You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Leech Lake’ tag.
Finally blogging again. It’s been quite a summer and fall with “the move.” Lately we’ve been working on finishing up Sunlight in My Soul, Abraham, Standing in Moonlight, Raging Winds, Walking Over the Water, Autumn Wind and Dear John. There’s a new live video of Abraham, recorded last week in our home recording studio. You can view Abraham on our youTube channel. We’ve been asked about Greg’s free “Peace on Earth” holiday card. If you’re looking for it, you’ll find it online, with instructions for printing, in our dancing light café.
Today, we’re taking some time to do a little holiday baking. This year we created a special “Holiday Biscotti” for our family, friends and fans. We love the crunchy sweet Italian cookies, especially with coffee.
While reading a French cookbook, we learned the phrase “mise en place.” It a fancy French term that basically means, “get all your ingredients out, prepared, measured and ready to go before you start cooking.” Greg says it means, “Are the mice in place?” We’re finding that cooking from a recipe goes much more smoothly if everything’s ready to go.
We hope you enjoy the Holiday Biscotti. Happy Holidays!
Love,
Kiki and Greg
PS If you’d like a printer friendly copy of the biscotti recipe, click here.
Kiki and Greg’s Holiday Biscotti
PREHEAT OVEN TO 350°
Ingredients
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 large farm-fresh organic eggs
2 teaspoons freshly ground anise seed
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 one ounce squares white chocolate
¾ cup dark chocolate chunks or chips
¾ cup chopped crystalized ginger (could sub craisins for ginger, but use about half as much)
-
- Enjoy!
-
- The finished biscotti
-
- Transfer biscotti to a cooling rack and cool completely. Store in an airtight container. Can be made several days ahead. Here’s Greg with the biscotti, fresh out of the oven.
-
- Place the partially cooled log on a cutting board and slice diagonally into ¾” slices. Lay the slices down on the baking sheet. Return them to a 350º oven for 15 minutes.
-
- Form into a log that’s 16″ long and 3″ inches wide. Bake until light golden, about a half and hour. Take it out of the over and leave it on the baking sheet to cool for another half hour.
-
- Cream butter, sugar and anise with an electric mixer until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time until blended. Add vanilla and blend. Add flour mixture and beat just until combined. Stir in white and dark chocolates and chopped candied ginger.
-
- Put everything in place before starting. Chop the chocolate and crystallized ginger, grind the anise seed, measure the ingredients
-
- We bought a coffee grinder for $1 at the second hand store. We use it to grind our spices. This is ground anise seed.
-
- Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl (quickie sift) and set aside.
Kiki and Greg, when manifesting their musical selves, are the cosmic acoustic duo, dancing Light
Trader's Bay facing east (11/20/08)
November in Northern Minnesota
The sun cracked the frozen sky this morning. 17 degrees is frosty for a Florida girl.
The windows in the room where I blog face north. In northern Minnesota, winter comes early and settles in until the April sun starts shining in earnest. Today, the northern wind blasts across the partially frozen lake. There is only a double pane of glass protecting my face from the wind.
Back in the day, AC consisted of a fan blowing over a block of ice. From where I sit, the wind races across 8 miles of ice to reach my home office.
A heavy coat covered my pajamas as I took a three minute run out to the shore and back. Snagged these two photos for you. Probably the extent of my exercise for the day.
dock and slipper
In the first photo, the lake has just started to ice over.
Snapped this other photo while running across the one remaining dock section at the shore. You can see kitty pawprints in the snow. The toasty slippers were last year’s birthday gift from Mom.
Spinach & Mushroom Muffin Melt with Warm Harvarti and Tarragon Cream
Greg is blending four cups of soaked soybeans and a gallon of water to make tofu for my birthday dinner tomorrow. Back in the previous millenium, circa 1995, Greg created a tofu dish that has become an annual event.
Greg’s culinary creation is not on my pH diet, but then neither was the cabernet that accompanied the ahi tuna at yesterday’s birthday lunch. Two girlfriends and I were at the newly remodeled Chase hotel restaurant overlooking Walker Bay of Leech.
tofu? spinach? I think not.
Our trio shared a complimentary also not-on-my-diet birthday dessert. The Chase calls it “Just Chocolate.” It consists of chocolate layer cake, chocolate brownie, chocolate mousse and chocolate sauce. The three of us made it halfway through before running up the white flag.
So back to Greg and his culinary genius … Greg sautees slabs of fresh tofu in unsalted butter and tamari and sets them aside. Sliced meadow or crimini mushrooms are sauteed in olive oil with a little garlic and onion. After the mushrooms are soft and ready to eat, Greg puts a bunch of fresh spinach on top of the mushroom mixture in the pan. The heat from the mushrooms and the cast iron skillet wilts the spinach. Toasted whole wheat english muffins are buttered with earth balance spread. The 1995 original used unsalted butter. Either is great by me. Both ways are yummy.
Greg plates the dish. Doesn’t that sound snobby? Food Network/Iron Chef overload, no doubt.
In true Yookish fashion, Greg puts two muffin halves on a plate, butter side up. He lays the tofu on a muffin, then covers the tofu with the spinach-mushroom mixture. That get’s covered with a slice of creamy havarti on top.
Now you’d think that would be decadent enough, but Greg really knows how to push the envelope. For the finale, Greg covers the whole shebang with a tarragon cream sauce. The hot cream sauce and warm spinach mushroom mixture melt the soft havarti. It is the most sensual blend of textures and flavors, and I am a grateful and lucky girl!
Tomorrow I will share a photo with you … if I can restrain myself long enough to point and shoot. mmmmmmmmmmm – Kiki
How Greg makes fresh tofu
use multiples of these proportions
(Greg makes 4 times this much)
-
1 cup of soybeans, soaked overnight
-
1 quart of good water
-
3/4 teaspoon Epsom salt
Blend water and soybeans in a blender for about three or four minutes
Do this in batches according to your blender’s capacity
Strain through a piece of fabric – like a cotton flour-sack towel
Heat the liquid in a double boiler over boiling water for 20 minutes
Off the heat, add Epsom salt while the soy milk is hot
Let hot soymilk coagulate for about 20 minutes
Line your tofu mold (Greg uses flat bottomed colander) with cotton fabric
Put the curds on the fabric
Press with a 20 pound weight (Greg uses 2 1/2 gallons of water in a container)
Leave under weights for two to four hours depending on how firm you want the tofu
the longer you press, the firmer the tofu
use the same way you’d use tofu from the store
