Dead to the Last Drop (45 page)

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup all-purpose flour

¾ cup yellow cornmeal

Step 1—One-bowl mixing method
: Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a mixing bowl, whisk together egg, milk, sour cream, sugar, salt, and oil. When the mixture is well blended and the sour cream smoothly incorporated, whisk in the baking powder and soda. Finally, measure in the all-purpose flour and cornmeal.

Switch to a spoon or spatula and stir until all the dry ingredients are incorporated into a loose, lumpy batter, but do not overmix or you will develop the gluten in the flour and your corn bread will be tough instead of tender.

Step 2—Prepare the pan
: Prep a muffin pan by lightly coating the muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray. Put a little on the top, too, in case your muffins spread. Pour your batter into the cups, distributing the batter evenly.

Step 3—Bake
: In a preheated 350°F oven, bake muffins for 20 to 25 minutes. When a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with no wet batter clinging to it, remove from oven. Remove muffins from pan quickly or the bottoms may steam and become tough.

Clare’s Big, Chewy Café-Style Oatmeal Cookies

Wonderfully crispy around the edges with a delightfully chewy center, these big, round oatmeal cookies are bakery quality—Clare Cosi’s amazing version of the All-American oatmeal cookie. Two textures of oatmeal is her secret, along with a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, extra vanilla, and dark brown sugar. They’re extra popular with Clare’s coffeehouse customers, including Stan “Sticks” McGuire, who enjoyed a plate of these with a hot cup of joe as he sat down with Clare for an eye-opening discussion about her difficult chef.

2 dozen big, bakery-style cookies, 3-inches in diameter

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

½ cup brown sugar, packed (light or dark brown? See Clare’s note)*

½ cup white, granulated sugar

1 egg, whisked with fork

2 teaspoons vanilla

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup all-purpose flour

1½ cups old fashioned rolled oats (divided)

¾ cup raisins

*Brown sugar note
:
You can use either light or dark brown sugar for this recipe. Choose dark brown if you’d like a deeper, richer winter-spice flavor with a note of molasses. Choose light brown for a lighter colored cookie with a taste more like traditional oatmeal.

Step 1—Prepare dough:
Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and two sugars together until they resemble smooth and creamy peanut butter. Add the egg, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix well. Now add the salt and baking soda and blend until smooth. Stop the mixer. Measure in the flour and ½ cup of the rolled oats. Take the remaining 1 cup of oats, dump it into your food processor and pulse until it has the consistency of flour. Add this “oat flour” to the bowl, turn the mixer on low, and blend everything into a smooth dough. Make sure all of your flour is blended into the dough, but do not over-mix at this point. Finally, fold in the raisins.

Step 2—Chill and form:
Tuck plastic wrap around the dough in your bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes—this brief chilling allows the butter in the dough to harden up so you can properly form your cookies into balls. While waiting for the dough to chill, preheat your oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. To bake, tear off pieces of the chilled dough and roll lightly in your hands to form walnut-sized balls. Space out the balls on your baking sheet to allow room for plenty of spreading. Using your palm, press down gently on the dough balls, flattening them into a circle roughly 2-inches in diameter.

Step 3—Bake with care:
Bake in your preheated 350°F oven for 10 to 12 minutes. The edges of the cookies should appear baked with the centers still soft and under-baked. That’s okay. Take them out of the oven and allow them to finish cooking for 10 full minutes on the hot baking sheet.
(This method is the best for creating perfectly baked, wonderfully chewy cookies while preventing the bottoms from browning too much, which is the easiest way to ruin an otherwise delicious cookie.)
After 10 minutes on the hot pan, your big, beautiful oatmeal cookies are ready for you and your loved ones to eat with joy!

Clare’s Quick-Rise 30-Minute Dinner Rolls

In just 30 minutes they’re in the oven! Yes, this is the very recipe Clare baked up for Mike Quinn in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, she had an ulterior motive—snooping. But Quinn didn’t care. The tender, warm fluffy interior of these rolls with the crispy golden crust made the invasion of his privacy worth it—and, after all, he did leave his smartphone in the kitchen with his message box unlocked.

Makes 12 rolls

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water

⅓ cup vegetable oil

¼ cup white granulated sugar

4½ teaspoons RapidRise yeast (or any quick-rising yeast)

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or ½ teaspoon table salt)

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3½ cups bread flour (or all-purpose flour)

Egg wash—1 egg lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon of water (optional)

Step 1—Prepare yeast:
Preheat oven to 425°F. In a mixing bowl, stir together the warm water, oil, and sugar. Now whisk in the RapidRise yeast until dissolved and allow it to sit for 10 minutes.
Yeast note
: It’s important that you use yeast that has not passed the expiration date of its packaging. At the end of this “proofing” step, you should see evidence that the yeast is alive. Watch for a slight foaming of the liquid—this is the yeast eating the sugar and producing carbon dioxide bubbles. If you don’t see that, your yeast is dead. Start over with new yeast. In the meantime, prep a 9-by-13-inch metal pan by coating bottom and sides generouly with nonstick cooking spray.

Step 2—Make dough:
Using an electric mixer with a dough hook attachment, mix in the egg and flour with salt mixed in. Using floured hands, knead the sticky dough in the bowl for 3 minutes, until it appears smooth.

Step 3—Form rolls:
Break off pieces of dough. Work each lightly in your hand like Play-Doh, then form the rolls this way: Flatten the piece of dough into a little pancake. Press your thumbs into the center and draw up the edges to form a little purse. Pinch the purse closed, turn it upside down, and place the smoothly formed roll into your well-greased baking pan. Form a total of 12 rolls. For even baking, they should be about the same size.

Step 4—Rest the Rolls:
Allow the rolls to rest in the pan (out of the oven) for 15 minutes.

(Optional egg wash: This recipe will give you beautiful rolls with a slightly browned top. For a shiny, bakery-style browning on top, brush the rolls with the egg wash immediately before baking.)

Step 5—Bake:
To bake, place pan in preheated 425°F oven. Bake for 13 to 18 minutes, depending on your oven. Pull out a test roll and split it. If the roll is overly doughy, continue baking the rolls for another 5 minutes or so, but be careful not to burn the bottoms. Remember, once the rolls come out of the oven, they will continue to bake as they cool, especially if you leave them in the hot pan.

Clare Cosi’s Prime Rib Roast

Mike Quinn would have come home even earlier if he knew what was waiting for him in Clare Cosi’s kitchen—an herb-crusted prime rib roast. A rib roast is an amazing thing, delicious, tender, buttery. For beef lovers it’s hard to beat. Clare made it a day in advance of Mike’s homecoming to slice thin and serve with her American-style au jus. That savory recipe follows.

Serves 6

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

3 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped

5 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped

½ cup kosher or pink salt

3 tablespoons whole peppercorns (or fresh-ground black pepper)

¾ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 small prime rib roast (3 to 4 ribs), about 6 pounds

Step 1—Create a crust:
Preheat oven to 325°F. In a bowl (or food processor) mash together the garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt, peppercorns, and ½ cup olive oil to make a paste. Smear the paste generously over the entire roast. Lay the roast, fat side up, on a rack in a walled baking pan. Drizzle with the rest of the oil.

Step 2—Roast:
In the preheated oven, roast for 1½ to 2 hours—about 20 minutes per pound. When the internal temperature of the roast reaches 125°F, it is medium rare. (Prime rib should not be cooked beyond medium rare.) Remove the roast to a carving board, cover with foil, and allow it to rest for at least 20 minutes. During the resting process, the internal temperature of the meat will continue to rise, up to 10 degrees.

Step 3—Serve:
Strain the pan juices. Use the juice to serve with the meat, or to add extra flavor to your au jus (see the recipe below).

Clare’s Effortless Au Jus

Slow cooking of a prime rib roast renders a lot of juice, but is it really enough? And what do you do a day later, when the beef tastes even better, but you’ve run out of the succulent, beefy gravy? While a traditional French dip uses beef juices, Americans have their own style of “au jus,” and Clare is happy to share her version.

Yield: 2 cups

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 stalk celery, chopped

¼ cup red onion, chopped

1 teaspoon garlic, minced

1 tablespoon water (or white wine)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2½ cups beef broth

1 teaspoon Wondra flour

Step 1—Prep the veggies:
Coat the bottom of a medium saucepan with olive oil and heat. Chop celery, onions, and mince the garlic. Caramelize the onions in the olive oil. Add celery and cook for 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 2 more minutes.

Step 2—Simmer:
Deglaze the pot with the water or white wine, then add Worcestershire sauce and cook for another minute, stirring constantly. Add the beef broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Step 3—Strain and finish
: Pour hot broth through a strainer, then return it to the pot. Add the Wondra flour and simmer 5 minutes or until it thickens slightly.

Serving tip:
When reheating the au jus for a beef roast, add some of the meat drippings from your main dish to the pan for added flavor and richness.

Clare Cosi’s Cherry and Port–Glazed Pork Tenderloin, Wrapped in Bacon

The sweet-salty combination of the cherry-port glaze with the “barding” of the tenderloin (in strips of delicious bacon) is out of this world, which is where Clare Cosi sent Mike Quinn the night she served this dish to him, popping champagne at the dinner table to celebrate a victory over “Hopkins the Horrible.” The cherries are dried, which makes it easy to enjoy this dish through the fall and winter. As for the port, as Tito would tell you, a “tawny” or “vintage” port has been aged for several years and is delicious sipped after dinner. This recipe will work just fine with a much less expensive, younger, “ruby” port. You can even substitute another sweet, fortified wine, such as a sweet Marsala.

Serves 3 to 4

For the pork loin

1 to 3 pounds boneless pork loin roast

6 to 8 pieces of thin-sliced bacon

For the dry rub

½ teaspoon chili powder

⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon cumin

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

For the cherry-and-port glaze

1 tablespoon cornstarch

¼ cup chicken stock

2 tablespoons butter

⅓ cup chopped onion

Pinch of ground allspice

½ cup port or another sweet red wine

½ cup or so dried cherries

½ cup dark brown sugar, packed

Step 1—
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil. Rinse the tenderloin in cool water and pat dry. Let the meat reach room temperature (about 15 minutes). Meanwhile create your spice rub. In a small bowl, combine your dry rub ingredients. When the tenderloin is ready, use your hands to massage the flavors into the meat.

Step 2—
Now it’s time for “barding” the pork, the traditional term for wrapping something in fat before cooking. For this recipe, Clare is using bacon. Wrap the bacon around the rubbed tenderloin one piece at a time,
starting at the ends and meeting in the middle. Cover all of the pork with bacon. Place the tenderloin in the center of the foiled pan. Roasting times vary. Roast 45 to 50 minutes if your tenderloin is 2 pounds or under. 50 to 60 minutes if it is 2½ to 3 pounds.