I was always skeptical of sweet potato pie.  I’m not sure why.  I’d say it was the idea of vegetables in my dessert, but I got over that for the delicious Indian dessert made with carrots cooked down in milk, gajar ka halva*.  I had it at a few different restaurants, still just trying a bite of my wife’s pie selection, since I didn’t want to commit to a whole slice.  I liked it.  It usually had a blend of spices similar to pumpkin pie, and a texture, well, a lot like pumpkin pie.  Some were bland, some were dry, and most had horrible crusts.

Pie crust is hard to get perfect all the time.  I’ve made some really good ones and some less-than-stellar examples of crust, but if nothing else they all tasted good.  The crust that went into this pie was a simple 3-2-1 ratio (as codified by Michael Ruhlman in his book, appropriately titled Ratio) of flour to butter to water.  I won’t go into the gory details of pie crust particulars as there are plenty of other people who can do it very well, like local food lover Anna Barnes in her Smile Politely piece Perfecting Pumpkin Pie.  Ruhlman also gives a lot of great tips in Ratio, and if you love to cook, I highly recommend this book.

The pie crust was initially made for Halloween night, as my wife and I dressed up as Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd from the 2007 Tim Burton musical film.  If you haven’t seen the movies or seen the stage musical, Mrs. Lovett is known for making little meat pies (possibly the worst pies in London) out of Mr. Todd’s unfortunate customers.  Not being a demon barber myself, I made cute little apple pies perfect for two people (or one glutton).  I didn’t remember to take pictures of those pies, but they were cute and delicious (probably the best pies in CU).  If nothing else, we won the costume contest at the party we went to, thanks to my wife’s expert costume-making skills.

I froze the rest of the pie dough, until one day I found myself in possession of two largish sweet potatoes that I had gotten from the farmers’ market.  For whatever reason, sweet potato pie sprung into my mind and I scoured the web for recipes.  I rarely give about.com much attention, but this time it seemed like the best recipe I could find was there, titled Mississippi Sweet Potato Pie.  I sliced the sweet potatoes and boiled them until soft, then (mostly) followed the recipe.  I reduced the sugar, increased the cinnamon, and added a little bit of some of my favorite fall spices like ginger and cloves.  I mixed it up with my immersion blender and got my crusts ready.

The recipe says two pies, but I didn’t believe it.  I think I was just in denial because I could only find one pie pan.  I made one pie and had some of the filling left over.  It wasn’t quite enough for a whole deep pie, but it was enough for a tart!  Thankfully, there was more than enough pie dough to go around, and so it went.  The pie turned out delicious and creamy.  It was moist and sweet, but lots of flavors coming through from the spices.  We’re still working on the last of the pie (which was unanimously loved by all in the house), and the tart will be sold tomorrow at our daughter’s school in their fine arts bake sale.  Since I mentioned it earlier, there’s already at least one person interested.  Here’s a sneak preview of what the buyer can expect.

* I know you might have been thinking pumpkin pie, but pumpkin’s actually a fruit!  I’m sure I didn’t know that as a child, but hey, it was covered in whipped cream.

After seeing me taking photos and trying all sorts of things in the kitchen, my wife wondered aloud why I never wrote any posts about the bento lunches she makes for our daughter.  In our house, we tend to cook separately.  She doesn’t want me in there.  She loves it and excels at it, and I just don’t have the experience to write about it.  The next time she asked me about the bento post, I said “would you like to write one?”  She finally agreed, so here is her first guest post.  She’d love any questions or comments you have, so please share them.  Oh, and the pictures in this post are really useful, so I encourage you to click to get the bigger version to see all the little details that go into them.

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Chocolate chip cookies are probably the most classic American dessert after apple pie.  You can get them at any grocery store, coffee shop, or even freshly baked at a bakery, but the best chocolate cookies are the ones you make at home.  In part, it’s because it’s a recipe anyone can do with minimum equipment and little investment.  I’m sure you’ve tried the ubiquitous Toll House recipe printed on the back of the chocolate chip bag, and those are good, if only because it means people are getting back into the kitchen and baking real cookies.  As you grow up, though, maybe you want a cookie that’s a touch more refined.

Enter Thomas Keller, chef and restauranteur of such three-Michelin-star restaurants as the French Laundry and per se.  He’s written a few cookbooks in the past, with recipes coming from the menus of those restaurants.  He has another cookbook coming out in November based on his family-style comfort food restaurant, ad hoc.  This book, he promises, is geared toward the home cook.  It has recipes that you’ve had, maybe even made, before–biscuits, pot pie, beef Stroganoff.  I don’t have any inside info on all the contents, since I don’t have a press kit, but Food Gal Carolyn Jung got one.  Lucky for us, she shared a few recipes, including one for grown up chocolate chip cookies.  Go to her site for the full recipe for Thomas Keller’s chocolate chip cookies.

There are a few big differences to this recipe from most chocolate chip cookie recipes.  First is in the ingredient list–there’s no vanilla!  Now, you could certainly add some, but the large amount of brown sugar in this recipe gives the cookies a more grown-up molasses flavor rather than the more in-your-face vanilla kick most cookies have.

Next is the chocolate.  The recipe calls for chopping up two different types of good chocolate.  I did this the first time I made these and the different flavors from the chocolate make the cookies much more interesting.  This may add a few dollars to your cookie budget, but it is well worth it.  You could use chips as I did this time, but I really recommend trying it with good chocolate as the recipe recommends.  Please, don’t use milk chocolate, and if you’re going with chips, don’t use the Nestle morsels.  Use at least a half-way decent chocolate, like 60% Ghirardelli chips.

At a glance, the mixing instructions are a little different, telling you to add the butter in stages and beating it very thoroughly.  I think the intent here is to make sure that you cream it enough, beating enough tiny bubbles into the butter that will expand later as they bake.  Other than that, the rest of the ingredients and the procedure are really the same as any other cookie recipe.

When I make cookies, I like to chill the dough a bit until it’s firm, but not completely hard.  Taking a tip from Alton Brown, I use a scooper to dish out my dough evenly.  Even scooping means they cook evenly and end up about the same size.

I made a double batch and handed some out to some friendly food fans.  After all, who can resist home baked cookies (especially when you’re not doing the work)?  I got a lot of positive comments on them.  In my family, these are our new favorite chocolate chip cookie.

This article originally appeared in Smile Politely here.  I’d urge you to click through and read it there since they’ll get some ad revenue or something.  I understand if you just want to get to it, though, so enjoy.

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Ricotta can be made in a lot of ways, but the most traditional way to make it is by recooking the whey left over from cheesemaking.  This is where the name ricotta comes from; it means “recooked”.  I made mozzarella cheese from a recipe from Cooking With Tien.  The mozzarella turned out pretty well, though I need a little practice in the heating and stretching and forming part of it.  If you love fresh mozzarella cheese, you owe it to yourself to make a batch.  In the long run, it’s cheaper than buying it in the store, plus it’s fun.

I found a simple recipe for ricotta online, entitled Ricotta Making Illustrated.  It’s a great reference for new ricotta makers, but it’s not terribly necessary.  Ricotta is probably the easiest cheese product to make, since there’s really only 4 steps

1. Make some cheese and save the whey.  I made mozzerella.
2. Let it sit overnight to ferment a little and acidify slightly.
3. Bring it almost to a boil, then let it cool down.
4. Drain off the newly-formed curds.

It really is that simple.  If you really want to complicate things you can follow the extra-detailed 8 step process at the above link.  Since the first cheese I made was mozzarella, the recipe only called for me bringing the milk to 90 degrees, which isn’t enough to denature or cook all the protein (mostly casein) in the milk.  Some of it was left dissolved in the whey (along with the riboflavin, which gives it the greenish-yellowish tint).  Bringing the whey up near a boil denatures those remaining bits of protein, which glob up into the tiny curds you get in ricotta.

Here’s my illustrated ricotta making process:

This is the whey left over from mozzarella.  You see a few curds left over that I didn’t scoop out.

This is what the why looks like when you’ve heated it almost to a boil.  You can see a big raft of cheese on the top of the whey.

This is what happens when it reaches a boil and breaks apart the curds.  You’re not supposed to do this.  You should only go to 95 degrees C (in case you don’t remember, boiling is 100).

This is a fine-mesh sieve lined with a couple layers of cheesecloth, ready for the ricotta.  Drain and squeeze a little, and you get the finished product, below.

From a gallon of milk, I got a good amount of mozzarella (didn’t measure, I’d guess somewhere between 1-1.5 pounds) and 4 ounces of ricotta.  It may not sound like much, but from one gallon of milk I got what could easily cost me more than $10 in a store.  It’s fun, requires little investment, and you learn a little about how cheese can be made in your own kitchen.