Back in business here...

Okay, trying again...
Looks like there are a lot of folks out there who would prefer to see Ollie's White House Chef recipes all in one place, so I'm resurrecting this blog.

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen is a great place for recipes from me and from 5 other mystery writers. Please come visit - and bookmark both sites!

Keep in touch!

Julie

Baklava stuffed with almonds, pecans, and pine nuts

1 package fillo dough (Even chefs buy it rather than making it by hand)
1 pound butter, melted.
8 ounces almonds, roughly chopped
4 ounces pecans, roughly chopped
3 ounces pine nuts, roughly chopped
1 cup sugar (for nuts)
2 cups sugar (for syrup)
1 cup water
¼ tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Ground cinnamon and powdered sugar to garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 350° F

Mix the chopped nuts with I cup of sugar. Set aside.

Remove fillo sheets from package to work surface and unfold. When not handling, keep covered by a damp paper towel or cloth dishtowel. Fillo dries out and becomes unworkable fast.

Cut the sheets in half to fit a 9 X 13 backing dish. Cover the fillo with damp towel again. Working quickly, using a basting brush, paint the bottom of the 9 X 13 pan with melted butter. Remove a sheet of fillo, place it on the bottom of the buttered pan, brush the fillo sheet well with melted butter. Repeat six times.

Sprinkle with a thin layer of chopped nuts and sugar.

Place six more sheets of buttered fillo in the pan, top with chopped nuts and sugar.

Repeat these layers until out of nuts and fillo, finishing with six layers of buttered fillo.

With the sharpest knife possible, cut the layers of fillo and nuts into four to six long rows. (Piece size is a personal preference.) Turn pan and slice the fillo into diamonds by cutting diagonally across the long rows.

Place in oven and cook until golden brown and toasty (about 35-45 minutes).

Remove from oven, cool pan on a rack.

While the pan is cooling, place 2 cups of sugar and a cup of water, plus cloves and cinnamon in a large and heavy saucepan over medium to medium high heat. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down slightly and simmer for 20 minutes.

Pour boiling syrup gently over fillo and nuts in pan.

Cool completely. To serve, place a doily or paper cutout over a dessert plate. Dust with cinnamon. Move the pattern carefully a half inch to the right and lightly dust with powdered sugar. Remove the pattern. Serve the individual diamonds of baklava on cinnamon and sugar-dusted dessert plates.

Mystery Lovers' Kitchen news!

Note from Julie:

If you love recipes, if you love books, if you love talking about cooking and reading, please visit the brand-new blog "MYSTERY LOVERS' KITCHEN." We went live today (I post on Tuesdays, so my first recipe will appear tomorrow) and this promises to be a fabulous site. We will have new posts every single day!

We have Krista Davis, Avery Aames, Elizabeth Spann Craig, Cleo Coyle, and Jenn McKinlay. Oh, and me, too.

This is preview week, and we'll make all sorts of announcements soon. We're also preparing to announce our first contest. So don't miss a moment of fun.

http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/

For now, I'll keep this blog live with Ollie's recipes, but stay tuned for updates.

Julie

Chocolate Angel Food Cake with Fresh Berries

This is a wonderful Angel Food cake. Delicious and light. The chocolate makes it special. When you're slicing, you'll want to use a serrated knife. Angel Food cakes are notoriously hard to slice. I have to confess that the last time I made this one, I wound up with quite a few smooshy pieces. They were still delicious ... they just looked a little funny.

Thank goodness I was serving family and friends and not President Campbell! It's a good thing that for big state dinners and small First Family gatherings, we have Marcel, our pastry chef, on staff. He's the real expert when it comes to dessert!
;-)



Chocolate Angel Food Cake with Fresh Berries


12 jumbo egg whites, or egg whites equal to 2 cups (this can be accomplished with 16 large eggs, or even meringue powder, if you don’t want to deal with so many leftover egg yolks—but egg yolks make fabulous puddings, a nice Lord Baltimore cake, or custard sauce, so Marcel never minds having leftovers.)

4 T. Dutch processed cocoa powder
¼ cup boiling water
2 T. vanilla extract
2 C. sugar, divided use
1 cup cake flour, well sifted or pulsed in a food processor
½ t. salt
2 t. cream of tartar
Confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder for garnish
1 pint fresh berries, rinsed, drained, and chilled


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, combine boiling water, vanilla, and cocoa powder. Stir until smooth and glossy. Set aside.
In another medium bowl, or in food processor bowl, whisk or pulse together cake flour, 1 cup sugar, and salt. Set aside.

In a large clean bowl (the slightest bit of fat will keep your egg whites from whipping properly), beat the egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar. Continue beating until egg whites form soft peaks. Gradually add 1C. sugar until stiff peaks form.

Remove1 C. of egg mixture from large bowl and fold gently into cocoa mixture bowl.

In large bowl, take remaining egg mixture and incorporate flour mixture into it by gently sifting 1/3 cup of the flour onto surface of beaten eggs, and folding them together. Don’t overwork this batter or it will loose its incorporated air. Work gently but efficiently and quickly.

Gently fold cocoa mixture into egg batter.

Spoon or pour batter into an ungreased angel food cake pan. Run a knife through the batter in a circular motion to eliminate any large air pockets. Smooth the top of the batter with a spatula.

Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes. Do not open oven door during the first thirty minutes of baking. Top of cake will crack—this is part of its charm. Cake is done when surface springs back when gently touched or toothpick inserted into middle of cake comes out clean.
Remove cake from oven and invert pan.

Let cool completely—at least two hours at room temperature.

Remove cake from pan by running a sharp knife around sides and center of tube pan to release from sides, then remove cake from pan. If cake has removable tube, run knife around bottom of cake pan before removing.

Dust cake and berries with confectioner’s sugar. To serve, place cake slice on individual plate dusted with coca powder and confectioner’s sugar. Heap berries to side of cake. Dust with more confectioner’s sugar. Serve.

Brand New Blog with Recipes

Hi there!
Olivia Paras here. But you can call me Ollie. If you've read any of the White House Chef Mysteries, written by Julie Hyzy, then you know I'm the (fictional) first female Executive Chef in the White House. We have a *real* female Executive Chef in the White House right now. Her name is Cristeta Comerford and, from all reports, she's doing marvelously. Any similarities between Cristeta and me are purely coincidental. I'm proud of my fictional adventures, just as I'm sure she's proud of the incredible role she plays in the First Family's life.

So far there are two books chronicling my story. The first is State of the Onion where I whack a White House intruder in the head with a frying pan and get myself involved in an international crisis. The second, Hail to the Chef, came out in December 2008. In that book, I'm in trouble, yet again. This time with bombs ;-)

The third book is due out in January, 2010, and I'll talk more about that one as we get closer to publication date.

For now, I want to introduce ... RECIPES!

Lots of readers have asked to have the recipes from the books available online. This way they can be printed out and taken to the grocery store, or placed on the counter as the food is being prepared. So here they are! (Or... will be. Soon.)

I like the fact that the recipes I've included in the books are simple ones. Quick and easy recipes are the ones that usually become family favorites.

Stay tuned. The next post will be a recipe from State of the Onion. In the meantime, please feel free to comment and let me know if there are any suggestions or ideas you have to make this site better!

Thanks!
Happy cooking,
Ollie