Spring Break Eats: Kat Hepburn's Brownies and DIY Fruit & Cheese Plates

Above: The deceptively elegant fruit and cheese plate at Village Pub is basically an artful plating of some basic quality ingredients- try it with some leftovers for a cultured-feeling lunch.
You will all have to please pardon my lack of posts lately. It was spring break here at UCLA and I spent R&R time in San Jose with my family and friends and also got the opportunity to camp at Malibu Creek State Park with a group of friends over this past weekend. Of course, I did not go that entire time without a culinary discovery or two that I would like to share with you all! Being back home and having more time on my hands, I was able to put together some slightly more elaborate meals like Date and Walnut-Stuffed Pork Loin and Arroz con Pollo. However, I know these dishes are not likely to make their way into a time-pressed cook's regular repertoire, so I want to tell you about Katherine Hepburn's brownies, an unbelievably quick dessert that delivers delicious rewards. Apparently this recipe truly came from the well-known actress herself. I had wanted to try a version of this recipe for a while, and the chance presented itself when my friend (who was my co-chair of the Culinary Club in high school!) and I wanted a sweet treat to accompany our watching the movie Milk. The beauty of the recipe is that it only involves one pot to mix in and a pan to bake the brownies in, resulting in super minimal clean-up. My friend and I made these one evening during the break and ate them gooey and warm straight from the oven with warm milk (considering the movie we were watching, we thought we were rather clever!). Our brownies turned out comparatively thin to other brownies but were extra rich and moist. We opted for no walnuts, but I'm sure they would be great, if you're a fan of nutty brownies. Sadly, I do not have a picture of the brownies, but I do have a picture of a lovely fruit and cheese plate that my mom and I had at Santana Row's Village Pub. We were both struck by the sophistication of flavors achieved by a gathering of such few and basic ingredients. This particular one had blue cheese, candied pecans, thin toasted slivers of nut bread, marinated olives and a red wine balsamic reduction sauce, but it would be so easy to throw together a gourmet plate with leftovers you happen to have in the fridge. Consider it as a creative solution to the question "what's for lunch?"

Recipe: Katherine Hepburn Brownies

Ingredients:

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter

2 squares unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preparation:

1. Melt together 1 stick butter and 2 squares unsweetened chocolate and take the saucepan off the heat.

2. Stir in 1 cup sugar, add 2 eggs and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and beat the mixture well.

3. Stir in 1/4 cup all-purpose flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt. (In the original recipe, 1 cup chopped walnuts is added here as well.)

4. Bake the brownies in a buttered and floured 8-inch-square pan at 325°F for about 40 minutes.

You can cut these brownies into squares, once they have cooled, and eat them out of the pan, but it is so much nicer to pile them on a fancy plate, from which people are going to eat them with their hands anyway. If you want to smarten up your act you can put a square of brownie on a plate with a little blob of créme fraîche and a scattering of shaved chocolate. 

*Recipe from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Katharine-Hepburns-Brownies-106559

Tofu Love

Above: Tofu scramble break down- the chopped nuts, spices, cranberries and crumbled tofu (I skipped the cilantro)- and then the beautiful assembled finish!
Recipe: Garam Masala Tofu Scramble
Right now I'm obsessed with the versatility of tofu. It adapts itself to stir-frys, adds some protein to salads, is yummy baked slathered in teriyaki or honey-mustard sauce, and this afternoon I discovered how delicious it is scrambled. I know that many people have aversions to tofu. My roommate recounted the story when her family decided to replace their Thanksgiving din one year with Tofurkey, to her absolute horror. Tofu is so good for you, so flexible and so affordable (1 14 oz. block of tofu will cost you under $2!) that it would be a tragedy to relegate it to the shady world of meat substitutions. I urge you to reconsider this potential food friend, which shines in this flavorful scramble. This week is finals week, which means that quick and easy are the buzzwords when it comes to food. But that doesn't mean a self-enforced Ramen diet is obligatory- this dish took about 15 min. to throw together and paid back many times in taste the effort and time put into it!

Garam Masala Tofu Scramble Recipe

You can buy garam masala spice blends, or make your own from spices like cardamom, cloves, cumin, and cinnamon. (I personally used a blend of curry spice that we had in the cabinent and some cumin and it turned out great, so you can work with what you have!). On the tofu front, I actually like to use a firmer tofu which lends more structure in the end, softer water-packed work as well but lend a looser, and in some cases creamier texture.

Ingredients:
a splash of olive oil
couple pinches of salt
1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala spice blend
1 medium onion, halved and cut into thin slices
1/2 medium bulb fennel, cut into very thin slices
1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped
12 ounces extra firm orgnic tofu, crumbled
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/3 cup pistachios, chopped

Add the olive oil to a big pot over med-high heat. Stir in the garam masala, and then quickly add the onions and fennel.

Stir in onions and salt and cook until the onions soften, just a minute or two. Now it's up to you in regards to how long you'd like to let the onions cook - it you are in a rush, just cook them for a few minutes until they soften. If you have a bit more time, let them start to caramelized and darken. Stir in the cranberries, cook them for thirty seconds and add the tofu. Stir and stir to combine the tofu with the other ingredients. Remove from the heat and stir in the cilantro and pistachios. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Serves 4.

*Recipe from Heidi Montag's blog 101 Cookbooks http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/garam-masala-tofu-scramble-recipe.html

New Ingredients on the [Chopping] Block

Above: My leftover yummy crispy-charred cheesy baby brussel sprouts. They were delicious cold the next day in a salad too!
Today I want to share with you two items that have recently found their way into my kitchen that I had never considered using in my cooking repertoire before now. The first is a pantry item, tomato paste. Tomato paste is essentially tomatoes that have been cooked for hours until super tender, then strained and reduced to a rich concentrate usually packaged in a tube, according to epicurious.com. Whenever I saw tomato paste on an ingredient list, I simply skipped it because I imagined the lonely tube languishing on my refrigerator shelf after it performed its one-hit wonder. However, Food Junta's blog post on simple tomato sauce as part of their back-to-basics boot camp series convinced me otherwise. Their "recipe" for tomato sauce (really more like guidelines anyways) is so straightforward and simple it will make you wonder why you've been buying those over-priced, sodium-packed jars of pre-packaged sauce for so long. Tomato paste is a suggested ingredient to pump up the flavor, and it truly does heighten the tomato flavor in the sauce. Pasta cooked with tomato sauce with some freshly-ground parmesan, a pinch of cracked black pepper and a small squirt of lemon is a divine and easy dish. You can find their guidelines at www.foodjunta.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/boot-camp-tomato-sauce/

The other ingredient that I had been neglecting for so long is more or less universally disliked: the brussel sprout. Memories from childhood attempting to pass off those yucky little green cabbages to some other unsuspecting kid's plate before they noticed was a pastime at the Christmas kids' table. But Heidi Montag of 101 Cookbooks convinced me to give them a second chance with her recipe for Golden-Crusted Brussel Sprouts, in which the brussel sprouts are crisped in a hot pan and sprinkled with cheese at the end. The preparation completely transforms these usually unsavory little morsels into toasted, cheesy gems. Trader Joes sells conveniently packaged baby brussel sprouts which are extremely easy to work with. I really suggest trying this one out despite any unpleasant past you may have with brussel sprouts. Here's the website www.101coobooks.com/archives/golden-crusted-brussel-sprouts-recipe.html