blog — molly yeh

dairy

roasted grapes with sweet labneh

in

one of these days i am going to be one of those people who, before leaving for a long trip, cleans out the fridge, washes the dishes, does laundry, and stocks the freezer with 12 individually portioned lasagnas for eggboy and one for me for the night that i return. 

today is not that day.

look at this pile of laundry.

what's all of this stuff on my desk.

somebody send pizza.

ah!!

i am back from new york and l.a. i think this was the longest amount of time that i've spent in a city since i became a country bumpkin and toward the end of my trip i *almost* had a very real jazz freakout because wowwwww there are so many people in such a small space, but i was caught by a bed of tacos and brioche. 

in a few days i'll get to the part where i tell you all about eggboy's first meeting with an eggslut (hold your jokes!), but first i must recover from what all just happened. you know, eat vegetables, wash underpants. 

one great mess that i returned home to, however, was the giant stack of cookbooks that i received right before i left. among them was tara's book. holy cow is it beautiful! the words are beautiful, the recipes are beautiful, and where the beauty hits me hardest is the photos. they're perfect. they're not flashy or crowded, and they accomplish this wild task of showing how food should look in a very confident way. a way that i can't stop admiring.

there are so many recipes in here that i can't wait to make, like the plum macaroon cake, fig toasts with buttered honey, five-spice steak, roasted peaches with glazed sesame oats... i could go on and on. the first recipe i made was the roasted grapes with sweet labneh, because it's grape season (yay!) and you know i have a serious thing for labneh.

roasted grapes with sweet labneh

serves 4-6

adapted from tara o'brady's seven spoons

ingredients

labneh:

zest from 1/2 orange

1/3 c demerara sugar, plus more for sprinkling

2 1/2 c labneh*

*if you make your own, layer the labneh with sugar during its initial straining process

grapes:

1 tb honey

2 tb grappa

1 lb seedless california table grapes

shortbread, to serve

clues

preheat oven to 375f.

to make the labneh, rub the orange zest into the demerara sugar and fold it into the labneh. spread the labneh in ripples on an ovenproof plate. sprinkle with more demerara. 

to make the grapes, mix the honey with the grappa in a large bowl. snip the grapes into clusters and toss them in the mixture. transfer them to a roasting pan with a shallow rim. 

bake the grapes and labneh until the grapes start to shrivel and the labneh is set and golden. begin checking for doneness at 12 minutes. you can either place the grapes and their juices on top of the labneh and then top with crushed shortbread, or you can layer everything into individual ramekins or glasses for a little parfait situation. (for the parfaits in these photos, i used unbaked labneh so that it would be easier to get a smooth layer, but both options taste great.)

enjoy!

-yeh!

thank you so much to grapes from california for sponsoring this post!

mini ricotta + parmesan cheesecakes

in , , ,

but molly, don't you hate cheesecake?

hated. i hated cheesecake. i used to love it, and then i overdosed on it by way of those little individually wrapped cheesecake bites that were big in the 90s, and then i didn't eat it again until 2010 when jeff forced a bite of ricotta cheesecake on me. it was fluffy and not at all tangy like the cream cheese cheesecakes of my youth. it blew my mind, ohmygod it was so good.

and then what happened?

i went back to hating it because baking cheesecake at the town bakery was a real bitch. it required a lot of steps, a lot of bowls, a lot of patience that i didn't yet have, and it wasn't as fun to decorate as the other cakes. (no offense to the cheesecake at the town bakery, people go gaga over it.)

but this cheesecake requires some patience, no?

it does, kind of. but i understand it now. i understand that in order to avoid cracks in a cheesecake, you need to cool it down gradually. you can't just take it out of the oven and wham-bam flip it onto a cooling rack. you have to caress it out of the oven, gently do this, gently do that, sing it a song, and then let it chill. but (!!) because these cheesecakes are miniature, all of that cooling down business is sped up, and if you want to eat one before the whole process has completed, you can and no one will notice because it's not like you have to take a slice out of one big cake. also (!!!!!!!) only one bowl is required. one!

why now? 

shavuot is coming! and on shavuot, we eat dairy.

why is this cheesecake different from all the other cheesecakes?

i follow this stranger on social media who recently made a mention of a *parmesan* cheesecake that he had in barcelona and it was so umami-y and good. that inspired me to add parmesan to my long-time-coming foray into ricotta cheesecake. i don't remember the stranger's name or his handle. (if you're reading this, barcelona cheesecake man, thank you!!) additionally, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think that authentic italian ricotta cheesecakes normally have a crust. but crust! it's my favorite part. so i added one, and it takes up almost a third of the entire cake, a ratio that i am ok with. 

describe this cheesecake in 19 words.

fluffy, creamy, light, slightly sweet, cute, a good beginner's cheesecake, lemony, polite, and with a subtle aftertaste of parmesan. 

thank you.

thank you!

mini ricotta + parmesan cheesecakes

makes 22 cheesecakes

ingredients

crust:

18 large rectangles (that is, 36 squares, or 2 full  pouches, or just under 10 oz) of graham crackers

a good pinch of kosher salt

10 tb unsalted butter, melted

filling:

1/4 c flour

1 c sugar

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 c shredded parmesan

30 oz whole milk ricotta

zest of one lemon

juice of 1/2 lemon (or of a whole lemon, if you like it extra lemony)

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

4 large eggs

assembly:

1 c jam

 

clues

preheat oven to 375 f. line 22 cupcake tins with paper liners, grease them, and set them aside.

crust:

in a food processor, process the living daylights out of your graham crackers. add the salt and process a little more. we want a nice fine crumb. with the processor running, drizzle in the melted butter and process for a few seconds until the mixture clumps together. spoon the mixture into your cupcake tins (roughly two tablespoons of the mixture per tin) and then use a glass or spoon to press it down firmly and evenly. if the mixture is sticking to your glass or spoon, spray it with a little cooking spray. 

set the cupcake tins in the fridge while you make the filling.

filling:

to make the filling, you're gonna use your food processor again. don't worry about cleaning it out, it just has butter and graham cracker residue in it and that is ok.

add the flour, sugar, salt, and parmesan, and pulse it a few times to combine everything and break up the parmesan. add the ricotta, lemon zest, lemon juice, and extracts, and process it until smooth. two minutes-ish.

with the processor running, add the eggs one at a time, processing a bit after each one.

spoon the mixture into your cupcake tins. it can come up pretty high, up to about 1/4-inch from the top of the tin. bake for 20 minutes, until the outer edges are set but the centers are still a little jiggly. turn the oven off, open it about halfway, and let them be for about 45 minutes. remove them from the oven and let them cool completely at room temperature. chill them for an hour or two, or overnight. 

spoon on your jam.

enjoy!

these will keep in the fridge for up to a week.

-yeh!