Instant(Pot) Rendang

Rendang is one of the most delicious dishes in the Indonesian repertoire, and generally takes foreevvveerrrrrrr to make. It's one of the few things I'll ignore my beef ban for, but I never bothered to make it myself. Which is too bad, since then I could a) use good sustainable meat and b) eat twice as much of it. But it occurred to me that, now that I have an InstantPot, things like this should be easy. The idea of rendang is that the beef (or other meat, or even a potato in theory/according to some cookbooks but why) slow braises in coconut milk with a pile of spices, then when all the liquid is reduced out it browns in the coconut fat. The great thing about pressure cookers is they'll get a piece of meat fall-apart tender in no time. The less great thing is, because they're sealed shut, they're shit at reducing down liquid. But even though this recipe required the second step of reducing the coconut milk, the fact that the beef was already well dismantled meant I could do it much faster than in th traditional method, and the whole thing was definitely faster, and required less careful braising. It didn't occur to me til afterwards that I'd want to write this up, so all I have is a photo of the final product on my plate about to get devoured. It's unphotogenic brown mush, but it's crazy delicious brown mush. 100% will make again.

The ingredients are lightly adapted from James Oseland's excellent cookbook Cradle Of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia; method is adapted from this blog, one of the few InstantPot rendang adaptations I could find online. It's a more Malaysian version, though, where I was going for Padang, but I bet it's good too.

NB: There's a lot of ingredients in here, particularly spices and aromatics. Some advance planning/internet shopping may be necessary for the more unusual stuff. Western Indonesia's (and especially Sumatra's) history at the intersection of the spice trades between Maluku in the east (cloves, nutmeg) and India to the west (cinnamon) are strongly reflected in this dish. There's a moment making this where I dropped in the nutmeg and cloves and the whole thing smelled like German Christmas gingerbread - colonialism made scent. (The Germans got it from the Dutch, who colonized the Spice Islands and all of Indonesia, along with some bits of India. The Malaysian version goes even more Indian-influenced, with cumin and cardamom, reflecting British rule over both countries.)

InstantPot Beef Rendang

1.5 lbs good cubed beef, the kind you'd use in stew, with plenty of marbling
1 whole nutmeg
5 whole cloves
6 shallots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
fresh red chilis to taste (one habanero did it for me)
1.5 tsp turmeric powder
a 2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled & chopped
a 2-inch chunk of galangal, peeled & chopped
5 candlenuts (Oseland suggests unsalted macadamias as a substitution)
1 can coconut milk
a 4-inch stick of cinnamon
1 star anise
2 stalks of lemongrass, tied into knots
6 kaffir lime leaves
5 daun salam leaves
1 tsp kosher salt

1) Bash up the nutmeg into pieces under a Pyrex. Put it in a spice/coffee grinder with the cloves, grind into a powder.

2) Put the shallots, ginger, garlic, galangal, chilis, and candlenuts in a tall measuring cup with a bit of water. Use an immersion blender to grind to a smooth sludge. (You can also do this in a small food processor.)

3) Turn the InstantPot on to Saute. Add just a bit of coconut oil to the pot. When it gets hot, use it to saute the flavoring paste, making sure to stir enough that nothing burns. This mode is hot, and at least in mine there's no 'medium' setting option. (It's been suggested you could do this sauteing in a spoonful of the coconut cream from the top of the can. Probably true, but I didn't try it.) After a minute or two, add the ground spices, turmeric, star anise, cinnamon stick, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and daum salam. Stir fry another minute or two. Everything should start to smell really good.

4) Add the beef, coconut milk, and salt. Add enough water to barely cover the beef. Seal on the lid, and set to pressure cook for 45 minutes.

5) Now is a good time to cook something green to go with it, and get a pot of rice ready to go.

6) When the pot beeps, let it sit for 5 minutes then do a manual release. (This is a good time to start the rice.) Take off the top and set it back to Saute mode. Cook down until the liquid is gone and the fat starts to foam. At first you'll only need to stir occasionally, as the liquid thickens things will start to stick and constant stirring gets important. Let everything fry in the remaining fat for a few minutes until it gets nice and brown and/or you get fed up with how badly it's sticking to the bottom. The meat will be totally falling apart here - that's good. You may want to cycle the heat element on and off to keep it from getting too hot at the end.

7) Transfer the rendang into a serving dish and pull out all the whole spices and leaves you can. Consider deglazing the pot with a little bit of liquid and scraping up all the tasty brown bits stuck to the bottom, since there's a ton of flavor in there, but you don't want to be pouring anything too liquidy over the rendang. Serve with rice and a veg.

GBBO Curry

Wow, it's definitely been two years since I wrote anything here. Prof life is busy, y'all. Quick update: Still teaching at Swarthmore, married Matt, got an InstantPot for a wedding present. And somewhere in there we watched a lot of Great British Bake-Off on tv and just loved Nadiya, who (spoiler alert!) won a season or two ago. So I recently followed her on Twitter, where she's generally a ray of sunshine, and found out she has some cookbooks and bought one. And then thus week made the lamb bhuna, because of course that's the first thing I go for.

The bhuna was pretty great. Even though I didn't quite follow the recipe. First of all, it comes with a recipe for garlic naan, but instead of 200 grams (1 1/3 cups) of flour (yes, it's ll in grams and weight measurements. Brits.) I somehow misread and put 800 grams (5 1/3 cups) in the food processor, and didn't notice til I'd mixed in the other dry ingredients so it was too late to turn back, and so I quadrupled everything else too and we ate a LOT of naan. Which really isn't a bad thing. (NB: My kindle version of the book says 'add the water' in the naan recipe but doesn't ever say how much. If you believe the BBC version, it's 100ml - just under half  cup, or 7 tablespoons - for a normal 200g-of-flour batch. Also: 1 cup self-rising flour = 1 cup all-purpose + 1.5 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp salt, says King Arthur.)

Then also the recipe called for 800 grams (1 3/4 lbs) lamb, and I only bought just under a pound, and because the recipe already only uses half the curry paste it makes and I didn't want to divide by four, and also yay leftovers, I made up the difference with eggplants. And left out the bell peppers b/c eew. And made it in the InstantPot instead of on the stovetop, because that thing is magic for getting tender falling-apart meat bits. (As Chekhov said, introduce an InstantPot in the first paragraph, you have to use it in the third.) So what follows here is almost but not really the real thing, converted into cups and pounds for us Yankees, and really quite tasty. Cheers.

InstantPot Lamb-Eggplant Bhuna àla Nadiya
~1 lb lamb cubes
2 medium-small eggplants
7 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh ginger
2 small onions
2 hot peppers or to taste
5+ cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsp curry powder, whatever that means to you
1.5 tsp garam masala
chopped cilantro

1. Roughly chop the onions, garlic, chilis, and ginger. Use a small food processor or, even better, an immersion blender in a tall measuring cup to whiz them into a smooth paste together with the oil, salt, spices, and 1/3 cup of water.

2. Chop the lamb into bite-sized cubes if it isn't already. Same with the eggplants.

3. Put the curry paste in the InstantPot, turn it on to the Saute function, and cook 5-10 minutes, until it starts to separate. Stir a lot - the saute setting is blazing hot and burnt curry paste is no good (though a little sticking & browning is just fine).

4. Add the lamb to the pot and brown the sides for another ~5 min. Add the eggplant and stir to coat with curry goo. Add 2/3 cup more water, put on the lid, and set to pressure cook for 30 min. This is a good moment to cook the naans (see BBC link above) and/or put on some basmati rice.

5. When the InstantPot's finished doing its thing, let it rest for another few minutes then vent the steam. take the top back off, set it back to Saute, and cook another 5-10 mins, stirring, til the sauce reduces. The eggplant will suddenly collapse into mush, which is fine. Taste for salt, serve with chopped cilantro.

To Remember

Awesome:
NY Times Moroccan Herb Jam:
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017742-moroccan-herb-jam
Make with carrot tops, kale, spinach, fennel, parsley, cilantro, etc etc etc. Spread on bread with hummus or eat on toast with harissa and a fried egg. 

Awesomer:
Quick Banh Mi:
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014140-shortcut-banh-mi-with-pickled-carrots-and-daikon
(Slice chicken thighs thin and marinate in all the stuff you're supposed to cook with the pork, then cook on a hot grill pan. Add a splash of fish sauce and sriracha to the pickles and a splash of soy to the marinade. Skip the Mayo.)

Awesomest:
Xi'an lamb burgers (A cross between this and this.)

1lb ground lamb
2 whole star anise
at least 1tbsp ground cumin
toasted Szechuan peppercorns or peppercorn oil
Sriracha or chili flakes
Small red onion, sliced thin
garlic, minced
pinch sugar
pinch cinnamon
2-3 tbsp soy sauce
2-3 tbsp rice wine (or mix of sake and vermouth)
Cilantro leaves
Chopped scallions

1) Cook the lamb in a pan with some oil and the star anise until just brown but not crispy. Add everything else and give a good stir. Cover for a few minutes, then take off the lid and let the liquid cook down. When nearly done, mix in the chopped scallions, and cook a minute more. Taste for spiciness and cumin - it should taste strongly of both. The meat should be wet like a sloppy joe but not swimming. If too wet, keep cooking.

2) Serve on flatbread, over rice or thick flat wheat noodles, or on a roll, with cilantro leaves scattered on top.

Quasi L'estate

About a year and a half ago, I went to Italy with my grandparents. Lake Garda – Gardasee –, at the edge of the Dolomites, is about a four hour drive south-east of their house in Bavaria, where I was visiting, and Monika suggested it would make a nice excursion. Y’know, just pop down to Italy for the weekend, like you do. Not a suggestion I’m apt to turn down. So we did, and it was indeed a lovely weekend. I discovered I’m terrible at windsurfing – Garda’s apparently a mecca for it, with reliable winds off the mountains, but I spent more time in the lake righting my board than upright on it, and kudos to my instructor for his patience with that. I got caught on the summit of Monte Baldo in a thunderhail storm, and made it to shelter soaked through, muddy, and barefoot – slippery wet sandals are slippery – just as the deluge let up. (Did I mention this was August?) And on our last day there, Monika decided we should drive out to Valpolicella to find a vineyard and taste/buy some wines. After a lot of winding down dirt roads through rows of vines, we found a guy who said he’d let us into his winery, just let him drive home and get the key to open the place up. So we had our own private tasting, except he poured us nearly full glasses instead of tastes, and the wine was delicious, and Monika bought a case. Driving back to Torbole, where we were staying, it got to be around dinner time, so we stopped at a hotel on the mountainside to eat. I ordered a pasta dish with roasted tomatoes, sausage, and sage. It was phenomenal.

Skip ahead to January, in the depths of a Philly winter. I have in my fridge a jar of roasted tomatoes preserved in olive oil that my mother made last summer, when the garden was popping out tomatoes faster than they could possibly be eaten, and a box of really good pasta in the pantry. Time to recreate the Valpolicella dish. It’s not quite the same as August in the Dolomites, but damned if it doesn’t brighten up a grey East Coast afternoon.

Valpolicella Roasted Tomato-Sausage Pasta

2 links Italian pork sausage

Roasted tomatoes, roughly chopped**

Fresh sage, chopped

Garlic, minced

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Grated Romano cheese

Good-quality short pasta, like cavatelli or orecchietti

1) Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan. Crumble in the insides of the sausage, and brown.

2) Meanwhile, set some pasta water to boil. Cook the pasta to al dente while sauteeing other things.

3) Add the chopped tomatoes and garlic. Sautee until soft & fragrant. Add the sage, and cook a minute more. Put in a good dose of cheese, then salt & pepper to taste.

4) Add the cooked pasta and a splash of its water to the pan and toss everything to combine. Serve with more grated cheese, olive oil for drizzling, and Italian wine.

Stuff in a pan, before it becomes stuff on pasta.

**Roasted Tomatoes, or Summer in a Jar

Basically just follow Smitten Kitchen’s recipe:

In August, when there’s more tomatoes than you know what to do with, slice a pile of plum, cherry, or normal (not gigantic heirloom) tomatoes in half. Set them on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a bit of oregano or marjoram. Add a few whole smashed garlic cloves. Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil. Bake at ~225 for about three hours, until things get all caramelizedy around the edges. Store in a jar in the fridge, with olive oil high enough to cover everything.

If you didn’t plan ahead, or used up all of your tomatoes already, or whatever, you can use store-bought jars of tomatoes in oil  or sun-dried tomatoes soaked a for a bit in hot water to soften.

Eggs & Tomatoes

Shakshuka. Why have I not written about shakshuka yet? 1) It's easy to throw together with minimal planning (if your pantry looks like mine, which for your sake I kind of hope it doesn't). 2) It's delicious. 3) It's got possibly the best name in the history of food. I'm on winter break (ie grading/course-planning/conference-talk-writing month), so time to make up for my past shakshuka negligence. Mea culpa.

Wine recommended.

Shakshuka is North African, or Israeli, or well what culture within spitting distance of the Mediterranean doesn't have some version of eggs baked in tomato sauce for dinner? There's likely as many versions as there are people making it: the NY Times published one, as did Yotam Ottolenghi (actually several from him); my version takes Smitten Kitchen's version as a starting point and then departs from it entirely. As usual, I make no claims to authenticity. All I'm saying is it tastes good.

Shakshuka!
1 lg (28oz) can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 fist-sized onion, or a leek
1-5 cloves garlic, to taste
1 can chickpeas
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika (or way way way less if you use the same uber-smokey kind I have)
1 tsp cayenne
olive oil
S&P to taste
good crumbled feta
1-2 eggs per person
chopped parsley and/or cilantro
good sourdough/pita/other bread to serve with
Optional other additions: 
harissa paste or powder
spinach leaves
crumbled sausage (merguez?) or bacon
diced bell or spicy peppers (I take it these are fairly traditional. Whatevs.)
Other veggies as desired

Leeks! Green parts welcome.

1) Rinse & chop the onion/leeks. Toss them in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil and saute til soft/translucent. If you're doing peppers of any sort, this is probably the moment to add those too.

2) Mince the garlic. Add to the saute party, along with the spices.

2.5) At this point, you or your forward-thinking cooking companion will realize that if you're gonna turn that leftover pizza dough in the fridge into pita breads, you'll need the cast iron skillet for that. Transfer everything to a Dutch oven. (This step optional.)

Stuff in pot.

3) Once everything's nice and fragrant, pour in the tomatoes and the drained, rinsed chickpeas. Let simmer until the sauce is thick enough to make indentations to set the eggs into. Near the end, stir in any spinach leaves or cooked sausage. Salt & pepper to taste.

4) Preheat the over to around 400. Use a spoon to make dents in the top of the sauce, then crack eggs into them. Don't scramble the eggs first, since that will make them runny and they'll just go everywhere instead of nestling in their little holes. Trust me.

Ignore runny scrambled egg in the upper right. Don't do that.

5) Crumble feta all over everything. I like a good Bulgarian sheep's milk feta, but take your pick.

6) Put a top on the pan and bake for around 10 minutes, until the eggs are set to your liking. Runny is good. Broil for the last few if you want the cheese to brown and bubble a little. If you forget, you could use your creme brulee torch to get the same effect, but only if you're totally insane. Don't look at me.

 7) Top with chopped parsley and/or cilantro, then scoop into bowls and eat with warm bread. Possible other variations include replacing cumin, cilantro, and feta with oregano, basil, and romano (ricotta?) for ouvo alla shakshuka, or whatever other national spin appeals to you. Buon appetito.

Also ignore shitty camera phone photos. Next time I'll charge my actual camera battery before cooking. Maybe.

Artichokes + Garlic + Pasta = Love

So it's been what, 5 months since I last posted here? My bad. In that stretch I've finished, defended, and submitted a dissertation, moved to Philly, and started teaching linguistics to precocious undergrads at my alma mater. It's been busy as hell, and as part of my dissertation recovery program I've been studiously avoiding writing anything longer than the answer key to the latest homework. But it's a Saturday and I'm kinda caught up on classes and this pasta is ridiculously good, so let me hereby declare this latest blogging sabbatical over. (Attn. any of my students who might be reading this: That was a performative. And yes, it will be on the quiz.)

Back before the madness that was this summer, on the last night of our super-secret trip to Italy in March, N. and I got dinner at a little restaurant in Bologna that we found on TripAdvisor. It was far too slick for its own good, and I was skeptical, but we were there and hungry, so we ordered a spaghetti al diavolo and a fettuccine al carciofi to split. The spicy spaghetti was quite good. We fought over the fettuccine.

Since getting back I've made it myself twice, and I can tell you this: it can either be the biggest pain in the ass pasta you've ever made, or it can be easy as hell and taste as good. I'm adapting my instructions here from Marcella Hazan, and while I have all the love and respect in the world for Marcella, I will say this about her version of the recipe: it's insane. And not in the fun, look at this crazy elaborate birthday cake that's a lot of work but comes out awesome kind of way (cough, cough). More in the totally unnecessary, will have you cursing her and your knives and artichokes and pasta til you say screw it and just order pizza kind of way. You can, if you want, buy fresh whole artichokes, trim, clean,  chop, and par-cook them, and proceed from there, as Marcella suggests. Or you can get a nice can or frozen bag of artichoke quarters or hearts, and save yourself the time and headache. I suspect you know which route I advocate.

A note on canned or jarred artichokes, however: make sure you get the ones packed in salt water, not vinegar. You'll probably have better luck with this in cans rather than jars. Rinse them well before chopping so they're not obscenely salty. Better still are frozen ones, which obviate the need for rinsing and (I think) taste a mite fresher. At Whole Foods I had the choice between quarters or hearts - hearts will be more tender; quarters will have a bit more chew. Dealer's choice here. I've tried both, both iterations were hits.

So without further ado:

Crazy easy, crazy good, post-dissertation pasta with artichokes
2 cans/1bag artichoke pieces
garlic
lemon juice
parsley
grated Romano cheese
S&P
olive oil
1lb pasta

1) Rinse the artichokes well if they're canned. Chop into pretty small pieces. Toss into a pan with some olive oil, saute for about 10 minutes over medium heat.

2) Mince/crush garlic to taste (3 cloves for my garlic-loving self), add to the pan, saute a few minutes more.

3) Add a good bit of lemon juice, a lot of parsley, and some cheese. Stir, then add salt & pepper to taste (careful of the salt if using caned chokes). Cook about a minute, then turn off the heat.

4) Cook the pasta.

5) Add a splash of the pasta water to the artichoke mixture, then toss in the pasta. Serve with more cheese, parsley, and a drizzle of fresh olive oil. I served it at a dinner party alongside a tomato/cucumber salad from my mother's garden, good bread, a peach/plum/rosemary galette, and some truly outstanding muffaletta meatballs that the inimitable A.P. may soon share the recipe for if we're lucky. Buon appetito. 

Insanity Cake #2

Ok so I realize that this is my second post in a row about a truly insane birthday cake that if you have any sense at all you'll never make. But it's my blog and I can, so I will. Backstory: N's birthday was on Friday. When I asked what kind of cake he wanted, he suggested chocolate (duh) chevre cheesecake with rum and raisins. Which is incredibly sweet - the chevre part was for my benefit, since goat's milk is way kinder to my system than cow's milk - but also kind of weird. So I considered for a while and came up with this monstrosity. I'd been wanting to make him the amazing Raw Brownies from My New Roots, because they're amazing and chocolate (duh). I'd also been wanting to make the chocolate tart from my Payard cookbook, even though that got shot down as an idea in the initial round of cake planning. And he did say cheesecake. So... a layer of cheesecake? Under a layer of tart? With the raw brownies as a shell? Chocolate (duh), flavored with rum and cinnamon. Anything else?

I called my sister, who is a far better baker/far more insane than me. The two layers, she said, need some differentiation - just cinnamon up the bottom. And why make the bottom layer chocolate cheesecake when it could be marbled? It occurred to me that the whole thing was going to be a pile of very creamy textures; some crackle and crunch would be nice. Chopped almonds? Bruleed top? Both! I ordered a creme brulee torch on Amazon. I googled cheesecake recipes. I got the torch, realized my existing tin of lighter fluid wouldn't fill it, and not one of the drug stores in New Haven carries butane (really?!?), and ordered that on Amazon too. I de-milkified the whole thing to the extent possible, added graham crackers to the crust because cheesecake, went shopping, and baked for a total of about six hours. Mark Bittman, in his How to Cook Everything, says that replacing the cream cheese in his recipe with ricotta is just fine, so I figured replacing half of mine with goat cheese wouldn't be a disaster. Halfway through baking I realized - after ripping apart my pantry to find it - that my block of good chocolate had been finished in an earlier project, and ran out to get more, only to discover that my options were milk, white, or unsweetened, no bittersweet to be found. So I bought milk chocolate and finished my cocoa powder compensating (don't do that). And on Friday I snuck into N's apartment while he was in rehearsal, bruleed the top, drizzled the whole thing in melted chocolate, lit a candle, and surprised him. And it was fantastic. Totally over the top, rich, decadent, insane, and delicious. And totally worth it. Happy birthday.

Some notes: I've given instructions below for both low- and high-lactose versions. I used goat cheese and almond milk, but go ahead and use all cream cheese and heavy cream. I flavored with cinnamon and rum, but you could leave one out, leave them both out, replace the cinnamon with orange zest or the rum with creme de menthe or or the almonds with hazelnut or whatever flavor combination strikes you. Also, while the marbling of the cheesecake was cool, it all ended up kind of mixing together so you could skip a step and just make it all chocolate or plain. Your call. The original recipes list baking times as rather shorter than what I found necessary, so keep an eye out and check for doneness with a toothpick early and often.

Bruleed Chocolate Marble Cheesecake Tart Brownie Cake with Cinnamon and Rum Because Why the Hell Not.

Brownie crust (Adapted from My New Roots):
2 cups walnuts
1 cup almonds
5 cinnamon graham crackers (Omit if you want it gluten-free, or for Passover, or whatever)
2 ½ cups pitted dates
1 cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut oil
¼ tsp. salt
(This will make extra. Enjoy the rest sprinkled over ice cream, eaten with a spoon, or pressed into another pan to make the originally-intended brownies.)

1) Make the crust: Whizz nuts in the food processor until well ground. Add graham crackers, and whizz again. Add remaining ingredients and blend until it starts to look kind of like garden soil and sticks together when you squeeze it. If it's not sticky enough, add more dates. Be sure to get the pits out first if you want any of this to work.

1) Dates. 2) Nuts & Grahams. 3) Ready to go. 4) Finished consistency.

2) Grease a 10x10 pyrex dish (I used coconut oil). Press the dough into the pan to form a layer a quarter-inch thick over the bottom and sides.

Marble Cheesecake (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup heavy cream/coconut creamer
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 cup (goat) yogurt
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
4 oz of the mildest goat chevre you can find (or another half package cream cheese)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
cinnamon
rum

3) Make the caramel. Yes, this is nuts, but as the original recipe points out, it's also not hard and very delicious. Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan (I used my cast iron) over medium-low heat, and stir fairly constantly. First it will clump up, then melt into a clear pale puddle. Keep going til it hits a nice golden brown. Pour in the cream or coconut creamer. It will bubble and get all steamy and the sugar will harden up again. Keep stirring. Let the sugar re-melt. Be careful when you can't resist dripping a bit on your pinkie to taste; this stuff's hot. Pour half out into another pan and set that aside over low heat.

1) Sugar starting to melt. 2) Post-cream. 3) Re-melted with cream. 4) Plus chocolate & yogurt.

4) Stir the chopped chocolate into the caramel still in one pan and stir til everything melts. Still over low heat, stir in the yogurt. you should end up with something nice and creamy. (If you want a firmer cheesecake, use slightly less yogurt, down to a quarter cup total/eighth of a cup per half-batch.) Turn off the heat.

5) Stir another quarter cup of yogurt into the caramel in the second pan. You should now have one pan of chocolate caramel and one of plain. (Or do these sequentially, washing the pan in between. Just realize that the second batch of caramel will be hard by the time you finish the first, and you can re-melt it in the microwave but use about 60% power and beware that it gets hot fast.)

Whipped cheeses.

6) Use a mixer to whip half of the cream cheese and half of the goat cheese til fluffy. Beat in the chocolate caramel at low speed. Beat in one egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, a tablespoon or so of rum, and a good shake of cinnamon.

7) Repeat step 4 with the non-chocolate caramel in a separate bowl. At this point you've got one bowl of plain cheesecake filling, one bowl of chocolate, and a lot of dirty dishes.

Payard Chocolate Tart

8 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup cream or coconut creamer
1/4 cup milk or almond milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp rum

8) Put the chopped chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Pour the milk and cream into a small pot and bring to a simmer. Pour over the chopped chocolate and stir til melted. Let cool 10 min.

9) Whisk in the beaten egg, vanilla, and rum. Stick in the fridge.

Etc.

Raw or turbinado sugar

Chopped almonds

Melted chocolate

10) Preheat oven to 350. Pour some of the plain cheesecake into the crust, then some chocolate, then some more plain, etc, til you've poured it all in. Use a chopstick or the handle of a butterknife to swirl it around til it's all marbled. Bake about 35 min.

11) Pull the cheesecake out the the oven. Sprinkle with some chopped almonds and extra clumps of crust mixture and pour the chocolate tart mixture over. It'll still be a bit goopy and you won't  get nicely defined layers that's ok. Return to oven. Start checking for doneness after 15 minutes. The middle should be a little wiggly and the edges a bit cracked. This might take another half hour, so keep checking with a toothpick and don't despair. Pull out and let cool a bit.

A done cake.

12) Brulee: Cover any exposed crust with tin foil. (I didn't; that's why mine got singed.) Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over the top of the cake. Go to with the blow torch. I found this worked best if I went over an area once lightly so it got little beads of melted sugar, than again to melt most of it, then a third time to get any spots I'd missed. Once you get the sugar bobbling you can lay off with the flame; it will melt the bits around it and fill most little holes itself, and that way you avoid burning the sugar. If you do catch a bit on fire, blow it out, pull it off, fill the gap with more sugar, and re-brulee. 

13) Drizzle melted chocolate over everything. Scatter chopped nuts over the melted chocolate. Stick a candle in the middle. Yell 'Surprise!'. Enjoy.