Just like learning a new word & then you hear it almost immediately, I find this is what happens to me when it comes to what I’m inspired to cook. Here’s a recent example.
A friend who stayed at my place while I was on a road trip left a few basic staples behind, one of which was a medium size wheel of Brie. I was ecstatic to see the Brie because it reminded me that I had about a pound or more of fresh cranberries in the freezer I never used at Thanksgiving and I had recently seen a recipe on Food52 for a Dutch Baby, which (if you ask me) is a fancy name for nothing more than an oven pancake, served with a cranberry & orange compote. So between seeing this recipe cranberries in the freezer and having a wealth of tangerine marmalade, I knew just what I’d be making this weekend.
What a luxury it was to be thinking only of making a Brie-en-croute & a Dutch Baby, oven pancake, served with a cranberry & orange compote over the weekend that the weather word was all about the impending Blizzard of 2016. All I needed to pick up would be a package of puff pastry. Even tho I heard about the storm I was still taken by surprise when I swung ’round the corner from Third Avenue on to 14th Street, the line to get in at 9:30 in the morning looked like a Depression bread line with people standing 4 abreast from the front door of Trader Joe’s extended west past three store fronts. I’d set out early Friday morning en route to my babysitting duties with enough time to jump into Trader Joe’s to pick up a package of puff pastry. I walked right by as tho I’d never even thought of going in there.
My first order of duties for the family I help w/childcare and cooking was to bone up on the very specific shopping list the length of my arm from wrist to elbow. The last item on the list was a case of water which meant I’d be taking the expandable, folding wagon to Whole Foods. The frenzy of people ‘stocking up’ on food for the blizzard was nuts. I remained very calm, collected knowing just where to go to get the very specific foods my friend needed. This is when I grabbed a package of puff pastry.
I couldn’t’ get home fast enough Friday night. The first thing I made was my extra special cranberry sauce. Aside for a few of the ingredients which I’ll keep secret the one secret I will share about my extra special cranberry sauce is that I make it the oven. The cranberries are roasted. Saturday morning I made the Dutch Baby/oven pancake served with the cranberry sauce which I warmed in a pot & added 2 heaping table spoons of marmalade to. Sunday I rolled out 1 sheet of puff pastry, 1,2,3, slathered the whole wheel of Brie with the cranberry sauce, sprinkled it with some summer blend Salt of D Earth, wrapped it in the puff pastry, then in Saran Wrap & into the freezer.
It’s the Dutch Baby Oven Pancake recipe I’m going to share now since there’s a link to my Brie-en-croute earlier in this piece.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
Melt 2 Ts Butter in an oven proof pan or skillet
Mix up 3 eggs, 1 C of milk & a scant cup of unbleached flour – until very smooth.
Remove the hot pan from the oven, with a mitt, and pour the batter into the melted butter in the pan. Cook for 20-25 minutes.
You’ll remove an absolutely beautiful, puffy warm oven pancake. Spread with the cranberry & orange compote, serve directly from the pan. While the Dutch Baby cooked I boiled water to prepare a real treat, a blooming chrysanthemum tea my bestie Downunder sent me, out of the blue. This helped to curtail the fact that I didn’t have yogurt or fresh fruit with this. All things considered, I had a lovely breakfast after having been away for nearly a week.
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