These cinnamon rolls have yeast in the dough and are sweetened with brown sugar and a touch of maple syrup.

Ricotta gnocchi with lemon and Parmesan are from a Michael Symon recipe.

It started New Year’s Day with the tried-and-true cream cheese cinnamon roll recipe from Saveur magazine. This has become a tradition to have the swirly dough boys on January 1. It takes some time since the rolls have yeast in them (you have to let the dough rise), but it is worth every step. It’s also one of the few days of the year to splurge, if you will.

 The dough is so soft and flaky. You get the crunch from the brown sugar-cinnamon-nut mixture, too. Do try these. 

Cream cheese is smeared on the dough before its rolled.

Later in the week was time for homemade ricotta. This was my first time making the soft cheese.

Making homemade ricotta uses four ingredients: kosher salt,whole milk, cream and an acid, such as lemon juice.

 I used Nancy Silverton’s recipe that appeared in Bon Appetit. The recipe made just enough ( 1 cup) to use in the ricotta gnocchi my family had for dinner Sunday night. The gnocchi recipe comes from Michael Symon in his book “Michael Symon’s Live to Cook.” Making homemade ricotta is more waiting than cooking. You heat the cream, milk, lemon juice and salt just until boiling, them remove from the heat and let the curds separate from the whey. Have some cheesecloth on hand to line a sieve placed inside a large bowl and pour the mixture into the bowl, trying to keep whatever curds have formed intact.

I let the mixture sit out for a few hours at room temperature. You could leave the ricotta in the fridge overnight. If all goes to plan there will be quite a bit of liquid at the bottom of the bowl. Check every now and then to make sure the ricotta isn’t sitting in that liquid. Scoop it from the cheesecloth-lined bowl (it will be goopy) and you’re good to go.

Curds start separating from the whey.

I made the little pillows two days ahead and fried them in butter. I knew when they maintained shape and formed a nice brown crust on the outside from the fry in butter that this was going to be an improvement from the first time I made gnocchi. The previous version used potato and called for boiling, then frying.

They get even better with a butter sauce filled with mushrooms and peas. Top it off with Parmesan cheese and you’re set for an enjoyable meal. Homemade ricotta is creamier and more flavorful than what comes from the store. Do yourself a treat and make some. It only requires cream, whole milk, lemon juice, salt and some cheesecloth to allow for the moisture to seep out.

My first attempt at a buche de noel.

I can’t imagine a Christmas without snowballs. When I think of a cookie for this time of year, the buttery treat coated in powdered sugar jumps to the forefront. This year’s rendition comes from Bon Appetit: a cardamom crescent. These cookies also have pecans and cinnamon.

Though it’s past Christmas, it’s always acceptable to talk cookies and baking.

The result is typical snowball, and that is a good thing. The buttery, salty, crumbly cookie is just right, with a slight dose of cardamom that provides an added flavor. Dusted with powdered sugar, these cookies are delectable. They go great with a cup of hot chocolate, which I drank three straight nights earlier in the week for dessert. For the hot chocolate, just mix some Ghirardelli cocoa powder, whole milk, and a dash each of cinnamon and vanilla extract. Yum!   

These cookies have pecans, cinnamon and cardamom. They go great with a cup of hot chocolate.

Earlier this month my mom and I made white chocolate turtle cookies, a recipe from Nicole Cleghorn that made the Los Angeles Times’ top 10 for their holiday cookie contest. The chocolate cookies have a surprise treat in the middle — a Rolo candy. The cookies are soft and the caramel in the middle from the Rolo creates a pleasing chew. The only thing I would alter the next time is add salt to bring out the other flavors. 

Otherwise, the soft chewy morsels are spot on. 

The chocolate cookieshave a "secret" in the center.

Earlier this week I ventured into uncharted territory: making a buche de noel.

Buche de Noel, or “yule log,” is a common French dessert that features sponge cake rolled around a buttercream filling and is often dusted with powdered sugar. Meringue mushrooms provide decoration.

The version I tried came from Saveur magazine’s December edition. Reporter Gabriella Gershenson interviews Parisian pastry shop owner Arnaud Delmontel, who shares a recipe with
espresso-tinged buttercream and a chocolate ganache coating on the outside of the log. The chocolate coating resembles the bark of a log.

The sponge cake was, well, tough, but the filling, made with whipped egg whites, sugar and butter, along with the chocolate ganache coating made the cake worth making.

I found a recipe from allrecipes.com that omits the flour for the cake portion of the dessert. Try it and let me know what you think.

Not sure if the eggs for the sponge cake were too cold when I put them in. I may not have mixed the eggs enough with the sugar to incorporate enough air. The picture in the magazine shows a thicker sponge cake than what I made. Oh well, it’s still dessert and at this point, that makes this a happy last few days of 2011.

Kolaches are yeast-dough pastries with a variety of filling options. The one above has poppy seeds.

The fourth of July has turned into a day to not only celebrate our country’s independence, but as an occasion to make something out of the ordinary. It has become tradition at our house to make a pastry on certain holidays, when dad has the day off and no one is in a hurry to go anywhere -– such as New Year’s, Labor Day and Memorial Day.

July 4 was about kolaches, the second go-around. I made the baked pastry that resembles a Danish once before, using a recipe printed in Saveur magazine. This time I worked off one from cookbook author and restaurant owner Rebecca Rather. Rather, who oversees Rather Sweet Bakery & Café in Fredericksburg, Texas, holds a special meaning for me and my mom, Sue. We saw Rather when she came to Sur La Table for a cooking demonstration in Newport Beach eight years ago.

She did a class on peaches, which included recipes for peach chutney and fried pies, which is on our to-do list this summer. Rather’s Texas background goes hand-in-hand with kolaches, since that’s where they appear to hold a sizable appeal.

Making kolaches is not an easy task. This is one of those recipes where you must let the dough rise. It’s best to make the dough the night before. You’ll still need to wake up earlier than usual to allow the kolaches time to rest after filling with whatever you like. A poppy seed or ricotta filling, both found in Rather’s book The Pastry Queen, or jam, will do.

The first time I made kolaches with jam, but this time I opted for the ricotta and poppy seed versions. After two tries, I’ve found kolaches to be on the drier side. That’s just the way they are;  not quite as moist as a muffin or coffee cake. But Rather’s recipe yielded more tender, flavorful and moist kolaches. The outside has a thin crust and the inside has a slight chew, reminiscent of sourdough.

You can make kolache dough the night before and let it sit in the refrigerator. Then the next morning, fill and bake them for a breakfast treat.

The recipe makes a ton. I halved it and still made out with just less than 20 kolaches. It’s OK because I froze them on the sheet pan, then stuck them in a plastic bag, where they now sit in the freezer.

The most satisfying part of baking is the process itself.  But I wouldn’t trade the last part – eating — for the world.

A Rather Sweet Bakery worker said they make 12 kolaches during the week and 30 on weekends. This is for  the omelet version, one of the bakery’s top sellers.

This is one instance where the effort is as much about the payoff – a yeasty roll filled with whatever you like. That’s sweet.

Click here for a kolache recipe posted on the blog, Homesick Texan.

Crawfish etouffee combines a mixture of dried herbs such as basil and thyme with a dark roux to create a bitter, spicy sauce.

So I was intimidated with my foray into Cajun cooking. On the menu Thursday night: crawfish etoufee courtesy of a recipe in Saveur magazine. I’ve wanted to try this recipe for at least six months and I finished making the “gravy,” if you will. It looks like a mole sauce and smells, well, indescribable, in a “I don’t know how this will taste” way.

This was the first time making a dark roux, that fat-flour combo that is associated with dishes such as gumbo and etouffee. The roux took about 20 minutes to go from the color of milk chocolate to the shade of, say, a darker Nestle Crunch bar (so not much). That’s when I added the onion out of sheer impatience. I’d been standing at the stove for about 30 minutes, whisking the bottom of the pot to keep the flour from sticking too much. Once I added the finely chopped onion, the roux bubbled furiously. It didn’t settle until I removed the pot from the heat and added the chopped bell pepper and celery and spice mixture. I scrubbed the sides and bottom of the pot with a wooden flat-edged spoon like a fiend, fearing the mixture would cake onto the pot so much as to render dishwashing a monumental effort.

Here is a progression of the roux from light to a darker stage:

Dark roux mixed with chicken stock and minced bell peppers, celery and onions form the gravy for crawfish etouffee.

OK, I’m an etouffee fan. This stuff wore on me. At first, it was bitter, but the tickle from the cayenne pepper at the back of my throat made it palatable. Bite after bite, the depth of near-burnt flour and oil (probabaly sounds like something to throw away) became appealing. Like the recipe says, it has stew-like consistency — spoon-worthy to scoop up the little crawfish tail meat with the gravy and rice. I wonder what it will be like in a few days once the flavors marry a bit more?

Here are a few suggestions I would make:

1. Stop the roux at the light brown stage to quelch some of the bitterness.

2. Reheat broth mixture and remaining broth before adding them to the pot with the crawfish and butter. I cooked the crawfish too much — they curled up. They were already cooked, so they just needed a reheat. The problem was the broth mixture and remaining broth and butter were at room temperature so they needed more than two minutes to reheat.

The crawfish came already cooked, so they only needed a brief heating. I cooked them too much because they started to curl.

Ah, the joys of cooking and learning. Here’s to etouffee and less bitter results next time.

 Hi. 

It’s good to be back. I’ve been gone for awhile from the blogosphere. I’m in the second semester of journalism graduate school at USC and it’s a challenge. So the writing has been for class and not here. But for spring break my mom and I went to Savannah, Ga., and that’s what I’m here to tell you about.

My mom is a Paula Deen fan. A few years ago I got my mom a gift certificate to eat at The Lady and Sons, Deen’s restaurant in Savannah. So we finally went and, lest I say, didn’t eat at The Lady and Sons. We had three nights there and ate at Deen’s brother’s restaurant, Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House.  Shrimp lovers rejoice: Bubba’s gives plenty of the critters in the low-country boil. We had reservations at The Lady and Sons another night, but my mom had a craving for barbecue, so we opted for a spot close to the hotel.

We had our fill of Southern fare. I had my mind set on fried catfish and it didn’t take long before a plate with two thin fillets of the golden fish, some black-eyed peas and collard green sat in front of me. We ate dinner the first night at Sweet Potatoes, a charming, homey spot in a strip mall. Handwritten words and paintings decorate the sky blue-colored walls. The catfish was the best fried item I had on the trip. It was so light and had the most delicate crunch. There was no grease. And this place has outrageously affordable prices. The catfish, two sides and a biscuit cost $6.75. A half portion of peach-glazed barbecue chicken with two sides and a biscuit goes for $7.75.

I had grits one morning with a vegetable omelette at Sunnyside Up, another strip mall spot. But I enjoyed the breakfast more at J. Christopher’s, a downtown Savannah place with outdoor seating that welcomes bringing a dog and hanging out. We ate inside and I had a breakfast fit for a day of intense activity. A skillet filled with crisped potatoes, sausage, sauteed bell peppers and onions and a small dollop of country gravy formed the bed for two sunnyside up eggs. What a meal! The food comes out in an individual cast-iron skillet with an oven mitt wrapped around the handle. Make sure to get those potatoes and cheese crusted along the side of the skillet.

J. Christopher's in downtown Savannah serves this filling meal. Potatoes, sausage, peppers and onions lie under the eggs and English muffin.

Our “hike” after breakfast was a few hundred yards to the carriage ride stop. We spent the next 50 mintues touring Savannah and all it offers.

Vanillekipferls have walnuts and vanilla extract in the dough.

Christmastime means snowballs. Those powdery dumplings that crumble when you bite into them and leave powdered sugar stuck to your fingers signal that it’s December and something sweet is on its way. I like cookies for the powdered sugar coating because it looks like snow and they go great with hot chocolate.

Other names for snowballs include wedding cookies and tea cakes. I’ve tried different versions in the last three years, alternating the nuts used in the dough and one year adding dried cherries or cranberries to the dough. A snowball is basically a butter cookie that’s baked and rolled in powdered sugar. This year I made the vanillekipferls, a recipe from Saveur magazine’s December issue. I learned a few things after making them.

The dough, like most snowball recipes, has butter, sugar and flour as the base. This cookie has powdered sugar in the dough, with vanilla extract and crumbled walnuts.

The dough came together quick. Rolling and forming the dough into crescents, though, took some time. The dough crumbled on the ends as I started rolling it into a log with my hands.

Use one or two teaspoons flour when rolling out the dough to keep it moist.

 I also tried a rolling pin, but the width of the dough made it difficult to form a cylinder. I did the best I could with my hands. I cut each of four dough logs into quarter-to half-inch pieces. Then came time to form each piece into a crescent. I followed the technique used to crimp the edges of a pie crust. I placed my index and middle finger toward the top of the piece and my thumb on the bottom. Then I used a finger from the other hand to make an indentation into the dough to form a moon.

My mom told me of a tip she read in a Martha Stewart magazine to wait until the cookies cool before rolling them in powdered sugar to keep them from becoming gummy. I followed the advice.

These snowballs crumble quite a bit. I’m not sure if I overworked the dough and/or added too much flour when rolling out the dough.

My favorites are a pine nut wedding cookie recipe printed in Fine Cooking, and kourabiedes, a Greek version from the Food Network Kitchens. I like a buttery, moist, slighly crumbly snowball.

But no matter the recipe, once that powdered sugar sticks to my fingers, I know Christmas is near. Merry Christmas!

This cheesecake uses Polly-O ricotta and cream cheese.

I first tasted it at Roman Cucina. It was sweet, creamy with a slight grainy texture in the sausage pasta dish. What was it?

I called the restaurant and found out the gooey cheese was ricotta. What? Ricotta? When I think of ricotta, I think of a bland, grainy spread used to stuff raviolis or top a pizza. This ricotta was a welcome change, a sweet tasting white goo that was almost too sweet for the savory dish.

Fast forward 16 months and I’m at Bristol Farms. I see the yellow container. It’s Polly-O whole milk ricotta, the kind in the pasta dish. I grab one. If only I went to Bristol Farms before buying another whole milk ricotta at Henry’s.

If I ever made a dessert calling for ricotta, I wanted to use Polly-O. Well, the time came. A ricotta cheesecake recipe from Bon Appetit caught my eye and I made it Tuesday, without the accompanying orange-caramel sauce. The graham cracker crust holds a mixture of cream cheese and ricotta boosted with orange zest vanilla bean seeds and vanilla extract.

The cheesecake has orange zest, vanilla bean seeds and vanilla extract.

This cheesecake was delicious. The orange was subtle, but enough to give it a floral smell. It was creamy for ricotta and not too sweet. The graham cracker crust turned soggy, but perhaps that came from not draining the ricotta for at least eight hours (more like two or three).

What makes Polly-O different from other types of ricotta? I e-mailed Kraft Foods. The associate director of consumer relations didn’t divulge the amounts or percentages of ingredients because the recipe is proprietary. The ingredient list reads: pasteurized milk, whey, milkfat, salt, vinegar, and so on. According to the web site, Giuseppe Pollio started Polly-O more than 100 years ago. He set up ricotta and mozzarella kettles on the beach at Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y. The Pollio Italian Cheese Company produces nearly 100 million pounds of cheese per year.

Saveur magazine featured an article devoted to ricotta, from curds to finished cheese. There’s a step-by-step photo guide on the web site for making homemade ricotta and there’s a recipe for ricotta and coffee mousse. Giada De Laurentiis has a recipe for ricotta chocolate chip ice cream.

Whatever the preparation, ricotta has its uses and in Polly-O’s case, they made for one glorious cheesecake.

Kolaches, such as the one above, are popular in Central Texas.

Some holidays in our house have become synonymous with baked goods. The latest yeast-dough installment was kolaches on Memorial Day. These dough squares with dollops of jam in the center, inspired from Czechoslovakinas, are popular in Central Texas. Well, we had a little bit of Texas in California. The recipe came from Saveur magazine and was straight-forward in preparation. It wasn’t nearly as involved as the cream cheese cinnamon rolls, also from Saveur, which are delicious by the way.

I made the kolache dough balls the day before and refrigerated them overnight. Then I spooned jam into the holes and baked them the following morning. 

Kolaches sit before going into the oven. I used three jams - white nectarine, strawberry and brandied apricot and blackberry sage.

When I bit into the kolache, I could taste the dusty flour within the thick, yeasty-tasting dough. The jam helped add moisture and sweetness.

But I’m confused. When I made cinnamon rolls in April, I formed the rolls the day before baking and they turned out delicate and tender.

Here are kolaches out of the oven. The pastries are popular among Czechoslovakians.

Seeking a reason, I asked a friend in Texas for advice. She said kolaches are supposed to have a dominant dough and yeast presence.

Then I looked at a recipe at allrecipes.com, which called for shortening instead of butter. Another recipe called for mixing ingredients, including scalding milk before adding the yeast. There’s even a Prague Kolache Festival in Prague, Oklahoma.

The kolches followed the aforementioned cinnamon rolls and doughnuts for Memorial Day 2008. I was in Massachusetts last Memorial Day and fourth of July.

I like baking. My mom looks to me for biscuits. There is something about rising dough I find intriguing. Most, if not all, of the fun is looking forward to what to make for the next holiday. So with fourth of July on the horizon…. please check-in then to find out.

Please forgive me for not posting in a while. I make no excuses. Please enjoy this post and the day. Thank you.

The beef for the carne asada taco at Taco Factory is simply prepared - salted, then grilled.

Two places are in the running for the best carne asada soft tacos in Orange County.

Las Golondrinas, a chain of Mexican eateries in Orange County, held the edge for awhile. The diced meat had a salty seasoning and joined a layer of refried beans, cilantro and pico de gallo inside two corn tortillas. It was pure eating pleasure. The beans made it all sing and added enough heft to make it a filling taco.

But the last two times I had the tacos, they were overly salty. The salt overpowered the delicate taste of the cilantro and the tomatoey, spicy pico de gallo.

But last Friday I had the carne asada tacos from Taco Factory, a long-standing place on Marguerite Parkway in Mission Viejo. In the past I went for their shredded chicken tacos, but this time I tried the asada.

We have a contender for carne asada soft taco supremacy.

Two soft corn tortillas held the right amount of meat. There’s not much to it – the beef is salted, grilled, then chopped. What you add to the taco is up to you. I think I added some pico de gallo and cilantro. Black beans and rice completed the meal.

Both Taco Factory and Las Golondrinas are right there. If the meat were less salty at Las Golondrinas, it would probably have the edge with the addition of beans. But I could always smear beans on the tortilla from Taco Factory to make a similar taco.

Please tell me where you go to find great carne asada soft tacos. The search continues.

I cut the squash into 1/2-inch cubes and roasted them with salt and pepper until tender. The mushrooms were sauteed in Smart Balance. Cook the pasta, reserve some of the cooking liquid, add the squash and mushrooms to the pasta with maybe a ladle-and-a-half of cooking liquid, cheese and a scant amount of whipping cream and you’re done.

The flavors all worked – slight sweet squash with earthy mushrooms and slightly-salted cheese. But the pasta wasn’t coated enough. Next time I would add more cooking liquid. This dish would gain a valuable boost from bacon. The squash makes it, though you could substitute other veggies, specifically leafy greens, for the mushrooms – Swiss chard and spinach come to mind.

On Thursday I made the blue cheese, walnut and escarole spaghetti recipe from Gourmet magazine. What a dish! And that’s a positive statement. This dish gets its spine from the blue cheese, which melts into a coating for pasta and wilted escarole. The escarole and pasta mix together and walnuts go atop.

For the cheese, I used Greven Broeker, a cow’s milk cheese from Belgium ($31.95 a pound), for the majority and a little bit of Roquefort, Mons, from France, a raw, sheep’s milk cheese sent from Bedford Cheese Shop. The roquefort has a stronger, hefty tang than the Greven Broeker. I bought the Greven Broeker in November at South End Formaggio in Boston. I opened the wrapping to find the cheese with a slimy coat. It had the color of a very pale beige. But I used it anyway and I’m still here two days later.