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Tonight, Mr. Fritz and I took a meal over to the Rev. and Mrs. Glade, my final meal-after-a-new-baby-delivery for this baby season. I'm not expecting to cook for another new mom until February or so when Mr. and Mrs. Robertson have their little girl. This particular delivery was extra fun because we ended up getting to share the meal with the Glades, and during the ensuing hour we had quite a few good laughs, especially when Mrs. Glade recounted her days in her high school marching band and one particularly unfortunate showing during a band performance in Toronto. There are few things as priceless in this life as dear friends. (Especially funny ones!)In any case, I wanted to make something really special, so I decided on Braised Brisket with Cranberries as the main dish and Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes for the side dish. The brisket takes four hours to roast in the oven at 350, so it's a meal to make when you know you'll be around for the afternoon. It requires very little babysitting.
You begin by searing the brisket for 8-10 minutes in a heavy pot, then set it aside and make a bath for it to braise in -- saute a little flour, then add red wine, chicken broth, water, blackstrap molasses, a bay leaf and half a bag of cranberries to the pot. Once that's mixed together, you place the brisket back in the pot and set it in a 350 degree oven with the rack placed at the lowest possible point. Then you leave it alone for three hours. At the three hour mark, you add a one-pound bag of frozen pearl onions, and then at the 3:30 mark you add the rest of the cranberries. At the four hour mark, the brisket is done. But along the way, your kitchen will fill with the wonderful scent of the cranberries cooking and the beef roasting; perfect for a cold fall day! Even better: the end result was excellent. The brisket was incredibly tender and the cranberries and onions were lovely accompaniments. The liquids turned into a great gravy-like sauce and the whole dish together was fragrant and well-balanced. Definitely a keeper. 
For the mashed potatoes, you also need to plan ahead just a bit because it takes an hour to roast the garlic (recipe below). I really need to pick up a potato masher; I ended up once again using my pastry cutter to mash them, which is not optimal. My mom uses her stand mixer to mash potatoes, but it's too much of a hassle for me to pull mine out for this. (My mother's potatoes, I should add, are legendary in how amazing they are.) Anyway, the roasted garlic definitely added a nice edge to the standard potatoes I typically make. (Roasting the garlic also made me recall the time I went to a restaurant in San Francisco called The Stinking Rose - an entire restaurant dedicated to garlic!). In any case, the potatoes turned out very nicely and I'm glad I went to the trouble of roasting the garlic.
ROASTED-GARLIC MASHED POTATOES
Everyday Food Magazine, November 2008
Serves 8. Prep time: 15 minutes. Total time: 1+1/4 hour
2 heads garlic
1 tsp olive oil
3 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch cubes
Coarse ground salt and pepper
1 cup half and half
4 Tbs butter
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut off and discard top quarter of garlic heads. Drizzle garlic with oil; wrap in foil. Bake until tender, 1 hour. Squeeze out garlic cloves; discard skins.
Place potatoes in a large sauce pan and cover with cold water by 1 inch; season with salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until potatoes are easily pierced with a paring knife, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and return to pan. Heat over medium, stirring, until a thin starchy film covers bottom of pan. Remove from heat; add half and half, butter and garlic. Mash until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.
The very gracious Mr. and Mrs. Fleming invited us over for dinner last night and when I asked what I could bring, Mrs. Fleming suggested dessert. Since I'm not a baker (as previously noted), I was at a loss for what to make. Luckily, the December issue of Everyday Food arrived this week (I know, I seriously am obsessed) and on the cover was a luscious looking Cranberry Trifle. The trifle, a layered dessert with three elements (cranberry compote, store-bought pound cake and a creamy cream cheese whipped cream) comes together quickly and easily. First, you simmer cranberries, water, sugar and ginger for about 8 minutes, until the cranberries start to burst. Let that cool completely while you prepare a mixture of cream cheese, brown sugar, regular sugar, vanilla and heavy cream using a stand mixer. Then cut up the pound cake and begin the assembly process: first a layer of pound cake, then a layer of cranberry compote, then a layer of whipped topping, repeating the layering process two more times. 
A couple of notes: I used gingerbread pound cake instead of vanilla pound cake and the tasters all agreed that it was an upgrade. Other substitutions: light cream cheese for regular cream cheese and jarred pureed ginger for chopped fresh ginger. Also, I made only half the called for amount of cranberry compote and used only 12 ounces of cake, but made the full portion of whipped topping and it still made enough dessert to serve at least 8 people if not more. Using a trifle dish is a nice because you can see all of the layers through the glass. I have a really pretty trifle dish (thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Meyer!) but if you don't have one, any reasonably high-sided baking dish will do. Finally, I think it would work nicely with chocolate pound cake and cherries as well. Maybe I'll try that combination next!
CRANBERRY TRIFLE
Everyday Food Magazine, December 2008
Serves 12, Prep Time 35 Minutes, Total Time: 35 Minutes + Chilling
2 bags (12 oz each) cranberries, fresh or frozen
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 Tbs finely grated peeled fresh ginger
1 bar (8 oz) cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
2 homemade or store-bought all butter pound cakes (12 oz each), cut into 3/4-inch thick slices
Candied Orange Zest (below) for garnish (optional)
In a medium saucepan, combine cranberries, 2 cups granulated sugar and 2 cups water. Bring to a simmer over medium, cook until cranberries begin to burst, about 8 to 10 minutes. Let compote cool completely.
Make cream filling. Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, brown sugar, and vanilla on high until well combined. With mixer on medium, gradually add heavy cream; continue to beat until soft peaks form.
Arrange 1/3 of cake in a 3-quart serving dish. Spoon 1/3 of compote over cake; spread to sides of dish. Dollop 1/3 of cream filling over compote; spread to sides of dish. Repeat twice, ending with cream filling. Refrigerate at least 2 hours (or up to 1 day). Garnish with Candied Orange Zest if desired.
CANDIED ORANGE ZEST
In a medium sauce pan, bring 1/2 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup water to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar, Add zest of 1 orange (peeled into long strips with a vegetable peeler), simmer, swirling occasionally, until zest is tender, 8-10 minutes. Drain, and transfer to a plate. Dredge zest in sugar and thinly slice.
The title of this blog post will be amusing to those who know me, because the truth is, I don't really bake. Unlike my sisters -- who can bake cookies, cakes, fudge and more at what is basically a professional level -- I did not inherit my mom's baking gene. I don't have the patience for measuring things carefully and, well, I guess that's my main problem: I don't have the patience to measure things carefully, which is the key to baking success. Nevertheless, I feel like I ought to at least try to satisfy Mr. Fritz's active sweet tooth with something more than just his daily ration of two Entenmann's donuts. So, I decided to give this Everyday Food recipe for Cranberry Bread a try. It's a fairly simple recipe: mix up the dry ingredients (flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt) in one bowl and the wet ingredients (melted butter, one large egg, and some whole milk) in another. Add the wet to the dry, fold in a bag of fresh cranberries, pour into a buttered and floured loaf pan and bake for 350 for an hour and 15 minutes.
I will admit, the freewheeling cook in me surfaced briefly while I was pulling it together and I ended up modifying the recipe just a bit: I had some leftover light coconut milk from another recipe, so I subbed that for the whole milk. I thought it might cut some of the tartness of the cranberries, plus I just didn't want to waste it. Hopefully it will work similarly to regular milk. I guess when it comes down to it, you can take the cook out of the kitchen but you can't take the kitchen out of the cook. Or something like that. Verdict on my Frankenloaf? Very tasty! Maybe I should try this baking thing more often. Or perhaps I shouldn't push my luck...
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