During the marathon of cookie baking that has been going on over the last two weekends (and is finally over!), I paused to do other things, both in and out of the kitchen. What I'm finding is that, if I continue with one project for hours and hours and hours, apart from physical fatigue, I develop and almost "mental" fatigue, and begin to resent what I'm doing. If you saw the wonderful movie "Like Water for Chocolate," (and if you haven't, SHAME ON YOU), you are very familiar with the consequences of bad emotions going through your head when you cook (Now, if I could only learn to channel the good ones and the "good, dirty ones, I'd be set...). So I have to pause, because no one wants a cookie that tastes bitter and of bile. So on one of those breaks, I made a lamb stew, with dried apricots.
I suppose this recipe is sort of Middle Eastern/Iranian. I'm not sure. I don't know enough about the cuisine to say that with definitiveness. The spicing is middle eastern, and the use of dried fruit in meat dishes is very characteristic of that part of the world (and Africa too, for that matter. I think that some of the more elaborate Renaissance recipes that caused the passing of the so-called "anti-sumptuary laws probably did, too, but I don't know).
For years, I have made a lamb stew recipe with quinces, and I've posted it here. It's a very good recipe, but it has a very different feel, and flavor profile than this dish does. There are similiarities. And it's a very easy dish to make, although it is one where you can't leave the house when you're cooking it. As the weather gets cold and bleak, that's probably a good thing (although today it is an unseasonable 62 degrees). Let's get started.
First, the meat. You need about 2.5-3 pounds of lamb. Now, the logical place to start is with what is sold as "stew meat." Honestly, I don't see a point in buying this, unless you are dead on sure of what you're getting. I find that my stews work much better if I buy a boneless piece of lamb stew, and cube it myself. I can make the pieces as big or small as I like, and I know that they're uniform. Makes cooking much easier. It doesn't take long to cube a shoulder that is about 3 pounds. Maybe five minutes? Once you have the cubes, pat them dry, salt them and pepper them, and put them aside (if you think ahead, you can salt them the night before and refrigerate, but don't use the pepper until the next day).
Collect your spices. You will need a half teaspoon each of ground coriander, ground cinnamonm, and a quarter teaspoon of saffron. Saffron quality varies. Look for a longer strand of spice, rather than a powder or anything like that. You will also want to chop up two large onions. Also, have some chicken stock ready (the original recipe, like the quince stew, calls for water. Chicken stock makes it better). Finally, get half a pound of dried apricots.
Let's address the question of dried apricots for a minute. You can get California apricots, or Turkish apricots. The "rule" amongst cooks is that Turkish apricots are better, more tasty, and that they need more cooking time. As a general matter, I agree. But you can get delicious California apricots, especially organic ones. Honestly, though, in this dish, I think the standard, beautiful non-organic ones are fine. It will simplify your cooking if you use those, but if you are willing to spend the time, by all means go with organic or Turkish.
If your dried apricots are not soft, then you will have to cover them with water and let them soak for about an hour. You can start that half an hour or so before you begin making your stew, because you won't need them for a while.
Pour two tablespoons of olive oil, and add two tablespoons of unsalted butter (or, go with oil, all the way), into a pot and heat it at medium fire. Add the lamb cubes and brown them. Be patient. If they all don't fit comfortably in the pot, do it in batches. It is REAL important that you get this meat nice and brown because once you start the stewing, the possibility of getting color on the meat is gone. It will probably take you at least ten minutes to get it cooked nice and brown. As the cubes are cooked, put them aside in a bowl.
In my original recipe, it calls upon you to now get rid of most of the fat, and add the onions. I didn't do that, and I'm glad I didn't. If you do not use very fatty lamb, you will need that fat to cook these onions. Lower the heat, and cook them for a full 5-7 minutes. Stir while you're doing this. You don't want them to brown, but you want them soft.
When the onions are done, add the meat back to the pot, and stir in the spices. Now, cover everything - just BARELY cover it - with chicken stock. Let it come to a simmer, lower the heat, and let it cook away for half an hour.
Near the end of that half hour, drain the apricots. Save the water. Cut them into small pieces. Add the fruit and the water to the stew, and cook away, covered, for another hour or so. Check occasionally to check the liquid level. You don't want this to dry out, but you also don't want soup. Add stock as you need to. Near the end of the hour, check the seasonings by tasting a bit of the broth and a small (OK, a BIG ) piece of the lamb. You want it to be very tender.
It is interesting that if you cook this on the stove top as I did, you will get a drier dish, than if you move your pot into the oven, and let it cook away at 325 or so for the length of time given in the recipe. That's the nature of how close the fire is to what you are cooking.
This is really an eye opening dish. And I hope it inspires you to try it with other dried fruit. Figs perhaps, or dates, or even apples? I am also trying to get my hands on some dried persimmons, because I think the combination is going to be a good one. And you now have a general stewing/braising recipe, that you can use with other meats. For example, there is a wonderful dish of chicken braised with dried figs, and there is also one that I have seen of pork and pears. Those of you more clever than I will come up with more combinations. Use your imagination, but use it wisely. Think carefully before you decide that a potroast with dried cranberries is in your future....
Monday, December 15, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
More cookies
I want to warn you all ahead of time: this is a sad story in some ways. People die in it. People I miss. But I want to tell their story here. It involves Gertie, and Richard. And it involves horrific things: the holocaust, AIDs, and cancer. And Xmas cookies.
You ready? Ok, here we go.
When we first moved into our apartment, back in the early '90s, I was intrigued by an older, very tough looking woman. Tough was NOT the word: this woman was downright ROUGH. She sort of looked like the kind of woman you see coming out of the nastiest, darkest kind of bar, with a red face, and who looks 15 years older than she was. One day, she was struggling with some bags up to her apartment, and I offered to help. The look I got could have curdled milk and the tongue lashing about "I'VE BEEN DOING THIS SHIT FOR MYSELF FOR YEARS I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP" really scared me. But then she dropped something, and I grabbed it before it could fall and shatter and she agreed to let me help her. I didn't get into her apartment that time, but it was the ice breaker. Eventually, I learned that her name was Gertrude, but she preferred to be called Gertie. I also learned that she was a lesbian. And I learned that she was a concentration camp survivor. The ONLY member of her family who did survive.
One of the things that I learned from Gertie was that, when we study the events of the past, it is very easy to forget the inarticulate, the illiterate, the ones who really are a part of that history, but don't get any say in writing about it. Let's face it: we've all read or at least read about the scholarly histories of the holocaust, and the brilliant doctors, musicians, etc, who died. But there WERE "blue collar" jews, who died as well. Millions of them. And we forget them. Well, Gertie was one of them. Her family was NOT educated, she did NOT go to school, and when she came to the United States, she did not have rich relatives to take care of her. She had to rely on herself, always. Eventually, she became one of those people who clean the subway stations for the MTA, and eventually retired on disability She had a rent stabilized apartment, a studio, and lived alone, because when she moved to Greenwich Village "because people told me I should live there," she didn't know how to express her sexual preferences in a way that would interest any of - in her words "those hoity toity dykes who live around here."
I used to visit with Gertie, and she told me once that I was one of three men besides her father and two brothers who she trusted. I never met the other two. And one day, I was brave enough to ask her about something in her apartment: there was ALWAYS a bowl of lemons on her table. ALWAYS.
Be warned. This story is going to break your heart. It still breaks mine. As poor people, in Poland, her family didn't have enough to eat a lot of the time. Even before the occupation. And they certainly couldn't afford fancy stuff like citrus fruit (remember: this is before easy transportation of food). One day, no one knew quite how, her brother came home with a lemon: one, single lemon. There was, of course, the usual questioning and buzz about how he got it, but ultimately, her mother decided that she'd use it to make cookies.
She never got the chance. They came for the family that day. She never saw her brother or her father again. But by having the lemons , in her words "she remembered them."
At the time, I was working with my much missed baking teacher, Richard Sax. I told him the story about Gertie. He got very silent for a while and then he said "let's make her something. Let's make her some cookies." Richard knew EVERYTHING about cookies, and he recalled a recipe which, as I have learned, is not uniquely Polish, but is middle European, and is classic to Jewish communities because it uses oil, and no butter. And Richard told me that in the classic version, there was no citrus, but we were going to do it because "Gertie deserved it."
We made these cookies, and I brought them over to Gertie. Even though she liked me, she was VERY suspicious of gifts. She ate one of the cookies and I remember her saying something like "damn it, now you're making me think there may be some kindness in this freakin world." The lemon taste startled her (I learned, after making the cookies, that she never actually ATE the lemons she'd put on the table. She'd just replace them as they spoiled).
I made those cookies for her every chance I got. One fall, I went on vacation, and when I came back, the doorman told me that Gertie was "gone." Cancer. All the while, I did not know she had inoperable cancer, she never told me. She had decided not to do treatments because she was "just sick and tired of everything." I never got a chance to say goodbye.
A year later, Richard died, of lung cancer, which was related, I think both to his HIV status, and to the death of his partner a year before. I didn't get to say goodbye to him either.
These cookies are the cookies we made. They are NOT the fanciest cookies in the world, nor are they the easiest to make. Their texture, as with oil cookies in general, is not so creamy and soft as you might like, but "they are what they are." Try them. You may really like them. I make them every year, send them in my assortment tins, and when I make them, I think of Richard when I pour the poppy seeds into the batter, and Gertie when I'm grating the lemon peel. And they're in the kitchen with me.
You will need 3 eggs, half a cup of vegetable oil, 1.5 cups of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Whip all of these up together in a mixer, until you have a light, frothy mass. Then stir in three cups of flour, a tablespoon (yup, a tablespoon) of baking powder, and then AT LEAST a half cup of poppy seeds. Make sure the poppy seeds are fresh. They have a high oil content, and go rancid quickly. Finally, grate the peel from at least one, and maybe two lemons, and stir that into the batter.
This may not come together really easily and if it doesn't, add a little water until you get a cohesive mass of dough. It behaves a bit like piecrust in that respect.
Richard used to refrigerate this dough overnight. I find that unnecessary, and if I DO refrigerate the cookies at all, it's for an hour, maybe two. He also used to roll them out and cut crescent moons of them, and he used to call them "Mohn munds," because "mohn" is a poppyseed, and mund is of course, a moon. But he had better technique at rolling than I do, so I just break off balls, roll them, and line them up on baking sheets. Then I bake them at 375 for 12 minutes or so. Sometimes you need to bake them up to 15 minutes, because they're not browning. That's ok too.
When they cool, you store them in a tin. But like I said, their texture is not the greatest in the world, and after longer storage, they begin to feel almost like a cracker.
My description of these cookies may make you think "why bother?" Well, I don't really have to answer that, do I? I've written before as to how my friends live on for me, through the recipes I associate with them, and honestly, they DO taste good. They're just a little different.
Folks, you have someone out there who you associate with a particular recipe or dish or restaurant or something. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE before you forget it, record it. You'll never lose it. Holidays are a time of remembrance, and that's when you call these things forth.
You ready? Ok, here we go.
When we first moved into our apartment, back in the early '90s, I was intrigued by an older, very tough looking woman. Tough was NOT the word: this woman was downright ROUGH. She sort of looked like the kind of woman you see coming out of the nastiest, darkest kind of bar, with a red face, and who looks 15 years older than she was. One day, she was struggling with some bags up to her apartment, and I offered to help. The look I got could have curdled milk and the tongue lashing about "I'VE BEEN DOING THIS SHIT FOR MYSELF FOR YEARS I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP" really scared me. But then she dropped something, and I grabbed it before it could fall and shatter and she agreed to let me help her. I didn't get into her apartment that time, but it was the ice breaker. Eventually, I learned that her name was Gertrude, but she preferred to be called Gertie. I also learned that she was a lesbian. And I learned that she was a concentration camp survivor. The ONLY member of her family who did survive.
One of the things that I learned from Gertie was that, when we study the events of the past, it is very easy to forget the inarticulate, the illiterate, the ones who really are a part of that history, but don't get any say in writing about it. Let's face it: we've all read or at least read about the scholarly histories of the holocaust, and the brilliant doctors, musicians, etc, who died. But there WERE "blue collar" jews, who died as well. Millions of them. And we forget them. Well, Gertie was one of them. Her family was NOT educated, she did NOT go to school, and when she came to the United States, she did not have rich relatives to take care of her. She had to rely on herself, always. Eventually, she became one of those people who clean the subway stations for the MTA, and eventually retired on disability She had a rent stabilized apartment, a studio, and lived alone, because when she moved to Greenwich Village "because people told me I should live there," she didn't know how to express her sexual preferences in a way that would interest any of - in her words "those hoity toity dykes who live around here."
I used to visit with Gertie, and she told me once that I was one of three men besides her father and two brothers who she trusted. I never met the other two. And one day, I was brave enough to ask her about something in her apartment: there was ALWAYS a bowl of lemons on her table. ALWAYS.
Be warned. This story is going to break your heart. It still breaks mine. As poor people, in Poland, her family didn't have enough to eat a lot of the time. Even before the occupation. And they certainly couldn't afford fancy stuff like citrus fruit (remember: this is before easy transportation of food). One day, no one knew quite how, her brother came home with a lemon: one, single lemon. There was, of course, the usual questioning and buzz about how he got it, but ultimately, her mother decided that she'd use it to make cookies.
She never got the chance. They came for the family that day. She never saw her brother or her father again. But by having the lemons , in her words "she remembered them."
At the time, I was working with my much missed baking teacher, Richard Sax. I told him the story about Gertie. He got very silent for a while and then he said "let's make her something. Let's make her some cookies." Richard knew EVERYTHING about cookies, and he recalled a recipe which, as I have learned, is not uniquely Polish, but is middle European, and is classic to Jewish communities because it uses oil, and no butter. And Richard told me that in the classic version, there was no citrus, but we were going to do it because "Gertie deserved it."
We made these cookies, and I brought them over to Gertie. Even though she liked me, she was VERY suspicious of gifts. She ate one of the cookies and I remember her saying something like "damn it, now you're making me think there may be some kindness in this freakin world." The lemon taste startled her (I learned, after making the cookies, that she never actually ATE the lemons she'd put on the table. She'd just replace them as they spoiled).
I made those cookies for her every chance I got. One fall, I went on vacation, and when I came back, the doorman told me that Gertie was "gone." Cancer. All the while, I did not know she had inoperable cancer, she never told me. She had decided not to do treatments because she was "just sick and tired of everything." I never got a chance to say goodbye.
A year later, Richard died, of lung cancer, which was related, I think both to his HIV status, and to the death of his partner a year before. I didn't get to say goodbye to him either.
These cookies are the cookies we made. They are NOT the fanciest cookies in the world, nor are they the easiest to make. Their texture, as with oil cookies in general, is not so creamy and soft as you might like, but "they are what they are." Try them. You may really like them. I make them every year, send them in my assortment tins, and when I make them, I think of Richard when I pour the poppy seeds into the batter, and Gertie when I'm grating the lemon peel. And they're in the kitchen with me.
You will need 3 eggs, half a cup of vegetable oil, 1.5 cups of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Whip all of these up together in a mixer, until you have a light, frothy mass. Then stir in three cups of flour, a tablespoon (yup, a tablespoon) of baking powder, and then AT LEAST a half cup of poppy seeds. Make sure the poppy seeds are fresh. They have a high oil content, and go rancid quickly. Finally, grate the peel from at least one, and maybe two lemons, and stir that into the batter.
This may not come together really easily and if it doesn't, add a little water until you get a cohesive mass of dough. It behaves a bit like piecrust in that respect.
Richard used to refrigerate this dough overnight. I find that unnecessary, and if I DO refrigerate the cookies at all, it's for an hour, maybe two. He also used to roll them out and cut crescent moons of them, and he used to call them "Mohn munds," because "mohn" is a poppyseed, and mund is of course, a moon. But he had better technique at rolling than I do, so I just break off balls, roll them, and line them up on baking sheets. Then I bake them at 375 for 12 minutes or so. Sometimes you need to bake them up to 15 minutes, because they're not browning. That's ok too.
When they cool, you store them in a tin. But like I said, their texture is not the greatest in the world, and after longer storage, they begin to feel almost like a cracker.
My description of these cookies may make you think "why bother?" Well, I don't really have to answer that, do I? I've written before as to how my friends live on for me, through the recipes I associate with them, and honestly, they DO taste good. They're just a little different.
Folks, you have someone out there who you associate with a particular recipe or dish or restaurant or something. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE before you forget it, record it. You'll never lose it. Holidays are a time of remembrance, and that's when you call these things forth.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Xmas cookies: "The miniseries"
I tell people, with more than a soupcon of truth, that evidence of how much chaos there is in my life, and how far it has gotten out of control, comes from my annual Xmas cookie production. I make, literally, thousands. And unlike your normal crazy baker, I don't make one or two (or three or four) varieities: I make over 40.
How did this start? Well, years ago, someone I loved dearly was spending his last days in a hospital. I brought a tin of cookies at Xmas to cheer him up. "Where's mine?" was asked by several of the people in the room. Given my deep rooted sense of Catholic guilt, next year, I made more. And the "where's mine?" request came up again. So, production expanded, and expanded again. You can figure out the rest. It is, literally, a chaotic couple of weeks between Thanksgiving and Xmas as I get all of these together. And every year when it's done I say "This is IT. No more. I am TIRED of this." And Guy, patient spouse that he is, shakes his head, looks away, and says nothing when I start buying butter on sale in October and November.
The style of cookies I make has changed. When I started, I did stick to basic "cut out" cookies. You know the kind I mean: the snowmen, the stars, etc, and spent yards of time decorating them with frosting, and sugar and everything else. And they just weren't very good. Pretty, but not very good ('fess up: have you ever eaten one of those decorated, icinged, sugared cookies that tasted like anything but frosting?). I started investigating other cookies, especially those of a more European bent: biscotti, shortbreads, nutbased cookies, etc. And they taste much better. MUCH better.
But... and this is something I need to warn you about if you get into cookie baking in a big way. Most of these cookies, like most baked t hings, are BROWN. They are, at best, golden brown, but color wise, you have a certain monotony. It IS broken up by things like dried fruit in the cookies, or jam, or things like that, but if you go for tastier cookies, you are NOT going to have the beauties that you would get from a bakery, where someone pipes frosting in pretty colors all day. Nope, you're not going to get those from me.
In terms of flavors of cookies, I am going to generalize wildly, and say that people seem to fall into three "favorite flavor " categories for cookies: chocolate, spice, and citrus.
I am not a big fan of chocolate type cookies, and actually, as I meet more and more people and put out cookies, it seems that once people break out of the mold of chocolate cookies, and discover the other "tastes," they move to others (let's leave my friend David out of this, shall we?). My own palette goes to the citrus cookies, but only slightly. I'm going to present a recipe below that is not really my own, but I have modified it.
In my opinion, a cookie should leave you feeling SATISFIED. If you feel like you have to eat six or seven of them at one time, the cookie is not well made. You shouldn't need many of them. One or two biscotti, one well made oatmeal cookie, etc etc etc. Granted, there is time for indulgence, but if you're dumping cookies into a bowl, adding milk and eating them like breakfast cereal (as one friend once did), you're not doing them justice, or they're not doing you justice.
In the citrus category, this may very well be my new favorite cookie. I like it because it uses the WHOLE citrus fruit: not just the rind, and not just the juice. I also like it because, even though it was originally written as a log cookie (the kind you form into a log and then slice and bake), it works as a drop cookie too (the kind where you grab hunks of dough and form balls and bake). I LIKE drop cookies. I HATE log cookies.
This is NOT for people who do not like citrus. But they are PERFECT in a holiday assortment, and they are great at the end of a rich meal. They make a lot, and you'll be glad you made that many.
Start with 2 sticks of unsalted butter that have softened at room temperature, and beat them, in a mixer, for about two minutes. Add zest from one lemon and one lime, that you have grated. Put those naked fruits aside (CAREFUL BOYS). Then stir in a cup of granulated sugar, and beat for another two minutes. While that's happening, squeeze the lemon and the lime separating the pits (I didn't have to tell you that, did I?), and then add the juice to the butter mixture. Also add a teaspoon of vanilla. Then add 2 heaping cups of flour (about 2.25 actually) and a half teaspoon of salt. The salt is REAL important. Don't forget it.
You will have a very soft dough, and you DO need to refrigerate it. The minimum time is probably 3 hours, but I will tell you that I have refrigerated this overnight, and it's been fine the next day, right out of the fridge.
You will need three baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Preheat your oven to 375. Break off small balls of dough. Let's say about the size of a really big olive or a really small walnut (that's not really helpful is it? Deal with it). Put about 25-30 of the balls onto each cookie sheet. Then, put a quarter cup of sugar in a small bowl, and press a small glass into it, to take some sugar on the bottom. Press the cookies slightly, and bake them in the middle of the oven, for about 10-12 minutes Use ten minutes if you like softer, moister cookies, and 12 if you like them crispier. If you see them browning around the edges, take em out.
These will be very soft when you take them out of the oven. Leave them alone for a good half hour, and then either eat em, or put em in a metal tin or a glass jar, or something like that. NEVER in plastic.
They are supposed to keep for a week, but I've kept them in a cold place in a house for a month.
If you had some of my huckleberry ice cream around, that would make a nice filling for these guys. But to tell you the truth, I just like to sit there with them, and enjoy each nibble. They are really good.
I have said that gingersnaps are the "house cookie," and I almost always have them around. These may give a run for the money to the snap. Or, maybe we'll make em both and satisfy the spicers and the citrussers.
How did this start? Well, years ago, someone I loved dearly was spending his last days in a hospital. I brought a tin of cookies at Xmas to cheer him up. "Where's mine?" was asked by several of the people in the room. Given my deep rooted sense of Catholic guilt, next year, I made more. And the "where's mine?" request came up again. So, production expanded, and expanded again. You can figure out the rest. It is, literally, a chaotic couple of weeks between Thanksgiving and Xmas as I get all of these together. And every year when it's done I say "This is IT. No more. I am TIRED of this." And Guy, patient spouse that he is, shakes his head, looks away, and says nothing when I start buying butter on sale in October and November.
The style of cookies I make has changed. When I started, I did stick to basic "cut out" cookies. You know the kind I mean: the snowmen, the stars, etc, and spent yards of time decorating them with frosting, and sugar and everything else. And they just weren't very good. Pretty, but not very good ('fess up: have you ever eaten one of those decorated, icinged, sugared cookies that tasted like anything but frosting?). I started investigating other cookies, especially those of a more European bent: biscotti, shortbreads, nutbased cookies, etc. And they taste much better. MUCH better.
But... and this is something I need to warn you about if you get into cookie baking in a big way. Most of these cookies, like most baked t hings, are BROWN. They are, at best, golden brown, but color wise, you have a certain monotony. It IS broken up by things like dried fruit in the cookies, or jam, or things like that, but if you go for tastier cookies, you are NOT going to have the beauties that you would get from a bakery, where someone pipes frosting in pretty colors all day. Nope, you're not going to get those from me.
In terms of flavors of cookies, I am going to generalize wildly, and say that people seem to fall into three "favorite flavor " categories for cookies: chocolate, spice, and citrus.
I am not a big fan of chocolate type cookies, and actually, as I meet more and more people and put out cookies, it seems that once people break out of the mold of chocolate cookies, and discover the other "tastes," they move to others (let's leave my friend David out of this, shall we?). My own palette goes to the citrus cookies, but only slightly. I'm going to present a recipe below that is not really my own, but I have modified it.
In my opinion, a cookie should leave you feeling SATISFIED. If you feel like you have to eat six or seven of them at one time, the cookie is not well made. You shouldn't need many of them. One or two biscotti, one well made oatmeal cookie, etc etc etc. Granted, there is time for indulgence, but if you're dumping cookies into a bowl, adding milk and eating them like breakfast cereal (as one friend once did), you're not doing them justice, or they're not doing you justice.
In the citrus category, this may very well be my new favorite cookie. I like it because it uses the WHOLE citrus fruit: not just the rind, and not just the juice. I also like it because, even though it was originally written as a log cookie (the kind you form into a log and then slice and bake), it works as a drop cookie too (the kind where you grab hunks of dough and form balls and bake). I LIKE drop cookies. I HATE log cookies.
This is NOT for people who do not like citrus. But they are PERFECT in a holiday assortment, and they are great at the end of a rich meal. They make a lot, and you'll be glad you made that many.
Start with 2 sticks of unsalted butter that have softened at room temperature, and beat them, in a mixer, for about two minutes. Add zest from one lemon and one lime, that you have grated. Put those naked fruits aside (CAREFUL BOYS). Then stir in a cup of granulated sugar, and beat for another two minutes. While that's happening, squeeze the lemon and the lime separating the pits (I didn't have to tell you that, did I?), and then add the juice to the butter mixture. Also add a teaspoon of vanilla. Then add 2 heaping cups of flour (about 2.25 actually) and a half teaspoon of salt. The salt is REAL important. Don't forget it.
You will have a very soft dough, and you DO need to refrigerate it. The minimum time is probably 3 hours, but I will tell you that I have refrigerated this overnight, and it's been fine the next day, right out of the fridge.
You will need three baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Preheat your oven to 375. Break off small balls of dough. Let's say about the size of a really big olive or a really small walnut (that's not really helpful is it? Deal with it). Put about 25-30 of the balls onto each cookie sheet. Then, put a quarter cup of sugar in a small bowl, and press a small glass into it, to take some sugar on the bottom. Press the cookies slightly, and bake them in the middle of the oven, for about 10-12 minutes Use ten minutes if you like softer, moister cookies, and 12 if you like them crispier. If you see them browning around the edges, take em out.
These will be very soft when you take them out of the oven. Leave them alone for a good half hour, and then either eat em, or put em in a metal tin or a glass jar, or something like that. NEVER in plastic.
They are supposed to keep for a week, but I've kept them in a cold place in a house for a month.
If you had some of my huckleberry ice cream around, that would make a nice filling for these guys. But to tell you the truth, I just like to sit there with them, and enjoy each nibble. They are really good.
I have said that gingersnaps are the "house cookie," and I almost always have them around. These may give a run for the money to the snap. Or, maybe we'll make em both and satisfy the spicers and the citrussers.
Monday, December 8, 2008
One of Tati's favorites: stuffed cabbage
I have written, only occasionally, about my grandfather, "Tati." If you've read those entries, you know why. The emotions of writing about him are tough. As my emotions seem to be right out there on the surface of my skin, no matter how I try to keep them in check, the combination of an inherent property of yours truly, and the memories of this wonderful man, sort of overwhelm me. It really isn't until recently that I recalled how much he loved this dish. And how Nana would NOT make it for him. Cabbage really does not have much place in an Italian kitchen. She would make coleslaw every once in a while, and she felt compelled, when we were older, to make corned beef and cabbage on St Patrick's Day (it was awful), that was about it. And I've told you how cabbage gave Tati gas, and Nana would give him grief about this whenever he went out and had it.
It took me a LONG time to "cotton" to cabbage. I'm still not going to eat brussel sprouts (incidentally, I LOVE the Italian word for them: cavolini, or "little cabbages. " That's a new word to Italian, since Brussel sprouts are not an Italian vegetable either). And as far as stuffed cabbage went, I always had a feeling that it was a difficult, time consuming dish, not worth the trouble. And indeed, many of the recipes for it that I found, were so intricate, I wondered how anyone could ever make it.
Well, I found one that I really like. Some years ago, Marian Cunningham, a true treasure in the cooking world, published an almost unnoticed book called "Forgotten Recipes." In going through it, indeed, it is my opinion that there is a reason why most of these recipes were forgotten. They're just not very good. Even the stuffed cabbage recipe, good as it was, needed modification. Ms. Burros had essentially presented recipes from a day long past. In that period, dishes like this one were sweeter, and were "spicier" in the sense that they had sweet spices in them. The original recipe for t his dish contained allspice and cloves. Nice in some things, but they were put into the tomato sauce base of the recipe, and that just bothered me big time. So, too, did the brown sugar. So I make this in a simpler form, and it's a good dish to make. If Tati were around, I would want to make it for him. But I would also want to fall into his arms and have him hold me the way he did when I was very young. I'm fortunate enough to have found a friend who's arms remind me of those strong, "Tati arms," and I try to get him to hug me as much as I can. It's not the same, but we learn that what we have is pretty darn good. I'd make it for James, too.
So, here we go. You will need a head of cabbage, say about 2-2.5 pounds. That's really not that big a head . You can use savoy, or plain cabbage. I'm going to come back to this in a minute. You will also need a generous 2 cups of tomato sauce - you may even want to go with 2.5 cups. Also, 2 cups of cooked white rice. Finally, you will need 2 pounds of ground meat of some kind. I like to use a 50/50 mixture of beef and pork, or all pork in this recipe. You could, however, use whatever you like. I do think that this would even work with ground turkey.
Prepping the cabbage is the hardest part of this recipe, and there are several ways to do it. The way I do it is to start by removing any leaves that I just wouldn't eat. DOn't throw them out. We'll get back to that. Then, cut out the core of the head of cabbage with a sharp knife, to enable you to peel the leaves off, one at a time. Patience and steadiness, and don't worry if they tear. This dish is forgiving.
Eventually, you'll get to the point where "the law of diminishing returns" sets in. In other words, like those stacking Russian dolls, you'll get to something small, and non-separatable. You can chop that up and use it in the dish too. We're gonna "use it all."
Take those whole leaves, and put them into a big pot of salted, boiling water, and cook them for about five minutes. Drain them, and let them cool down. (Indeed, if you do the cabbage prep first, you can make the rice and get the sauce ready while they cool).
There IS an ingenious way of separating cabbage leaves, if you have the room in your freezer. This comes from Jacques Pepin. What you do is cut away that center piece, and freeze the whole head. The next day, thaw the cabbage. If you do this, you don't have to boil the leaves. I never have any room in the freezer for a head of cabbage, so I always use the boiling water method. No big deal.
Okay, w hile those leaves are cooling, take 2 cups of that 2.5 cups of sauce, and add the chopped meat to it. Cook this over low heat, just until the meat loses its pinkness. Stir to break it up. You're going to notice something very interesting: the sauce is going to become "intermingled in the meat, and it won't be very liquid. That's exactly what you want. Taste it and add salt and pepper to your liking (you will need it). Finally, stir in that rice.
Get a big, 9x13 pan ready by pouring that reserved half cup of sauce over the bottom of it. If you had left over small leaves of cabbage, chop them and put them on the sauce. Then, put that aside and take the cabbage leaves, one at a time, and fill them with a spoonful of your sauce and meat mixture. Don't overfill them, because we do have a use for the leftover filling. IF, as is frequently the case, the base stem of the leaf is too tough to allow you to roll it up, cut away as much as you need to allow it to roll, just like a tortilla. Put them, seam side down in your pan, and if you have to stack them, so be it. If there is extra filling left, put that on top of the rolls.
Remember those leaves that were really ucky and you couldn't see using them? Well, now you will. Put the whole leaves on top of everything, as if to protect them, because they will. What those leaves do is act to keep the dish from drying out. You are going to put a big piece of foil over it anyway, but the cabbage leaf protectors are nice, if you have them. Bake the dish at 350 for an hour. It might be useful to you to put it on a baking sheet to bring it to the oven (it is for me).
After an hour, you will have a PLEASANT smell of cooking cabbage in the house, and you'll see bubbling around the edges of the dish. It's VERY hot at this point, so let it cool down. Even better, if you have the time, let it chill overnight and eat it the next day. Reheat it with the foil cover, and take away the cover leaves.
The traditional accompaniments for this are apple sauce or sour cream, or both. I've never gotten used to the sweet element with the dish. Tati used to love it with potato pancakes. He'd put applesauce on the pancakes, and eat the cabbage with sour cream, that he'd augment with sauerkraut juice. I use the sour cream, but not the sauerkraut juice, and now that I think about it, I can't really give a reason why I don't. Maybe it's simply because I don't have it around, but that can certainly be fixed.
This is a time of year for remembrance. As we get closer to December 21, and the days get shorter, and we sink into more and more of the night (can you tell I've been listening to Tristan und Isolde, you OQs out t here?), our departed loved ones do visit more and more, and memories stir up that you thought were gone. In many ways, this is the saddest season of the year. Try to enliven it by remembering something good to go with the sad. Yes, I miss Tati. I miss him DEARLY. But making this and eating it makes me remember all of the good that I had in the too short time that I knew him.
I expect you at the table, Tati. Come and join us.
When you're done, if
It took me a LONG time to "cotton" to cabbage. I'm still not going to eat brussel sprouts (incidentally, I LOVE the Italian word for them: cavolini, or "little cabbages. " That's a new word to Italian, since Brussel sprouts are not an Italian vegetable either). And as far as stuffed cabbage went, I always had a feeling that it was a difficult, time consuming dish, not worth the trouble. And indeed, many of the recipes for it that I found, were so intricate, I wondered how anyone could ever make it.
Well, I found one that I really like. Some years ago, Marian Cunningham, a true treasure in the cooking world, published an almost unnoticed book called "Forgotten Recipes." In going through it, indeed, it is my opinion that there is a reason why most of these recipes were forgotten. They're just not very good. Even the stuffed cabbage recipe, good as it was, needed modification. Ms. Burros had essentially presented recipes from a day long past. In that period, dishes like this one were sweeter, and were "spicier" in the sense that they had sweet spices in them. The original recipe for t his dish contained allspice and cloves. Nice in some things, but they were put into the tomato sauce base of the recipe, and that just bothered me big time. So, too, did the brown sugar. So I make this in a simpler form, and it's a good dish to make. If Tati were around, I would want to make it for him. But I would also want to fall into his arms and have him hold me the way he did when I was very young. I'm fortunate enough to have found a friend who's arms remind me of those strong, "Tati arms," and I try to get him to hug me as much as I can. It's not the same, but we learn that what we have is pretty darn good. I'd make it for James, too.
So, here we go. You will need a head of cabbage, say about 2-2.5 pounds. That's really not that big a head . You can use savoy, or plain cabbage. I'm going to come back to this in a minute. You will also need a generous 2 cups of tomato sauce - you may even want to go with 2.5 cups. Also, 2 cups of cooked white rice. Finally, you will need 2 pounds of ground meat of some kind. I like to use a 50/50 mixture of beef and pork, or all pork in this recipe. You could, however, use whatever you like. I do think that this would even work with ground turkey.
Prepping the cabbage is the hardest part of this recipe, and there are several ways to do it. The way I do it is to start by removing any leaves that I just wouldn't eat. DOn't throw them out. We'll get back to that. Then, cut out the core of the head of cabbage with a sharp knife, to enable you to peel the leaves off, one at a time. Patience and steadiness, and don't worry if they tear. This dish is forgiving.
Eventually, you'll get to the point where "the law of diminishing returns" sets in. In other words, like those stacking Russian dolls, you'll get to something small, and non-separatable. You can chop that up and use it in the dish too. We're gonna "use it all."
Take those whole leaves, and put them into a big pot of salted, boiling water, and cook them for about five minutes. Drain them, and let them cool down. (Indeed, if you do the cabbage prep first, you can make the rice and get the sauce ready while they cool).
There IS an ingenious way of separating cabbage leaves, if you have the room in your freezer. This comes from Jacques Pepin. What you do is cut away that center piece, and freeze the whole head. The next day, thaw the cabbage. If you do this, you don't have to boil the leaves. I never have any room in the freezer for a head of cabbage, so I always use the boiling water method. No big deal.
Okay, w hile those leaves are cooling, take 2 cups of that 2.5 cups of sauce, and add the chopped meat to it. Cook this over low heat, just until the meat loses its pinkness. Stir to break it up. You're going to notice something very interesting: the sauce is going to become "intermingled in the meat, and it won't be very liquid. That's exactly what you want. Taste it and add salt and pepper to your liking (you will need it). Finally, stir in that rice.
Get a big, 9x13 pan ready by pouring that reserved half cup of sauce over the bottom of it. If you had left over small leaves of cabbage, chop them and put them on the sauce. Then, put that aside and take the cabbage leaves, one at a time, and fill them with a spoonful of your sauce and meat mixture. Don't overfill them, because we do have a use for the leftover filling. IF, as is frequently the case, the base stem of the leaf is too tough to allow you to roll it up, cut away as much as you need to allow it to roll, just like a tortilla. Put them, seam side down in your pan, and if you have to stack them, so be it. If there is extra filling left, put that on top of the rolls.
Remember those leaves that were really ucky and you couldn't see using them? Well, now you will. Put the whole leaves on top of everything, as if to protect them, because they will. What those leaves do is act to keep the dish from drying out. You are going to put a big piece of foil over it anyway, but the cabbage leaf protectors are nice, if you have them. Bake the dish at 350 for an hour. It might be useful to you to put it on a baking sheet to bring it to the oven (it is for me).
After an hour, you will have a PLEASANT smell of cooking cabbage in the house, and you'll see bubbling around the edges of the dish. It's VERY hot at this point, so let it cool down. Even better, if you have the time, let it chill overnight and eat it the next day. Reheat it with the foil cover, and take away the cover leaves.
The traditional accompaniments for this are apple sauce or sour cream, or both. I've never gotten used to the sweet element with the dish. Tati used to love it with potato pancakes. He'd put applesauce on the pancakes, and eat the cabbage with sour cream, that he'd augment with sauerkraut juice. I use the sour cream, but not the sauerkraut juice, and now that I think about it, I can't really give a reason why I don't. Maybe it's simply because I don't have it around, but that can certainly be fixed.
This is a time of year for remembrance. As we get closer to December 21, and the days get shorter, and we sink into more and more of the night (can you tell I've been listening to Tristan und Isolde, you OQs out t here?), our departed loved ones do visit more and more, and memories stir up that you thought were gone. In many ways, this is the saddest season of the year. Try to enliven it by remembering something good to go with the sad. Yes, I miss Tati. I miss him DEARLY. But making this and eating it makes me remember all of the good that I had in the too short time that I knew him.
I expect you at the table, Tati. Come and join us.
When you're done, if
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Annalena flies solo: is this a new recipe? Monkfish, mushrooms and tomatoes
One of the things that people say about cooking is that, ultimately, there really isn't anything new that comes out of a kitchen. For the most part, this is true. Think of how many people have been cooking since the beginning of time. Steak tartare? Uh, no. Even when you think it's really, REALLY creative. A few years ago, I thought that lemon verbena would make a wonderful sorbet, and it did. I bragged about it. I told my herb vendor (Stokes Farms), that I did it. I was so proud. Mario Batali's sous chef was there. He gave me their house recipe.
Mine was better. But it WAS the same thing. Of course, when you look at the cooks who are "out there," like the restaurant Alinea, or others, this is all new. But is it food? I've not been to these places, but sorry, I remain unconvinced. But perhaps that's unfair. It is invention coming out of those kitchens. Whether one chooses to eat it or not, is a different issue.
You can never learn enough about cooking, and you can study recipe after recipe after recipe, and certain themes emerge. For example, let's look at the example of short ribs. I really don't remember which one of the "brown" spirits was the first one used, but there are recipes for short ribs braised in bourbon, in scotch, in beer, in stout, in lager, etc. I THINK the first one was actually coffee, and if you think about it, certain flavor notes in coffee DO suggest the flavors of those strong drinks, so it was just one step to them. Are they new recipes? Probably. But where does "new" become variation, and where does it just turn into copying?
I dunno.
My recipe has probably been made somewhere, probably by some Provencal cook, because it feels like it. On Monday, shopping at the Farmer's Market, someone was asking my fish monger Dolores about monkfish. She and her buddy Jan were explaining how to cook it, and of course, I jumped in. Now, I was NOT planning to buy monkfish, but now the thought was in my head. Ten minutes later, I had a pound and a half tail of it.
I like monkfish. It's frequently called "poor man's lobster," for reasons I don't get. It doesn't taste like lobster to me (I HATE lobster), I don't think the texture is the same, so I just don't get it. I DO like it. If you saw a monkfish before it was butchered, you might not want to eat it. The fish is UGLEEEE! And scary. All of the meat IS in the tail, it's nice and solid and dense, and it's a white fish with very little fat in it. It's still sustainable, and it's still cheap .
I also picked up a pound of shitake mushrooms. I use a lot of mushrooms at this time of year. These are not foraged mushrooms, but they are really good. Their solid density really appeals to me with winter food. But there wasn't really all that much to work with in the kitchen, t hanks to my latest purge of stuff. So, it was looking like mushrooms and monk, in some way, manner or form.
I like baked monkfish, and while mushrooms do bake up nicely, they throw off a lot of water, and they take a long time to get soft. So I decided to pan fry them a bit first. A few sprigs of rosemary, five small cloves of chopped garlic, and a pound of sliced shitakes went into a pan, and cooked for ten minutes.
A note on shitakes. The stems are tough. REALLY tough. You can save them and add them to a stock or b roth, but I love to just chew on them. I'm weird, I know.
And a note on rosemary. When you cook with i t, leave it on the branch. The reason for this is those needles. They're extremely bothersome if you wind up with one of them in your teeth. If you leave them whole, the flavor will go into the food, and you can pull out the branch at the end, and have no problem.
I put the mushrooms down on the bottom of a 9x13 glass baking dish, with the oil. That was enough for the fish to rest on, patted dry and salted. Looking at it, it just looked, well, lonely. But I had a lot of the baked tomatoes I made when they were in season, all under oil. I crushed four of them in my hands, and added that to the mushrooms. Then I covered everything with foil tightly, and put it in a 400 degree oven.
I DID overcook it. I baked for 30 minutes. 20 would have been fine. But taking the foil off released a wonderful aroma of mushroom, tomato, and fish, with rosemary underneath it all It served up beautifully, with swiss chard and couscous.
Maybe this isn't original. Very little of what a cook does, ultimately, is original. But if you wanted to copy this, either with monkfish, or some other white fish, be my guest. If you use fish steaks or filets, like cod, or flounder, or pollak, or something like that, I suggest you cut the cooking time down to ten minutes or so. Check the fish with a knife to see if it's cooked through.
You will enjoy this. I promise. And you don't have to give me credit.
Mine was better. But it WAS the same thing. Of course, when you look at the cooks who are "out there," like the restaurant Alinea, or others, this is all new. But is it food? I've not been to these places, but sorry, I remain unconvinced. But perhaps that's unfair. It is invention coming out of those kitchens. Whether one chooses to eat it or not, is a different issue.
You can never learn enough about cooking, and you can study recipe after recipe after recipe, and certain themes emerge. For example, let's look at the example of short ribs. I really don't remember which one of the "brown" spirits was the first one used, but there are recipes for short ribs braised in bourbon, in scotch, in beer, in stout, in lager, etc. I THINK the first one was actually coffee, and if you think about it, certain flavor notes in coffee DO suggest the flavors of those strong drinks, so it was just one step to them. Are they new recipes? Probably. But where does "new" become variation, and where does it just turn into copying?
I dunno.
My recipe has probably been made somewhere, probably by some Provencal cook, because it feels like it. On Monday, shopping at the Farmer's Market, someone was asking my fish monger Dolores about monkfish. She and her buddy Jan were explaining how to cook it, and of course, I jumped in. Now, I was NOT planning to buy monkfish, but now the thought was in my head. Ten minutes later, I had a pound and a half tail of it.
I like monkfish. It's frequently called "poor man's lobster," for reasons I don't get. It doesn't taste like lobster to me (I HATE lobster), I don't think the texture is the same, so I just don't get it. I DO like it. If you saw a monkfish before it was butchered, you might not want to eat it. The fish is UGLEEEE! And scary. All of the meat IS in the tail, it's nice and solid and dense, and it's a white fish with very little fat in it. It's still sustainable, and it's still cheap .
I also picked up a pound of shitake mushrooms. I use a lot of mushrooms at this time of year. These are not foraged mushrooms, but they are really good. Their solid density really appeals to me with winter food. But there wasn't really all that much to work with in the kitchen, t hanks to my latest purge of stuff. So, it was looking like mushrooms and monk, in some way, manner or form.
I like baked monkfish, and while mushrooms do bake up nicely, they throw off a lot of water, and they take a long time to get soft. So I decided to pan fry them a bit first. A few sprigs of rosemary, five small cloves of chopped garlic, and a pound of sliced shitakes went into a pan, and cooked for ten minutes.
A note on shitakes. The stems are tough. REALLY tough. You can save them and add them to a stock or b roth, but I love to just chew on them. I'm weird, I know.
And a note on rosemary. When you cook with i t, leave it on the branch. The reason for this is those needles. They're extremely bothersome if you wind up with one of them in your teeth. If you leave them whole, the flavor will go into the food, and you can pull out the branch at the end, and have no problem.
I put the mushrooms down on the bottom of a 9x13 glass baking dish, with the oil. That was enough for the fish to rest on, patted dry and salted. Looking at it, it just looked, well, lonely. But I had a lot of the baked tomatoes I made when they were in season, all under oil. I crushed four of them in my hands, and added that to the mushrooms. Then I covered everything with foil tightly, and put it in a 400 degree oven.
I DID overcook it. I baked for 30 minutes. 20 would have been fine. But taking the foil off released a wonderful aroma of mushroom, tomato, and fish, with rosemary underneath it all It served up beautifully, with swiss chard and couscous.
Maybe this isn't original. Very little of what a cook does, ultimately, is original. But if you wanted to copy this, either with monkfish, or some other white fish, be my guest. If you use fish steaks or filets, like cod, or flounder, or pollak, or something like that, I suggest you cut the cooking time down to ten minutes or so. Check the fish with a knife to see if it's cooked through.
You will enjoy this. I promise. And you don't have to give me credit.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sweets for the sweet: nutty candy
As we are heading into the holiday season, I start making my holiday goodies. Cookies and candies. Whilst the cookies seem to change, from year to year, depending on my mood, or whim , or what have you, the candies are very much the same: candied grapefruit peel, quince paste, and a toffee crunch or two.
The first one of the toffee crunches I ever made was called, quite impolitely "white trash fudge." It had marshmallows, candied cherries, chocolate pieces , nuts and who knows what else in it. I thought it was revolting. And I couldn't make enough of it. Every single cookie plate or assortment I sent out, came back with the "fudge" gone, and other cookies, my pride and joy, still there. SIGH.
Well, perhaps it was Freudian, but I lost the recipe for white trash fudge years ago. Toffees of some kind find there way into the assortment every year though.
What is a "toffee" anyway? Well, one way you can think of toffee is as a "butered caramel." If you heat sugar either with or without water, at appropriate heat, it breaks down, and becomes, first, a liquid. Then a slightly darker one, then a very dark one, and then it burns to, literally, charcoal. That process by which the sugar turns to this brown liquid, is the making of caramel. If you add butter to the sugar mix, you get toffee. It's that simple.
Or is it? The chemistry behind this process is quite mind boggling and one of the scourges of every organic chemistry student. Trust me on this one. Also, if you follow basic instructions for making these concoctions, what you will have, essentially, is a toffee or caramel SYRUP. Making the actual candies involves having molds, and scads and scads of time. I have neither. So my "toffees" are really toffee syrup, surrounding some other goody, generally nuts.
I am giving you here a basic recipe for making a batch of excellent nut crunch. This is very similar to really good peanut brittle, except you should vary the nuts and make your own, trademarked candy.
A word of warning (or two). If you have small children, you should NOT let them help you with this recipe. You are going to be cooking sugar to 350 degrees. That's hot. It's as hot as hot oil, and you know how that burns. Sugar is worse. Remember: sugar is sticky. So while you may be able to rub off hot oil, real quickly, you will NOT be able to do that with sugar. It will cool down when it hits your skin, but it will take its time. So, no kids in the room, please. And wear gloves. And an apron. You will also want a paper lined baking sheet, sprayed with cooking spray, and some kind of spatula or bench knife, also sprayed
You will need 2 cups of sugar, a quarter cup of water, a half stick of unsalted butter, cut into cubes, and a quarter cup of corn syrup. You can probably leave out the corn syrup, but this helps stabilize what you're cooking, and allows it to "flow" better. You can find it next to the sugars at the grocery store. And you can use the rest to make a pecan pie. Get the white one. A candy thermometer is just about essential
Mix all of these things together in a pot, and let the sugar melt into the water. Stir itwhile it's melting down. Before that, pour out two - 2.5 cups of nuts, of whatever kind you like. This year, I'm stressing pignoli nuts. Put them at the side. Add half a teaspoon of salt
Once the sugar melts, stop stirring it. This is CRITICAL. If you disturb the sugar, you have a chance of forcing it to crystallize wildly, and inappropriately.
When the sugar has melted down, lower the heat, and get your candy thermometer, or any kind of thermometer tested to over 350 (most of them are). Try to get an instant read one. You'll watch the syrup begin to bubble up in big bubbles, then reduce to smaller ones, and then color. It's going to take about eight minutes to get to the temperature you need, but start checking after four, and check every 30 seconds. When the temperature is reached, take the pot off the heat and stir in the nuts, hard and fast. IF you wanted to add half a cup of chocolate chips at this point, or anything else, no one would mind.
Pour the mass out onto the paper, and IMMEDIATELY spread it out as far as you can. If you use the bench knife , you can use it to press things down, the way you would if you were spreading plaster on a wall. Just keep on spreading. then put it aside and let it cool, for about twenty minutes.
You will come back to a hard, brittle mass, that you break up at random, to make oddsized pieces. And you have nut brittle in your hands.
This stuff keeps, in a dry, metal tin, for months. Make several batches, and you've got holiday gifting done.
Be careful, but do try this recipe. It really is worth the effort. Homemade candy always provokes a smile.
The first one of the toffee crunches I ever made was called, quite impolitely "white trash fudge." It had marshmallows, candied cherries, chocolate pieces , nuts and who knows what else in it. I thought it was revolting. And I couldn't make enough of it. Every single cookie plate or assortment I sent out, came back with the "fudge" gone, and other cookies, my pride and joy, still there. SIGH.
Well, perhaps it was Freudian, but I lost the recipe for white trash fudge years ago. Toffees of some kind find there way into the assortment every year though.
What is a "toffee" anyway? Well, one way you can think of toffee is as a "butered caramel." If you heat sugar either with or without water, at appropriate heat, it breaks down, and becomes, first, a liquid. Then a slightly darker one, then a very dark one, and then it burns to, literally, charcoal. That process by which the sugar turns to this brown liquid, is the making of caramel. If you add butter to the sugar mix, you get toffee. It's that simple.
Or is it? The chemistry behind this process is quite mind boggling and one of the scourges of every organic chemistry student. Trust me on this one. Also, if you follow basic instructions for making these concoctions, what you will have, essentially, is a toffee or caramel SYRUP. Making the actual candies involves having molds, and scads and scads of time. I have neither. So my "toffees" are really toffee syrup, surrounding some other goody, generally nuts.
I am giving you here a basic recipe for making a batch of excellent nut crunch. This is very similar to really good peanut brittle, except you should vary the nuts and make your own, trademarked candy.
A word of warning (or two). If you have small children, you should NOT let them help you with this recipe. You are going to be cooking sugar to 350 degrees. That's hot. It's as hot as hot oil, and you know how that burns. Sugar is worse. Remember: sugar is sticky. So while you may be able to rub off hot oil, real quickly, you will NOT be able to do that with sugar. It will cool down when it hits your skin, but it will take its time. So, no kids in the room, please. And wear gloves. And an apron. You will also want a paper lined baking sheet, sprayed with cooking spray, and some kind of spatula or bench knife, also sprayed
You will need 2 cups of sugar, a quarter cup of water, a half stick of unsalted butter, cut into cubes, and a quarter cup of corn syrup. You can probably leave out the corn syrup, but this helps stabilize what you're cooking, and allows it to "flow" better. You can find it next to the sugars at the grocery store. And you can use the rest to make a pecan pie. Get the white one. A candy thermometer is just about essential
Mix all of these things together in a pot, and let the sugar melt into the water. Stir itwhile it's melting down. Before that, pour out two - 2.5 cups of nuts, of whatever kind you like. This year, I'm stressing pignoli nuts. Put them at the side. Add half a teaspoon of salt
Once the sugar melts, stop stirring it. This is CRITICAL. If you disturb the sugar, you have a chance of forcing it to crystallize wildly, and inappropriately.
When the sugar has melted down, lower the heat, and get your candy thermometer, or any kind of thermometer tested to over 350 (most of them are). Try to get an instant read one. You'll watch the syrup begin to bubble up in big bubbles, then reduce to smaller ones, and then color. It's going to take about eight minutes to get to the temperature you need, but start checking after four, and check every 30 seconds. When the temperature is reached, take the pot off the heat and stir in the nuts, hard and fast. IF you wanted to add half a cup of chocolate chips at this point, or anything else, no one would mind.
Pour the mass out onto the paper, and IMMEDIATELY spread it out as far as you can. If you use the bench knife , you can use it to press things down, the way you would if you were spreading plaster on a wall. Just keep on spreading. then put it aside and let it cool, for about twenty minutes.
You will come back to a hard, brittle mass, that you break up at random, to make oddsized pieces. And you have nut brittle in your hands.
This stuff keeps, in a dry, metal tin, for months. Make several batches, and you've got holiday gifting done.
Be careful, but do try this recipe. It really is worth the effort. Homemade candy always provokes a smile.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Iconic food: chili
Ok, now I KNOW I'm gonna step on toes with this one. Here you have this Italian guy, treading on one of the sacred foods of Tex Mex and Mexican cooking. I have written about European "canonical" foods and how trying to find "the" definitive recipe is impossible. That's true for chili, which is unarguably an iconic American food. EVERYONE has eaten chili. EVERYONE who cooks thinks theirs is the best. And every single one of them is different.
What is chili? Oi, that gets into a Buddhist kind of thing about "what is desire?" or "what is true love?" The more I have investigated the underpinnings of chili , the more I realized that there was much I would never figure out. One thing I DID learn, early on though: if you are calling it "chili con carne," or if you are adding beans to it, you are NOT making chili. At its most basic, chili is meat, with seasonings. I guess you could argue that it's a way to cook up meat when you have it, and make it last. Fat and spices help to keep decay and mold away from food, and there's both in chili. And it cooks up in large bunches, in a reasonably short period of time. And of course, it permits bulking up if you like. Adding beans to it does that. So, too, does putting it over rice, or noodles ("Cincinnati style," I'm told. Now there's a sign of canonical food. Try to connect Cincinnati and Tex Mex. The dots don't line up). But at its purest, chili is just what I said: meat, spices, seasonings, fat.
I have always made , to be honest, piss poor chili. This year, I tried something new. I looked and looked until I found the most minimal recipe I could. I even had to add things to this recipe, like fat. The recipe called for sauteeing meat and onions, but didn't say HOW to do it. And beyond onions, garlic, meat, it has chili powder and cumin in it, salt, and water. That is it. Try it.
The final product here is remarkably tame, given the amount of seasonings. It DOES have a bit of a kick, but much less than I thought it would. You'll lprobably need to buy some spices for it.
This makes a generous quart of chili. You can cut it back by half, but why do that?
You start with four pounds of ground meat, and four cups of chopped onions. That's about 5-6 medium sized onions. Get ground chuck if you can. Something about 85% lean. Anything leaner like that is probably going to give you chili that is too dry for your taste. Get GOOD meat too. I used grass fed, which at 7 bucks a pound, makes this a not inexpensive dish. You're worth it though.
Also, measure out six TABLESPOONS of chili powder (I used pure ground ancho) and 6 TABLESPOONS of ground cumin . That, incidentally, is about a third of a cup of each. Yeah, it's a lot. Don't worry.
If you can get canned chipotles in adobo, chop about three of them, and then freeze the rest (these will go bad in the fridge, and you don't want to lose them. Use them to spice up something else). Now, you're ready to cook. Really.
Get a heavy duty dutch oven, and slick the pan with olive oil. Add the onions and the meat, cold. Turn up the heat to high, and start turning the meat and onions. You want to cook this until the red is gone from the meat. It will take just under ten minutes. When the pink is gone, stir in the spices and the chipotle. Also add about a scant tablespoon of salt. Stir that all together and cook, for about three minutes. You can also add 6 or so chopped cloves of garlic to this. You don't have to. After the three minutes, add five cups of water. Lower the heat to medium low, partly cover the pot, and go away for ninety minutes. Come back every now and then to stir it and to check the liquid. Mine was wet enough up until the l ast ten minutes or so, when it began to crackle. At that point, I could have either added more water, or kept stirring it. I did the latter.
Over the course of the cooking, the color changes from a bright orange red to this wonderful brick red color that permeates the whole dish. The seasoning is such that I would say a half cup portion is plenty, especially if you add a starch like rice, or grated cheese, or sour cream, or all of t hose things. Add some chopped jalapenos if you like and your hot sauce of choice.
This is really something really, REALLY easy to do. And it makes a lot. And look at that recipe, if you would. Does it seem very fatty? It's not. You can it as rich as you like with additives, but that's up to you.
Now, go and get some ground meat, and make some chili. I THINK you could substitute some ground pork here if you like, but I haven't done that. I'm saving mine for stuffed cabbage.
Yes, folks, winter is around the corner. No more fresh strawberries. Lots of applesauce and baked pears, and dishes like this.
Superbowl party, anyone? :)
What is chili? Oi, that gets into a Buddhist kind of thing about "what is desire?" or "what is true love?" The more I have investigated the underpinnings of chili , the more I realized that there was much I would never figure out. One thing I DID learn, early on though: if you are calling it "chili con carne," or if you are adding beans to it, you are NOT making chili. At its most basic, chili is meat, with seasonings. I guess you could argue that it's a way to cook up meat when you have it, and make it last. Fat and spices help to keep decay and mold away from food, and there's both in chili. And it cooks up in large bunches, in a reasonably short period of time. And of course, it permits bulking up if you like. Adding beans to it does that. So, too, does putting it over rice, or noodles ("Cincinnati style," I'm told. Now there's a sign of canonical food. Try to connect Cincinnati and Tex Mex. The dots don't line up). But at its purest, chili is just what I said: meat, spices, seasonings, fat.
I have always made , to be honest, piss poor chili. This year, I tried something new. I looked and looked until I found the most minimal recipe I could. I even had to add things to this recipe, like fat. The recipe called for sauteeing meat and onions, but didn't say HOW to do it. And beyond onions, garlic, meat, it has chili powder and cumin in it, salt, and water. That is it. Try it.
The final product here is remarkably tame, given the amount of seasonings. It DOES have a bit of a kick, but much less than I thought it would. You'll lprobably need to buy some spices for it.
This makes a generous quart of chili. You can cut it back by half, but why do that?
You start with four pounds of ground meat, and four cups of chopped onions. That's about 5-6 medium sized onions. Get ground chuck if you can. Something about 85% lean. Anything leaner like that is probably going to give you chili that is too dry for your taste. Get GOOD meat too. I used grass fed, which at 7 bucks a pound, makes this a not inexpensive dish. You're worth it though.
Also, measure out six TABLESPOONS of chili powder (I used pure ground ancho) and 6 TABLESPOONS of ground cumin . That, incidentally, is about a third of a cup of each. Yeah, it's a lot. Don't worry.
If you can get canned chipotles in adobo, chop about three of them, and then freeze the rest (these will go bad in the fridge, and you don't want to lose them. Use them to spice up something else). Now, you're ready to cook. Really.
Get a heavy duty dutch oven, and slick the pan with olive oil. Add the onions and the meat, cold. Turn up the heat to high, and start turning the meat and onions. You want to cook this until the red is gone from the meat. It will take just under ten minutes. When the pink is gone, stir in the spices and the chipotle. Also add about a scant tablespoon of salt. Stir that all together and cook, for about three minutes. You can also add 6 or so chopped cloves of garlic to this. You don't have to. After the three minutes, add five cups of water. Lower the heat to medium low, partly cover the pot, and go away for ninety minutes. Come back every now and then to stir it and to check the liquid. Mine was wet enough up until the l ast ten minutes or so, when it began to crackle. At that point, I could have either added more water, or kept stirring it. I did the latter.
Over the course of the cooking, the color changes from a bright orange red to this wonderful brick red color that permeates the whole dish. The seasoning is such that I would say a half cup portion is plenty, especially if you add a starch like rice, or grated cheese, or sour cream, or all of t hose things. Add some chopped jalapenos if you like and your hot sauce of choice.
This is really something really, REALLY easy to do. And it makes a lot. And look at that recipe, if you would. Does it seem very fatty? It's not. You can it as rich as you like with additives, but that's up to you.
Now, go and get some ground meat, and make some chili. I THINK you could substitute some ground pork here if you like, but I haven't done that. I'm saving mine for stuffed cabbage.
Yes, folks, winter is around the corner. No more fresh strawberries. Lots of applesauce and baked pears, and dishes like this.
Superbowl party, anyone? :)
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