BakedPearCrumble

Perhaps what I love most about teaching at Rancho La Puerta is discovering what’s growing in the cooking school’s six acre organic garden.  Last month it was strawberries, and lots of them.  So I decided they’d go into the pear crisp I’d planned for dessert.  Another place for discovery is the school’s pantry.  A bag of crystallized ginger practically leapt into my hands, so naturally I had to add some to the dessert as well.  It’s these unpredictable moments that astonish me and lead to variations in a recipe I hadn’t originally contemplated.

You can make this a gluten-free dessert by substituting a gluten-free baking mix for the flour.

This crisp comes together very quickly and makes an ideal impromptu dessert.  Serve it plain or with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

PearCrumbleServing

 

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PearGaletteBaked

Teaching at Rancho La Puerta is always full of surprises.  The guests who sign up for my classes are a diverse group of extremely accomplished people from all walks of life.  But in the kitchen, we’re all equals, because in the time we have together there is one aim: to cook a menu of seven recipes in two hours and to sit and enjoy the meal together.  Cooking is all about the pleasures of the table and the sense of community it fosters.

At my first class, Dana Shaltry, a pediatric orthodontist, volunteered to make the dessert, a rustic French pear galette.  I had demonstrated how to make the ground almond bases and pastry with a food processor, and  Dana took it from there.  He rolled the dough into a rough circle, cut the pears into thin slices, and arranged the fruit beautifully over the ground almonds.

PearGaletteShaping

Once the fruit is arranged, he sprinkled on some sugar, scattered dots of butter on top, and folded the sides of the dough around the pears, pressing firmly to adhere.

PearGaletteShaped

After baking, we served wedges of the galette with a spoonful of creme fraiche.

PearGaletteServing2

Here’s the recipe.

                                       

 

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 Baked Buns in Basket

I was in the mood for something yeasty and cheesy and easy, and I remembered a recipe I included in my book, Baking in America.  I had beaten a soft blue cheese into a thick yeast batter, spooned it into muffin cups, and after one hour-long rise, the rolls were ready to bake.  The result? A fine-crumbed exceedingly tender bun loaded with cheese flavor.  The dough takes only minutes to make with a heavy-duty mixer.  And although I haven’t tried it, I’m sure the food processor would make even quicker work of it.  If you start this a couple of hours before dinner, the buns’ll be ready when you are. [...Read More]

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BananaCupcakes1

I love the character a small amount of lusty, robust, black walnuts gives to these cupcakes.  Black walnuts are native to America.  The more common English walnut isn’t from England but was imported to England from Persia.  Black walnuts are usually sold already chopped, but for this recipe they must be finely chopped. So get out your chef’s knife. Don’t use a food processor, which will turn some of the nuts into dust and others into a paste. [...Read More]

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One of the things I love about living in Missoula, Montana, is the large variety of fresh eggs I can buy at farmers’ markets.  Right now, our winter market is in full swing at the Missoula County Fairgrounds.  It’s indoors, of course, because we never can predict what the weather will be like, especially at this time of the year. At this week’s market I bought a variety of eggs.  And here they are nestled together in a basket in their natural colors.  Can you identify their sources?

EasterEggsMedley2

Give up?  The six eggs in the middle are from chickens.  The three with the greenish shells are laid by Araucana hens, a breed originally from Chile.  The brown-shelled eggs come from Rhode Island Reds.  The two spotted-shelled eggs at each end of the picture are turkey eggs, and the plain-shelled ones next to them are duck eggs.

Here’s what the eggs look like in a basket lined with a yellow cloth.  The arrangement of the eggs is a bit different.  Can you identify their sources now?

EasterEggsMedley1

Happy Easter!

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AppleMuffinsinBasket

A few weeks ago I was asked to judge a local apple cooking contest. The recipes were incredibly diverse and ranged from apple leather to apple pizza.  But there was one recipe that stood out from all the rest: apple muffins.  These were the lightest apple muffins I had ever tasted and they boasted a deep apple flavor along with a generous amount of diced sweet/tart apple. [...Read More]

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