Recipes & Cooking: December 2003 Archives

Todd and I spent five days with my parents for Christmas this year, and I spent a lot of time baking "with" my mom. I put "with" in quotes because my mom does not like to cook or bake. The first time this was really driven home was when we set out to make peanut blossoms. (The recipe we used came out kind of crumby, so I won't transcribe it here; my mom couldn't remember which recipe she's used in the past. Even though they were tasty and did disappear, we decided that next time we'll use the recipe on the Hershey's Kisses package.) She got a phone call around the time we started rolling cookies and abandoned me.

Next was the lemon poppyseed bread that she wanted to make for friends. I made it while she was out shopping. (And forgot to put the poppyseeds in the dough, so I sprinkled them on top. They were mini loaves so it didn't matter much.)

Even Christmas day she managed to be out of the kitchen for a good portion of the time, setting up the tables and tracking down cutlery and tablecloths. (I may have lost it a little bit right before dinnertime on Christmas day. I guess I can't stand the heat sometimes.)

The thing is, she knows I love to do this stuff, and I always volunteer. I guess I've read too many of those stories, where the writer reminisces about standing on a stool next to his/her mother, elbow-deep in flour, cutting out cookies, beating butter, sneaking a bit of the dough or licking the beaters. I've idealized baking with someone, so I strive for that Norman Rockwell picture.

When I think about it, though, I realize I kind of got that this year. In our own less-than-perfect way, my family spent a lot of time together in the kitchen: gossiping over a second glass of wine with my parents, complaining with my brother while he assembles the vegetable tray (which I call "crudité" to my family's amusement), making coffee with my dad in the early morning, talking with my mom as we prep about what a great cook her mother was (my mom's mom got sick when I was very young, so all I remember is a wheelchair-bound grandma who always gave me bubble bath for Christmas and loved Lawrence Welk - the bubbles from the show and my bath seem to be linked in my memory).

It was a good holiday. I love this stuff.

I've let all my subscriptions run out. I never completely came around to the high-concept recipes in Gourmet, and Everyday Food recipes seem to be hit-or-miss. (I've tried a couple that have failed completely, a problem I never had with Cooking Light.)

I'm thinking maybe Food and Wine would be a good one to try for a while, and I've signed up for two free issues of Real Simple. (The deal is supposed to be that I get to try the first two issue and then, if I'm not happy, I can write cancel on the bill and never pay a thing. But they have yet to send me my two trial issues buy have already sent me two bills. It's so aggravating. It's like they've scammed me into a subscription that I'm not sure I want. And I won't pay until I get my trial issues. There. I'm done complaining.)

What magazines do you all get inspired by?

We haven't gone to the grocery store in ages (we've been out of milk all week) so I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel when I made dinner tonight. I had old, old, old carrots and celery (which was mostly leaves), a leek, garlic, chicken stock and some bread left over from a takeout dinner on Wednesday. So I made "vegetable" soup (it was very green).

Chopped up the celery stalks and the leaves separately, and sauteed the stalks with carrots, leeks and garlic in a Dutch oven, then added chicken stock, water, a diced potato, salt, pepper and the celery leaves. Simmered until the potato was tender. It was pretty good, with pronounced celery, leek and garlic flavor fighting for prominence. Cut the bread in half lengthwise, broiled it, then put some shredded Parmesan on top and put it back under the broiler until the cheese was crusty.

I just love the challenge of making dinner out of nothing. It's like Gordon Elliot's Doorknock Dinners. There are some nights any chef would be hard-pressed to make something from the contents of my fridge. But I feel inspired by the challenge. Now I'm in the worst position, though. A completely empty fridge, which means complete freedom to make whatever I want (since I'm going to the grocery store). This is when I spend hours flipping through cookbooks, never settling on anything.

So I didn't win my first baking contest, where I entered my chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons. (Sniff.) The really sad thing is that the recipe I made only made 18 cookies, and I had to give them 12, I gave one away, and Todd and I ate two right after they were baked, so I only have three left. (I guess that could be a good thing, too. Wouldn't want to get sick of them.)

The good news is that my friend, Julie, did. She won in the most creative category, for chocolate sandwich cookies with peppermint filling. She got the recipe for the chocolate part from epicurious.com (the Dark Chocolate Cookies recipe, but she chilled the dough until it was firm enough to roll into balls), then made the peppermint filling with a combination of peppermint extract, confectioners' sugar and a tiny bit of cream (it was thick enough that she could roll it in a ball then flatten it). The thing that put her into the winners' circle, though, was that she placed a small star-shaped cookie cutter on top of the assembled cookie, then dusted it with confectioners' sugar to make a pattern. Hooray Julie!

There was a raffle here at work today and I won a Calphalon nonstick double griddle! (I actually won a set of Crabtree and Evelyn beauty products, but the person who won the griddle didn't want it, so traded with me.)

I keep hearing bad things about the chemicals nonstick cookware releases, though. I can't decide what to think about that.

One of my coworkers says she gets a letter when someone tries a recipe from the magazine and it doesn't work. Often this reader wants the money she spent on ingredients to be reimbursed by the magazine (which the magazine doesn't do). I always scoffed at these readers, but now at least I can sympathize with the sentiment (although I still would never expect such a thing).

I printed out a recipe from another blog this morning, for caramel-topped brownies, and really ended up with a stinker. I think the problem was that the instructions said to use a 9-inch square baking pan, but I noticed later at the end of the recipe "makes 50 brownies." So I'm thinking it should have been baked in a 9 x 13-inch pan. The pan was really full, and the brownies took 20 minutes longer to bake than they should have (by that time, the caramel layer had both burned and oozed into the brownie layer, making a big mush). I have no idea how the recipe would have turned out if the instructions had specified the correct pan size, but I'll never know (I actually had to throw it out). I'm too mad about wasting all of my nuts, vanilla, butter, eggs, chocolate, etc. to give it another go.

So I want to apologize to anyone who might have tried cooking (particularly baking) anything from here and got bad results because I transcribed something wrong. My mom calls me every once in a while to say, "I don't understand. Your site says to (fill in blank with one of my silly mistakes)." I am grateful for the constructive criticism. I'm a copy editor in my day job so, while the blog is an attempt to escape that for a little while, I can appreciate the benefit of a second pair of eyes reading things, especially recipes.

Todd's holiday party for work was last night, and one of the appetizers was wedges of apple tart. It wasn't anything like what I expected, though - it was savory instead of sweet. It had a crust like a pizza and included some kind of cheese. I think it could be great with some brie or other mild, silky cheese (it could have been brie). Maybe add some pepper and thyme? I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to experiment. (I think it's a little too weird of a combination for those I cook for, so I'd end up eating it all myself.)

I threw together dinner last night and it turned out pretty good. I coated strips of chicken (the package said for stir-fry) first in egg white, then in almond meal seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh thyme, sage and rosemary. Let it rest for a while, so the egg white can dry out a little (I think it helps the coating adhere), then panfried it. I could find a hundred uses for this almond meal.

And I hate to admit it, but fresh herbs are definitely worth the trouble/expense. Argh. It's so much easier to reach for a jar of dried. I'm still a proponent of dried spices, though.

I've bitten off more than I can chew (hahaha) in the holiday baking/candy making category, I think. We're sending a package off to Todd's sister and her family tomorrow, so I baked a batch of Italian wedding cookies to send in that (I'm going to have to make another batch I think, because they were good; I used the almond flour I bought recently at Trader Joe's), and then I made lemon-rosemary mini bundts (which I froze for gifts) and orange-chocolate truffles. Next weekend I want to make shortbread for one coworker, another cookie as a contest entry and chocolate-and-caramel covered matzo. I'm thinking maybe cinnamon and hazelnut biscotti or chocolate crinkles for my contest entry, but I don't know. I can't decide whether I should steer clear of chocolate. (If the judges are eating lots of chocolate cookies, will they get sick of it?) If I went with my own nostalgic favorite I'd do peanut butter blossoms (the one with the Hershey's kiss inside), although my mom used to make them, a long time ago, with these starburst-shaped chocolates instead. They're always the first cookies gone.

The truffles I made today didn't turn out very pretty. It's more of a trick than the recipe intimates to get them round. Mine looked like little chocolate rocks, all different shapes. Toward the end I realized that you have more control when you move the truffle from one spoon to another. REALLY rich, too. The ones I made had some Cointreau in them.

My company is having a holiday cookie contest and I want to enter. It's my first contest, though. Anyone have any tips? Any cookie recipes that are really fantastic?

There are five categories: best tasting, best looking, best bars, most original and best intentioned. I don't think I should go for best looking, because I'm not an aesthetic perfectionist. Todd's been pressing me to make Nanaimo Bars, which are layered bar cookies with a cookie layer, custard layer and a layer of chocolate on top. I'm thinking something simpler, though. Maybe a Mexican wedding cookie. This weekend I'm hoping to make lemon-rosemary bundt cakes and truffles. It's snowing buckets right now, so it'll be a good weekend for indoor activities.

Don't forget to send me your award-winning cookie recipes, though. I can tell I'm going to make myself crazy trying to figure out what to enter.

I made the cover recipe from the new issue of Everyday Food, and it smelled awesome when we took it out of the pan (the topping is made by coating the pan liberally with butter - 2 tablespoons - then adding 1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon allspice, then putting a single layer of fresh cranberries on top of that; then you put the batter on top and bake it). Suddenly the apartment was filled with the warm, spicy scent of holiday baking. It was like the instant the Grinch hears the Whovillians singing and his heart grows bigger: I'm in the Christmas spirit. I was actually cheerful walking to work in the bitter cold this morning.

We're going to eat it tonight, so I'll let you know how it tasted (and post the batter recipe if it turns out to be good).

I made this last night for dinner and was pleased with the results. They were tender and almost fluffy, a little but not too chewy, with a good potato flavor. I can't wait to experiment with other varieties.

The recipe called for 1 pound Yukon Gold potatoes boiled whole, but all I had was regular baking potatoes, so I cut them in quarters and boiled them for 20 minutes. Then I peeled them (while still hot) and put them through the medium size holes on my food mill. I mixed in two eggs, one at a time, then 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup first and then the rest gradually. I split the dough in half and, on a liberally floured surface, I rolled each half into a 1-inch-diameter log, which I then cut into 1/2-inch sections that I put in the fridge until the water was ready. Once the water was boiling, I dropped a few in, then fished them out when they floated to the top (less than a minute).

Tossed it with asparagus, heavy cream, proscuitto and Parmesan. I have about half of them left uncooked, in the freezer for a future meal. Kind of a mess to make but so easy.