Gifts from the heart, or at least from your own kitchen

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I decided this past Christmas that I was going to try my hand at homemade gifts. Now I certainly couldn’t post this before Christmas for fear that it might spoil the surprise for those receiving my homemade goods. But I was so pleased with how they turned out that I now will be giving them as hostess, birthday, cheer up or just because gifts. So I suppose this is the spoiler alert for any of my friends who plan on inviting me to a dinner party.

It started out with a simple idea.  I cut a basil salt recipe out of Food Network Magazine and it had been sitting in my stack of recipes for months, along with the kosher salt and sweet little glass salt shakers from Cost Plus collecting dust in my pantry. One Saturday when my basil plant was overflowing I just picked off all the leaves, threw them in the food processor with the salt and baked the mixture.  It came out the most amazing green color. It was electric.

Basil Salt fresh out of the oven

Basil Salt fresh out of the oven

I poured it into the jars, made my own labels, tied on an old-fashioned Christmas tag with twine and that was that.

Basil Salt Jars by Jules

Basil Salt Jars by Jules

BASIL SALT

adapted from Food Network Magazine

Pulse ½ cup kosher salt with 1 cup packed fresh basil leaves in a food processor.  Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 225 degrees F until dry, about 45 minutes, tossing halfway through. Let cool and pulse again for a fine powder.  I skipped the second pulse because I liked the coarse grainy look and feel.

I decided my next food gift was going to be my sister’s delicious red onion marmalade.  It is always a favorite and now that I know how to can, I was able to make several to take with us to London for Christmas.

Double the recipe if you can, but you will need a very large sauté pan.  This batch only produced 3 full jars (plus some extra as a nice treat with aged gouda that night)

Red Onion Marmalade Label

Click the label for the recipe on my sister’s blog

The last gift I made was Jamie’s Epic Hot Chocolate.  As I might have mentioned before, I am a huge fan of Jamie Oliver and spent the months leading up to Christmas watching all of his past Channel 4 Christmas specials over and over.  He makes this incredibly rich hot chocolate and griddle pan waffles outside on a cold winter’s day over an open fire.  It was the perfect gift for my husband’s best friend’s three girls, or young ladies as I should now call them.  The only thing I didn’t add was the malt powder.  I couldn’t find it anywhere here in Los Angeles.

The best part of this gift was that I had been racking my brain to come up with a nice gift for my son’s preschool teachers and this was it. It was perfect because my son could help make it, which I think makes it more special.

Ollie making epic hot chocolate
A gift for his preschool teachers
Apparently the tongue is key to not spilling

JAMIE’S EPIC HOT CHOCOLATE

adapted from “Jamie’s Christmas With Bells On”

 Ingredients

4 heaped tbsp. cocoa powder

3 heaped tbsp. powdered sugar

2 heaped tbsp. of malt powder (optional)

2 heaped tbsp. corn flower

1 pinch sea salt

1 pinch cinnamon

3.5 – 4 oz. quality dark chocolate (70%), finely grated (plus a little extra coarsely grated to add to the top)

Preparation

Add the above ingredients (except the coarsely grated chocolate) into a large jar and shake to mix up.  Once mixed, spoon into gift jars and add a sprinkle of the coarsely grated chocolate on top.

Use 5 heaped tbsp. to 1 pint steaming milk.

And the Oscar goes to…

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After Christmas season, I can easily say, hands down, my next favorite season is Oscar season. Not just for the reasons one might think. Yes, I love seeing what all the stars are wearing, making fun of the host and the sometimes inebriated starlets and getting nervous as they open that envelope to announce the winner as if I had some personal stake in it but it is actually for the food. From that first year in my Santa Monica apartment when I took four baguettes, hollowed them out and laid them end to end across my table filled with spinach dip for “The Green Mile”, I knew my food pun destiny.

Over the years it has evolved, mainly due to the introduction (to me at least) of Photoshop in 2006.  Prior to that I would type up signs that read Multiple Layered Personality Dip for “A Beautiful Mind” or Crouching Tiger Prawns with Hidden Dragon Sauce.  I think you can all guess the movie.

However, when I started turning the movie posters into menu boards, it became serious business. I will admit that I don’t always come up with all the menu items, my regular Oscar party girls and my husband help out with ideas. But I always do the posters.  Here is a slideshow of a few favorites from previous years.

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We always have some pretty fun ideas and I think this year was no exception.  Here is a sampling of our menu.

Almond Kalenina  – kale, date, parmesan and almond salad

Beets of the Southern Wild – arugula and beet salad

D’Mango – a delicious mango cocktail as well as a Coeur a la Crème with mango chutney

Escargot – while I didn’t serve some Iranian snail dish, I did make spinach and cheese pinwheels in the shape of a snail

King’s Toast Points Bruschetta – self explanatory

Hitchcrock starring Artichoke Hopkins & Helen Mozzarella – artichoke mozzarella dip in a crockpot

Life of Pie – while I admit, this was an easy one to come up with along with Zero Dark Chocolate, my friend Jenny made an amazing samosa pie in keeping with the theme of the movie

The Schezwan  – Sweet and spicy schezwan turkey meatballs.  I will not describe the form my friend Vickie chose to shape them since she wanted to keep with the theme of this movie as well, but considering “The Sessions” was about a sex surrogate I think you all get the picture.

Snow White Cupcakes and the Bundtman – White cupcakes from Sprinkles and a homemade caramel bundt cake.

D’Mango
Escargot
Wreck It Roquefort
Almond Kalenina
Beets of the Southern Wild
Hitchcrock
Kings Toast Points
Life of Pie – The Pastry of a Lifetime
The Mushroom
The Schezwan
Snow White Cupcakes & the Bundtsman
Zero Dark Chocolate

And of course, every year we must have our wine section:

Walk the Vine
There Will Be Wine
District Vine
Wine Flight

Wreck it Roquefort:  When The Game Is Over, The Fig Begins.  Coming to Crackers in 3D

or

Fig & Blue Cheese Savouries

Click the above link for the recipe from Epicurious from The Food 52 Cookbook Volume 2 (and make sure to visit Food52 as well.  It is one of my favorite culinary websites)

Fig & Blue Cheese Savouries

A few suggestions for the recipe:

For step 3, I didn’t have a small enough cutter so I cleaned out an old prescription bottle and used that.  It worked perfectly.

For step 4, I  highly suggest using a pastry bag with a small round tip for filling if you have one.  Trying to scoop out the fig jam from a ¼ teaspoon was really difficult.

So while the menus and puns change over the years, one thing always stays the same: George Clooney is hot, and so are these … (insert just-from-the-oven item here)

George Clooney Is Hot
George Clooney Is Hot
George Clooney Is Hot

 

A Celebration of Family, Friends and Food

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So I figured it was time to start my own blog.  I am grateful to my sister for her letting me hijack her blog for the last few months, but it is time to step out on my own. I chose the name Sundays at Lark because it has special meaning. My husband and I call our home Lark, and our goal has always been to host a big open house for all our family and friends on Sundays. They can wander in and out as their schedules suit them and there will always be something good cooking, or we will try new recipes together. The wine will be flowing and we can relax out on our decks. My three year old will be running around like a mad man, asking anyone who passes by to come hunt for dinosaurs or dig with his trucks in the yard. We haven’t yet made this happen every Sunday, but I am proud of the fact our home is where my friends like to congregate, whether it be for a Friday night “Downton” marathon or a random Tuesday night of wine drinking and deep conversation or a Saturday afternoon when someone stops by to raid our enormous avocado tree or pick greens from our garden.

I am inspired every day by the online food community.  By the beautiful photos and stories and by the recipes that I know have not only been tested but eaten and enjoyed.  I am excited to be joining this world – to share the pleasure of discovering and trying new recipes, not to mention creating recipes of my own, especially with ingredients from my garden. As I become a part of this online conversation, I hope that my own photographs and meals will inspire you, just as yours have inspired me.

View from Lark at sunrise

View from Lark at sunrise