Oui, Chef

Fare for the family table

Cookies + Bars

Chewy Fruit and Nut Bars

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The internet is an amazing thing isn’t it?  What with its millions upon millions of recipes to tempt and entice.  I have to fight the urge daily to not spend half my day cruising the web looking for new recipes to incorporate into our repertoire here in the Oui, Chef kitchen.  I love seeing what others, both professional chefs and home cooks are cooking, but if I’m not careful, I can lose hours bouncing from one site to the next, exploring the work of those I’ve come to trust to do GREAT food.  To be honest, even while exercising restraint, I can accumulate 20 recipes during one of these reconnaissance sessions.  Some, I’ll cook with the kids eventually, many I’ll file away and likely never get to, but every now and again, I come across a recipe that looks so perfect, that I find myself reorganizing our cooking schedule to make room for my new discovery right away.

This is one of those recipes.

 

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Chocolate "Earthquake" Cookies

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This post represents the start of a little experiment here at “Oui, Chef” that we’d love for you to join in.

Here’s the deal.

My wife and I bought a little bag of decadent chocolate treats at a terrific local bakery a few weeks back, and were so enamored with our find, that we immediately began a quest to figure out how to reproduce the goodies at home.  Our first attempt, while tasty, was not even a poor, abused step-child of the yum we were trying to replicate.  This, our second iteration, is much closer, though we still have a few issues to correct.  The point of our experiment, is that we will continue to refine this recipe over time, hopefully with some input from you all, and report back regularly with our progress.  With any luck, we’ll develop a clone of these sinfully delicious treats soon, and all get to share in their glory.

 

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Bittersweet Chocolate, Cardamom and Orange Cookies

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Chocolate-Cookie3

 

Happy Holidays Everyone!

For those of you busy in your kitchens preparing for a house full of guests, here is a deep, dark and delicious chocolate cookie to add to your holiday spread.  My wife and I dreamed up these little lovelies for a Food52 contest a while back.  She called for the flavor profile of orange and cardamom, I added the fleur de sel topping, and our little baby was born…..aw, isn’t she cute!  Don’t you just want to squeeze her chubby chocolate cheeks?

All of us here at “Oui, Chef”, Grid, Arthas, Boris, Peyton, Muppet, and my wife and I, wish you all a fun, warm, and delicious holiday season.  Thanks so much for being part of our adventures, for all of your great feedback, and for your support and inspiration.  We all look forward to cooking with you again in the New Year!

Cheers – Steve and the Gang

Bittersweet Chocolate, Cardamom and Orange Cookies

by: Chris Brodie and Steve Dunn
yield:
Cooking ModePrint Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
  • 1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup hazelnut meal/flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
  • 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate cut into chunks
  • 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips
  • 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • Fleur de sel

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 ℉
  • Ready 2 sheet trays with silpats or parchment paper
  • Combine the 1 oz. unsweetened chocolate and 2 oz. bittersweet chocolate in the bowl of a double boiler and melt, let cool.
  • In a standing mixer with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and brown sugar. Add the cooled chocolate, vanilla, and orange zest, then the eggs, one at a time, mixing to incorporate after each addition.
  • Sift together the AP flour, baking soda, kosher salt, cocoa powder, cardamom, and the hazelnut meal/flour. Add to the bowl and mix on low speed until just incorporated. Add the bittersweet chunks and chips, mix to distribute.
  • Spoon the cookie dough by heaping teaspoons onto the prepared sheets, and place in the oven for about 14 minutes.
  • When done, remove the cookies from the oven and immediately sprinkle them with a large grained fleur de sel. Place on a rack to cool.
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Killer K-A Brownies

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I am generally more than a little skeptical of a chef (or a company’s) claims that a certain recipe will yield the “best” representation of a dish.  It is why I have always bristled a bit at Chris Kimball’s proclamations of such through his “Cook’s Illustrated” and  “America’s Test Kitchen” entities.  Now, before any of you who may be big fans of his go all apoplectic on me, I actually do the like the guy, and his publications and shows.  I frequently learn new and useful cooking “tips” when reading “Cooks Illustrated”, and have found many of his recipes over the years to be quite good.  I just don’t believe that anyone has a lock on the “best” iteration of any dish, largely because there is no single definition as to what constitutes the “best” of any kind of recipe.  My idea of a great Duck Confit is not likely the same as Thomas Keller’s, or Joel Robuchon’s, or Chris Kimball’s, or my wife’s for that matter.  Given the subjectivity of all of our likes and tastes, how could it be any other way?

That said, imagine the look of disdain that crossed my face when I unexpectedly came across a brownie recipe the other day entitled “The Best Fudge Brownies Ever”.

Oh really?

 

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Coconut Pecan Chocolate Chunk Bars

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‘Tis the season for neighborhood barbecues, block parties, and picnics.  If you are lucky enough to have a few of these events on your social calendar, and have been called on to bring a dessert to share, then have we got a recipe for you.  Light years better than any boxed brownie mix or slice and bake cookies you can find, and barely more work than either.

On the 4th of July, my family gathered not only to celebrate my sister’s 40th (again) birthday, but also the 70th birthdays of my mom and dad, as they each had hit this milestone earlier in the spring.  Suffice to say that a rather special shindig was in order.  Everyone rolled up their sleeves, and we put on quite a spread for family and friends.  There was grilled chicken, steak, burgers, and dogs.  There was a delicious fruit salad, a fab potato salad, a yummy composed green salad, and my mom’s famous baked beans and pasta fagioli.  We had sublime homemade hommus and crab dip, killer guacamole and chips, and a delicious artichoke dip.  There were even steamed lobsters with drawn butter, and a fabulously rich chocolate birthday cake to commemorate the day.  Ugh….I’m feeling full again just thinking about it all.

If I were a gamblin’ man, I would have guessed that the lobster, or maybe the steaks would have garnered the most praise from the crowd, but as good as they were, they couldn’t compete with the Coconut Pecan Chocolate Chunk Bars that I put out after lunch…..silly me.  They were, without question, the hit of the day.

OMG…WHERE DID YOU GET THESE THINGS?

YOU MADE THEM…..CUT IT OUT…..REALLY?

I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU’D BE WILLING TO SHARE THE RECIPE, WOULD YOU, WOULD YOU, HUH? 

I MEAN THESE ARE REALLY GOOD……ACTUALLY THEY ARE BETTER THAN REALLY GOOD (at this point, the speaker is starting to shake like a crack addict desperate for a fix).

OH SWEET JESUS…..THEY ARE FABULOUSLY, STUPENDOUSLY, AWESOMELY GOOD!  CAN I PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HAVE THE RECIPE?  PLEEEEEASE!!!

Jeez, Louise.

Alright…already.  I’ll make you a deal.  If you promise to check yourself into rehab on Monday, I’ll post the recipe to my blog.  😉

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M Cookies

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Imagine my surprise (and delight) as I slipped into the kitchen a few mornings ago and found my youngest step-daughter curled up in a comfy chair with a fist full of post-it tags in her right hand, and an open cookbook on her lap.  I asked her what she was up to, and she told me that she was “just looking for some fun stuff to cook.”

God be praised.

As I walked closer I could see that she hadn’t picked up one of the few “kid” oriented cookbooks that I had on the shelf, but rather the quite fabulous Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme .

Holy crap!

She had a wide grin on her face and that all too familiar glazed look in her eyes, which I recognized immediately as a sign of someone who had just been exposed to a healthy dose of really good food porn.  She quickly shoved the book in my face and rapidly started to flip the pages to show me all the recipes she wanted to try; the Triple Chocolate and Meringue Ice Cream Puffs, the Gâteau Saint-Honoré, and the Plaisir Sucré were her favorites….oh my.  To be sure, these are some of the more elaborate and complicated confections in the whole book. 

Merde!

As challenging as her choices were (especially for a 10 year old), I gotta say that I like the way she thinks.  She is definitely a ”go BIG, or go home” kinda girl.  No fussing about with a beginner’s cookbook for her, no sir.  If she was going to learn how to bake, then she wanted to have the world’s premiere pastry chef showing her the way…….ummm, that would be Pierre, not me.

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