(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
Marzipan Cookies
🍪🍪🍪🍪
Crispy toasted almonds and a double chocolate grid (white and 60% cacao) grace the tops of the chewy marzipan base. Final decorating stage shown here.
🍪🍪🍪🍪
More Christmas cookies to come!
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
Chocolate Pecan Whiskey Balls
🍪🍪🍪
Named for the chocolate and toasted pecans in them, but especially for the pecan whiskey (yes, it’s a thing). Sparkling sugar adds a crunchy, festive touch.
🍪🍪🍪
Stay tuned: there’s more to come!
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
Biscotti
🍪🍪
These twice-cooked treats (aka cantuccini) are laden with toasted almonds and dried cherries that I simmered in Amaretto. Delicious dunked in coffee for breakfast, wine for dessert (as they do in Italy), or cocoa for snowstorms.
🍪🍪
Stay tuned: more cookies to come!
When I bake Christmas cookies, it’s the same cast of characters every year. Not that this old dog can’t learn new tricks, it’s just that after I’ve made my signature treats, I usually don’t have enough energy left to take pictures of them. (Although somehow I do manage to muster the energy to consume them!)
So here are some past photos of those goodies. Enjoy!
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
Identity Crisis Cookies
🍪
So named because I couldn’t decide whether to make chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin or toasted coconut pecan and since I had all of those on hand…well, you get the picture.
🍪
More to come….
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That time when folks dust off words like ’tis and ’twas as Bing Crosby inscrutably croons, “Christmas is a-comin’ and the egg is in the nog!” (Whaaa…?)
But it makes an appropriate musical background for reading the tell-all eggsposé revealing what I do with holiday nog.
Well, um, yes. Yes, you are chopped liver.
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
In this photo, at least. It’s a classic Ashkenazi Jewish side and never a main, hence the cutting slur relegating the target to second class status. Ironically, the dish is absolutely delicious.
It’s a cinch to prepare, although it is time consuming if you want to get it just right. There are only four ingredients: sautéed chicken livers, caramelized onions, hard boiled eggs, and schmaltz (rendered chicken fat, often justifiably referred to as “liquid gold”) that are ground together (but a food processor is fine) and served on matzo, rye bread, or challah.
Here, I’ve accompanied mine with sliced cucumbers, pickled green tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and garnished it with gribenes. What, you don’t know from gribenes? A shanda! Gribenes are crisp bits of chicken skin fried along with more onions until shatteringly crisp.
Oy! I almost forgot to mention the fifth ingredient – a Jewish grandmother would never forgive me.
It’s love, of course.
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
This past weekend, I conducted an ethnojunket to Brooklyn’s Little Odessa where I purchased a fatir, still warm from the oven. This flaky layered bread often partners with Middle Eastern dips but also figures into qurutob, the bread salad that’s the national dish of Tajikistan.
But upon arriving back home, neither of those ideas resonated for me, so I decided to experiment in the kitchen with my customary reckless abandon. I sliced off a wedge, separated the layers, and contemplated their fate.
I decided to soak the flakes in beaten eggs like French Toast (or Matzo Brei!) and fry them up with some enhancements. I seasoned the eggs with salt, black pepper, and a generous amount of cumin, then sautéed onion, a little garlic, and some greens (I had cilantro and scallions on hand) and finally, when the fatir flakes were thoroughly saturated, I added them to the pan and continued to sauté. I garnished my invention with sour cream, cilantro, nigella seeds, and sesame seeds and served it with sliced tomato.
Closeup of a very successful forkful, if I do say so myself.
Seems like ethnojunkets, in addition to offering lots of tasty international food plus entertaining and educational fun, also are pretty adept at providing delicious inspiration!
So if you have an appetite for delicious inspiration, check out my ethnojunkets page and sign up to join in the fun!
(Originally posted in 2021.)
The Jewish holiday of Chanukah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after its destruction in the second century B.C. The ceremony involved the lighting of a menorah, an oil lamp, but there was only enough oil to last for a single day. By a miracle, the menorah glowed for eight which is why Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated for as many days. In Jewish households, a nine branched menorah is used; a single candle is lit on the first night and an additional candle is added each consecutive night, with the ninth position reserved for the shamash, a helper candle used to kindle the others.
Since the Chanukah miracle revolves around oil, tradition involves eating oil-centric fried foods. Sufganiot, jelly doughnuts, are the go-to sweet treat in Israel while Eastern Europe brings latkes to the table, potato pancakes customarily served with sour cream and apple sauce; here, we happily indulge in both.
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
My homemade latkes: shredded potatoes, minced onion, beaten eggs, baking powder, S&P, plus a binder like flour or matzo meal, shaped and fried in plenty of peanut oil and/or schmaltz (chicken fat) if you’re the decadent type 🙋♂️; they’re plated here with the requisite sour cream alongside chunky apple-strawberry sauce topped with sweet crystallized ginger. (You know me: I hadda be different.)
The recipe calls for salting and draining the potatoes; I simply set up a colander in the sink, squeezing out the liquids from time to time. But this year, I noticed something I had never witnessed before: the intricate patterns made by the drained, wet potato starch were as beautiful and mesmerizing as snowflakes! A present day Chanukah miracle!
The photo enlarged.
Now, look very, very closely and you can see a tiny, perfect Chanukah menorah in the pattern. Go ahead, keep searching. Stay focused. Take your time. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll just, um, finish off these latkes while you’re trying to find it….
!חַג חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ
Happy Chanukah!
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
Ever heard of a trifoliate orange? Me neither until a few weeks ago when my friends at Prospect Heights Community Farm were generously offering them, and since I never refuse anything even remotely edible, I accepted.
They’re about 1½ inches in diameter, slightly fuzzy, at once both sour and bitter, and contain more seeds than pulp – the very definition of a culinary challenge. I decided to try my hand at improvising marmalade. Since that’s a task I had never attempted, I reasoned that no one could criticize me if the result was less than stellar.
I sliced the peels, added the purported pulp, orange juice and sugar, and repeated the procedure using some sweet Valencia oranges (actual pulp!) to offset the aggressive components, and tossed in a handful of dried cranberries because I had some in the pantry (the reason I incorporate many left-field ingredients into my experiments) then cooked the mixture until it reached a marmalady consistency.
The outcome was surprisingly tasty for a first effort and complemented toasted English muffins and wedges of brie with equal appeal (no pun intended).
BUT: given the frequency of repeated tests involving a touch more of this and a lot more of that, I have quite a bit left over!
So what’s your favorite way to use orange marmalade?
(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)
To follow up on my last post, no trip to any Seabra’s is complete without a visit to the bacalhau department. Bacalhau (pronounced ba-kal-Yow) is dried, salted cod that’s used in purportedly thousands of recipes in Brazilian/Portuguese cuisine and I recommend that you try it even if you’re not a fan of fish (an afishionado, as it were). As a rule, the larger the Seabra’s, the bigger the seafood department, hence the wider the assortment of bacalhau varieties, provenance, and sizes from small chunks to whole fish. It goes without saying that it has a seriously long shelf life.
I generally purchase enough to make a few dishes like brandade and the creamed bacalhau shown here. It’s simple to execute, doesn’t require much time in the kitchen (i.e., not including a 2–3 day soak in the fridge to rehydrate and desalinate the fish), and is deliciously rewarding.
Here’s an oversimplification of what I did after soaking, rinsing, and draining the fish: Simmer the cod in water until it’s tender (it will break up). While that’s going, sauté chopped onions, garlic, and bell pepper in butter and set aside. Cook the softened cod a bit in more butter – it doesn’t take long. Add some half and half and continue to cook as the fish absorbs the liquid; you may need a few additions until it’s nearly saturated. The idea is to completely soften the fish and have no liquid remaining.
Add the aromatics back to the cod along with some thawed frozen peas and enough heavy cream to reach the consistency you desire. Add freshly ground black pepper, a bit of salt and any other seasonings you like as the spirit moves you. Cook to heat through.
I garnished it with chopped scallions and petits poivrons and plated it with glazed carrots on the side.
Sometimes I think that I could do an ethnojunket to the Ironbound just for Seabra’s, Nasto’s Ice Cream, and Teixeira’s Bakery (all posted on my website if you’re curious). Just a thought. 😉