"Red Wine & Chocolate" Sundaes

I’ve got a new podcast obsession these days*, one that has me DVRing old movies and thinking about classic pairings like Fred and Ginger, Bogart and Bacall, Audrey and Givenchy.**

*You Must Remember This. Listen to the episode on Clark Gable and Carol Lombard. Try not to bawl your eyes out.

** It also has me thinking about J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes, but the former’s suspicions about how everyone in Hollywood was a Communist and the latter’s man-whoring are maybe not Valentine’s Day appropriate.

Red wine and chocolate are one of those classic pairings, too, no? Or, how about blue cheese and bacon, PB&J, french fries and a Frosty? Red wine and chocolate top them all, in my opinion, maybe because I don’t like blue cheese, but really, how do you beat red wine and chocolate when they team up?

I’m not the only one who thinks so, at least not in wine country, where you can often find Cabernet paired with chocolate truffles, or as I recently discovered, poured into a batch of chocolate sauce. I bought a bottle, and as usually happens with impulse purchases, had no real plan for what to do with it other than pouring it onto a spoon, so I put it away until inspiration struck. It wasn’t long before I was dreaming up ice cream sundaes with chocolate cake and that sauce, and then I knew that the cake had to have red wine in it too, to mimic the sauce, and that was it.  

I used the red wine chocolate cake from Smitten Kitchen as a guide, partly because I still get apprehensive sometimes about experimental baking and also partly because the story that goes along with that particular post is maybe the only romantic 9/11 story I’ve ever heard and it made me “aww” when I read it. She paired her cake with mascarpone, but as it turns out, it also goes excellently with vanilla ice cream, strawberries, and for an extra oomph of booze, that cabernet chocolate sauce. It’s a decadent treat perfect for Valentines, Galentines, or just because it’s Friday.

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"Red Wine & Chocolate" Sundaes

Makes 4 sundaes. Red wine chocolate cake adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

2-3 tbs butter, softened
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
splash of vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
pinch of baking soda
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp kosher salt
1/4 plus 1/8 cup of red wine

1 pint vanilla ice cream
red wine chocolate sauce (you can buy here, or use another chocolate sauce)
1/2 cup strawberries, hulled and quartered

1. Prepare a 6-inch cake pan. Line the bottom with parchment and grease with butter or cooking spray. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. In a bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. Put butter and sugars in the bowl of a mixer and beat until fluffy and fully combined. Add in egg and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated. Add in the dry ingredients in two batches, alternating with the red wine.
4. Pour into the prepared baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove cake from pan and let cool completely. 
5. To make sundaes, cut out 2-inch circles from the cake layer. You should be able to get four circles. The baker gets the scraps!
6. Place a cake circle in the bottom of a small bowl (or stemless wine glass) and top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Drizzle with chocolate sauce and garnish with strawberries.

Easy French Onion Soup

And the slow cooker magic continues! 

I recently found out that you can caramelize onions in a slow cooker.

Mind. Blown.

I love caramelized onions, but I do not like making them, because to get them perfectly mellow and sweet and not burned requires patience, like a thirty or forty-five minutes worth of standing at the stove level of patience that I don't often have. But with a slow cooker, you can literally throw your onions in the crock, walk away, enjoy your day, and come back to a pile of perfectly caramelized goodness. Yes, please. Add in some homemade oxtail broth and you have yourself a pretty amazing french onion soup.

In fact, I have to admit this soup is pretty much the reason I decided to make bone broth using oxtail. A friend and I used to go sometimes to this French bistro in my neighborhood that had a great rose selection and the best french onion soup I'd ever had, made with oxtail broth. The restaurant has since closed, but I still think about that soup sometimes, and so I decided to try to replicate it using my slow cooker. I think I got pretty close! 

Even if you don't make your own broth, this soup is delicious, and so easy to do on a weekend day while you get errands done or go have fun, and at the end of the day you can curl up with a bowl of soup that tastes like you spent hours standing at the stove to make it, except you didn't, and isn't that the dream?  

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Easy French Onion Soup

Serves 4. Caramelized onion method adapted from Jonathan Reynolds.

For the soup:
1 lb onions, thinly sliced
2 tbs balsamic vinegar, divided
2 tbs butter
generous pinch of salt
1 tsp flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dried thyme
4 cups oxtail broth (or other beef broth)
splash of brandy

For the cheese toasts:
1 small baguette, cut into 1/2 inch slices
gruyere cheese, sliced thinly or shredded
1 small handful fresh parsley, chopped

1. Caramelize the onions. In a slow cooker, add the onions, 1 Tbs balsamic vinegar, butter and salt, and cook for at least 6 hours on low, until onions are softened and caramelized.
2. Add flour and another Tbs balsamic vinegar to the onions and stir to combine, then add a tsp of salt, dried thyme, and the broth. Cook on low for at least 2 hours. The soup will be done at this point but the longer you cook it the more intense the flavors will be. When ready to serve, stir in a splash of brandy.
3. To serve: butter baguette slices and toast on both sides under the broiler, add a couple slices of gruyere to each slice and place back under the broiler until cheese is melted and turning golden. Ladle soup into bowls and place two cheese toasts in each bowl. Garnish with the parsley.

Slow Cooker Oxtail Broth

Trust me, this stuff tastes way better than it photographs. 

Bone broth is pretty buzzy these days, touted as a magical elixer by Paleo adherents and many others. I haven't been to any butcher shop this year without seeing pints of it in the refrigerator case, and certain soup brands have started selling it in smaller cartons with the new, trendy label.  But this is one bandwagon I'm happy to jump on.

For one thing, it's the ultimate comfort food in the middle of winter, which has been colder and rainier (yay!) this year in SF thanks to El Nino. It's also crazy delicious, which you already knew if you've ever had a homemade chicken soup or any other kind of homemade stock. Because, actually, bone broth isn't anything new, although you might be forgiven for thinking it's some exciting discovery. It's the same meat stock we've all been eating and drinking forever, just dressed up with a trendy name to go with new supposed health benefits (some might be true, I'm not a scientist so I'm not claiming any) or to be better sold out of tiny storefronts.

You could buy it from any number of sources, but if you've got a slow cooker in your kitchen, it's insanely easy to make at home, and a lot cheaper. Add bones (or meat cuts with bones), aromatics, and seasonings to the slow cooker, cover with water, and basically forget about it for a day. I'm not really sure how it gets any easier.

I chose to roughly follow the method of how I usually make broth out of leftover roasted chicken, since it's easy, and from looking at some other sources, seemed to be a fairly standard bone broth process. I made my broth with oxtail, since it has both meat and bone but is also collagen-rich. This means the broth is full of nutrients, but also that once it cools, the broth takes on the appearance of what can only be described as meat jell-o. It isn't pretty, but trust me, it's a good thing! I added simple aromatics, like some onion, carrot, and bay leaf.  Apple cider vinegar is also there for a little bit of brightness, and also to help leech minerals out of the bones. That just sounds so appetizing, right? I mean, just look at the finished product!

Or maybe don't. 

I promise, once you skim off a layer of fat and heat it back up, this stuff is nothing like jell-o. It's just perfect, soul-warming goodness on a winter day.

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Slow Cooker Oxtail Broth

2 lbs oxtail, cut into pieces
1 large carrot, cut into half moons
1 large stalk celery, sliced
1 small onion, diced
3 or 4 garlic cloves, smashed
1 bay leaf
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbs apple cider vinegar
2 qts water

1. In the crock of a slow-cooker, add all ingredients and cover with water. Cook on low for at least 10 hours, up to 12.
2. After 10 hours, broth should be dark and rich and meat should be falling off of the bones. Strain broth into a large bowl. Separate the meat and save for another use.
3. At this point, you can pour some broth into a mug or bowl and drink immediately, or cool to room temperature before refrigerating or freezing for future use, or use right away as a base for soups or in other dishes where broth is used.

Notes:

• If you want to remove some of the fat, refrigerate overnight and scrape off the solid layer of fat that collects on top.
• I used simple aromatics in this version, but you can pep it up with more vibrant flavors, like lemongrass, ginger, dried chiles, etc.
• When drinking this broth, I like to add a little flaky sea salt and a generous splash of apple cider vinegar.