Triple Chocolate Brownies

These truly are the very best brownies. So easy, they can be made while you are boiling water for pasta. The perfect base for an almost endless array of add-ins, you will never tire of them. The perfect gift for a lovelorn friend, a bake sale staple, an undeniably delicious bribe, a delectable way of expressing gratitude. Or, you can simply hide in a closet and keep them all to yourself. Tempting.

Recipe:

• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 8 ounces butter (2 sticks)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 
• 1/2 cup All-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 large handful bittersweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven.
Butter or spray a rectangular pyrex dish--I use one that is 11 3/4 inches by 7 1/2 inches.

1. In a medium bowl over boiling water (or in a microwave) melt chocolate and butter together. Stir gently just until melted. 
2. Add sugar, vanilla, eggs and salt and mix until eggs are just combined. Add flour and cocoa powder and mix again just until combined and there are no lumps--really DO NOT OVERMIX. The brownies will be tough and dry if you mix too much. Really you are just trying to make sure that all your ingredients are combined together and aren't left in great lumps, that's all. Use a wooden spoon, be gentle.
3. Add chocolate chips and spoon into prepared pan. Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes until brownies are set-the surface should have a nice sheen, the edges should be  dry and well set, and the tester should come out fairly dry. The brownies will continue to cook, once they come out of the oven, and they really are best a bit on the gooey side, so it's best to under-rather than over cook.

One caveat: You MUST wait until the brownies are cool before cutting! I know, it will be hard!

If you ever get bored with the basic recipe (how could you? but still...) add chopped pecans or walnuts to the batter before baking, or sprinkle the top with some grains of super coarse salt, or pistachios, or coconut, or frost it with ganache when it cooled, or....see? practically endless....

Party Food: Boeuf Bourguignon

The months of late winter in my house are full of parties: from Christmas on, it seems, we are in a constant whirl from New Years to the first week of spring in late March: there is Epiphany, many birthday parties, Valentine's Day, school festivals, sometimes even Easter!

Everyone needs a recipe to feed a hungry crowd of people--something incredibly easy, but also gorgeously impressive and deeply satisfying. This is a recipe that will never cease to draw oohs and ahhs from the hungry guests gathered around your dining room table, and leave plates and bowls scraped clean.

While the last posts have been consumed with the sweeter side of these many celebrations, really, you can't have dessert before you have had a long, leisurely, delicious meal. As a hostess of many, many parties, I have realized the importance of having a store of recipes that are almost indestructible, and most can be made ahead and even served room temeperature. That, a really great black dress, and champagne, and you have a party.

This week, we are making a riff on Boeuf Bourguignon, the classic French beef stew. Delicious, with layers of rich, wine laced broth and chunks of tender, silken beef and sweet carrot, earthy, plump mushrooms and smoky bacon. Nicely complex, but not too muddled with different flavors, and nicely balanced by some plain buttered egg noodles or even mashed potatoes.

*The recipe is really very easy, but it does take time. Do it the day before if you can, and let it cook all afternoon on the back of the stove or in the oven. Cool it to room temperature and then refrigerate before going to bed. Overnight, any fat in the stew will rise to the top and solidify and you can simply lift it off and toss it before heating it about an hour before your guests arrive. Easy! Also, the stew really improves in taste overnight. But don't worry if you can't do this step, it will still be amazing!

Serves at least 10 hungry big people

Recipe:

• 5 pounds beef chuck roast, as local as possible, diced into about 1-1 1/2 inch cubes
• vegetable oil
• salt and pepper
• 4 strips smoky bacon, cut into lardons (1/4 inch strips) 
• 5 celery ribs, chopped (about 1 cup)
• 8 ounces baby carrots (about 1 cup)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 liter red wine (1 1/2 bottles)
• 3 cups beef stock
• bay leaf
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 12 ounce package white mushrooms, quartered
• 1 package frozen pearl onions (you can use fresh if you have the time and inclination. I would rather use that time to vacuum the floor or get a pedicure, frankly.)

1. In a large, heavy, deep dutch oven or daube (as the French say) over medium-high heat, add a bit of vegetable oil and brown the cubes of meat well. This is the hardest part of the recipe, because it will take a few batches, and the urge to crowd the pan is strong. RESIST THIS URGE! Too many pieces in at once means that the meat will poach and turn gray and not gorgeously golden brown, sealing in all those lovely juices that will make your stew so delicious your guests will swoon. It will take three or four batches, but be strong. All the other ingredients can just be dumped in soon enough. Keep adding vegetable oil if needed to make certain the beef doesn't stick. As the cubes are finished, scoop them out and put them in a nice deep bowl and season them well with salt and pepper and continue until all the pieces are finished. 
2. If the bottom of your daube is looking unappetizingly blackened and tar-like, give it a quick wipe with a paper towel, but really, don't worry about it too much. Dark brown is simply tasty waiting to happen. Return to medium high heat and add the bacon. Once the bacon begins to render its fat add the carrots, celery, onion and garlic and cook over medium heat until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. 
3. Once the veggies are on their way, add the meat back in, glug in almost all the wine, add the beef stock and the bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Once a nice, steady bubbling has been reached, crack the lid to about half way, turn the heat down so that the stew is at a bare simmer, and go do something else for a few hours. 
4. After about 2 hours, in general, my stew is just about ready for the last steps.  In a large sauté pan, melt butter over high heat. When the butter has fully melted add mushrooms and pearl onions and cook, stirring often. Add a bit of salt (mushrooms need to exude their liquid to get the proper sear and mushroomy taste) and keep cooking until the mushrooms are golden brown and the pearl onions have lost some of their frozen chill and add them to the stew. 
5. Check the stew periodically--add the rest of the wine if you haven't already, and taste to check the seasoning. My stews tend to be ready after about three hours of barely there simmering, but could probably go longer, and if I turned up the heat could be ready more quickly. But figure about 2-3 hours. If you are doing the overnight trick, you are done. Simply put your pot in a sink of ice water until it is cool and then refrigerate overnight. 
6. Right as your guests are arriving, put your pasta water on to boil. The water should come to a boil just as you are pouring a second round of drinks and getting everyone to the table for the first course, which is perfect. Toss in a large bag off egg noodles. They cook in about 8 minutes, so by the time everyone has come to the table and you have plated the first course and gotten it to the table, it is time to drain the pasta and return it to the pot with some butter. Turn up the heat on the stew--it should be piping hot before being ladled out.

Simple. Delicious. 

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

I love Valentine's Day.
I am not ashamed.
It is my favorite day of the year. Not because I am a hopeless romantic (though perhaps I am).
Valentine's Day is wonderful for many reasons--flowers! hearts! Love! (Okay, maybe I am a bit of a romantic.) But it is most wonderful, aside from the affection I get to lavish on my friends and family, for all the marvelous food and luscious treats. Truffles--both the mushrooms and the chocolates--make an appearance, as do less rarified ingredients, like the very first asparagus of the season and handmade tagliatelle.
But really, it's all about the desserts. Unrepentantly dense, dark, flourless chocolate cake. Smooth, satisfyingly tangy lemon tart. But what says Valentine's Day more than Red Velvet Cake?
It is perhaps a bit played out by now, with the endless replays of Sex and the City on cable, but I am from the South, where red velvet cake was just another dessert in the stunningly long repertoire of my grandmother's regular baking rotation, along with things like coconut cream cake, buttermilk pie, apple buckle, blueberry whim-wham, and syllabub. But for Valentine's Day, she always made me Red Velvet Cake.
Now I'm a grown-up, and frankly appalled at the thought of all the red dye I must have eaten as a child. I had always thought that the cake was red from a chemical reaction between the dutch process cocoa powder and the baking soda used to leaven it. Once upon a time, that may have been true, and that is why there is a subcategory of chocolate cakes with names like "Devil's Food," but the color was vague at best, and with the advent of commercial food coloring, the vibrantly hued cakes of my childhood were possible.
I would be happy with something less brilliantly scarlet than that--some of the recipes I looked at called for 2 ounces of red food coloring for a single 8-inch cake!, but I would like to serve something that was recognizably Red Velvet.
After much thought, and quite a bit of internet searching, I stumbled across beets. (That, and a package of them in my vegetable drawer that was looking lonely.) Further research on some other people's experiments with beets and reading through some ancient cookbooks, where sweet vegetables like beets and tomatoes make appearances in desserts with some regularity, yielded this recipe for red velvet cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.

Just in time for the best day of the year.

*One Caveat: This recipe relies on the interplay of pH levels to keep the red color of the beets bright and lively through the cooking process. I started with buttermilk and the juice of a whole lemon, and moved on to sour cream and half a lemon with some cider vinegar, which is what worked best for me and my kitchen. If it doesn't work for you, please feel free to play with the acid levels--find what works! And then tell me!

Recipe:

Cupcakes
1/2 can cooked beets or 1/2 pack cooked beets from one of those cryopacks in the veggie section (good stuff, those. great for salads.)
2 Tablespoons sushi vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder (NOT Dutch process)
pinch salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven

1. Prepare a 12 cup muffin tin with cupcake casings or baker's joy.

2. In a food processor, blitz beets, lemon juice and vinegar until a very smooth purée forms, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally with a spatula.

3. Add sugar, butter and vanilla and blend until smooth. Add dry ingredients. Blend until smooth. Add eggs and sour cream and blend until just combined.

4. Divide evenly among 12 cups and bake approximately 20-25 minutes until well risen and set--a cake tester (or toothpick) comes out clean, with no batter or crumbs.

Vanilla Buttercream

2 egg whites
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 sticks butter, cut into small pieces

special equipment: candy thermometer, electric mixer with a whip attachment

1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, put water and sugar to boil.

2. While sugar heat, beat egg whites in an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. By this time, the sugar should be boiling merrily and be about 240 degrees. Add to the egg whites and beat on high speed until the metal bowl is cool to the touch, between 5 and 10 minutes.

3. Add butter gradually. Don't worry if the mixture looks as if it is beginning to curdle, keep with it. It will eventually return to creamy gorgeousness. Add vanilla and beat to combine.

Makes enough to ice a dozen cupcakes plus plenty to snarf on.