to have zeroed in on Field’s book quite a bit since being back.

The basis of the book is an exploration of Italian snacks (hence the “small bites”). By snack, I refer to the concept of “merenda“. In Italy, la merenda is a mid-afternoon snack that tides you over until dinner, which is usually later in the evening (8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and sometimes even later). In my family, we would have merenda around 4:00 or 5:00 and it would almost always be something simple like a slice of bread drizzled with olive oil and sea salt, some coffee and cookies or a plate of fruit. Regardless of what our merenda consisted of, it would always be something small. Merenda is never a huge meal.

Italy in Small Bites is essentially a tour through Italy with glimpses of the incredible variety of foods that would be served at merenda. Now I should point out that Italians approach merende (the plural of merenda) in a multitude of differing ways. The snacks found in this book are not exclusively for mid-afternoon. As with all things involving Italian food, the variety is astounding.

There was one recipe in the book that I’ve had bookmarked for a long time, but that I’ve never tried and that’s a recipe for Farinata. In its simplest form, farinata is a think pancake made of chickpea flour thickened with water and usually olive oil. It’s baked until it’s golden and crispy. While farinata is very famous in the region of Liguria, there are numerous variations on the idea of the chickpea pancake throughout Italy.

I love anything made of chickpeas so it follows that I would adore anything made with chickpea flour. Like the very best “snacks”, this is an easy one to make and the end result is a crispy, slightly salty gift to the mouth that yields the essence of chickpea as soon as you bite into it. And it’s all delivered with a hug of rosemary and olive oil.

It was so good, it was almost as good as being in Italy with my family.

Hope you try it.

Ciao!

Note: I made the the recipe from Carol Field’s book but you can find recipes for farinata everywhere. Here are a few samples of some great versions of farinata:

Farinata from Food & Wine

Farinata with Onions and Black Pepper from Ilva of Lucullian Delights

Farinata from Italian Cooking & Living

Farinata with Sage, Olives and Onion from Epicurious

It seems impossible but today is in fact the last day of summer.

As I’ve been telling so many people lately, I feel like I just blink and suddenly two or three months pass me by.

And to tell the truth, I still feel like I’m not fully back home, as though I’m straddling my time in Italy and my time since I’ve been back in Toronto. I feel a bit like I’m neither here nor there.

It’s unusual for me to be so reluctant to say goodbye to summer. It’s not my favourite season and the end of summer signals the beginning of my true seasonal love: the fall.

But these days my mind keeps replaying the three incredible weeks I spent in Italy and I’m just not ready to let go.

On my last night in Rome, I called my mother to go over my arrival time and flight information. I’m sure she sensed my reluctance to leave. Before we ended our conversation, she asked me to go out and have one last ice cream and to make it a lemon gelato, just for her (lemon gelato being her absolute favourite).

I stepped out into the hot Roman night and immediately veered off the beaten tourist path. I passed by countless gelaterias but couldn’t settle on which one to make the last one that I would visit before heading home.

And then quite by chance, I happened upon Il Gelato di San Crispino, a gelateria that I’d hoped to visit during my time in Rome but that had, up until that point, eluded me.

Without hesitating, I walked right in and ordered what is without question the very best lemon ice cream I have ever tasted.

It was so vibrant and so crisp that I felt like I was eating the most refreshing, cold lemon imagineable.

As I ate my gelato, leaning against the side of just another old, fading, beautiful Roman building, I silently thanked my mother for the best Roman goodbye that I could imagine.

Ciao!

Note: If you make it to Rome, you must visit Il Gelato di San Crispino, widely considered to be among Rome’s best gelaterias. The recipe for the lemon gelato that I made (pictured above) is from Olives & Oranges by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox. If you’d like to try making lemon gelato at home, here are some great recipes:

http://nymag.com/restaurants/articles/recipes/lemongelato.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_2058527_make-lemon-gelato.html

http://italianfood.about.com/od/gelatoandsherbet/r/blr0306.htm

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/1620/lemon+gelato