Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m back!  See, that wasn’t so bad, all things considered.  Last night I baked for the first time in my new kitchen.  I wanted to make something that hadn’t been featured on the blog, but that I knew would make a large quantity, so the husband and I could both take them to work as a “thank you for putting up with our craziness this past week” kind of thing.  I happen to work in fundraising, and happened to close…on the last day of our fiscal year.  So it was a madhouse at work, but my office survived without me (I wear many hats, and one of them happens to be gift entry and database management), minus a few slightly panicked calls.

So as a thank you, I made them some of my favorite cookies.  Why I haven’t shared them yet on here is beyond me.  I discovered them long before the NYT chocolate chip cookies, and these just kick your average chocolate chip cookie experience up a notch or two.  They are filled with delicious things, like oats (good for you too!), chocolate chips, toasted hazelnuts, and toffee candy.  Now you won’t see me putting walnuts in any cookie or brownie on here, but for some reason the hazelnuts really spoke to me.  Maybe because I have an addiction to Nutella that started during the summer of 2000.

Today at work is also the start of our all staff filing days, as we just moved our files from a dungeon to the floor that our office is actually on.  And so there is a major backlog of things to be filed.  So these cookies are really working two fold, “thanks for putting up with us not being at work” and “thanks for filing so much stuff all at once.”

For some reason these cookies came out completely flat and slightly crispy when I baked them.  Normally they are fairly domed and less crispy.  I’m not sure if that is my new oven, or due to the fact that I used brand new baking soda and brand new baking powder.  I am going to have to do some investigating on this one and see what happens.  Regardless, they are still delicious.  They come from one of my Giada De Laurentis books (I can never remember which one has what in it), and it was a Giada-riffic dinner last night.

Above is a sneak peek of my new kitchen…please don’t mind the pile of stuff on the end of the island…we’re still unpacking and getting settled.  It will be a little while before we figure out where everything goes.  That’s the beauty of a loft, there is limited storage, so you have to get pretty creative sometimes.

We painted it grey, as it was bright red when we bought it.  I’m more of a cool colors sort of girl, as you will see in future photos of my bathroom and feature wall in the bedroom…

I also can’t help but share a photo that I snapped this morning of my amazing find of a chandelier.  It’s new, not old, but made to look old, and it certainly makes a statement.  Which is exactly what I wanted.  I’m on the hunt for a giant farm table to go under it, as the 50’s kitchen table that is there right now doesn’t quite work…and I want a giant table for entertaining purposes.

Alright, on to the recipe!

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 ounces English toffee candy (recommended: Heath or Skor bar), finely chopped
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, husked, and chopped
1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Line 2 heavy large baking sheets with parchment paper. Finely chop the oats in a food processor. Transfer the oats to a medium bowl. Mix in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and stir just until blended. Stir in the toffee, hazelnuts, and chocolate chips.

For each cookie, drop 1 rounded tablespoonful of dough onto sheet, spacing 1-inch apart (do not flatten dough). Bake until the cookies are golden (cookies will flatten slightly), about 15 minutes. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely. (The cookies can be prepared 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

Moving

For those of you who actually keep up with my blog, I promise I’m still alive and haven’t forgotten about you!  I am moving (my home, not my blog) tomorrow, so my kitchen has been in disarray for quite some time now.  As soon as the BIG move has been completed, I will share pictures of the NEW picky eatings kitchen, as well as possibly share pictures of the rest of the loft.

Stay tuned!

Chocohotpots

This post is about my anniversary dinner, which I know, occured over a week ago.  But it’s better late than never, right?  I’m glad we got that straightened out.  Instead of going out to our favorite nice restaurant in the city, Sel de la terre (best drinks and french fries, and the staff there is extremely nice, at least at the one on the harbor), we opted to stay home and cook.

One of the main reasons to stay home (not that staying home and enjoying one another’s company wasn’t enough), is because we are in the process of buying a loft!  Our very first place to call our own!  Well, our very first place we will own, as I like to call all our apartments our “own.”  And all our extra money, once we sign our lives away, will be going towards furniture.  I have been scouring craigslist, overstock, ebay, and will be going to my new favorite stores and flea markets to furnish the place.

It has actually always been my dream to live in a loft, and I’m really glad my husband was on the same page.  We’re moving to this fabulously old factory that was converted in 2004, and from the looks of it, there is a real community there.  There is a shared roofdeck, parking (!), and a gallery.  Hopefully that gallery will be just the push I need to start making art again.  We’ll see.  It’s a fabulous space with a fabulous kitchen, and it is perfect for entertaining, which we happen to love to do.  I grew up in an open floorplan, and this is taking it even further!  Not to mention there is laundry in our unit.  IN OUR UNIT!!!  I swear, sometimes it’s the little things.

We will be closing on the 30th of this month, and moving soon after that, so if you don’t hear so much from me…that’s why.  I am thinking of starting a spin off blog about decorating and design, and living in a totally different space, so keep an eye out for that in the not too distant future.  But now, back to what you came here for, dinner.

For dinner we had steak (more about that in a second), roasted potaoes (nice and crispy, just the way we like them), roasted green beans, and delicious rosemary bread (bought, not made).  For the steak, we go to Whole Foods and buy a really nice cut of meat, and then salt and pepper the heck out of it.  This time the husband used a wee bit too much salt (and kosher, to boot), but it was still pretty delicious.  Then we slap it on the grill, and that’s it!  No sauce, no nothing.  Just plain, simple, and delicious.

Now the dessert.  Oh, the dessert.  This is a recipe I found 2 winters ago, when I was scouring the internet for a delicious and easy dessert to make for Christmas at my in laws house (I don’t think they were technically my in laws yet at that point).  And I wanted it to be chocolate.  So on to the food network’s website I went, and looked through about a million different recipes.

This one caught my eye, and it’s a Nigella recipe, which often means easy and delicious.  Not pretentious, not always the most beautiful, but at least you know it’s going to taste pretty darn good.  And so I got all the ingredients, was gifted ramekins for Christmas, and after dinner everyone had drunk far too much wine to want any dessert.  This was actually Christmas Eve, so when we trekked to my parents house the next day, I ended up making these.  And they always get rave reviews.  Think somewhat molten chocolate cakes, but so much easier and confined to their own little ramekin.  I also like to top them with ice cream, it makes the whole experience that much better.

Chocohotpots (she actually calls them Chocohotopots, but I like my name better)

1 stick plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, with 60 percent cocoa solids (this time I accidentally used regular semi-sweet, and it was just fine)
2 eggs
3/4 cup superfine sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Special equipment: 4 (2/3 to 1-cup capacity) ramekins

Place a baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 400 degrees F.

Butter the ramekins with 1 tablespoon butter.

Either in a microwave or in a bowl suspended over a pan over simmering water, melt the dark chocolate and 1 stick butter, then set aside to cool a little.

In another bowl, mix the eggs with the sugar and flour with a hand whisk and beat in the cooled butter and chocolate mixture. Divide the mixture between the 4 buttered ramekins. Bake for about 20 minutes, by which time the tops will be cooked and cracked and the chocolate gooey underneath.

Place each ramekin on a small plate with a teaspoon and serve. Make sure to warn people that these desserts will be HOT!

One Year Ago Today…

On a sweltering June day…

…we tied the knot in the gorgeous city of Charleston.  It’s been an amazing year, and here’s to a million more!

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

I realize that I have been totally slacking yet again, work is crazy, and all that jazz.  Although the exciting news is that if all goes well (we have one final hurdle), the husband and I will be moving into a loft, a loft that we OWN.  Now I was never always totally interested in owning my own piece of property, be it a condo or a house (although around here you have to go far from the city to find a house that can actually be worth it), but my husband has always wanted to own.  He hates renting, and I just never wanted the commitment of owning.  But every time he would make his case, the fact that I could paint however I wanted, knock down walls (we won’t have any in our loft), and do WHATEVER I wanted to in the kitchen.  That was always an enticing idea.  You mean I could put in stainless steel countertops, and tons of cabinets, and get my dream fridge and stove?  Certainly not right after we move, but somewhere down the line.  So I caved to the peer pressure, and here we are, just steps from owning a condo.

I will have more updates on it as time goes on, and I apologize if design elements sneak their way into my blog…but hey, it is my blog, and I can do whatever I want to it…now on to the food.

A few weeks ago I was looking to try something new in the kitchen, and happened to be craving chicken.  After going through ALL of my cookbooks and finding nothing appealing, I turned to my reader.  I was looking through my starred items, and came across this beauty, which is chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, originally by the Barefoot Contessa, but adapted by Pam at For the Love of Cooking.

This recipe is easy (except it takes a while, smashing all that garlic), delicious, and best of all, since Pam jazzed it up, it has NO heavy cream or any of those other bad for you things that Ina likes to use.  Believe me, I love the Barefoot Contessa, but homegirl is not down with the lighter side of food.  And at some point, I am going to be on the beach, in a bathing suit, and I will leave my heavy cream for the ice cream that I love so much (I never said I was a healthy eater, did I?).

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic (yes really, 40!)

6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of any fat and in half (you don’t quite need as many, unless you are serving a crowd)
1-2 tbsp of olive oil
Dried thyme to taste
Sea salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste
40 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of butter
1 tbsp flour
1 2/3 cups of chicken broth
2 tbsp 2% milk (or more)
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Separate the cloves of garlic and peel.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place trimmed and halved chicken breast in a large zip lock bag. Pound the chicken breasts flat with a mallet until 1/2 inch thick (such a good stress killer!).   Season with sea salt, black pepper and thyme to taste.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. In batches, saute the chicken smooth side down first, until nicely browned, about 4 minutes. Flip the breasts and cook for 45 seconds then remove to a baking dish. Once all the chicken has been removed, add the garlic to the pot. Lower the heat and saute for 3-4 minutes, turning often; add the chicken stock, making sure to scrape all the brown goodies off the bottom of the pan. Season with sea salt, pepper and thyme if needed. Pour sauce over the chicken in the baking dish. Cover with a lid or tinfoil and bake for 20 minutes.

Once the chicken has baked, carefully remove the chicken and garlic cloves to a platter and cover with an aluminum foil tent to stay warm. Place the sauce in the large skillet that you cooked the meat in or a saucepan. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and milk with a little bit of the sauce. Once it’s thoroughly mixed, slowly whisk the flour mixture back into the rest of the sauce. Add the butter to the sauce, raise the heat and boil for 3 minutes or until it’s nice and thick. Taste and re-season if needed. Pour the sauce over the chicken, garnish with fresh chopped parsley and serve. Enjoy.

I served mine with egg noodles, and my husband had his the next day with rice, and both were very tasty (he doesn’t like egg noodles as much, since they’re too slippery).