Biscuit Gourmet Biscotti: Not Just Holiday Treats

Just over a year ago Amber Smith was an occupational therapist with a passion for baking and pastries. She lived in Europe, based in London, and says she spent a disproportionate amount of time in bakeries and cafes.

"It tells you so much about where people are at in different countries," she says.

Feeling restless professionally, Smith wanted to spend more time in the kitchen. She didn't necessarily want to open a bakery, but at some point while baking biscotti, she says she had her aha moment. The recipe she'd been perfecting--a lighter, airier, updated biscotti--wasn't being done in the States, at least nowhere she'd been.

So, she launched Biscuit Gourmet Biscotti. I found her earlier this year at the Solana Beach Farmers Market and kept track of her. The cookies she bakes are truly lighter and airer than traditional biscotti with wonderful flavors that change with the seasons. Customers have responded. She's now selling at Caxao Artisan Chocolates in Little Italy, Birdrock Coffee Roasters, Arricia Italian Market in La Jolla, and Pigment in North Park, with the occasional fill ins at the Solana Beach and Hillcrest farmers markets. That doesn't include online sales across the country. She and her business partner now have four part-time employees to keep up with demand.

"I'm trying to make biscotti something to enjoy anytime, not just the holidays," Smith says.

I invited myself to the kitchen she rents in Coronado. It's a surprising light and airy space, sitting behind an office supply store on C Ave. just off Orange. Smith was waiting for me, ready for us to bake two varieties of biscotti, her Vanilla Orange Biscotti with Dark Chocolate and Grand Marnier-Infused Cranberries and her Nutmeg Biscotti with Toasted Pecans.

There is certainly an art to making the biscotti. While the ingredients can all go in your stand mixer for blending, shaping is critical so that the cookies retain a consistent size. Like the mandelbread I grew up with, the dough must have the right feel to it. Unlike mandelbread, a recipe which never changed in my lifetime, Smith has to balance creating new flavor combinations with the alchemy of making dough. Add liquid like Grand Marnier or a flavored extract and you have to adjust the amount flour. Every action has a reaction. That's why she spends so much time refining her ideas.

"I have at least 100 flavors in my head, but I try to keep it simple and hip," she explains. "And it's very important to me to layer flavors so that each bite has some complexity."

So, shall we get to the recipes?

The basic idea is to measure and add ingredients into a bowl to blend. We used her red Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Then we divided the dough in half, manipulating each piece into a long log that we then flattened into a rectangle. They go into the oven for the first baking. Once, they've cooled just enough the pieces are sliced into individual cookies and go back into the oven for a second baking (Smith says you could enjoy the cookies just fine after the first baking, but it's the second that gives them a firmer biscotti texture). Cool. Eat.

Vanilla Orange Biscotti with Dark Chocolate and Grand Marnier-Infused Cranberries
From Amber Smith
(printable recipe)

Makes 35 cookies

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 stick (1/4 pound) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 teaspoon orange extract
zest of 1 orange
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier or any orange liqueur
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1 cup dark chocolate chunks or semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350℉ and line two sheet pans with parchment paper.

Roughly chop the dried cranberries into smaller pieces and put into a microwave-safe bowl. Add the Grand Marnier and warm in the microwave on high for 45 seconds, remove and stir, then let cool. Rehydrating the dried fruit will keep it from dying out too much during baking.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a separate bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, using the paddle attachment for a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer on medium speed. Add eggs and extracts and continue to mix on medium speed until fully incorporated, adding the orange zest and mix until well blended. Slowly add the flour mixture on low speed until fully combined.

Add the chocolate and rehydrated cranberries. The combination of the liqueur and cranberries will form a syrup. Be sure to scrape it all into the dough for maximum flavor. Mix on low just until fully incorporated into the dough.

Divide the dough in half and shape each half into two, 16- to 18-inch loaves on one of the prepared sheet pans. Flatten the logs until the are about 2 1/2 inches wide and a half inch thick. Be sure to leave at least four inches in between the loaves to allow for spreading.

Bake for 25 minutes or until the tops of the loaves turn a warm brown. Remove the pan from the oven and let loaves sit for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Turn oven temperature down to 300℉.

Slice cookies 1-inch thick. Arrange the biscotti on both sheet pans with at least one inch between each cookie to allow for air circulation and adequate cooking. Bake for an additional 25 minutes and remove from oven.

Note: Bake one sheet a time (unless using a convection oven) to ensure even baking.

Let cool and store in an airtight container for up to three weeks to maintain the crisp and light texture.

Nutmeg Biscotti with Toasted Pecans
From Amber Smith
(printable recipe)

Makes 35 cookies

Ingredients
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 stick (1/4 pound) unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
*1 1/2 cups toasted pecans

Preheat the oven to 350℉ and line two sheet pans with parchment paper.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, nutmeg and cinnamon in a separate bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, using the paddle attachment for a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer on medium speed. Add eggs and extracts and continue to mix on medium speed until fully incorporated. Slowly add the flour mixture on low speed until fully combined.

Roughly chop the toasted pecans and add them to the dough. Mix on slow just until fully mixed in.

Divide the dough in half and shape each half into two, 16- to 18-inch loaves on one of the prepared sheet pans. Flatten the logs until the are about 2 1/2 inches wide and a half inch thick. Be sure to leave at least four inches in between the loaves to allow for spreading.

Bake for 25 minutes or until the tops of the loaves turn a medium brown. Remove the pan from the oven and let loaves sit for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Turn oven temperature down to 325℉.

Slice cookies 1-inch thick. Arrange the biscotti on both sheet pans with at least one inch between each cookie to allow for air circulation and adequate cooking. Bake for an additional 20 minutes and remove from oven.

Note: Bake one sheet a time (unless using a convection oven) to ensure even baking.

Let cool and store in an airtight container for up to three weeks to maintain the crisp and light texture.

*A simple and fantastic variation is to use candied pecans or caramelized hazelnuts!

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Be Mine: Four Local Valentine's Treats

This is the time of year I get flooded with PR emails touting special romantic dinners at various restaurants. Ah, if only...

I long ago gave up trying to keep up with the tsunami of Valentine's day romance packages, but I do love a heart-felt gesture. So, I thought I'd mention several delicious edible Valentine's Day options for gifts that I've come across.

First up is cheese. Cheese? Yes, Taste's Mary Palmer pulled this out of a cooler at the Little Italy Mercato and, oh, did I want it. It's a Coeur Fleuri Chevre--a heart-shaped French goat cheese decorated with dried pomegranate seeds and rose petals. Truly seductive for the cheese lover. $13.50 at the Little Italy, Hillcrest, and North Park farmers markets.

Then, there's gelato. Not just any gelato, but Millie's vegan gelato--or as owner/gelato genius Susan Sbicca says, plant-based. She's made four special Valentine's Day flavors: blood-orange creamsicle (perfect topped with fresh blood orange marmalade), chocolate mint swirl (I top this with Jackie's Jams new Stehly Farms raspberry jam), coconut bing cherry (lovely with chocolate syrup), and lemon raspberry (crazy good alone but reaches a whole new dimension with Katherine Humphus's balsamic port reduction). (Sbicca may also have a passion fruit gelato. Be sure to ask.) $10 a pint at the Leucadia farmers market.

Finally, chocolate. Well, of course, chocolate! Here are two of my very favorites with some intriguing variations on an age-old theme:

Caxao holds a special place in my heart. You know that saying that you can feel the love in food? Yeah, yeah, but with Beatriz Ledezma's confections, I really can. There's something so pure and soulful about what she creates. Maybe it's just the combination of ingredients, but I think she could be a character in Like Water For Chocolate. There's something of the magic realism in her that is expressed through those truffles and caramels.

For Valentine's Day Caxao has what Beatriz calls the Je Thé Adore Collection--a seven-piece box of ganaches infused with various teas, fruits, and spices. Je thé aime, for example, is an infusion of green tea, papaya, peach, oranges, and marigold petals with a white ivory ganache and covered in 70 percent dark chocolate. $18

Then there's her delightful Pink Champagne Heart Box--11 pieces of silky white chocolate ganache and pink champagne truffles. $35

Her yet-to-be named crispy treats in a take-out box (puffed rice, puffed quinoa, rice cereal, caramelized sesame seeds, almonds, peanuts, and organic 75 percent chocolate) are dressed up for V-Day and are $6.

And, if you just want to give a little bitty truffle treat, give an Emperor Truffle--dark chocolate ganache covered in 70 percent dark chocolate. All of $2.50.

All of these are available online or at her booths at the Little Italy Mercato and Hillcrest farmers market.

For a very different kind of chocolate, you'll want to try David Bacco's truffles. He's got a beautiful 12-piece assortment for $26.95 (at Seaside Market, Albertson's Del Mar, and online). These hand-crafted sweets feature the glossy  heart-shaped incantato, a blend of passion fruit, caramel, and milk chocolate ganache.

Then, there's his extravagant hand-painted edible heart box filled with two incantatos, serene (milk chocolate caramel ganache), citral (a fusion of lemongrass and 71 percent bittersweet chocolate, euphoria (a dreamy Hazelnut gianduja), and montserrat (Caribbean spices with ancho and chipotle). This package is $29.95.

Bacco is also collaborating with Sea Rocket Bistro for Valentine's Day dinner, with executive chef Tommy Fraioli using chocolate in each course, with a dessert created by Bacco that incorporates Sea Rocket's bacon jam.

Now, I'm sure I missed a lot. So fill in the gaps with your favorite Valentine's day edibles!

♥♥♥

P.S. My buddy Sam Zien, "Sam the Cooking Guy," is doing a special event on February 18 at 7 p.m. called "Sam Live." He'll be on the stage of the Joan Kroc Theater doing live cooking, showing video clips, telling behind-the-scenes stories, taking audience questions, and then signing books. You can learn how this frustrated biotech exec ended up with a TV cooking show. And, opening for Sam will be Australian bartender Hayden Wood from Woody's Liquid Kitchen (featured on Oprah and known as the most entertaining bartender in the world).

Here's the link for tickets--the big deal about this is that a portion of the proceeds will go to support Salvation Army/Kroc Center scholarship programs. General admission tickets are $60.

I've got two tickets to give away to this event. Just write a comment about the best edible Valentine's Day gift you ever gave or received. I'll pick what I think is the most moving (or funny) comment. The deadline for comments is noon PST on Monday, Feb. 13, 2012.

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Mexican Modern: Mision 19

I'm always intrigued by Javier Plascenia's food. If anyone can shatter the cliche that most people--other than Mexicans--think of as Mexican food, it is the Plascenias. My friend Beatriz Ladezma of Caxao Chocolates, who grew up with Javier and with whom I had dinner with at the new Mision 19 in Tijuana, explained to me that chefs throughout Baja look to the Plascencias as the epitome of creative and striking menus and techniques. Certainly, they've been doing that at Romesco on the U.S. side in Bonita--with Mediterranean-inspired dishes using local ingredients. Erizo Cebicheria, which I visited in April, melds local seafood with forward-looking approaches--octopus carpacio, for example, or chicharon de tuna.

So, I'd been eager to travel to Tijuana again to try Mision 19, one of the newest additions to the Plascencia restaurants. But this one is truly Javier's. Here, he's cutting loose and making his own imprint without worrying about how it fits in with the rest of the family's dining spots.

The restaurant is housed in Zona Urbana Rio, the city's business district, in a new concrete building--very cool and modern, but the space is warmed by an infusion of wood--whether the long thick planks that hang along the windows or the sleek wood tables and chairs--and color--the red upholstery and the tint of green in the glass.

The food is just as cool and modern, presented on white dishes sitting on squares of lava or slate. Everything pops.

Beatriz and I decided to go with the Chef's menu, which started light--a parfait of avocado meringue, thick housemade yogurt, diced Baja scallops, Persian cucumbers, soy jelly, chiltipin--a local wild chili--and a sprig of salty sea bean surrounded by corn sand. While the layers are beautiful shades of cool green, they are meant to be stirred together and the resulting flavors are an amalgam of sweetness with a tad of heat, umami from the soy jelly and salt from the sea bean.

Next came a petite salad of cured nopal strips mixed with Meyer lemon and grapefruit juice, topped by locally farmed abalone chips, micro arugula, and a chili de arbol salsa--creating a hot, crunchy dish with the slightest undertone of grapefruit. The dish, Plascencia said, was inspired by a dish he had at a local Chinese restaurant.  In fact, there is a distinct Chinese influence in several dishes, due, explained Beatriz, to the large Chinese community in Tijuana. Like the Jewish community I grew up in north of the border, Tijuanans have a tradition of enjoying Sunday dinners at their favorite Chinese restaurants. The Plascencias clearly among them.

Our third dish was deceptively simple--a salad with a thin slice of beef, heirloom tomatoes, and olives. But the beef had been sous vide for more than 48 hours--or, as the menu says, "cooked to high empty for 48 hours and sealed at the moment."

Intriguingly, the waiter, also named Javier, placed spoons in front of us and instructed us to use it to pick up the olives. Okay. The greyish brown olive, reminiscent of a kalamata, was, in fact, not an olive at all. Hello, molecular gastronomy. This was the essence of olive, but a tiny balloon of olive juice with all the salty brine you get when you bite into the real thing.

Fortunately there were several in the salad--and I felt like a kid playing with her food. What fun!

We then segued from light to more substantial. Risotto. But, here too tradition was upended. Think of this as a Mexican version of risotto made, yes, with arborio rice, but also heirloom goat eye beans and pearl barley. No cheese in sight and totally not necessary. The richness of the risotto came from wild mushrooms, zucchini blossoms, black truffle and black truffle oil, and a healthy helping of huitlacoche--also known as black gold, fungus on corn that is a true delicacy. Topping the risotto was epazote foam and what looked like tiny geranium petals.

Easing into fall, this spins traditional rice and beans into an elegant yet earthy and filling dish. I loved the distinctiveness of the textures of the arborio, the barley, and the beans--all chewy but different in their own ways.

How to beat this? Well, our last course was perhaps the one Beatriz and I enjoyed most. Pork belly. Was it a taco? Well, kind of. But again, Javier turned tradition on its head and merged two, actually three, cultures.

The slate tile held what looked like a taco with three sauces. But instead of a corn tortilla was a masa and maiz crepe with a hint of cilantro peeking out. The three sauces? From the left a soy mixture, chili de arbol, and then tomatillo and habanero. Then we each removed our toothpicks.

Inside was revealed more cilantro and slices of scallions topping strips of creamy pork belly. I gingerly added the spicy sauces and finished it with a drizzle of the soy, picked it up and took a bite. Then laughed. Clearly Javier had recently had Peking Duck. The pork belly was a combination of juicy flesh and crispy skin. The soy sauce and the richness of the pork was so "Peking Duck" but then there was the cilantro, the scallion, and those spicy salsas. Taco. Encased in a crepe. This isn't the Mexican food that people go to TJ for--but it should be because it clearly expresses the ingredients and cultural influences that are so key to the region. And so bypasses the cliche of what outsiders think encompasses Mexican food which is, well, just street food.

We finished with a colorful dessert plate centered around panacotta. A long tube of panacotta. Tossed in and around the creamy sweet was pineapple sugar ice, a brilliant blue colored jiricaya--like flan with cream, eggs, and sugar but not ordinarily blue--pistachio brittle, strawberry leather, cacao sand, a whisp of cotton candy, white chocolate raspberries, and a slice of roasted, then poached peach. Altogether it was a circus of a plate. I'm not sure how it fit in with the train of courses we'd been on, but it was a colorful and fun end to a surprising and delicious meal. Next up? Caesar's Restaurante Bar, the birthplace of the Caesar salad, but now, with the Plascencias' ownership, the epitome of Baja's new gastronomic culture.

Mision 19 is located at Mision de San Javier, 10643 in Zona Urbana Rio, about a five-minute drive from the border crossing off the 805.

Chocolatier Beatriz Ladezma and her childhood friend Javier Plascencia

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