Bon Appétit's Blueberry Blintzes from 1978

A few fortunate things have resulted from starting Bon Appétempt, but receiving three Bon Appétit's from 1978 (from a Pittsburgh thrift shop nonetheless!) from our friend Katie has got to be close to the top of the list. Just wait and you'll see why.

Bon Appétit's Blueberry Blintze circa 1978:

Bon Appétempt's 2009 version:

There are sooooo many things to talk about.

First off, doesn't their picture of the blintze look completely average at best and woefully unappetizing at worst? Why would we even PICK that recipe you might be wondering. Well, take another look at the cover of that top magazine above--it's a plate of brownish-beige sausages on top of brownish-beige sauerkraut over a black background. If these magazines are any indication, then the late 70s were bad food years.

To further prove our point, check out some more images:

What is with everything being monochromatic? The upper picture is egg pasta, with fish dumplings and some nameless (thankfully) light, pink cream sauce. Quenelles? More like gross-elles! GET IT? DO YOU GET IT?!

The below flaming plum pudding speaks volumes about where the Bon Appétit editors' heads were at back in the day.

(Nice touch with the plastic holly on the ornate silver platter.)

I know what you are thinking: Can we please move on to less gross things? OK, how about the amazing ads we found.

Supersonic flight attempt? Sadly... a fail.

What about this lady and her domesticated jungle cat?

I could see myself spending some time with her (Wait, who is the little witch?).

1978 Pontiac Safari Wagon? Tremendous trunks? SOLD!

Matt and I got into the whole vibe. Here we are out for cocktails.

And here I am having a fun time trying to feed Matt while my friend looks on in horror.

But maybe, just maaaaybe, you'd like to know how the attempt went? I guess it was a success though it was probably the first time in history that upon completion of a recipe, neither of us were very eager to try it. Maybe the chunky, cottage-cheesy filling mixture had something to do with that?

But honestly, it wasn't that bad. Definitely more of a breakfast than a dessert though.

And I know Bon Appetit was doing a thing on healthy desserts, but I think the yogurt topping was just way too healthy. If I did this again, I would try it with a créme anglaise on top or at least something sweeter/ buttery-er than low-fat yogurt. I mean, c'mon.

In short, thank you, Katie!!! We owe you three Pittsburgh-born retro magazines on... other people's parties?

RECIPE:

10 servings

Blintzes
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 cup nonfat milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon butter

Filling
1 1/2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh or defrosted frozen blueberries
2 tablespoons breadcrumbs (optional)
2 teaspoons butter
Low-fat vanilla yogurt

To make blintzes, place first 4 ingredients in blender and whirl until smooth. Refrigerate 1 hour. To cook, melt butter in 8-inch crepe pan. Pour in just enough batter to coat botom of pan with thin layer. cook on both sides until faintly golden. Turn onto plate or cake rack; repeat to make remaining blintzes.

Press cottage cheese through a sieve to drain off liquid. Mix together cottage cheese, egg, sugar, cinnamon and salt. If you are using frozen berries, be sure they are completely defrosted; drain and dry thoroughly on paper towels. Gently fold 3/4 cup berries into cheesee. If mixture seems runny, carefully stir in breadcrumbs.

Place a spoonful of filling on each blintz, fold in ends and roll up. Melt 2 teaspoons butter in nonstick pan and sauté blintzes until golden. Serve hot with vanilla yogurt, remaining blueberries and light dusting of cinnamon if desired.

Whole Foods' Spicy Shrimp Inari

For this attempt, we took a few (hundred?) steps outside of our comfort zone in the hopes of recreating one of our favorite Whole Foods' prepared meals: spicy shrimp inari. Have you guys ever picked it up? We eat it all the time and can't understand why the amazing spicy shimp & inari combo seems to be virtually unheard of outside of Whole Foods.

Whole Foods' version:
Our version:

Despite being our inspiration, we couldn't do our ingredierts-gathering at Whole Foods. We had to travel to the west side to the amazing Nijiya Market, a great organic, Japanese grocery store where you can find stuff like this:

What's that second bottle on the left side? We aren't sure. Oddly enough, the Nijiya employees weren't entirely sure either, but we were looking for a liquid form of dashi and are pretty sure that this mysterious bottle contains a comparable substance called dashinomoto.

Speaking of things I think I figured out during this whole process:
1. Inari is made of fried tofu pockets.
2. Fried tofu pockets are called aburage.
3. Aburage comes either canned or frozen.

We bought both versions. Below is the frozen one:

The frozen aburage is definitely visually more appetizing than its canned counterpart. And they just call for one extra step--dousing them with boiling water and then slicing them in half to get the pouches. With the canned version, you just pull them out and they are ready to go.

Doesn't look so good, right?

I kept trying to read the directions on the can of aburage, but my eye kept wandering Vivianne-ward.

I'd never made sushi rice before. It wasn't so bad except that I forgot that we were doubling the recipe and so we had to make two batches and both batches stuck to the bottom of the pan in a major way. Anyone know how to avoid this? Was it on too high of heat?

Here at bon appetempt, we like to follow recipes, but like we said, this spicy shrimp inari is elusive. We couldn't really find a recipe for it and so ended up having to wing it. One of the inari recipes we looked at called for cooking the aburage in a saucepan filled with many of those strange ingredierts from Nijiya Market. It looked something like this:

The spicy in spicy shrimp inari comes in with a spicy sauce on top of the shrimp. We're pretty sure that Whole Foods simply mixes Sriracha and mayonnaise, but guess what? We didn't have Sriracha on hand. (I know, WTF-situation.) We thought we did. (We are becoming overconfident in the condiments we think we have on hand.) We did have sambal oelek and mayonnaise, however, and after some experimenting came up with a pretty decent, if not super spicy alternative. (See recipe at end of post.)

Shrimp. Required ingrediert.

Once the tofu was finished, we let it cool and then squeezed out the excess sauce with the help of a small lemur that inexplicably appeared mid-attempt. Though not in focus, the little guy is pictured below.

Aburage is kind of like the Japanese version of the pita pocket. Once cooked, we stuffed each pouch with the rice mixture. At this point we had achieved inari but what happens next is what takes it to the next level and separates this inari from the standard inari available at every sushi restaurant.

Our patent-pending four-step spicy shrimp inari process:

Bon Appetempt, your pictures look stunning, but how did it taste, you ask?

It was great. Very similar to the original, but a little saltier. Usually, I dip the little guys in soy sauce, but our version definitely didn't need any more of that. We're pretty sure that Whole Foods uses the canned aburage and simply takes the pockets out of the can and stuffs them with sushi rice, skipping over the aburage simmering in the dashi/soy sauce/mirin/sugar potion. Either that or we used too much dashinomoto and not enough sugar. Or we should never have used the dashinomoto in the first place.

Our spicy sauce, on the other hand, was great. Much spicier than the Whole Foods one, but we liked it even more for that.

Oh and by the way, while we were at Nijiya market, we picked up some Kasugai gummy's. Whoever is in charge of translating their copy is a genius.

INARI RECIPE via HUB-UK (We didn't use the carrot)
Ingredients:

2 cups prepared sushi rice

3 Tbs. Mirin

3 Tbs. Sugar
4 Tbs. Soy sauce
1-1/4 cup Dashi

1/4 cup Shredded par-boiled carrot
Salt
4 Deep-fried tofu cakes (aburage)*
or
8 Canned tofu pouches

Note: Aburage can be bought canned or frozen at many Asian food markets. The canned variety are already seasoned and sliced; if using these, plan on three or four pouches per person.

Bring the prepared sushi rice to room temperature.
(If using canned aburage, skip this next step) Pour boiling water over the deep-fried tofu cakes to remove oil. Cool, then slice each tofu cake in half lengthwise to make eight tofu pouches.

In a small saucepan, combine the mirin, sugar, soy sauce and dashi together. Simmer over low heat until hot. Drain gourd strips, then add the gourd strips and tofu pouches into the stock. Heat to boil. Cover, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Squeeze the tofu pouches and gourd strips dry. Set aside.

Mix the shredded carrot with the sushi rice.

Moisten hands, then pick up enough rice to make a small, oval-shaped ball. Open a tofu pouch; gently slide the rice ball into the pouch. Fold the sides in and top flap over the rice to close pouch. Repeat with remaining rice and tofu pouches.

Serves 4

SPICY SAUCE RECIPE via BON APPETEMPT
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sambal oelek
1/2 teaspoon mirin
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Mix it all together. Enjoy.

Saying Farewell to Gourmet with Red Wine Caramel Apples

The recession has directly affected my life in many, many ways, but for some reason this week's announcement of Condé Nast shutting down Gourmet magazine felt oddly personal. Maybe because the magazine was responsible for roughly one-third of Bon Appetempt's posts? Or because it was the first food magazine I subscribed to? Or because of all the food mags Gourmet seemed to allot the most space to food writers and I'd recently written an essay on failure in food and life that I'd been looking to pitch to the editors?

Probably all of that has something to do with my reaction, but I think what it boils down to is that Gourmet was like my AIG or Lehman Brothers. It had been around since the 40s. It was 69 years old. It was too beautiful to fail!

Apart from writing letters to Condé Nast, the only other thing we felt we could do was this little tribute to the most recent issue that arrived in our mailbox.

Gourmet's version:

our version:

As you may have guessed, the recipe involves apples. Our market didn't have macintosh available, so we went with The Jonagold Apple, which is apparently a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Jonathan apple.

For better or worse we did not have Popsicle sticks, so we went for the next best thing on hand: wooden chopsticks.

All you need to make this attempt your very own:

First, you reduce the red wine. Then, in a separate pot, you make the caramel by boiling sugar and water. Next, you add the wine reduction and the heavy cream and let it simmer.

Once it cools down a bit, you get the apple in there, which brings us to where the project became a minor fail. The recipe calls for a few gadgets that we didn't have and decided not to purchase--one of which being a candy thermometer. We were supposed to get the caramel up to 238°F and then bring it down to 200°F.

Apparently we haven't learned our lesson that science sometimes cannot be eyeballed. (We stuck the apple in the sauce when Matt turned to me and said, "That looks like 200°F.") Sooooo, the red wine caramel never thickened to the point it should have, and what resulted was an extremely thin layer--a tiny hint of caramel covering the apple.

That being admitted, the stuff was delicious. It tasted like the best pie filling we ever had. We ate it straight off the spoon and then later, Matt put it over ice cream. It just never achieved the thickness we had come to expect from a caramel apple.

At first, we assumed that this was our fault, a consequence to our unscientific approach (and it still most likely is), but upon checking out the recipe on Gourmet's site (which is still there as of now, thank God), it appears that others have also found that this particular caramel recipe doesn't thicken enough to really stick to the apples.

But we can't and won't go out on Gourmet with a fail. (The next two and a half lines should be read in the voice that Mel Gibson uses to summon his army in Braveheart.) No. This will not be our last Gourmet appettempt. We will go on attempting(!!) via The Best of Gourmet as Matt's parents recently bought us the book pictured below. And though I loved it before this news, it now seems like a rare artifact, a reminder of what a gorgeous, inspiring, and thoughtful publication Gourmet was.

And thus, Gourmet lives on!

RECIPE:

Makes 8 apples
Active Time:30 MIN
Start to Finish:1 HR

8 small McIntosh apples, stemmed, washed well, and dried
1 1/2 cups red wine
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
6 tablespoons heavy cream

EQUIPMENT: 8 wooden ice-pop sticks; a candy thermometer

Insert a wooden stick halfway into each apple at stem end. Line a tray with wax paper and lightly grease paper.

Boil wine in a small saucepan over medium heat until reduced to 1/2 cup, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

Bring sugar and water to a boil in a 21/2- to 3-qt heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then wash down any sugar crystals from side of pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water. Boil, without stirring, swirling pan occasionally so caramel colors evenly, until dark amber. Add reduced wine (mixture will bubble up and steam) and swirl pan. Add cream and simmer, stirring, until incorporated, then continue to simmer until thermometer registers 238°F. Remove from heat and cool to 200°F.

Holding apples by the sticks, dip them in caramel and swirl to coat, letting excess drip off, then hold apples up (stick end down) for about 15 seconds to allow more caramel to set on apples. Put caramel apples, stick side up, on greased wax paper and let stand until caramel firms up, about 30 minutes.

COOKS’ NOTE: If caramel becomes too thick* to coat apples, reheat over low heat to loosen.

*not gonna happen

Organic and Chic's Goldies or The Shiniest Dessert Ever

Upon seeing the below picture in Sarah Magid's Organic and Chic cookbook, I felt instantly bound to the idea of making them. But was I setting myself up for another arts and crafts attempt akin to the Decoupage egg fail?

Maybe so, but these were twice as cute and completely edible. These were "Goldies," organic and chic versions of their inspiration, the Twinkie.

Sarah Magid's version:

our version:

If you like the looks of these guys, you'll want to take a look at the whole book, which reminds me of something Martha Stewart would've produced if she were 30 years younger, more focused on eating organic, and lived in Brooklyn.

Already mentally married to the idea of creating The Goldies, I went on to read the entire recipe and realized that it called for a few items I didn't own.

1. An eclair pan

2. Edible metallic gold dust

3. A pastry bag and tips

Matt and I argued about what to spring for. I thought we could do without the eclair pan and just get eclair paper liners. We called around a few local places and they literally laughed at the idea of not needing the pan. With my feelings newly crushed, I decided to stick to the directions, log on to kitchenclique.com, and buy the pan. Interesting note: While eclair wrappers are everywhere, eclair pans are very very difficult to find. Dessert conspiracy?

For sure, we needed the gold dust. I mean, c'mon. (Per Organic and Chic's recommendation, we got ours via Kitchenkrafts.com.)

But for the pastry bag, I decided we could use a Ziploc bag.

The first step was making the Goldies' bodies a.k.a. Magid's Easiest Chocolate Cake recipe, which did live up to its name--no eggs or milk involved.

After baking for 18 minutes, the bodies were looking gooood.

The vanilla buttercream seemed tricky compared to the other icings I've made in the past. It involved mixing milk, flour and vanilla in a saucepan, stirring until it thickens and then quickly cooling before adding to the creamed butter and sugar mixture. But the result was this super smooth, semi-milky buttercream and my favorite component of the whole dessert.

I guess part of the reason you use a pastry bag is because the alternative looks kinda gross.

Also, without the tip, we would soon realize that we didn't get enough of the good stuff inside the cake.

Even though they looked great.

In her book, Sarah Magid tells the story of how she came up with the idea for Goldies (and other reformed junk food). She tells how, while browsing in a grocery store, her son wanted to buy a box of Twinkies, and after looking at the ingredients on the back of a box she decided that she would bake him her own version minus all the processing and weird bits.

Now, since Magid uses chocolate cake instead of the standard yellow found in the original Twinkie, and then covers that chocolate cake in a layer of chocolate ganache (see below), how is she going to get that yellow Twinkie-like color back in there?

Enter: edible gold dust.

Did we just blow your mind? You're probably asking yourself: What the ef is edible gold dust and/or what is it made of? The website we bought it from simply says it contains no metal. Regardless, it's amazing. Just brush it on and voila, instant Charlie and the Chocolate Factory effect.

I wish the below were a picture of the faces of our pals, Heather and Alex at the moment when we arrived at their house for dinner and pulled the foil off the dessert platter only to reveal more shiny metal. Uhm, gold bricks? Thank you?

Speaking of gold bricks, Matt boxed one up and sent it away to cash4gold.

Just waiting for our check to arrive in the mail!

In short, Goldies are awesome. I mean, at the end of the day it's organic chocolate cake with organic vanilla buttercream filling and a coating of organic dark chocolate ganache. So, yeah... we ate a lot of them this weekend.