Don’t get me wrong – we’re as romantic as the next couple. We love to pamper each other, go out for a nice meal, give each other little gifts. But we don’t reserve these things for Valentine’s Day. We do them all year round. And with life as hectic as it’s been, lately, when Valentine’s Day rolled around, neither of was, well, in the mood to go all out this year. I still wanted to prepare a nice meal, though. You know, at least acknowledge the day and make it a little bit special. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Timing – not usually my friend – stepped in, when I received a lovely Valentine bouquet of both red (Belles Rouges) and white (California Pearl) California endive (ohn-deev, people) from Rodger Helwig of California Vegetable Specialties, who was the very first person I’d met at the International Food Bloggers Conference in Seattle, last August.

California Vegetable Specialties is the only grower in the United States that grows Belgian-style endive commercially. When I visited it’s website (endive.com), I learned more about the health benefits of this sweet, but slightly bitter, little relative of chicory. Don’t we all have relatives like that? But you love ‘em anyway, don’t you? I also learned that it’s not just for appetizer dippers and salads. Apparently, 90% of the endive eaten in Europe, is eaten cooked.

Earlier last week, I received several sample bottles of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur wines from Mike Wangbickler – who I’d also met at IFBC (#ruke!) – on behalf of Planet Bordeaux.

Now, I’m not a wine geek. I fall into the category of wine-drinkers who – like most people who buy art – may not know much about wine, but I know what I like. The Planet Bordeaux campaign is “…an effort to elevate awareness of the wines of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur in the United States. The goal is to show Americans that Bordeaux is about more than classified growths and wine reviews. It’s about the people who make the wine, the land that grows it, and the lifestyle that surrounds it.” Couldn’t have said it better, myself. The wines are made to be drunk young, but age gracefully (unlike me), and are extraordinarily reasonably priced – most under $20. In fact, this lovely Château Loudenne 2007 Bordeaux Blanc we had last night, was the most expensive of the lot, at SRP $20. It was dry, but lush and fruity, and a perfect complement to our meal.

Seems the fates were speaking to me and shooting some divine inspiration my way, right? And so they were. The combination of the endive and the Bordeaux Blanc resulted in a simple, yet elegant, Valentine’s Day meal that moved my husband to declare, “I think I have a new favorite vegetable!”

Wine-Poached Chicken With Braised Endive & Mushrooms
(serves 2)

Ingredients:

2 Tbs. olive oil
6 heads endive (I mixed white & red)
1 large shallot, peeled & sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, peeled & sliced thinly
sea salt
freshly ground pepper
2 cups chicken broth (or stock)
1/2 cup white wine (in this case, Bordeaux Blanc)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
8 oz. mushrooms (your choice), sliced
2 heaping tsp. cornstarch
water

Special equipment: large (12″) frying pan with tightly-fitting cover, tongs

Preparation:

Heat the frying pan over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Slice about 1/4″ off the bottoms of the endives, and core by running the tip of a paring knife around the core at an angle. A little cone should pop out. Place the whole heads of endive in the pan and sear for about 2-3 minutes. Turn them with the tongs and allow to sear – again, about 2-3 minutes. The endives are a bit triangular, so you may want to sear the third side, as well. And don’t worry if you lose a leaf or two – they’ll just add to the sauce.

When the endives are seared, add the sliced shallot and garlic to the center of the pan, followed by the chicken broth and wine. Move the endives so they are now ringing the pan, and add the chicken, pretty-side-up. Add the mushrooms to the pan. Don’t bother stirring, just spread them around evenly in the pan. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper, and cover the pan tightly. Reduce the heat to low and allow to simmer for about 20 – 25 minutes.

Remove the chicken and endive to a plate and keep warm. Raise the heat to medium-high and bring the contents of the pan to a boil. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half.

Spoon the cornstarch into a measuring cup, then fill with cool tap water to the one-cup mark. Stir vigorously until the cornstarch is completely dissolved and add to the pan. Stir the sauce and allow it to simmer until it thickens a little. Remove from heat.

To serve, arrange one chicken breast and 3 endives on a plate and spoon the sauce and mushrooms over all.

Disclaimer: This is not – strictly speaking – a sponsored post. I received endive from endive.com and wine from Balzac Communications, at no cost to me, and with no promise from me. The opinions expressed – as always – are my own.

Love is in the air and it’s time to consider what delectable sweet treats to share with the ones we love. It’s also time for the monthly MacTweets challenge!

For those of you unfamiliar, Mac Tweets is made up of people all over the world mesmerized and obsessed with a little French cookie called the macaron. For February, the Mac Tweets theme is – and how could it not be – Valentine’s Day!

These simple little cookies can produce such frustration, that even the most accomplished baker approaches the oven with not a little trepidation when the timer goes off. I have tried all the famous recipes, and some not-so-famous ones. But, I have finally refined the basic recipe and technique to a point where I’m getting consistent results and feel comfortable sharing what I’m doing, with you:

RJ’s Basic Macaron Recipe

Ingredients:

1 rounded cup blanched, slivered almonds
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

3 egg whites
1/8 tsp. cream of tartar
2 Tbs + 1 tsp. granulated sugar

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 300º. Prepare 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Place the almonds and powdered sugar in the bowl of a food processor, and run until the nuts are superfine and combined with the sugar. Sift the mixture into a bowl and set aside.

In a larger glass or metal bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. Sift in the cream of tartar and sugar, and continue beating until glossy, stiff peaks form.

Fold half of the nut/sugar mixture into the egg whites until nearly incorporated. Add the other half and continue to fold until the whites are completely incorporated, with no white streaks showing. The batter is the right consistency when a bit of batter dropped from a spoon onto a flat plate loses its peak in a few seconds. If the peak remains, give the batter two or three additional folds and test again.

Load the batter into a pastry bag with a large round tip and pipe into circles about 1-1/2″ in diameter onto the baking sheets, keeping them about 1-1/2″ or more apart. If decorating your macs, this is the time. For these Valentine Macs, I placed a 1/2″ heart-shaped cutter on top of the mac, and lightly sprinkled red sanding sugar inside till the surface was completely covered, then gently removed the cutter in a straight-up motion.

Leave the macarons out on the counter for at least 45 minutes to dry. You may have to let them sit longer in higher humidity. They’re ready to bake when they’ve formed a light skin over the top. Touch one lightly with your finger. If it feels dry and not sticky, you’re good to go.

Bake for 18 – 20 minutes. Allow to cool, remove from pans with offset spatula and fill if and how desired.

Filling continues to be my personal bugaboo. So I didn’t fill these. But they’re so light and crispy – yet chewy on the inside – that I decided to leave well enough alone.

For more Valentine’s Day cookie options, try these Linzer Torte Cookies, cut in heart shapes, or these Stained Glass Lemon Cookies, with heart cut-outs!

I was flattered to be invited to join a group of bloggers in a challenge to bake – and write about – 12 different holiday cookies in 12 days. These first 12 days of December, to be precise. The theme this year is the 2008 Bon Appétit Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. Out of the 31 cookies in the collection, we were free to choose any 12 recipes to bake and blog about, in any order we choose. At the bottom of this post is the list of my fellow asylum inmates participants, who have taken up the gauntlet and are baking so you don’t have to. Well, okay, if you want to actually eat the cookies, you have to bake them yourself. But it’ll be fun! Right? I said, Right?

What will really be fun, is to see who’s chosen which recipes and compare notes, tastes, and, well… let’s leave artistic merit out of it, shall we? I’ve already warned you that I am not a food stylist!

On a more serious note, December is also AIDS Awareness Month, and today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. Many of us, if not most of us, have been touched by this world scourge in some form or another, whether it be the illness or loss of a family member or friend. I’m no exception. There were friends of mine from high school and college days – terribly talented people – who were cut down in the prime of their lives, and whose loss most of the world will regrettably never know.

Angela of Spinach Tiger has asked that we Cook Red to Remember today to increase AIDS awareness and to honor the lives and memories of those we loved and lost. You don’t have to be gay to contract AIDS, nor do you have to be young. You might be shocked to learn that one of the fastest growing populations susceptible to contracting STD’s and AIDS, is the heterosexual elderly. It’s no joke. So, while I have no compelling story to share, I can offer my compassion and support. In their honor, I’ve combined my first cookie offering for the 12 Days of Cookies with a tribute in red in support of World AIDS Day.

Notes:

I really like these cookies and will make them again – with and without filled centers. They’re fun to make and eat and I found the subtle lemon flavor helped to keep them light and not overly sweet.

I’ll take this opportunity to repeat one of my favorite tips: Whenever you have a recipe that calls for lemon juice, but not the zest, put the whole juiced rind into a plastic freezer bag and toss it in the freezer. When you have a recipe that calls for zest, but no juice, you can zest one of your frozen lemon rinds with a microplane grater, right out of the freezer! With the price of lemons these days, who can afford to waste them? My husband recently made a batch of hummus and tabouleh, and that’s how I have a supply of lemon rinds to zest for all of these recipes!

While some readers who left comments on the original recipe apparently found it difficult to remove the cookies from the parchment, I used my silicone baking sheet liners (Silpat or Matfer) and had no problem whatsoever. Personally, I think the real “trick” is to really let these cookies cool completely on the cookie sheet. That won’t take more than about 15 minutes, tops.

I whizzed cherry Lifesavers in the mini-food processor attachment of my stick blender to make the centers, and used a demitasse spoon (eensy-weensy espresso spoon) to fill them. If a few sprinkles of crushed candy miss the hole, it’s really no big deal to lightly brush at them with your finger, back to the filled centers. After a couple of hits-and-misses, I also found that it was easier to take the rounds to the baking sheet and then cut the centers out in place. Fewer stretched out and misshapen middles that way.

As you might guess, I’ve already made several of these recipes, and I will share with you now a couple of vital bits of intelligence for working with these cut-out cookie recipes:

First, these recipes don’t yield huge quantities of cookies, so there is really no value to creating several separate rounds of dough to wrap and refrigerate. These doughs are super-sticky right out of the mixer, and you’ll drive yourself mad. Just pull out a nice big piece of plastic wrap, dump the dough out of the mixing bowl into the center, and use the plastic wrap to shape it into a round (or a square, or a rectangle – really, who cares? You’re not making pie, here.), and flatten the whole thing to about a 1/2 inch thickness. When you get to the rolling out part, just cut off the amount you want to work with, and add the scraps to the next hunk.

Second, the dough may be rock-hard when you take it out of the fridge, but it will soften up in mere seconds, so don’t go wandering off to watch “Desperate Housewives” while you wait for it to become more pliable.

Third – and most importantly – whenever you see the words “on lightly floured surface”, that’s code for “keep the bench flour close and use it liberally and often.” You’ll need it.

So, there you have it for Day One, folks! Please visit my cohorts below to see what they came up with today. And drop by again tomorrow for the next installment in The 12 Days of Cookies! Sounds like a freaking soap opera, doesn’t it? Oh, wait.

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project

In honor of World AIDS Day, even Sly is wearing a red ribbon. We remember.