Cassoulet Love

Once you've made Mark Bittman's cassoulet a few times, it becomes, like all of my favorite recipes, something of a kitchen sink recipe. Have a few Brussels sprouts that need some love? Kale? Chard? Zucchini? Kidney beans instead of cannelinis? Bacon instead of bone in chicken? GO FOR IT!

Our Tiny Kitchen

My mother-in-law shared this great post called "Small Kitchens, Great Meals," in the Huffington Post in celebration of tiny kitchens, and I was inspired to share ours with you after all. We have affectionately dubbed our kitchen, "The Submarine Galley:"

On a normal day, it's stacked to the ceiling with drying dishes, mixing bowls, trays on top of the fridge.

On the counter, we have olive oil, sugar bowl, toaster, tea caddy, and kettle (with the miniature microwave oven perched precariously above these items on the crooked, homemade shelf). I use the stepping stool as a cooling rack and the top of the fridge to stash the cookbook when I need all two feet of the counter space.

That said, we've made some yumminess in this small space and have learned to navigate the kitchen together in a carefully-choreographed routine. Also, I'm sure everyone's kitchen has challenges. What are yours?

Chocolate Soufflés!

As you may be able to tell from the artful photography, I enlisted the site's official photographer (but usually photographer-at-large) to photograph my second outing as a maker of soufflés. It was to be my second glory. My repeat success at making soufflés, those oh-so-troublesome (and oh-so-eggtastic) delicacies. Proof that soufflés are within the realm of possibility.

The occasion required the correct-sized ramekins. Martha, whose individual chocolate soufflé recipe I was following, asked for 10 oz ramekins, so I scoured our local hardware / kitchen stores to find two matching 10 ouncers.

Then the pleasurable work began. Weighing the chocolate:

Whisking hot milk and eggs yolks into a custardy pudding (or puddingy custard) base:


Whisking the egg whites separately, oh-so-separately, for it is their magical properties that provide the soufflé with its souffle - breath:


And then here is when things went slightly awry. Fold the egg whites into the chocolate, ensuring they do not lose their lift:


I was so ginger with them, that I ended up with this motley mess:

I honestly don't know how you fold hot melted chocolate into cold egg whites and mix them up so that the soufflé becomes uniformly brown without losing its lift.


What I do know is this. They were so delicious we forgot to take a picture of them when they came out of the oven. I know, I know, it sounds like a convenient excuse, a way not to show how they came out a little lackluster.

But chocolate custard baked to a frothy crisp is going to satisfy and delight. Even if it's not going to win any chef-of-the-year awards.

Quatro Leches Cake

As you've seen in the past, I'm an admirer of the New York Times' coverage of food. They give me ideas about what to cook for Thanksgiving, they elucidate the chemical properties of butter and provide me with the best brownie recipe I've ever made (make it the only, since there's no need to improve upon perfection), thereby giving me the tools to create some of the best cookies ever.

All that to say a couple of weeks ago they wrote about the delights of cooking with condensed milk. And I knew it was time. Time to bake my first Tres Leches Cake. If you haven't had this, it's a rich and moist sponge cake of South America provenance with, you guessed it, a lot of milk and cream. This is not for the lactose-fearful.

I went with Alton Brown's recipe. The concept is simple - make a sponge cake, soak with milk for a few hours, ice with whipped cream

Ingredients:

Cake:

• Vegetable oil
• 6 3/4 ounces cake flour, plus extra for pan
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
• 8 ounces sugar
• 5 whole eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Look at all the holes! All the better to soak up oodles of sweetened milk, evaporated milk, milk milk, cream, what have you. Milk of all stripes.

Glaze:

• 1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup half-and-half

As it turns out, with milk and cream in the fridge, I didn't want to buy a huge half-and-half just for this. What's the use of cream that doesn't whip into a glorious froth? So I dub this cake Quatro Leches, because I soaked it in the two canned milks, and milk and heavy whipping cream.

Whipped cream topping:

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 8 ounces sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Do NOT make this with 8 ounces of sugar. I love sweet things, but if they are cloyingly sweet, it overpowers the flavors of any other things, like the cake, the lushness of the cream. I added barely 2 oz of sugar here, and it was still a little too sweet for my taste. I think next time I will top the cake with unsweetened whipped cream, because sweet cake soaked in sweetened milk is sweet enough for me.