Saturday is cooking day

… alter­nately titled, In Which Vast Quan­ti­ties of Sugar and Fat are Con­sumed. Oh, yeah. Yes­ter­day was a busy day. We had brunch at my SIL’s, and in prepa­ra­tion there­for, I made a crust­less bacon & onion quiche for 8. It’s a very low fat recipe– just 10 eggs, 1 cup heavy cream, 5 strips bacon & a large onion, browned together in a pan, salt, white pep­per, and nut­meg, stirred together and baked for 20–25 min­utes until browned at the edges and set in the mid­dle at 375F. Very diet-conscious.

I also made Dorie Greenspan’s Swedish Vis­it­ing Cake. This cake has been get­ting raves all over teh intar­webz, and let me tell you, nom nom nom nom nom. It’s good. So good, in fact, that we made another one this morn­ing, just to enjoy for our­selves. The BH actu­ally made this one and took its pic­ture this morn­ing– but the one we brought to his sister’s yes­ter­day was also a hit. The recipe is dead easy, since it only requires two bowls and a fork or wooden spoon to make. Our ver­sion had two changes from the orig­i­nal, link above– we had no vanilla, so we used lemon extract in place, and we had no sliced almonds to sprin­kle on top, just whole skinned almonds– so we just bashed them with a meat ten­der­izer and sprin­kled them on top.

Then, after we got home, I started mak­ing sup­per for our friend L, who cel­e­brates her birth­day today. Since today was sup­posed to be messy and ucky with a snow and ice storm (and is, in fact, messy and ucky), I pro­posed we make her din­ner last night instead. Accom­mo­dat­ing soul that she is, she agreed. L. is also an accom­plished cook and baker, so it’s always fun to cook for her, and I can try some­thing new on her and she will appre­ci­ate the exper­i­ment. I decided to make some­thing that’s been sit­ting in my com­puter recipe file for a while– Rose Prince’s Poached Chicken with Leeks. (Scroll down for the recipe after click­ing on the link.) Peo­ple, meet your new chicken crack. I did make the fol­low­ing vari­a­tion– in place of the 900 ml (3/4 quart) of chicken stock, I used 300 ml white wine (pinot gri­gio) and 600 ml (1/2 quart) stock. I didn’t have and couldn’t find fresh tar­ragon, so I dry-brined the chicken parts with 3 tbsps. salt, 1 tbsp. white pep­per, and 1 1/2 tbsps. Penzey’s dried tar­ragon for an hour before brown­ing the parts and poach­ing them. I tested my chicken at 30 min. and found it was done, so I removed it from the stock/wine mix­ture, ladled the stock into a fat sep­a­ra­tor, poured the defat­ted stock back in (leav­ing a good 1/3 cup ren­dered chicken grease), and then stirred in the cream and the leeks as called for. I removed the skin from the chicken parts and then added them back in, cov­er­ing and leav­ing on low heat for 10 min­utes. Served with but­tered rice dressed with the juice of 1/2 a fresh squeezed lemon and green beans, it was the per­fect warm­ing sup­per. Of the broth, L. said, “you need to bot­tle this.” I just had some more for lunch, and yeah, I do.

Finally, what’s a birth­day with­out a birth­day cake? I am not a huge choco­late fan, but L. is, so I knew I had to make a choco­late cake. I have got Julia Child’s Reine de Saba cake down, and it’s been my go-to grownup’s choco­late cake for years. When it’s done right, noth­ing matches it for choco­latey rich­ness. Well, until this cake– Dorie Greenspan’s Choco­late Arma­gnac Cake. My vari­a­tions from the recipe are: 1) I used almond meal instead of pecans, since I have almond meal already made in my freezer, and 2) I did not have arma­gnac, but have used bour­bon as a sub­sti­tute before, since it is also woody and sweet, like arma­gnac– so I used bour­bon to flame the lit­tle bits of chopped prunes that I think are key to mak­ing this cake so rich, yet light, and melt­ingly moist. So, now I have a new favorite choco­late cake. The recipe is a lit­tle bit more fid­dly than the Reine de Saba, but it’s worth it.

Black­berry ice cream went amaz­ingly well with the cake. I’d just guessed that it might, since I didn’t want to bring home vanilla, and there wasn’t any Haagen-Dazs rasp­berry gelato, my usual go-to for accom­pa­ny­ing choco­late birth­day cake.

The chicken recipe, espe­cially, deserves to be part of your cho­les­terol and triglyc­eride count.