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Biscotti
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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.
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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!
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Identity Crisis Cookies
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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.
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More to come….
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A post? Now? No time!
Supposed to be making treats for the holidays. Might not even be enough time to get it all done.
But…hungry right now. Need something faster than delivery. Fresh mushrooms in the fridge, rice noodles in the pantry, fresh ginger, garlic, scallions, onions, always a jar of “master sauce” on hand. Boil noodz, chop veg, stir fry, plate.
Time for artsy photo? Nope. Barely in focus.
Time for clever writing? Nope. Not even full sentences.
Lunch served. Back to holiday prep!
If you saw my last post, it pictured only a few of the potato latkes I had made, so there was a stack of leftovers to contend with the next day at lunchtime. They really don’t reheat well – I mean, who wants a soggy, limp latke? – so some culinary cogitation would be called for. My thought process:
• Latkes are primarily potatoes and onions.
• What do I have in the house that’s brunchish? Eggs, among other things.
• Potatoes pair well with eggs – think frittatas.
• Onions pair well with eggs – think Western omelets.
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The solution? A latke omelet! (Omeletke? Omelatke?)
So I cut up some latkes and sautéed the pieces to get them extra crispy. Western omelets usually contain onion and sweet pepper but since the latkes were pre-onioned, I just needed to add a little diced red bell pepper to the sauté. I spooned the mixture onto the slowly cooking beaten egg (enriched with a touch of heavy cream left over from my Thanksgiving sides), plated it, and left just enough peeking out to identify the contents; a dusting of Spanish paprika and a few cilantro leaves provided the garnish.
The pink stuff? Western omelets also often contain ham. All I had in the house was “turkey pastrami” – which tastes nothing like turkey and even less like pastrami, but that’s what there was in the fridge. (Don’t ask.) I wanted the omelet to be latke-centric, so I decided to use the faux ham as an accompaniment. Sliced and sautéed it to get some crispy brown edges (crispy brown fixes everything), hit it with some cracked black pepper and fanned out the result beside the omelet.
Anything else? Perhaps round it out with some kind of veggie so I could pretend that it’s a balanced meal, so I cobbled together a quick shredded carrot and currant salad spiked with cumin, cinnamon and a sprinkle of hot paprika plus fresh lemon juice to bring it together.
The inner workings. Note the yummy crispy bits.
I actually might have enjoyed this more than just the plain latkes – and I’m feeling a little guilty about it.
Given the provenance, I guess it stands to reason.
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.
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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!
My understanding is that families who gather together on Thanksgiving sometimes end up seated around the table arguing, ultimately taking sides.
In my politically sane family, we don’t take sides – we bring sides, to the Thanksgiving table that is, because we do a potluck.
My contributions this year were Scalloped Potatoes with Leeks and Bacon…
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As served.
Fresh out of the oven. Only a pint of heavy cream and a pound and a half of bacon went into this low-cal dish. 😜
…and Savory Corn Pudding.
As served.
Fresh out of the oven. It’s a signature recipe of mine that uses frozen corn – evaluated and actually better than fresh for this – as well as Cope’s dried sweet corn. I marvel at the way the snipped chives always find their way to the top. Did I mention that half a pound of butter and more than a pint of heavy cream were ingredients as well?
Hope your Thanksgiving was a peaceful one too!
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Halloween is just around the corner and I wanted to indulge in something that didn’t involve Reese’s Cups, M&M’s, or Kit Kats, so I’ll be goblin’ futomaki that’s decked out in an All Hallows’ Eve costume – I guess that makes it both a trick and a treat. (But, not gonna lie, I’m waiting for the post-holiday sales: just as leftover Thanksgiving dinner tastes better the next day, so does leftover half-price Halloween candy.)
In obeisance to the official black and orange Halloween rubric, the black monstermaki (futomaki means thick or fat roll) is wrapped in nori, its conventional costume, and its orange sidekicks are swathed in soy wrappers that come in five flavors/colors: original soy, sesame, spinach green, turmeric yellow, and paprika orange.
I filled them with kani (krab sticks), avocado, cucumber, strips of sweet kanpyō (dried gourd) and most important, eel because – in keeping with the holiday spirit 👻 – it’s only one letter away from EEK!
And in case you’re wondering – no, I’m not handing out these spookomaki on October 31; the kids are supposed to scare me, not the other way around!
Happy Halloween! 🎃 🍣
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I hadn’t been considering taking a photo of this and there isn’t even any backstory except that I had been reading a food website’s newsletter that happened to be singing the praises of shakshuka. I’m told that I’m hopelessly suggestable when it comes to food choices (okay, fine, guilty as charged) so you know what took place next, totally spur of the moment.
Shakshuka comes with some weighty baggage regarding its origin and consequently a predictable carry-on of spelling alternatives. Best I can tell, it got its start in Ottoman North Africa; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, and Yemen among others proudly include it among their national cuisines, each with its own accent of course.
Essentially, shakshuka is tomato sauce (canned tomatoes are fine if you don’t have great fresh tomatoes and great amounts of time) pointed up with onions, peppers, and garlic in which eggs are poached; the basic recipe is pretty simple although it calls for a soupçon of finesse at the stove when nestling the raw eggs into the sauce. But beyond the fundamentals, international flights of fancy take off involving an assortment of seasonings that run the gamut from sweet to spicy and the inclusion of black olives, preserved lemon, feta cheese and such, as well as representative meats and vegetables (think merguez or chickpeas). Space and deference to your plans for the remainder of the day preclude my listing them all here.
My extemporaneous seasonings that day included lots of toasted ground cumin and whole cumin seeds, smoked paprika, harissa to kick it up, and cilantro as an integral ingredient as well as a garnish. Pretty straightforward, but I was motivated, and sans forethought I used whatever I had on hand. I did veer from the canon, however, by anointing it with white truffle oil post poach.
I can’t imagine this dish without bread – but English muffins instead of a more appropriate North African or Middle Eastern bread? Say it with me: because that’s what I had on hand!
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Actually, it’s not about when, it’s about where. Here’s what happened:
The weather was more than agreeable so I decided to take a walk to the local farmers’ market – just looking, thank you, those $8 organic heirloom tomatoes are way beyond my pay grade these days. The problem with “just looking” is that you actually see things. Things like a Brobdingnagian cabbage that was flawless, dirt cheap, and the circumference of an oversized beach ball. I rolled it home and, trying to think outside the box grater, proceeded to burrow through the interwebs in search of cabbage recipes other than coleslaw, stuffed, or soup so I could to put this behemoth to good use. I found 53,900 results for something called haluski; 22,200 results for halusky; 11,600 for halushki; and 3,800 for halushky.
Now, many years ago, I developed a delicious but agonizingly labor-intensive recipe for Bryndzové Halušky, a Slovak national dish: diminutive potato dumplings that involved the adept use of a special kitchen tool (a halušky strainer) and frustratingly hard-to-find bryndza, a pungent sheep’s milk cheese. That had been my halušky connection – with nary a shred of cabbage to be found therein. (And yes, I know that some cultures toss in sauerkraut on occasion.)
I checked into Wikipedia for some orthographic advice. Traveling though Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary and other corners of Central and Eastern Europe, the spellings and recipes were similar, but nationalized, of course. But here’s the kicker, ibidem: “In the United States, most adapted halušky recipes call for egg noodles rather than potato dumplings. Some American cooks include loose, cut, and fried green cabbage…compelled by simplicity [check], difficulty in finding bryndza or acceptable substitutes [check!], and access to affordable cabbage [check!!]….” (Italics and bracketed comments mine.)
Okay, American style gets the nod and as a bonus it only required ingredients I already had in the house: butter, egg noodles, butter, and onions. (Did I mention butter?) Some of the recipes called for bacon but I chose to use the last two hunks of Polish sausage lurking in my freezer from a recent foray to Greenpoint; if you’re curious, they were wiśniowa and zwyczajna (my spellcheck was traumatized and still is in recovery from that one – feel free to send flours).
The recipe is simple and pretty obvious really, but a couple of notes: Cut the cabbage into pieces similar in size to the noodles, and cut the onions into pieces like the cabbage. And most important: you’ll be frying the veggies and boiled noodz in a cowful of butter, but don’t just cook to soften: you want them to pick up some color and get a little crispy – that’s essential – and those crunchy bits sticking to the bottom of the pan are an integral part of the dish too. It’ll require a bit of patience, but keep your focus on crispy and brown (even my plate was brown, but you don’t have to get that obsessive about it) and you’ll turn out some hearty Eastern European comfort food that will Czech all the boxes. 🙃
I’m not one for watching teevee, but lately, for a number of reasons, I’ve had too much time on my hands. As I was flipping through channels I didn’t even know I had, I came upon a what I assumed was a rerun of The French Chef, Julia Child’s archetypal 1960s cooking show. Turns out it was a re-rerun in the form of a new PBS cooking show, Dishing with Julia Child, a paean to the grande dame of TV chefs – and despite my reservations, it was every bit as entertaining and educational as its progenitor. It featured celebrity chefs José Andres and Eric Ripert doing play by play and color as they “watched” her program on a mockup of a retro TV screen. Not only is the concept too cute by half but it also solved the technical problem of the difference between 60s broadcast television’s 4:3 aspect ratio and today’s 16:9 frame.
In this episode, she was preparing the iconic French dish, sole meunière. Now, I seldom do any French cooking – it requires more patience than I can muster and more proper training than I possess – and when I do, I never post about it, even if I’ve snapped a pic of the aftermath. But I do make basa meunière from time to time since basa is inexpensive and the dish requires very little patience and even less proper training – dredge in seasoned flour, pan fry in brown butter, plate with capers, lemon and parsley, take photo, consume. It reminded me that I had a couple of photos hanging around from my Cooking in the Time of COVID series that I had never posted (I don’t really do French cooking, right?) so here are the consequences.
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I had been playing around with truffle fries as an accompaniment. A toss of steamed veggies on the side, because how much Fried can you eat? (Don’t answer that!)
Served with some incredible simply roasted honeynut squash. (I sang its praises in part of my Winter Squash Deep Dive series here.)
Finally, a use for the “French” tag in a post – marginally at least!