Mommy/Daughter French Blue Striped Apron

I was inspired to create this apron design after a trip to Paris (my second favorite city!) and I’m absolutely DYING for Georgiana to get big enough to wear the matching mini version. I love the idea of aprons being a fashion statement even if you’re in the kitchen with no one around. Plus, I think any husband will agree that dressing up a bit around the house even if its just throwing on a cute apron is always a good thing. Smile. Michael probably would even suggest wearing heels but that might not happen….haha!

Thumbprint Cookies

Every Christmas my very talented  sister-in-law Jennifer makes these delectable cookies. She is an amazing cook and these cookies are my husbands favorite. Sometimes she makes an extra little bag to-go for us which is actually quite dangerous! I asked her for the recipe to put on the blog and it turns out she was using Ina Garten’s recipe. (Good ol’ Ina!) These little cookie are absolutely fabulous with a hot cup of herbal tea so snuggle up and enjoy.

Ingredients

• 3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
• 7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
• Raspberry and/or apricot jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter andsugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together. Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

Celery Root Soup

Celery Root Soup

A celery root or celeriac is a very alien looking vegetable and its hard at first glance to really appreciate how tasty it is. So…if you haven’t already I recommend just coming out of your comfort zone and making this soup as your first experience. This delicious soup is a crowd pleaser and you’ll feel pride in adding a new ingredient into your repertoire of food.

Recipe:

1 Celery Root

¾ Cup Cream

1 ¼ Cup Sour Cream

2 Tbs Butter

2 Cups Vegetable Stock

1 Tsp Salt

Dash Pepper

Peel and dice celery root. Saute the root in a saute pan with butter. Coast the root thoroughly with butter and let simmer for 10 minutes with cover on.

Add cream, stock and sour cream. Stir until nicely combined. Simmer for 12-15 minutes unitl root is very tender.

Puree mixture in batches in food processor fitted with the blade attachment. Season to with salt & pepper. Taste and correct seasoning to taste. Serve.

*Note: Celery root can be very fibrous so a food mill would actually eliminate this even more than the food processor if you have one. Still great with the food processor or even a blender.

Baked Orange French Toast with Chocolate Sauce

This recipe materialized from me not having any food in the house and a loaf of stale bread… I sometimes feel that my best recipes come when I have LESS to choose from. I had also just made a big batch of orange marmalade and was trying to figure out a way to incorporate it with something. I love orange marmalade but its one of those things that you get a hankering for at first and then lose interest after your 10th piece of toast. So I was trying to figure out how to utilize it and came up with this. Anyway, it turned out great. Its pretty adventurous with the bite from the orange rind and chocolate sauce. Next time you have a stale loaf of bread, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Baked Orange French Toast with Chocolate Sauce Recipe:

1 Loaf French Bread (Day Old Preferably)

4 Cups Milk

4 Eggs

¼ tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

¾ cup orange marmalade

Cut french bread into medium pieces. Place in a greased casserole pan.

Combine milk, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and orange marmalade. Whisk to combine. Pour over bread. Move bread around in pan to ensure each piece gets soaks in the mixture. Refrigerate for 3 hours or over night.

Bake at 350 degrees for ½ Hour.

Chocolate Sauce:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 Tbs unsweetened chocolate powder

Combine water and sugar in a sauce pan. Put on medium-high heat until boiling. Reduce by half. Reduce heat and add two Tbs of unsweetened chocolate powder. whisk until smooth. Continue to simmer until reduced another half and slightly thick and syrupy. Put into a vessel of your choosing for drizzling over the french toast. Sift powdered sugar over the french toast if desired.

Chuck Roast

Many a Sunday growing up we would have chuck roast at my Grandparent’s house for Sunday dinner. There was always something so cosy about walking into the house with the smell of a roast cooking. It was the smell of love, family and peace. I’m so lucky to have such a caring family that have made so many efforts to create lasting memories through food and togetherness. I just have have one little baby right now who doesn’t eat chuck roast. But I literally can’t wait for the day when my kids say, “Mom, can you make chuck roast for dinner? Its my favorite!” Creating togetherness from food is probably the main reason why I love to cook so much. And a good ol’ roast is usually just as heartwarming to others as it is to me.

Recipe:

2-3 lbs Chuck Roast

2 Cloves Garlic

wochstershire Sauce

1 cup red wine

largely chopped golden potatoes

baby carrots

largely chopped onions

salt & pepper

Buy a 2-3 lbs chuck roast bone in or out. On a cutting board, slice two garlic cloves thinly. On the roast, slice small pockets in the meat every 2 inches and place sliced garlic into pockets. Rub both sides of the roast with cooking oil. Salt and pepper both sides. On a stove top heat a large pot or dutch oven. Place roast with garlic side down in the pot and brown for two minutes. Turn and brown the other side. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce and add 1 cup red wine. Turn oven to 350 degrees. Cook roast 2 ½ to 3 hours. Cover pot with lid. Check to see in one hour if roast goes dry. Add water ½ to 1 cup if desired. 1 hour before roast is done add  potatoes, carrots, onions. Add additional salt and pepper to season the veggies. After an hour, remove the roast and vegetables. Slice the roast and serve with vegetables.

Fondant

I have a love hate relationship with fondant. Mostly hate actually…I had  no idea how difficult it is to learn how to use fondant. People swear to me that after you get the hang of it its actually easier the just straight icing but my first attempt was riddled with rips and tears. I do have a vision of doing a pink ruffled fondant cake for my baby Georgiana’s first birthday so we’ll see if it happens…Since I’m in the wedding industry I’m always blown away by the wedding cakes that I see. Below is a cake done by the amazing Sylvia Weinstock for my good friend Ariel Yve’s wedding. This cake was FLOWN into Santa Barbara from NYC and had an innumerable amount of sugar flowers. Wedding cakes are art! Do you think my cake compares?

Pink Ruffled Apron Design

I’m sort of obsessed with pretty girly things and feel like kitchen aprons are the perfect way to express the ultimate of femininity. What was that song from the Disney movie, “Summer Magic”? “Femininity, femininity, thats the way to catch a beau!” I love it… And even though I already caught my “beau” I never get enough opportunities to wear fancy frilly things so why not wear them while cooking? Its the perfect way to have fun and play dress up while being productive and feeding the fam. This design is my personality to a T. Pink, Ruffles, Bows on an Apron = perfection. I designed  it and my friend an amazing seamstress Mercedes Trump sewed it for me.

Bacon Scalloped Potatoes

My Grandma often made scalloped potatoes for Sunday dinners. When my sister compiled our family recipes we found out that she made them out of a box! She totally had us fooled for years. Here is my “non-box” version of her scalloped potatoes. Oh…and I added bacon!

10 strips thickly sliced bacon

⅓ cup chopped onion

2 tbs butter

2 tbs olive oil

5 tbs flour

1/12 tsps salt

½ tsp pepper

5 cups milk

6 cups thinkly sliced potatoes (peeled)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a saute pan fry bacon until crispy. Drain on a paper towel. Chop up and set aside.

In a large saucpan saute onions in olive oil and butter until tender. Whisk in flour, salt and pepper until blended. Gradually whisk in milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes until sauce is thickened.

Place half the potatoes in a greased 3-qt baking dish. Pour ⅓ of the sauce over the potatoes and spread evenly. Sprinkle half the chopped bacon. Layer more potatoes, pour ⅓ more sauce and sprinkle remaining bacon. Layer final potatoes and pour remaining sauce. Bake, uncovered for 60-70 minutes or until potatoes are tender and top is lightly browned. Enjoy!

International Pizza

In many other countries, hard boiled eggs are a common ingredient in almost any quick meal such as pizza, sandwiches, salads etc. In the States however, hard boiled eggs aren’t seen quite as much. This pizza was devised by myself and my brother after his recent return from Brazil and my trip to Paris where hard cooked eggs are used a lot. Bahian Pizza is the inspiration for this recipe and is named after a state in Brazil that is known for its vibrant culture, music and people. We combined forces and came up with this super satisfying pizza. Bon Apetit and Bon Apeite.

Fresh Packaged Pizza Dough (I get mine at Trader Joe’s)

3/4 cup marinara Sauce

1 cup Grated Mozzarella Cheese

3 Sliced Hard Cooked Eggs

1 Large Yellow Onion – sliced in half moons

1/2 cup Soy Chorizo or Regular Chorizo

Sour Cream to dot on top

Take onion and saute it with olive oil until brown and caramelized. Set aside.

Sprinkle Flour on a clean surface and place pizza dough in the center. Flour your rolling pin and roll out pizza dough until round and thin. In the meantime, turn on oven to 400 degrees and place a pizza stone (if you have one) inside to get hot. If you don’t have a pizza stone a regular cookie sheet will do. Let the oven preheat for 10 minutes and then place your pizza dough on a pizza peel that has been spread with a layer of cornmeal (so that the pizza can slide easily onto the hot pizza stone). If at all possible you want to keep the pizza stone in the oven so that it stays hot and crisps up the pizza dough. Bake the pizza dough for 10 minutes until crispy. Remove pizza dough with the pizza peel (can be tricky but I recommend using tongs to help you get it back in the pizza peel). Top the pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella, sliced eggs and caramelized onions. Bake for 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and getting slightly crisp and brown on top.

Remove from oven and let cool. Cut and serve with a small dollop of sour cream on each piece.

*Note. Why soy chorizo? If you get the right brand, its actually super tasty and I’m always looking for a way to cut down on meat if doesn’t mean cutting down on taste.

Restaurant Review: Watermark on Main. Ventura, CA

As my husband and I drove down to Ventura from Santa Barbara on our way to dinner I gazed out the car window to see the glistening sun reflect off the beautiful and expansive ocean. As I viewed the beautiful scene I thought how I make this drive so often on the way down to LA and yet almost never stop in Ventura as I pass through. This time we were stopping; excited to see what our destined restaurant had to offer.

As we walked toward the Watermark I was impressed by the building which was located on the corner of the bustling Ventura Main street. Evidently they are housed in an historic building from the 1910‘s. As I approached the door my heart sank for a moment as I saw a sign declaring their dress code. “Oh no!” I thought, “Are we dressed up enough for this place?” I was wearing dark blue skinny jeans and my husband a button up blue shirt with gray jeans. We definitely looked respectable but as I saw the sign it reminded me of an embarrassing encounter we had once at a country club where Michael had to change out of his expensive designer t-shirt for a cheap Geoffrey Beene button up shirt. He was humiliated. I had been to the restaurants website but hadn’t seen any mention of a dress code. I figured we’d have to go in and find out if we were to be scoffed and turned away. As we approached the hostess desk we were greeted by a pretty and friendly hostess who led us immediately to our table. Phew. I guess we looked respectable enough for her to seat us. (I later looked up their dress code online and their only request is for men to wear a button up shirt). We were seated in a pleasant booth next to the window and very quickly were greeted by our waiter. He asked us if we wanted to order wine which we declined but gave him our appetizer order right away. He failed to remove the wine glasses (which I did’t really care about but having worked in the restaurant business for long enough noticed this as a small error). The ambiance was beautiful with the old and new colliding. The murals on the walls were spanish colonial as was the ceiling. You can tell the owners put a lot of thought and pride into the decor with big touches like their second story clock to the small touches such as the small “watermark” on the plates.

Our appetizers came out extremely fast and we dug in. Michael ordered the wedge salad with crispy pancetta, maytag blue cheese, tomato and maui onion. I ordered the lobster bisque. Michael felt his salad was good and delivered as you would expect any simple wedge salad to deliver. (What is there to get wrong?) However, the crispy pancetta was fairly sparse and chopped to the size of dust. The lettuce seemed a day too old and not as crisp as he would have liked. But satisfying nonetheless. My lobster bisque however was noticeably bland. I kept thinking to myself, am I missing something? Perhaps bisque is suppose to be more subtle in flavor and I’m being too picky. After running all the possible options in my mind I realized it was just bland. It definitely lacked seasoning and flavor. Even just a slightly heavier hand with the salt and pepper would have been an improvement. I’m still a little out of sorts with the soup. I looked up the definition of a bisque (thinking again that I might be missing something) and it mentions flavor and seasoning being its biggest contributing factors. Okay, so the bisque sucked. Moving on.

The next course was a raw bar that had mussel, oyster, crab claw, crab leg and shrimp. Being familiar with everything but the oyster I dove into the shrimp. Delish. I dipped it in the cocktail sauce and it was an easy score. Okay, onto the next. The mussel didn’t deliver as much as I was hoping it would. It had a slightly fishy taste that made me think it wasn’t the freshest product. The crab claw and leg were good and I enjoyed that with the horseradish they provided. Last but not least…the oyster…Perhaps its was the stories that I heard that oysters taste like fish snot going down your throat that has deterred me from trying them. Or the fact that you don’t really eat them, you swallow them whole. I was searching for a lemon wedge to squeeze on top but couldn’t find one. I resorted to the horseradish and took the plunge. At first I really just tasted horseradish. Then I tasted ocean. Hmmm. Tastes exactly like what you smell when your walking along the beach. Not bad. I could see getting use to this. Next time, I want a lemon wedge though….

 

For our entree’s I ordered the rib eye and Michael the filet mignon. I was going to order the duck but since I had a disappointing first course I decided to go with a standard that know I like. Duck isn’t something I’ve had outside of chinese restaurants (and not often even then) so I’m not as familiar with the flavor. Michael encouraged me to be safe because I was more adventurous for the appetizers and I think he wanted me to enjoy myself. I ordered my rib eye medium rare but not bloody and Michael did the same for his filet. My rib eye was cooked exactly as I requested. The cut of meat, however, had a fair amount of gristle. I am aware that rib eye is a fattier cut of meat, but having cooked this a few times I know that the key is a good quality product. Since I’ve had better rib eye that I’ve made a home it was slightly disappointing for a $38 plate of food. But I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it nonetheless. I mean, it is steak after all.  It came with a garlic potato puree that was flavorful and a variety of steamed vegetables. The sauce was a rosemary demi and had some wild mushrooms and roasted tomatoes as a garnish. The sauce was okay as were the mushrooms. I could take it or leave it.The tomatoes were actually packed with flavor and seemed to have been roasted with basil. Overall, it was a satisfying meal but certainly wasn’t something that I would crave or feel like I needed to have again. Maybe I should have tried the duck…

Michael’s filet was cooked unevenly but was close to the medium rare he ordered. The meat was tender and flavorful. It came with Yukon potatoes, parsnips and had a huckleberry and red onion confit. The confit was very thin so it was hard to taste it at all. The parsnip puree was topped with the potatoes diced small and was delicious. It was a very smart was to served the starch and the marrying of the parsnips and potato in this way not only brought out a lot of flavor but also texture. The plate came with  fresh steamed vegetables as well which were a great accompaniment. The plating for both entree’s seemed fairly standard without a lot of thought put into the presentation.

Finally, dessert! Michael HAD to have the chocolate dipped strawberries stuffed with cheesecake and I tried the chocolate carmel tart. Let’s start with my tart…

The descriptions advertised a buttery chocolate crust, creamy caramel, chocolate ganache and grey sea salt. The biggest flaw with this dessert is that the sea salt was sprinkled on top of the tart so that every bite had a different amount of salt and therefore  ran the risk of being a salt lick. It completely overpowered the other components and made the dessert pretty much inedible. Also, the caramel was masked by the large proportion of chocolate on top giving a sickly sweet taste to the chocolate. And the crust wasn’t chocolate as advertised but probably graham cracker. In the end, the dessert should have been advertised as, “Overly Sweet Chocolate Tart with a Sea Salt Lick.” The sea salt should have been incorporated into the caramel itself so that the proportion was perfect. You just can’t leave things like inconsistency in sprinkled salt to chance.  It just doesn’t work.

Michael’s strawberries, on the other hand, were heavenly. It was actually an awesome dessert  to have after a large meal because the proportion of half fruit half cheesecake is the perfect blend of refreshing and indulgent.  Mostly fruit with that creamy bit of cheesecake topped with chocolate was delectable. Michael felt the quality of the strawberry was superb however the cheesecake wasn’t the best he’s tasted. Having said that, this is a recipe I’m going to definitely attempt to make at home. Michael was being nice to share with me since my dessert wasn’t that great but I could tell it was with great effort. Our only complaint was that there wasn’t more. Two strawberries didn’t quite seem enough for some reason…The plating seemed odd as well with one rogue raspberry set to the side. We didn’t get it. It seemed a little lonesome. But that was our only comment and wished they had a back window that they just sold these’s little bites of heaven out of.

All in all, the meal was a bit underwhelming. There was promise in the dishes but they weren’t perfect. Watermark wouldn’t be the first place I think of for an upcoming birthday dinner or special occasion and thats a shame because it has a tremendous amount going for it. Some screws still need to be tightened.

As we left I heard a random gentleman talking to the doorman, afraid to go in because he wasn’t sure if he was dressed appropriately. It would probably behoove the restaurant to drop their dress code. It seems to be scaring paying customers away and their standards aren’t that stringent anyway. Perhaps an inviting but upscale approach would be best.

Food Grades:

Wedge Salad – B

Lobster Bisque – C

Rib Eye – C+

Garlic Potato Puree – B+

Filet Mignon – B

Parsnips and Potato – A

Chocolate Caramel Tart – D

Chocolate Cheesecake Strawberries – A-