Comfort Foods and Indulgences

My friend Pat Loud says that chocolate is ALWAYS the best choice for dessert at a dinner party.  What I love about Pots de Crème is that it can be made ahead (up to 3 days) and it packs a great chocolate punch.  The satiny texture takes “chocolate pudding” to a whole new decadent level. Many recipes require a baking the dishes in a hot water bath, but this recipe is much simpler and uses a cooked custard (crème anglaise) method which is poured over the bittersweet chocolate.

You can cut the recipe in half to serve 4 or increase as needed depending on how many you are serving. Small porcelain dishes or espresso cups make great serving dishes and because it’s so rich, a small amount goes a long way. Although I like to serve it with a small butter waffle cookie and my recently discovered Yoku Moku cookies from Japan (http://www.yokumoku.com), a simple dollop of cream and some chocolate shavings will deliver beautiful dessert for any occasion.

From the L.A. Times

In Italy's Piedmont region, where polenta may be better loved than anywhere else on Earth, the cornmeal mush is a food of the fall. When the air turns crisp with the first frost and people await the arrival of snow, housewives labor over their cooking pots, stirring, stirring as coarse meal slurried in water gradually thickens and becomes sticky and delicious. To serve, it's poured out onto a wooden board in a rich golden puddle like a harvest moon.

Cesare Pavese wrote about it in "The Moon and the Bonfires," a nostalgic novel about a Piedmontese expatriate's return home: "These are the best days of the year. Picking grapes, stripping vines, squeezing the fruit, are no kind of work; the heat has gone and it's not cold yet; under a few light clouds you eat rabbit with your polenta and go after mushrooms."

We do things differently in Southern California. In the first place, fall can be even hotter than summer. Here polenta belongs to these damp chilly days of winter.

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Remember I told you there was going to be lots of leftover ham from the gorgeous Carlton Farms Bone-In, Whole Holiday Ham we made yesterday? Well, I was right. And luckily the possibilities are endless when it comes to using using up leftover ham.

If I were you, I would start with making these Ham and Havarti Sliders on Parmesan-Butter Topped Pretzel Buns. There are NO words to describe how good these turned out. Do you see that cheese? It's epic.

You see, I have a new vice lately. It happens to be THIS exact cheese. I have been getting my stash at Costco. Every time I shop, I come home with more and more packages to get me through until the next Costco trip. The cheese has a decent shelf life but it's not even an issue since we are eating it faster than we can replace it. If you have never had Havarti, it is the creamiest, butteriest, most superior melty cheese you could imagine. The fact that I can now get it in deli slices has turned me into a Havarti fanatic. It is by far the ultimate grilled cheese-cheese. Does that make sense?

I knew this leftover ham and Havarti cheese were going to marry and bring peace and love into my kitchen. I was right. These little sliders were incredible. I have pure love for this cheese and I hope you can find some soon.

Or the Uncondensed Title: Green Chile, Parmesan and Black Pepper Buttermilk Biscuits with Chorizo & Chipotle Gravy. Whew!

While I can overeat with the best of them, a Hearty Breakfast Boy I am not. It slows me down and makes me feel sluggish which is why I usually stick to a banana and some peanut butter. Sometimes oatmeal, occasionally an omelette.

These rules change if we’re talking brunch, though. My little peckish early morning hunger turns into a full-fledged giant appetite after I’ve been up for a few hours. Or automatically after 10am.

This recipe is something Adam came up with last Sunday, the first lazy day we’ve had together in quite some time. He just returned from 17 days in Wisconsin, working on a project while freezing his ass off. He had an idea for changing up his biscuits and gravy to which I replied “Oh gosh, I’m not sure about that. I think you’ll have to make it so I can try it.”  Of course I was sure about it, you can’t really mess up biscuits and gravy, can you?