At heart, I’m a bread and butter person. I have a weakness for bread like none other and could probably live off a 90% carb diet. I love butter almost as much, especially sweet and salty whipped butter – anything that acts as a vehicle for butter, or VFB as our friend David likes to call it, I’ll eat it.

I’ve been on a garlic-confit kick because we keep getting this awesome garlic at the farmer’s market and I often buy too much of it, or have a ton leftover from making dinner and don’t want it to rot away in the vegetable bin. So the other night, we made garlic confit and I had the idea to mix it in with butter and make toasts. For the holiday festivities we put radishes and watercress on the toasts to make little tea sandwiches, and disguise the fact that we were about to eat a loaf of bread and stick of butter for dinner. Well we didn’t eat the whole loaf and all the butter, but Jonathan’s taken care of that in recent days.

Our little tea sandwich toasts were a fun easy snack and we had leftover garlic confit and very tasty, fragrant olive oil to use in cooking and salads for days to come.

INGREDIENTS:

For the Garlic Butter:

7 heads of garlic
Sprig of rosemary
Sage leaves
Tbsp black peppercorns
Tsp coriander seeds
Olive oil, to cover

Process:

1. Slice off the tops of the heads of garlic, wasting as little of the cloves as possible.
2. Remove a stick of butter from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature.
3. Place garlic heads in a small baking dish and combine with herbs and spices.
4. Cover with olive oil and a parchment lid. Top with foil and bake at 250º until very soft, about 45 minutes to an hour.
5. Remove from hot oil carefully and allow to cool. Strain off the oil and reserve it for future use – just make sure to keep it refrigerated.
6. When the garlic cloves are cooled, peel them and put in mixer with butter. Whip until garlic and butter are combined and butter is light and fluffy. Spread on toasts and enjoy!

For the Toasts:

Slices of bread of your choice, toasted
Radishes, sliced
Watercress, picked and cleaned

Process:

1. Spread garlic butter on toasts. Top with radishes, watercress or whatever else you like. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve at room temperature.

© 2011 Jonathan Meter  and Jessica Hertle

Last week Jessica and I were invited to attend a coffee tasting by our friends at Craft Coffee. Michael Horn, the creator of whatisfresh.com, started craftcoffee.com about a year ago to help spread quality, artisanal coffee. Subscribing members to Craft Coffe receive a tasting selection of coffees every month, handpicked by Horn’s team. As the emphasis on the importance of locality and sustainability grows, we all pay a premium for specialized, local and organic, and artisanal ingredients, and Michael Horn is making coffee one such product.

Despite our high respect for artisanal products and the people who craft them, the craft of making coffee often winds up as an afterthought. In New York, there’s definitely a growing market for quality coffee, but the craft of making coffee is still underrated, especially in many restaurants. In a city where everyone is seeking out craft beers, artisan cheeses and homemade pickles, Horn saw an opportunity to introduce coffee and brewing coffee into that realm of specialty products.

Craft sells all fair-trade coffee that comes from roasters all over the United States. Every month they select several coffees to mail to subscribers. The Craft team’s process for tasting coffee and selecting the beans is extensive and in many ways similar to wine tasting.

At the event last week, Jess and I had the opportunity to taste the three different coffees Craft is offering in their holiday gift boxes. Michael’s team of coffee tasters and brewers had laid out some of the foods that they found notes of in each of the coffees. These included some fruits, nuts and also a peanut butters sandwich. Jess and I didn’t get all of that, but we did love the coffees we tried. Hopefully we’ll both soon develop a more sophisticated coffee palette, but for the time being we were happy to walk away with our gift baskets of fresh coffee beans.

You can check out Craft Coffee’s website at craftcoffee.com to learn more about what Michael and his team are doing all over the country to change the way we consider, brew and drink our daily cup of coffee.

© 2011 Jonathan Meter and Jessica Hertle

It’s been a while since Jonathan and I have posted, and we have really missed BiteSized this past month. It’s been a busy time for us both, but we’re so happy to be back!

Even though we haven’t been posting, we have been doing a lot of cooking. We had some Sunday dinners and made some meals for just the two of us also. The one item present at all these dinners has been cauliflower, and I just can’t get enough of it. Jon used to claim he couldn’t eat it on account of his sensitive stomach, but I legitimately think that was just an excuse he was using to get out of eating a healthy vegetable. Once I roasted it for him in my favorite way, with olive oil, salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes, he started to come around. I like to roast the florets until they are dark and crispy – nicely browned and crunchy, but not burned.

Our oven is about to bite the dust and has only two settings – off, and a raging 550°. So it can be tricky to make sure stuff doesn’t burn, especially when the two of us put something in there and get distracted and totally forget about it. Somehow at work I manage to remember things in the oven consistently without burning them, but the minute I get home it’s like another, less organized, totally scattered brain takes over and makes me forget things on the stove or in the oven like it’s my job. But yesterday we managed to get the roasted cauliflower out of the oven in time, fortunately.

I had the idea to make roast cauliflower soup because it was cold out yesterday and I thought it’d be a nice change from the roast cauliflower we’ve had every week for a month. When we were buying the cauliflower at the market, the fresh herbs were so fragrant and I thought it’d be fun to fry them in a light tempura batter and serve them with the soup, to keep the crunchy factor that I love about the roasted florets.

We roasted the florets for the soup a little less than I do when we are eating them plain, and I used the cauli stems as a base for the soup, along with an onion and some garlic. I lightly battered and fried the herbs we got at the market – sage, rosemary and parsley.

Our soup and fried herbs snack was a fun and super easy recipe, and it looked really pretty together on the plate. It was definitely a nice change from the roasted florets (although we did make and eat some of those two, the cauli head we got at the market was mammoth). I hope you’ll try this soup, or at least the roasted florets!

INGREDIENTS
(Makes 3 very full quarts)

 

For the Soup:

2 quarts of cauliflower florets, roasted
1 quart worth of cauliflower stems, thinly sliced
1 small white onion, thinly sliced
3 heads of garlic, chopped
1 quart of chicken stock
2 cups heavy cream
Water, as needed
Salt and pepper
Red pepper flakes
Olive oil
1 tbsp butter

Process:

 

1. Separate the cauli stems from the head. Break the head of the cauliflower into florets and dress with olive oil, salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes. Roast at 425° until lightly browned.
2. Meanwhile, slice the stem of the cauliflower, slice the onion and chop garlic. Sweat together in a large pot over medium heat in olive oil and butter. Season well with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.
3. When florets are roasty, add to the pot on the stove and cook together for a few minutes to soften. Add stock, bay and water and simmer for about 45 minutes.
4. Blend soup in food processor (remove bay leaves) and pass through a fine mesh strainer. Serve hot with fried herbs or crusty bread.

For the Fried Herbs:
(Adapted from Bon Appetit)

Herbs of your choice, picked off the stem
1 cup all purpose flour
3 heaping tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking powder
1 ¼ cup ice water
¼ cup cold beer
Salt and pepper

Process:

 

1. Pick herbs, use only the nicest leaves.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, then add the water and beer. Don’t mix the batter too much and don’t worry if it is lumpy.
3. Dip herbs in batter and fry in hot canola oil, just for a few seconds, until crispy.
4. Lay herbs on a paper towel to dry. Serve with cauli soup.

© 2011 Jonathan Meter and Jessica Hertle