I recently received two lovely food samples – olive oil from Cobram Estate and blood oranges from Limoneira. While I don’t always end up using samples for recipes, the combination of the two was inspiring. Particularly after coming home from Portugal, where olive oil and oranges are often used together in sweets, I knew I wanted to bake something. I decided they were destined for a pound cake.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not my most original idea. A quick Google or Pinterest search for blood orange and olive oil cake will reveal dozens of beautiful photos. Some cakes are simple, others are glazed with a lovely pink frosting, and others have paper-thin slices of oranges baked on top. They were all so pretty that I couldn’t resist adding my own version to the mix.

Zesting oranges and rubbing orange zest into sugar should be a winter therapy treatment. The smell is an instant mood lifter, and takes me back to sunnier, warmer days. Like the morning we spent eating tangerines straight from the trees in a sunny courtyard in Portugal. Or the afternoon we spent at a plum blossom festival in Odawara, buying sacks of fresh clementines from every other house we passed. One day we’ll live somewhere where it’s warm enough to grow oranges, where it doesn’t snow in March. Until then, we’ll have to rely on the scent of fresh oranges to trigger our happiest memories.

This cake was a lovely surprise, gently sweet and tender. Both the orange and olive oil are subtle but the flavors are distinctly present. The pieces of blood orange interspersed throughout the cake add a pop of juicy sweetness and keep the cake moist. It’s always a sign of a good recipe when I immediately begin running through variations for next time – meyer lemon, olive oil, and rosemary? Grapefruit and star anise? This one will be a staple.

Disclosure: I used olive oil and blood orange samples provided free of charge by Cobram Estate and Limoneira to create this recipe, but I was not otherwise compensated. As usual, all opinions are my own!

Blood Orange and Olive Oil Pound Cake

Recipe adapted from Melissa Clark via the New York Times.

• 4 blood oranges (3 for cake and one for glaze/garnish)
• 3/4 cup of sugar, plus more for candying oranges
• 1/3 cup of buttermilk
• 3 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp orange oil (optional)
• 2/3 cup high quality extra-virgin olive oil
• 2/3 cup of powdered sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9×5 inch loaf pan with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Grate the zest from two of the blood oranges into a large bowl. Add the sugar to the bowl and use your fingers to mix the zest into the sugar. Cut one of the zested oranges in half and squeeze the juice into a liquid measuring cup – you should have about 1/3 cup of juice. Add the buttermilk to the measuring cup so that you have 2/3 cup of liquid in total. Whisk juice and buttermilk together, then pour the mixture into the sugar. Whisk until evenly combined. Add the eggs to the bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until no lumps remain. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir together until just combined. Stir in the orange oil, if using. Now add the olive oil to the batter a little bit at a time, using a spatula to fold the oil into the batter. Repeat until all of the olive oil is evenly incorporated. Set batter aside.
4. Using two of your remaining oranges (the one you zested and one of the others), cut orange segments into supremes. Do this by cutting the peel and white pith off of the outside of the oranges, then use a paring knife to carefully separate the orange flesh from the translucent membrane of each segment. If necessary, break the orange supremes into pieces that are about 1/4 inch big. Once you have supremed both the oranges, add the orange supreme pieces to the batter. Fold a few times just to incorporate the oranges into the batter.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan, using a spatula to distribute the batter around the pan if necessary. Bake the cake for 55 minutes, until golden on top and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then lift out by the parchment paper and cool completely on a cooling rack.
6. To make the glaze, cut the last blood orange in half. Squeeze the juice from one half of the orange into a small bowl. Place the confectioner’s sugar into a small bowl and whisk until it is free of lumps. Whisk in the blood orange juice a little at a time until the glaze drips thickly from the whisk when lifted out of the bowl. Cut the other half of the orange into paper thin slices. Pour the glaze evenly over the top of the cooled cake, letting it drip down the sides onto the parchment paper. If desired, candy the orange slices according to this method – this will make the orange slices tender enough to eat in addition to a pretty garnish. Arrange the orange slices on the top of the glaze and serve.

The post Blood Orange and Olive Oil Pound Cake appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

People ask me all the time if I like to travel. I think the answer is supposed to be, “yes, I love it!” but honestly it’s a hard question for me to answer. There are parts I love – meeting and working with people from all over the world, spending hours wandering through a city that’s hundreds of years old, the food, experiencing more climates and geographies than I ever thought I would, and there’s even a small part of me that loves the glamour of “jetsetting,” of being handed a glass of champagne when I sit down and watching my passport fill up with stamps. Importantly, I also love my actual job, the reason I travel so much.

But there are also parts of travel that I hate – packing and unpacking, something that even with hours of practice still stresses me out. Airports, and canceled flights, and planes that catch on fire while you sit on the tarmac. The unavoidable low-level anxiety that accrues before any trip. Being perpetually tired, because days on the road start early with breakfast with our team and end late with long work dinners. The up and down, here and there frenzy of visiting two or more countries each month. Being always on. The constant tension between taking the weekend to explore whatever country I am in and going home to decompress and spend time with Trevor. The chaos of packing everything else I need to get done at home into the few days I have between trips. Mostly, I hate being gone, away, not at home. For me, this is less about the physical aspect of being in my house, although that’s important too, and more about being away from Trevor, my family, and my friends.

This weekend, though, I am home, and I am loving it. I am home and it is thrillingly sunny, the birds are chirping, and we slept with the windows open just a crack. I puttered about in the garden, planting flowers of every shade in our increasingly whimsical border garden, a grand experiment in color. I sat on the porch and drank pink lemonade and sunburned my legs because it’s shorts weather! And I made these biscuits, with ramps, because ramps are available now (and only now) and I am home now. These biscuits made the house smell incredible, and they are flaky and buttery and just cheesy enough. I had two of them, spread thickly with ramp butter, for dinner, along with half a bottle of rosé. It’s nice to be home.

Like what you just read? Subscribe to Katie at the Kitchen Door in the box on the right, on Feedly or Bloglovin‘, or follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks for reading!

Ramp, Bacon, and Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits

Recipe adapted from Serious Eats. Makes 10-12 biscuits.

• 3 pieces bacon
• 4-6 fresh ramps, thoroughly washed. roots trimmed and discarded, and white and green parts of ramp thinly sliced
• 2 c. all-purpose flour
•  1 TBS baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 stick butter, frozen, plus 2 TBS melted butter for brushing biscuits
• 1 c. buttermilk, cold
• 4 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside
2. Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until crispy and brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Remove the bacon to a paper-towel lined plate and lower the heat to low. Add the sliced ramp whites and greens to the bacon grease and saute for 60 seconds, then use tongs or a slotted spoon to transfer the ramps to the plate with the bacon. Set plate aside; remove the pan from the heat and let cool.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt until evenly combined. Use a box grater to grate the frozen butter into the flour mixture, then use your hands to quickly toss the grated butter with the flour so that the flour fully coats the butter. Use your fingers to break up any large chunks of butter so that the entire mixture is coarse. Pour the cold buttermilk into the flour-butter mixture, and use a fork to gently mix the dough until it is shaggy and damp.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and use a rolling pin to roll it into a 12 inch by 12 inch square, about 1 inch thick. Sprinkle the grated cheddar cheese and ramps over the top of the dough. Finely chop or crumble the cooked bacon and sprinkle over the top of the dough, pressing the bacon bits in slightly. Fold the dough like you would fold a letter – fold the left third of the dough over the middle then fold the right third of the dough over the first two thirds, making a stack of three layers. Repeat this motion from top to bottom, so you have a small square. Gently roll the dough back out into a 12 inch by 12 inch square. Use a biscuit cutter or glass to cut 3-inch rounds out of the dough, re-rolling or hand-forming any scraps into additional biscuits. Place the biscuits on the baking sheet and brush with the melted butter. Bake until golden brown, about 15-17 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Best served warm. Store any leftovers in the fridge.

The post Ramp, Bacon, and Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

The first thing I did with our strawberries was make jam. I know that for many people, jam is sort of a last resort thing, something they turn to when they’ve run out of ideas and their fruit is on its last legs. But I’ve been dreaming about filling my pantry with jars of strawberry jam, made from our very own strawberries, since the middle of winter, so for me getting a batch of jam on the shelves was my first priority. Canning still makes me a little nervous, but with every batch of preserving I get a bit more confident. This time around, I veered ever so slightly from the recipe I was using (Paul Virant’s Strawberry Pinot Noir Jam recipe from The Preservation Kitchen), adding a little bit more sugar (which, from what I understand, is basically always safe to do), and a whole vanilla bean. The resulting jam is sweet but not saccharine, loose but not runny, and very elegant. I only wish 2 pounds of strawberries made more than 3 little pint jars! It’s going to be torture to wait until fall to open the others, even though I know I’ll appreciate them much more when the prospect of meals based mainly on kale and sweet potatoes starts looming.

Of course, as delicious as jam is out of the jar, it’s still a condiment, and you typically need to serve it on something. As I waited for my canning jars to seal, my mind wandered off somewhere along the lines of “If you give a moose a muffin…” until it settled on black pepper buttermilk biscuits as the most appropriate companion for my strawberry pinot jam. Upon comparing a number of different biscuit recipes, I determined that the basic, accepted buttermilk biscuit recipe uses approximately the following ratio: 2 cups flour + 2 tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp baking soda + 1 stick butter + 1 c. buttermilk, with a bit of variation from author to author. I followed this general guideline, used the frozen grated butter trick and added a few hefty teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper, and the resulting biscuits nearly stole the show from my poor jam. But really, they’re best together – cold and sweet strawberry jam filling in the nooks and crannies of hot and flaky buttery biscuits. And if for some strange reason you get tired of that combo, my next recommendation is to use these biscuits as a vehicle for bacon-egg-avocado sandwiches, with vanilla ice cream and strawberry jam for dessert, of course. Really, you can’t go wrong.

Like what you just read? Subscribe to Katie at the Kitchen Door on Feedly or Bloglovin‘, or follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or Google+. Thanks for reading!

Strawberry, Pinot Noir, and Vanilla Jam

Adapted from The Preservation Kitchen. Makes 3 half-pint jars.

• 2 lbs fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered
• 1 1/4 c. plus 2 TBS sugar
• 1/2 (750ml) bottle of Pinot Noir
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 vanilla bean

1. In a wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the strawberries, sugar, wine and lemon juice. Split the vanilla bean down the middle, scraping the seeds into the berry mixture, then adding the bean pod. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat slightly and simmer for 10 minutes, until the sugar is dissolved and the strawberries have released some of their juices. Cool to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate overnight or for up to 3 days to allow the berries to continue macerating.
2. On the day you will can the jam, fill a large pot or canner with water and bring to a simmer. Scald 4 half-pint jars in the hot water to sterilize, leaving them there and a gentle simmer until you are ready to can. Soak your lids and rings in hot water to soften the seals, and sterilize your other equipment.
3. Strain the juices from the berries into a large pot, reserving the fruit on the side. Place the juices over medium high heat and cook until they have reduced by half and have reached a temperature of 215°F, about 25 minutes. Add the fruit back to the juices and continue to cook, skimming any foam off the surface with a ladle, until the mixture has reached 212°F, another 15-20 minutes. If you don’t have a thermometer, test the consistency of a jam by dropping a few drops of liquid on a frozen plate – if the chilled liquid gels, then your jam is ready.
4. Drain the hot water from your jars, and place the hot jars on the counter. Use a funnel to fill the hot jars with the hot jam, leaving a 1/2 inch space between the top of the jam and the rim of the jar. Wipe the rim with a clean paper towel, then place the lids on the jars, and screw the rings on until snug but not tight. Use canning tongs to transfer the jars back into the simmering water, increase the heat to a boil, then boil the jars for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the jars in the water for a few minutes, then remove the jars from the water and let cool completely. Listen for a pop as you remove the jars from the water – that indicates a seal has properly been formed. Note: Do not process any jars that are only partially full – it is only safe to process full jars. Any partially full jars should be stored in the fridge and eaten within a few weeks.

Black Pepper Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 12-15 biscuits.

• 2 c. AP flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 stick salted butter, frozen
• 1 c. cold buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and pepper. Grate frozen butter over the coarse holes of a box grater, then add the grated butter to the flour mixture. Use your fingers to gently toss the grated butter with the flour, fully coating the butter.
2. Pour the buttermilk into the flour mixture, and use a fork to gently mix them together, just until the dough is moistened. Don’t overmix. Lightly flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Knead the dough 2-3 times, just until it comes together, then flatten into a disk that is 1/2 an inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter (about 2-inches in diameter) to cut out biscuits, pressing the scraps together when you’ve run out of room to create a smaller disk. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
3. Chill the biscuits in the fridge for 20 minutes, then transfer to the preheated oven. Bake until puffed and golden brown on the top and sides, about 15-18 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

The post Ingredient of the Week: Strawberries // Black Pepper Buttermilk Biscuits with Strawberry Pinot Noir Jam appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

March is a funny month.  It can be fickle, and torture you with day after day of cold gray rain.  Or it can be lovely, full of surprisingly warm days and sunshine that feels like a blessing on bare skin after so many months bundled up.  Daylight savings brings an extra hour of light to the evenings, tempting us outside after work, but the tradeoff of returning to dark mornings can making getting out of bed a struggle.

March is mainly a month of waiting, and of preparation.  We sense the arrival of spring on the horizon, and begin to shed our winter dust – sweaters get put in trunks, windows get opened, closets are cleaned out.  Spring cleaning is not just a saying, it’s something we feel the urge to do – to get our affairs in order and be ready to start fresh in the new season.  Even in religions, March is typically a time of preparation – the season of Lent, when Catholics prepare for the resurrection, almost always occurs in March.  Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, also falls in March, and celebrates the coming of spring and the departure of winter.

Waiting, preparation, cleaning – to me this all calls for simplicity, including in our food.  Of course, I think there’s something to be said for simple food at pretty much anytime of the year, but the first batches of tender, green, spring produce (peas! asparagus! fava beans!) are worth showcasing on their own, simply prepared, just because they are such a radical and welcome departure from the heavy, starchy, foods that carry us through winter.  As I was sorting through my cookbooks this week, it seemed to me particularly appropriate to focus my March cooking on recipes from Rozanne Gold’s Radically Simple, a book packed with stunningly photographed recipes, most of which have fewer than 10 ingredients.  It truly lives up to it’s title.  I’ll be sharing a few more recipes from this book later this month, but I thought the book was very much in line with what the people over at Greatist are trying to accomplish – simple, healthful recipes that are still packed with flavor – so I wanted to choose this week’s collaboration recipe from it.  I settled on this pea and wasabi soup because, well, because I love pea soup, but also because peas are one of the first spring vegetables to arrive, and a sure sign that spring is actually here.  Plus, the wasabi and buttermilk in this recipe really dress it up.  I know it’s still a bit early for fresh peas in New England – I used frozen ones this time around – but they’ll be here soon enough!

Head on over to Greatist for the full recipe!

Other Greatist posts (healthy, easy recipes with fewer than 8 ingredients and under 30 minutes active time):

• Feta and Lentil Tabbouleh – Recipe, and Post
• Kalamata, Lentil, and Mushroom Veggie Burgers – Recipe, and Post

The post Greatist Collaboration: Pea and Wasabi Soup appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything for a while.  I felt a little bit guilty about abandoning this blog just like that, but I’ve been adjusting to some fairly major changes in … my plans? my life in general? my world view? my sense of self?  Wherever the changes really are, they’ve left me feeling uninspired, and not energetic enough to do more than try and sort myself out.  Certainly not enough to create.

So I was planning on letting this blog rest, at least until I got to Maine, where everything always seems fresh and calm.  But then a really good friend who knew I was dealing with some blah stuff dropped off a package that included cream soda, key lime pie, fresh mozzarella, and three beautiful, beautiful pints of raspberries.  (How did he know???)  And when I saw these raspberries, I was so suddenly and forcefully relieved and inspired, that I just started to smile.  And I knew that I had to use them and share them and maintain the part of myself that loves to do that.

Ironically, I already had a blog post written and ready to go when said major changes occurred, and that blog post promised you two things: one, that I was imposing a ten day baking ban on myself, due to the overload of delicious but highly fattening recipes I seem to have been making lately, and two, that the next three recipes I posted would be healthy.  Errrrrm… I made muffins with the raspberries.  I swear, I searched and searched for savory raspberry recipes but didn’t really want to write about something as mundane as a salad dressing and didn’t want to go out and buy meat to go under a raspberry sauce.  So I told myself that muffins were an OK compromise – they’re not really dessert, and they don’t have that much sugar, and they have lots and lots of healthy berries.  And I actually had gone exactly ten days without baking, I just hadn’t ever made it official.  And muffins are just good to have around when you’re at risk of waking up sorta sad and discombobulated.  Or really any day, actually.

These muffins were yum.  But, they were not sweet.  At all.  In fact, they’re very tart, which actually makes them feel healthier and, I dunno, more muffin-y, less cupcake-y.  However, if like me, you like most food that you consume to be noticeably sweet, I have three options for you in terms of these muffins.  1.  Do not make them.  Adhere to your own personal baking ban instead.  2.  Add 1/4 cup of sugar to the recipe as it’s posted below.  3. Add chocolate chips to the batter.

I made half of them with chocolate chips.  It was the right choice.  It made them perfect.  It made them just like my favorite muffins in the world, the raspberry chocolate chip muffins at Perfecto’s.  If you’re ever in Massachusetts, and you drive by a Perfecto’s, you should really stop.  Their muffins are epic.  Anyway, I’m glad I made these.  I’m glad I’m writing.  And I’d like to thank you, Marco, and really all my friends, for being around and being supportive … and for bringing me raspberries!  Friends rule.

Raspberry Buttermilk Muffins

Adapted from a combination of the recipes from Joy of Baking and “The Berry Bible”

Makes 12 muffins

• 2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• zest of one lemon
• 1 egg
• 1 c. buttermilk
• 2/3 c. canola oil
• 2 c. raspberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 c. dark chocolate chips (optional)
• turbinado sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.  Line muffin pan with liners, or grease muffin cups well.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and lemon zest. [Note: I was out of AP flour and used 1 cup of cake flour mixed with 1 cup of bread flour – the results were very good, the texture was slightly denser than a regular muffin but not too much so.]
3. In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, egg, and canola oil until well blended.  Pour buttermilk mixture over flour mixture and stir just to combine.
4. Add raspberries, and chocolate chips if desired. Stir to incorporate.  If you stir vigorously, the raspberries may break up, giving the muffins a lovely pink tint, but losing the concentrated raspberry flavor in a single bite.
5. Fill muffin cups full with batter.  Place one whole raspberry in the center of each muffin and sprinkle turbinado sugar on top.  Bake for 20 minutes.

The post Raspberries. appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.