Category Archives: Entertaining

  • Warm Cinnamon Rolls For A Cold Winter Day

    January 17, 2013

    46 Comments

    Warm Cinnamon Rolls.

    Warm Cinnamon Rolls.

    It’s cold here in Norcal. And I don’t mean “wimpy-Californian” cold. I mean, its cold. Sub-freezing, burlap on the citrus, frost on the windows, see your breath, don’t slip on the driveway cold. The kids get a kick out of it (we don’t). But the house is still toasty and Carolyn knows just what to bake to warm us up, Cinnamon Rolls. You know, the big, puffy, swirling rolls with the thick white glaze….yup, those. Carolyn pulls out treats like this when the weather gets nasty, and they are so good we almost (and we do mean almost) welcome the cold.

    cinna11cinna9And these rolls are a special treat and a good baking project for a cold weekend, where indoor activity and warm kitchens are at a premium. They do take some time, work, and a little gear, but the reward is something almost everyone likes. And who doesn’t like a cinnamon roll? The whole house smells like a bakery, and then you get a big, sweet, warm and yeasty roll with a sugar and cinnamon filling and a sugary vanilla glaze. Hard to beat. Kid’s and adult’s eyes widen when these come to the table.

    cinna10Actually, the one person who may not “love” cinnamon rolls is the baker. These do take some time and effort. But this recipes works. It’s from King Arthur Flour, they thoroughly test their recipes, they know what they are doing. And the recipe is big enough so you can split the rolls into batches before baking and freeze half for future use (and the dough does refrigerate overnight or freeze well). So if you make the effort you do get a proven recipe and a batch in the morning or next weekend, if you like. We think it’s a decent payoff. (Right about now Carolyn will say “what do you mean ‘we’?”) 😉

    cinna5cinna4The extra work with kind of baking comes from using a yeast-based dough. Yeast is what makes for a soft and puffy roll, but you need to activate the yeast, add it to the dough and then let the dough rise. In most cases, yeast-based doughs requires just a bit more work, but a lot more time (in this recipe, up to a few hours) and some advance planning. And a stand mixer or bread machine really help here. You can make this dough by hand, but it will be a workout and the dough will take longer to rise. Not advised.

    cinna12Oh, and did we tell you about the “second rise”? That happens after you spread out the dough, make and add the cinnamon filling, roll up the whole thing and then cut it into slices. (At this point you can refrigerate for baking the next morning or freeze some for future use). You then put the slices in the pan, cover them and let them rise (puff) for another 2 hours, or so.  After that, you are ready to bake, and making the glaze is a snap. Again, not a ton of work, but a decent slug of time. Happily, you start to see what the finished product will look like, and it’s hard not to get excited.

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  • Super Bowl Snacks: Grilled Cheese Pull-Aparts

    January 15, 2013

    41 Comments

    grilled

    Grilled Cheese Pull-Aparts

    grilled1Make no mistake, love of baseball is one of the true pillars of our family (and yes that includes Carolyn, and yes she knows way more about baseball than most men, and yes that includes fans, and yes I am a very lucky man). But it is football season, and while we wait for pitchers and catchers to report we get to enjoy the 49ers run towards a title (we hope). The boys and I watch the games together and even rope Carolyn in for the 4th quarter, and we do try to cook “tailgate-y” stuff most Sundays. But as the Super (Stupor?) Bowl is coming (I hear the NFL may whack us for using their trademark, so we add some satire for legal cover) we are working on a few snacks that we can serve on the big day.

    grilled2We will share a few new recipes and update a few old ones, but we will start with this simple, but fun take on grilled cheese sandwiches. We found the recipe for Grilled Cheese Pull-Aparts at the Creamline, a food blog we like and follow (worth a look). The Creamline thought of the recipe as a snack for little kids, but since a bunch of men watching football are just about the same thing (intellectually), we figured we could easily tune the recipe for “adult” entertaining. And it turns out we were right. This recipe will not blow anyone away, but it is easy to make, easy to play with, tastes great (it is grilled cheese, after all) and is good fun.grilled3

    grilled4So what is the big deal here? Basically you get a sheet of 12 of sweet rolls, some areas have King Hawaiian rolls, some have potato rolls, some Parker House rolls. (Look at the photos, you will see what we mean.) You cut them in half, flip them over, so the “rough” side is out, butter and lightly salt the exterior, put a bunch of good cheese and other stuff in between the layers and grill the sandwich. Serve it when the cheese melts and then “pull-apart” the sections. Watch the melted cheese do its thing. Eat. Repeat. Smile.

    grilled5So what should you put in the sandwich? We use a few different cheeses, usually Cheddar and Gruyère, perhaps Fontina, a bit of bacon, maybe pickles or tomatoes, even a touch of mustard. But this recipe really let’s you do what you want. Left over steak or pulled pork? Perfect? Ham? Excellent. Chutney with cheddar cheese? Sophisticated, but very tasty. You get the idea. Hard to screw this up.

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  • Mixology Monday Cocktail: Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    December 17, 2012

    36 Comments

    Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    mxmologo-2It’s time for Mixology Monday, and if you couldn’t guess already, this month’s theme is “Humbug”. Firstly we want to thank JFL at Rated R Cocktails for hosting this month and Fred Yarm at Cocktail Virgin Slut for reviving Mixology Monday. Now lets get to the theme:

    Lets face it the holidays suck, yeah I said it. You put yourself in debt buying crap people will have forgotten about in a month. You drive around like a jackass to see people you don’t even like, or worse they freeload in your house. Your subjected to annoying music, and utterly fake, forced kindness and joy. Plus if you work retail your pretty much in hell, so don’t we all deserve a good stiff drink? So for this Mixology Monday unleash your inner Grinch. Mix drinks in the spirit of Anti-Christmas. They can be really bitter and amaro filled. They filled with enough booze to make you pass out in a tinsel covered Scrooge heap. They could be a traditional holiday drink turned on it’s ear. Or they could be a tribute to your favorite holiday villain. If you celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa then you still suffer through the holidays, so feel free to join in with your Anti-Holiday drink as well. Whatever it is add a hearty “Humbug!” and make your drink personify everything annoying or fake about the holidays.

     humbug6While “some people” here at the farm have similar crabby feelings about the holidays, some of us don’t (ahem), but we both immediately said “tiki” when we thought of “anti-Christmas” cocktails. And when you are in a long holiday line at the store and the items won’t scan, and the kids are starting to squirm, and nobody can find the manager, and the next person in line is sneezing on you and yapping about their sex life on the phone, and and now you will be late for dinner, and you just can’t listen to one more fu…..umm, you need a trip to the beach. And, if anything, a tiki drink is a trip to a beach. Far, far away…maybe by yourself.

    humbug3So now that we had a direction, we started in on our “anti-Christmas” cocktail. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach combines, light rum, golden rum, aged Jamaican rum and Lemon Hart 151 rum with lime juice, pineapple juice, passion fruit syrup, a dash of absinthe and a big dose of Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit bitters over crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wheel and the most cutesy, annoying holiday-themed item you can find. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach starts with pleasant notes of rum and citrus then you get the sweet / tart kick of the passion fruit and some heat from the booze. Standard tiki. But on the finish you get the herbal and anise flavors of the absinthe and a dry, almost tannic note of the hopped grapefruit bitters. We think the Alone, Bitter at the Beach fits the holiday season perfectly- too much good stuff that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth (literally and figuratively) and a bit of a headache.

    humbug1

    Our kind of reindeer.

    How did we get here? We stared with the Zombie as a template and then made sure to tune it to match the theme. Boozy? Oh yes. We took one of the booziest cocktails and added another ounce of aged Jamaican rum. Is that too much? Probably, but it is the holiday season, after all. Bitter? Medicinal? Well the absinthe and grapefruit bitters took care of that (and many tiki drinks do include grapefruit and absinthe, so we aren’t too far off the reservation). And we made sure to keep Falernum and allspice liqueur out of the drink- no pleasant holiday spices allowed. The garnish and cocktail napkin were our own special touches. Now if we only had a Grinch mug……

    humbugAlone, Bitter at the Beach:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 oz. light rum (El Dorado)
    • 1 oz. gold rum (El Dorado)
    • 1 oz. aged Jamaican rum (Appleton 12 yr.)
    • 1 oz. Lemon Hart 151
    • 1 oz. lime juice
    • 1 oz. pineapple juice
    • 1 oz. passion fruit syrup
    • 2 dashes absinthe
    • 6 dashes grapefruit bitters (Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit)
    • Lime wheel, for garnish
    • Christmas ornament, for garnish (optional)

    Assemble:

    1. Place all the liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a large glass or tiki mug filled with crushed ice. Top with more ice if needed. Garnish with a lime wheel and something holiday-themed and overly cheerful. Serve with a loud “harumph!” or “humbug!”.
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  • Hanukkah Cocktail: The Bees Knees

    December 9, 2012

    102 Comments

    The Bees Knees.

    The Bees Knees.

    Since Hanukkah is the “Bees Knees” of holidays (“dude, eight nights of presents, not just one”), we figured it’s time for a celebratory cocktail. And the Bees Knees not only tastes good, you can make a kosher version of the cocktail….really. In all seriousness, we do have some Jewish heritage in the family and we host an annual Hanukkah dinner with homemade latkes, jelly donuts and now, this cocktail. And the Bees Knees does fit the Hanukkah theme.

    bees1bees3At first, we looked for Hanukkah cocktail themes and it was a challenge. It is a festival of lights (not that helpful, flaming tiki drinks?) and oil is a main theme (there are a few cocktails with oil, but we aren’t going there), but happily the promised land is “the land of milk and honey” so we found a theme to build from. And as it turns out, raw honey is kosher, and we have plenty of raw Putney Farm honey. Even better, you can get kosher gin from the No. 209, a San Francisco based distillery (we used Bluecoat gin in this post, but will have the No. 209 at Hanukkah dinner). And it looks like fresh lemons are kosher, and we have plenty of Meyer lemons. Hmmm…

    bees4bees5Well, guess what? You just read the recipe for a Bees Knees cocktail. The Bees Knees combines dry gin, lemon juice and honey syrup (1 to 1 very hot water and honey) and is served up or on the rocks. Created in the prohibition era, the Bees Knees is easy to make and very tasty. And if you prefer rum, a light rum version makes a Honeysuckle, a dark rum version makes a Honey Bee. Add some champagne to the Honeysuckle and you get an Airmail. If you use rye or bourbon you get a Daisy Black. So you do get four or five drinks out of the deal (it’s not eight, but five cocktails from one basic recipe isn’t too shabby).

    bees6While almost all cocktail writers have positive feelings about the Bees Knees, many describe it as “inoffensive”. But we will take some issue with that. If you use basic store-bought clover or orange blossom honey, the flavors are pretty light. But if you use raw “forest” or wildflower honey in the Bees Knees you get much deeper herbal and bitter notes. Putney Farm honey is a forest honey made mostly from wildflowers and herb blossoms, it has some herbal and minty notes with a slightly bitter and piney finish. Good stuff, and perfect with a dry earthy gin. Along with the sweet acidity of the Meyer lemons, the herbal notes of gin and forest honey make for a very substantial cocktail with layers of flavor. So we suggest you get some raw honey from a farmers market and then try the Bees Knees, it won’t be simply “inoffensive”, it will be a special cocktail and a fitting celebration of Hanukkah.

    The Bees Knees:

    Ingredients:

    • 2 oz. dry gin (No.209 kosher, if you like)
    • 1/2 oz. honey syrup* (a bit more if using Eureka lemons, rather than sweeter Meyers)
    • 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
    • Lemon wheel, for garnish

    Assemble:

    1. Combine the gin, honey syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, coupé or flute. Garnish with the lemon wheel. Serve.

    * To make honey syrup combine equal parts honey and very hot water in a sealable container. Shake until combines. Stores in the fridge for 3-4 weeks.

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