It was cookie swap...again

The second Tuesday of the month is usually bookclub night, but we take a break in December (& July & August) leaving the 2nd Tuesday in December available for the holiday cookie swap.  Which works in nicely with the month's Lotto Linky topic:  FOOD.

I confess, a week before cookie swap I start kicking myself for not starting earlier, but it more or less works out in the end.  Our cookie swap rules are simple:  make cookies, bring cookies, exchange cookies.  Still I usually manage to screw up in some way.

It all begins with the cookies.  Make a couple dozen.  Or more.  Because all cookies are not created equal.  I make sugar & walnuts things rolled onto balls & plonked in colored sugar.  M****** makes mini-pecan pies.  V** makes buckeyes, the original (& much better tasting) peanut butter cups.  Their cookies take effort; mine really don't.  So I kind of think of 1/2 dozen of theirs equals 12+ of mine.  Maybe even 24+.  Maybe even more.  Seriously, I make them by the pound.

Still, it is worth the effort for all of us.  Sure, your kitchen gets turned upside down making a bulk of one maybe two kinds of cookies BUT you unload the cookies you are a little bit sick of & get back a nice mix to make up very pretty plates for your neighbors & co-workers  Or to eat on the drive home, your choice.

I made what I make every year (that is the beauty if cookie swap, you don't have to worry about too much of one cookie...yet another first world problem): 

Christmas Nut Balls (indeed)

2 sticks of butter, softened
--I prefer to use unsalted butter & then I add sea salt.  The general rule is up to 3/4 tsp of salt per stick, but you can do what you want.  This makes it easier to make a low sodium version if that is what you want.
2 tsp of vanilla
--put them in the mixer & let it run for awhile
1/3 cup of sugar
--toss it in the mixer & let it run awhile longer
2 tsp of water
--add while the mixer is still running
2 cups of flour
--sift the flour. Add it to the mixer, while it runs.
1 cup of walnuts
--I take whole shelled nuts & pulverize them with a mortar & pestle.  The largest pieces are maybe the size of a peppercorn or two...or three, but most of them are reduced to powder.  Tip them into the mixer & let it run until it is smooth smooth smooth.

Yes, I could call these mixer cookies.  It would be impossible to overmix them.  All this mixing (& all that butter) means everything will go easier if you chill it in the fridge for an hour or so.  So you can call them fridge cookie, too.

Preheat oven to 325 F.  Spoon dough into balls (or roll using your hands), roll in sugar, bake 20-25 minutes.  Cookies crumble easily when they first come out of the oven, but set as they cool.

Enjoy! 

Curried eggs

It has been a while since I had a recipe & I don't know about you, but when it gets hot I have trouble eating anything meaty.  Alright, I am not a big meat eater at the best of times (I had a cheeseburger a year ago October & by a year ago October I mean 2009), but the simple truth is I need protein just like everyone else.  In the summertime, the best way to get it is with eggs.  & yes, by the way, it is summertime here again in Fladidah.  This week, it is hard-boiled curried eggs over leafy greens (because it turns out I realllly need more iron & spinach is my new best friend).

First hard-boil some eggs.  However many you want.  Six eggs would last me a week; A could eat that in one sitting.  Lets say six:  hard-boil six eggs.  Then drain them & take make them easier to peel, drop them gently into cold, cold water.  Set aside for a minute...or an hour.

When you are ready, return to the eggs & peel them.  I roll them around for a bit until the shell cracks & then try to peel it in one piece like an apple.  No, I have never been successful, but it is good to give yourself these little challenges, don't you think?  Cut them & remove the yolks.  Set aside the whites, keeping them as intact as you can, but don't make yourself crazy, this is not deviled eggs after all.  Mash the yolks with a fork.

In a small bowl -a really small bowl, I use a teacup- combine 1tsp cardamon, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp red pepper. 1/2 tsp turmeric.  Generally these are already ground but if not, grind them now.  Grind them together, even.

Finely mince one or two or three cloves of garlic.  Three is probably too many, so if you really like garlic, use two.  If you buy minced garlic in a jar, try to scoop as much liquid as actual garlic & go for a teaspoon or so total.

Take your smallest pan, ideally a pan with some sides to it (i.e. a crepe pan would not cut it) & put in as little of a light oil as you need to coat the bottom.  Any light oil will do.  The idea is not to cook anything in oil but to make the temperature more or less even throughout the pan.  If you have a gas stove & snazzy cookware, you might be able to get away without the oil.  If you are feeling adventurous, or it is the morning after bookclub, you could try a bit of red wine, just covering the bottom of your pan.

Heat the oil, add the spices.  Stir.  & stir.  Do not stop stirring.  Add the garlic & stir some more.  The spices may smoke a bit, just keep stirring & use your nose.  When they "release" add the mashed egg yolks & stir, stir stir for as long again as you stirred before adding the eggs.  It is almost impossible to under-cook them, but the longer they heat up together, the more flavor the eggs will take.

Never stop stirring, never ever ever.

When they are done remove from heat, remove from pan (or they will keep cooking, even if the pan is not on the stove) & set aside.  Slice the whites into smaller-than-bite sized pieces.  I like to put them in a bowl, whites on one side, yolks on the other & spoon it over my salad instead of dressing.  Other people scoop them up on pieces of bread or mix it in with rice. 


& for those of you who like a media tie-in, I give you Cool Hand Luke.  I bet he couldn't have eaten those eggs curried...maybe he could.

Not your mother's tofu..not that I know your mother, maybe it is her tofu

More than a few people have told me recently that they might be willing to eat more tofu if only they knew what to do with it &/or they had a bad (i.e. bland) tofu experience 20+ years ago & have not been back for seconds.  Also, I have had a few husbands say they would not eat tofu, not matter what including one guy who had been eating tofu for let's just say a while without ever questioning what it was.  It might be chicken.  Very square chicken.

For those who do not know, tofu is what happens when milk made from soy beans coagulates & is then pressed to remove moisture.  & before you get all EWW disgusting, chicken nuggets are primarily made from offal.  In the game of I-may-never-stop-gagging, chicken nuggets win.

When you buy tofu at the store, it is usual to open the container & move the block to another container of fresh, clean water although I admit if I know I am going to use it within the next day, I don't bother. Once you have moved it however, you will want to change the water every day or so until you do use it.  Because tofu blocks are large for a single meal, it is likely you will not use a whole block at once.  Just tip out the water, add fresh to cover the remaining block (& then put the cover on the container so you don't slosh water all over the fridge) & put it back in the fridge.  Because there is so much water in tofu, I have never frozen it.  I am quite sure the texture would change dramatically, but for all I know it changes back, or it is a pleasing change.  Someone will have to try that & let me know.

If all of this water changing sounds like too much work, you can do what I do which is cook it all at once & then use it in salads, casseroles, sandwiches, scrambled eggs, etc. over the next few days.  If you are going to go this route, you want to cook it in a spice or spices or flavors that will 'match' the rest of the menu for the next few days.  Or not, I suppose, if you want something completely different.

This is what I do:

I buy extra firm tofu & cut it into cubes no bigger than my thumb.  I have small hands so think small cubes.

I take whatever pan I will be using; I like a big flat pan with high sides, but anything you have would work.  If you have been looking for a reason to use that old wok, here it is.

At this point I either cook something else in the pan (sauteing onions is the way I am most likely to go) or in a cold (Okay room temperature) pan I put in as little light oil as possible to cover the bottom.  This will involve adding a few drops, & swishing the pan around.  Again, because tofu has so much water, you don't want to add any more moisture than you need to.  At this point I often also add whatever spices I might be using.  Lately I have been favoring a mix of spices from Pakistani cuisine, last summer I was on a kind of chili powder kick, but I have been known to go with curry or sage or sesame or paprika...anything really.  A friend of mine puts bouillon cubes in the pan with the littlest bit of water, lets that cook away & then adds the tofu.  Whatever you fancy will probably work; tofu picks up flavors readily (another good reason to keep it covered in the fridge).

Then I turn on the heat, let one side sizzle, gently stir, let the next side sizzle.  The sides exposed to to the hot pan & spice will shrink a bit, giving it a lopsided sort of look until all of them have shrunk down.  All told, it probably won't take much more then ten minutes or so giving you ample time to call your mother or make next weeks grocery list or empty the dishwasher or whatever between stirrings.

When it is done, maybe tip it onto a plate covered with a paper towel to cool.  Or spoon it, depending on how wet/oily the whole thing is.  After it cools, you can put the cooked tofu into sealed containers & refrigerate a day or three until you are ready to use them.

It doesn't sound like much but added to salad it will add well, calcium & protein.  & yes, it will also add some fat, but compared to what you might eat instead, it is an improvement.   As for all those studies about increased dementia, keep in mind the study looked at elderly japanese men who 1) ate way more tofu in their lives than you will even if you eat it every day starting today & 2) the same group also had a much lower incidence of heart disease colon cancer, etc & lived way longer than you are going to if you are eating any other fried crap, so stop worrying.

I see your snickerdoodles & raise you two buckeyes

Somehow in the haze that was last December, I never blogged about our first ever holiday cookie swap.  Probably because I never took pictures & I mostly only remember I meant to write about something when I upload the digital camera.  I have only two time frames: Now & the Distant Past/Future (they are the same thing right?).

Let me give you the highlights:

V** made buckeyes.  Dozens & dozens of buckeyes.  I did not know what a buckeye was but I do now-it's where Reese's got the idea & homemade is better.  Because she committed to buckeyes early, M****** was in.  Apparently they are a favorite of C****'s.

M****** made a variety which included these fantastic chow mein noodle peanut butter things.  She said "Let's call them manger cookies".

A***** made...I don't remember.  I DO remember starting this whole thing because A***** has access to a cache of Hungarian-family cookies recipes & I know I was not disappointed.

They brought with them E****'s cookies.  They were the snickerdoodles.  I think.

B*** mailed her cookies from Boston.  When choosing what went back to her, we left off everything with icing that would just get all smushed.  Lucky me!

I made my mother's nut balls.  I made enough for everyone at the table to get a Chinese takeout tray of them as a Thank You for Playing take home gift.  I also made sour cream jam prints using the last of my homemade cranberry sauce, toffee spoons & Irish toffee spoons.

For A***** & M****** the highlight of the evening was the Irish.  So much so that when they left for the gym, I offered them a to-go cup.  They thought they would stop at the liquor store on the way instead.  M****** went on to tell people it brought her milk in & A***** gave her father a bottle for Christmas.

We are doing this again for sure, although I do not yet have a date.  Who's in?  Long distance can be accommodated.

Sweet potato chips

For the longest time last season, every CSA basket, every week was flush with sweet potatoes.  I admit I am a big fan of sweet potatoes, but I am also not from the USsouth & my repertoire was limited.   Fortunately, along with sweet potatoes, they included new recipes for sweet potatoes.  New to me anyhow.

This was my new favorite for most of last winter:

- Take a sweet potato, take three, as many as you might eat in one sitting.  The longer, skinnier ones are better for this, which is a lucky break because the bigger fatter ones are better for almost everything else.  Wash them & peel them, or don't peel them.  Wash them for sure, though.

- Slice the sweet potatoes as thin as you can without them having any too-thin pieces.  Hmm, how about as thin as you can keeping the thickness consistent, is that better?

- In a bowl that will be large enough for all the slices of sweet potatoes, mix olive oil & salt&pepper to taste.  Add the slices of sweet potatoes.  If you do this just a few slices at a time, it is much easier to get them all covered.  Because they need to be all covered.

-  On a cookie sheet, spread out the slices.  I used parchment paper underneath, instead of the usual foil & I think this helped the thinner slices not to burn. Pre-heat the oven to 400F (yea, I should have said that before, Sorry!) & sprinkle the sweet potatoes with finely chopped herbs of your choosing (I chose basil & thyme, mostly).

-  Cook for 20/25 minutes or so.  How thin you sliced them (& whether or not you used tin foil) will play a role here.  Let them cool some or that hot oil will burn your mouth!  & serve right away or later.  Right away is better.

Hamantaschen, belatedly

I spent many, many years combing through the bible (for what I have been told are all the wrong reasons) while I was getting a degree in literature. It is difficult to get through a study of western literature without a passing acquaintance with the new testament; it is impossible to get through the same study without an intimate knowledge of at least parts of the old testament. I recommend you begin with Genesis.

For the most part, it was a struggle. People who read the bible because it warms them & cleanses them, well more power to you. Do not ever undertake a comparative study of any kind, though because you will never put the pieces back together. In the end, there were only two books I really enjoyed. Leviticus (all that inventory! I love to count things. & those lists of crazy rules; I still quote 19:27 in defense if hippies everywhere, Oliver Cromwell be damned) & Esther. With Esther, I think it is safe to say we are back to that fairy tale thing again: Once upon a time there was a girl who lived with her guardian in an ancient kingdom...

& Esther brings us to Purim or The Feast of Esther, if you want to be that way about it. & Purim brings us to hamantaschen. I am almost as fond of these cookies as I am of the nut & shortbread cookies my mother only seems to make in December. I think there is something about them being limited to just those times & places that makes me love them more. My recipe has been adapted over the years from Beni's Family Cookbook by Jane Breskin Zalben, & Joan Nathan's The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen & they are both great books & they make excellent baby shower gifts. Also they are usually on sale, such a bargain.

It was pure coincidence, but last year, our regular book club meeting was on Purim & the book that had been randomly chosen was Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels. It seemed apropos to make something Purim-esque.

So here we go: hamantaschen is actually a two-parter. There is the dough & there is the filling.  & I rolled up my sleeves & got ready to walk you thru it, but the drop dead truth is there is a better recipe here.


//a complete & total side bar: a friend of mine had decided after much soul searching, that she was converting to Judaism. This came as a small shock to her Unitarian parents & a big shock to her Baptist husband. But she was certain. She explained to me that she was herself going to adopt the laws & live as a Jew but in trying to make the transition (I love people who are sure they will change the people they love) easier for her husband, she was looking for ways to reconcile his current deep-South/deep fried diet with kosher law & did I have any suggestions. My answer was "Jewish without the food! What's next, black without the music?" We do not talk much anymore.

Scarborough Fair dumplings

The worst of our cold seems to be over. I say this with confidence in January because the cold snap earlier this month is the worst this area has seen in well over a decade. It lasted so long that I was scraping the bottom of the cookbook; it has been a long time since I have needed a warm-me-up dinner more than three nights in a row.  One of those cold nights I made Scarborough Fair Dumplings.

I am fairly certain that you can guess the primary ingredients used in these dumplings. There is the standard dumpling: flour, egg, water, baking powder & the Scarborough Fair bit: parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme.  The beauty of these dumplings is that they can make a pot of plain boiling vegetable stock more interesting (although I would probably add some chopped carrots & white wine to make things more interesting).

- get out a big bowl & a sifter that can hold at least two cups.  Put the sifter in the bowl.

- into the sifter put 1/2 cup of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder & 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt.  Start sifting.

- when the ingredients in the  sifter volume are about half what they were, add a second 1/2 cup of flour (for a total of 1 cup of flour).  Sift until they content are again about 1/2 what they were.

- into the sifter put in dried parsley, dried sage, dried rosemary & dried thyme.  In my view a little rosemary goes a long way, ditto sage although a bit more is OKay, parsley is as nothing & thyme is my favorite so I tend to dump it in there.  If you must have proportions,: 4 parts parsley, 3 parts thyme, 2 parts sage & 1 part rosemary.

- sift until there is nothing left to sift.  Rub the big chunks through the mesh with your fingers if you have to.

- break an egg into a not-less-than-2-cups liquid measuring cup.  Add fluid to the 1 & 1/4 cup mark.  What you use is really up to you.  I have made them with water when I needed something pareve, but they were not so fluffy as when I have made them with milk.

- add the liquid to the large bowl of sifted ingredients.  Mix by hand.

- roll the dough into balls.  Bring your soup to a simmer.

- drop dumplings into broth.  Simmer covered for not less than ten minutes.

- serve immediately.

This is an easy recipe to prepare in the afternoon & then leave the dumplings resting for even several hours.  Then you can put it all together just before it gets to the table.

It-can-wait chicken

There have been passing references to my go-to cooler-weather favorite casserole, it-can-wait chicken. First let me say I do not slaughter my own chickens. Second, I do buy chicken at the grocery store. & third, I know that makes me a hypocrite.

This is the basic it-can-wait chicken recipe. You will need carrots, potatoes & chicken. & a large casserole dish with a cover. & an oven, although accurate temperature settings are optional.

- wash the potatoes & then cut them into bite-sized pieces. Layer them unpeeled & uncooked in the bottom of the casserole dish, about 1/4 of the way up the side.

- wash the carrots & cut them into bite sized pieces. Layer them unpeeled & uncooked on top of the potatoes, about 1/2 way up the side of the casserole dish.

- remove the skin from the the chicken thighs, wash them in cold water & trim the fat. Spread them out across the top of the vegetable layers, covering as much of the carrots as you can.

- cover the casserole dish & put it in the oven at about 375F for not less than 45 minutes. If you are running late, turn it down to 350F & add another 20 minutes. If the chicken is done & you still are not ready to go to the table, turn the oven off & leave it alone. Turn the oven back on to 350 about 12-15 minutes before serving. The only hard&fast rule is do not uncover until you are ready to serve.

There are many ways to jazz up it-can-wait chicken. You can make as above & then pour red wine or white wine over the whole mess. You can saute onions or apples or apples & onions & layer them on top of the chicken before you cover it all. You can throw cloves of garlic into the potatoes. You can mix random herbs in a small tea cup with little olive oil & brush it on the chicken. You can do all sorts of things. What you cannot do is screw this up. It is unscrew-up-able.

Leftover it-can-wait chicken can go on to have a long & fruitful career. You can stuff it into pastry dough. You can mix it with eggs & bisquick & make a passable chicken pie. Add some stock, celery salt & rice & you have soup. The only rule is if you did not buy boneless chicken, please remove the bones before you send the chicken on to its next destination.

& that is it. Add your own favorite twists & it can become bachelor chicken, second-hand chicken, or whatever your name for it might be.

The secret of flakey pastry

Trust me when I say I know flakey. I backed into my own barn (painted bright yellow) in the middle of the day while sober TWICE in one month. I saw the barn, but somehow forgot it was solid...? & that is just a small, recent example. I do flakey things with almost every breathe.

I think A's favorite must be the time I told Rick Smalley I was really sick of looking at all that bucky-sh*t & from now on if I found any magazines with C60 on the cover they were going straight into the recycling; A was interviewing for a job with Rick at the time. This turned out to be not such a bad thing actually. Rick's then-current wife had an I-cannot-believe-I-am-stuck-at-another-one-of-these-meet-&-greets look on her face most of the evening, but after I opened my mouth she perked up. I am sure A had mentioned why he was interviewing for this job, but it must have slipped my mind.

Now that my flakey credentials are established, let me pass along my recipe for flakey pastry. You can use it for empanadas or turnovers or you can roll it flat & use it for pie crusts (of the main course or dessert variety). Unlike most of my recipes, there will be some actual measurements involved. Please understand this means they are important, but it is still all mostly about proportion.

You will want a big mixing bowl with a wide opening (to work in) & another smaller bowl (for refrigerating the dough at the different stages). I like to mix in a ceramic bowl & refrigerate in a metal bowl, but that's me.

- in the large mixing bowl dry mix 3 cups of flour & of 1.5 teaspoons of sea salt (I think it matters but there are plenty who disagree). More flour than this will be unmanageable, so if you want 'more' you are better off making the dough twice.

- after these ingredients are well mixed (you can just keep spooning if through a sifter if you worry you will not be able to tell when the white grainy ingredient is well mixed into the white grainy ingredient), push it all into a mound in the bowl & make a small hollow in the center.

- add cold water to the empty center slowly. Stop, mix everything around a bit, make another hollow, add a bit more water, repeat (just like lather, rinse, repeat or faire mousser, rincer, répéter if you use salon brands). Ultimately it will about .75 cups of water, but in a humid climate it might be less; in a dry heat it will be more.

- during the repeats, slowly add 3.5 teaspoons of vinegar. I have always used a light (white wine or rice) vinegar, but someday I will use balsamic, just to see what happens.

- in a separate bowl, whisk 2 large egg yolks (or 3 medium or 4 small). Once all the water/vinegar has been absorbed by the flour/sea salt, mix the eggs in. The best way is with your clean, lightly floured hands. Keep a butter knife handy to scrape that sticky-eggy-goo back into the bowl every so often.

- it can be hard to see (it always looks not-quite-mixed), but you will be able to feel when it is well mixed. no really. Pat the dough into a ball shape & tip it into your refrigerator bowl (if you are changing bowls, which I really do recommend). Cover; you can use saran wrap or whatever & put in the fridge for not less than 30 minutes.

Now for the secret part. Earlier you should have taken one stick of unsalted butter & one stick of regular, lightly salted butter & put them on the counter to warm up. I should have mentioned this at the beginning but it is flakey pastry after all...

- in a small clean bowl (a third bowl, maybe), mix the two sticks of butter together. By the time you are finished, it should be easy to scoop some butter on a spatula & spread it evenly. The two sticks will be slightly different in color & texture, so you can see when they are blended. Do not substitute anything for this butter; margarine oils will separate & your pastry will not flake. Do not use either two salted sticks (too salty) or two unsalted sticks (wrong texture). One of each, I mean it.

- remove the chilled dough from the fridge, flour your counter (or board, but it will need to be a big board) & roll as flat & square/rectangle as you can. Let it rest for a minute or two. Then spread about 1/3 of the butter across the surface. Let it rest & then fold the dough back on itself. DO NOT KNEAD. Lift back into bowl, cover & refrigerate for another 30+ minutes.

- roll out, rest, spread another 1/3, rest, & fold. Back in the fridge & repeat one last time.

- after the butter has all been spread, leave the dough in the refrigerator for at least one hour. Overnight is fine, too.

Now you can move forward in an ordinary way. You will need to roll it out flat again & cut to fit your pie pan or dumpling press or whatever. Stuff with whatever please you. I have stuffed small empanada-style shapes with our regular pizza topping (cheese tomato sauce & broccoli in our house) , I have made larger ones filled with left-over chicken/potato/carrot casserole. Whatever you use, be sure it is either already cooked OR the cooking time will be adequate. If you are making a pie crust, bake (filled with pie filling) 350F for 35-45 minutes. If you are making smaller stuffed pastries, cook (filled with stuffing) 350F for about 15-25 minutes.

The secret is, of course the butter & how it behaves when cooked. You need thin thin layers of butter to create the light flakey dough. If you knead the butter in, the dough will not separate into layers, making light flakes & you will not get the desired effect or taste. It is still good, just not as good.

I have never made this recipe with anything other than butter but I was once served it made with margarine. Not only did it not flake, but it was a denser dough & did not roll out as smoothly. As a result, although it was lower in calorie it took more to make the pastry shells. I am sure it was not a calorie-for-calorie match, but if you ARE going to eat something fattening, shouldn't it be the best something it can be? If you are avoiding butter because it is a meat meal, let me suggest you go with something else all-together.

//the day I took these photos I used a whole wheat flour. I do not usually, but I did not have as much regular flour as I thought. As a result the dough was not as elastic & it did not spread as thin or fold as easily as it usually does. The results tasted different, but flaked just fine.

Nightshade pizza pie

For my most recent bookclub I made eggplant pizza. I deliberately blanded it because one of our members is pregnant & I have heard women-in-that-condition can have sensitive stomachs. My aunt was so sensitive she could not cope with the color red. Then mom-to-be was not there & we all had duller-than-usual eggplant pizza.

Eggplant is one of the nightshade vegetables we should all avoid because...they are shrouded in superstition. I sometimes get confused & call them the hemlock vegetables. I do not know why. I have never gotten confused & called them the belladonna vegetables. I am not one of those people who learns from my mistakes; instead I seem to learn to make the same mistake over & over again. I used to have the most convoluted route to Brainard airport because the first time I went, I got lost & for the next ten years I got lost in exactly the same way every time. Fatiguing.

I do not seem to have this problem cooking; I never seem to memorize a recipe wrong, although I have had trouble reproducing results. This is how I make Nightshade Pizza Pie:

First you need to make the dough. I have a bread machine. I make a yeast dough, so it continues to rise while I am making the pizza toppings part. You do not have to make your own dough, or even 1/2 make it like I do. Let's start again:

Have dough. & spread it on your pizza stone or pan or whatever you use (A likes to set pizza directly on the oven racks. yes, our oven is a mess). I got a head of myself again. If you are making dough, start the dough, but if you are not, go straight to the eggplant.

-cut up a single, medium sized eggplant into bigger than your thumb but not too big pieces. Rinse them & set them in a colander to drain. I turn a dessert plate upside down & put the flour canister on top if it the press them a bit, but I doubt it really makes a differences. I leave it like this for 20+ minutes so that the eggplant can dry, which DOES make a difference later (that the eggplant not still be wet from the rinse, I mean).

- thinly slice as much garlic as you think is a good amount. I like three cloves, for blander-than-bland I used one. Melt the garlic (when I said thin, I meant thin, GoodFellas thin) in a light oil.

- if you are not making your own dough & adding the basil to the dough, you want to add it now. For blander-than-bland I skipped this step entirely. It was pretty bland. How much basil is up to you, less is more if it is baked into the dough vs in the oil.

-add the eggplant to the garlic, mix well for a minute or two. Turn the heat down to medium, cover. Start checking back after 8 minutes or so, you are looking to see that the meat of the eggplant has started to break down but is not yet mush. You will know it when you see it, I promise.

- now back to the dough. Spread it as thin as you can. Pinch the sides, if you like, but if you are using a yeast dough it will not make any difference in the end.

-smear a thin layer of tomato. Again, this is your choice: you can use leftover spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, something from a jar, etc. I prefer leftover spaghetti sauce supplemented with real tomatoes (i.e. from a garden, recently). In a pinch, salsa will do. You need it to smear evenly, so you might need to mix in up to a tiny bit of oil, but this is rarely necessary unless you are actually working with a paste. Leave yourself about 1/2 inch between the edge of the crust & the outside of the tomato smear.

-pile the eggplant straight from the pan onto the tomato covered dough.

-pile crumbled feta cheese on top of that.

- put it all into a preheated 400F oven for 20 minutes & serve immediately or when you get around to it. It is good hot, room temperature & probably cold. I do not know; even the bland version did not last that long.

Spaghetti pie

This is the final month of hurricane season here but winter weather is just heating up (!) for most of the rest of the country. & so I am bringing you that we-got-no-power classic: Spaghetti Pie.

It had actually been a while, as in a decade, since I even thought about spaghetti pie, but my bookclub was reading My Latest Grievance & it takes place mostly, well pivotaly anyhow, during the blizzard of '78.

Ah the olden days. I remember Ella Grasso telling all the people to stay off the roads, including you poseur, workaholic junior high school teachers, & the trees completely covered in clear ice so you really could see the branches & bark, & the lovely power lines weighed down with snow, frozen to the street. Good times.

So if you have no power for days & days & days, & you have packed the contents of your refrigerator in the snow & you have access to open flame (preferably in the fireplace but any old hibachi will do) what can you eat? Why spaghetti pie, of course.

The ingredients are easy:

Cooked spaghetti. You can boil water over your fireplace if indeed you do not have any leftover in the fridge. Rigatoni also works. Or ziti. Macaroni is getting a little fussy, but I cannot think why it would not work, too.

A jar of supermarket spaghetti sauce. Ordinarily I would say jazz this up, but you may be all jazzed out after boiling spaghetti over an open fire. I once dated a guy who added mustard to the mix, but "shhh!" its a secret.

Grated cheese of some kind. Hard cheeses are easier to work with, but do not walk away from mozzarella, or anything that might crumble.

Whatever else is in the fridge that has not gone bad. I mean WHATEVER: cold cuts, zucchini, an eggroll, half a can of tuna, raisins, baby spinach, whatever so long as you avoid foods that would ordinarily be but have not yet been cooked (i.e. baked chicken good, raw chicken bad).

- Mix together your spaghetti, spaghetti sauce & grated cheese. Mix it well. Use your hands.

- Use most-but-not-all of this to cover the bottom & sides of your baking dish. Set aside what is left.

- Mix your whatever ingredients together. It helps if things are more or less bite sized. Chop the zucchini, tear up the cold cuts, really mince the onion unless you are OKay eating an entire chunk of onion in one bite.

- Fill the spaghetti-crust with the whatever.

- Spread the remaining spaghetti-mix over the top.

-You can bake this in an oven at 350 for 40 minutes. Or more. Or less. Or hotter. I would not recommend cooler. You can bake it in a dutch oven over your open flame. You can even use tin foil instead of a baking pan & make minis to bank around your fire. It does not take much, just enough to heat & melt so the spaghetti hangs together. Mostly.

Bon appetit.


//PS: I think it is good to LEARN while I BLOG. Today I learned there is no adverb form of the verb "to pivot". Ah language, how I love thee. So flexible.

Cranberry sauce

I made cranberry sauce this week-end & this is how I make it:

Cranberries from a bag NOT A CAN A BAG

Rum & lots of it

good old fashioned Water

Cloves, as in cloves of cloves, not cloves of garlic. I am sorry to report I know someone who thought cloves meant cloves of garlic. Very weird cranberry sauce & yet, still edible. I think she still makes it but with less garlic, even today.

Sugar: white sugar, lite brown sugar, dark brown sugar, the color of your sugar is up to you

Cinnamon stick because ground cinnamon really is just too much. Afterward you can use it to stir your cocoa, mmmmmm!

Mace. no, really. Outside of Trivial Pursuit this might be the first time this has come up for you, unless you are from The Nutmeg State. Here is the trivia: what two distinct spices come from the same plant? nutmeg & mace. Mace is the inner covering around the kernel in the nutmeg seed. Many cooks think nutmeg & mace can be used interchangeably. They are wrong but if it is not important to you, just use nutmeg. It is hard to use too much mace; it is very easy to use too much nutmeg. Also, if you are subbing with nutmeg, you might want to think about a pinch of red pepper. Less than a pinch, a few grains, really. Or you could just use mace.

Cornstarch, just in case.

-Boil the water, 5 fl oz or 1/4 pint-British or 2 cups or enough to cover to your first pinkie knuckle the bottom of your pot.

-Add the cinnamon stick, 3 whole cloves, maybe 4, never more than 5 & a full pinch of mace & the sugar. 8 oz is the upper limit for the sugar & you want to stir it slowly as it melts & use your nose. If it starts to smell like an old diabetic in a nursing home or the farthest, best concealed corner the stoners hung out at your high school STOP even if there is still sugar left in your measuring cup. White sugar will give you this smell faster without quite so much flavor on the other end. If you are using nutmeg instead of mace, use less than even a pinch; that is take a pinch & rub your fingers together without opening them over the pan.

-Once the sugar is dissolved, turn up the heat & bring to a low-but-constant boil for 8-10 minutes. Never stop stirring. I find the best way is to find some music that is 8-10 minutes long. Let me recommend: any two tracks from Joao Gilberto's Joao, almost any three songs by Sister Hazel, Aaron Copeland's Hoe-down twice & then 1/2 way again, I think you get the picture.

-Remove the cinnamon stick & the cloves. Do this with something that will let you knock the liquid back into the pot or you will have a sticky mess. I suggest toothpicks used like chopsticks or a slotted spoon. Put the cloves & cinnamon stick directly in the mug you will use for your celebration cocoa.

-Add the cranberries, the whole bag. If you are lucky enough to be able to buy them in bulk about a pound will do. You should have rinsed them first & let them dry, perhaps in that lovely cast-iron-&-enamel colander you put on your gift registry at Williams-Sonoma & have not used since the wedding. Or you could gather them in a thin kitchen towel, rinse them & use an elastic to close the towel & hang it from the kitchen faucet. They both work.

-Keep stirring & add the rum. How much rum? Well....the original recipe said 4 oz but that is more a guideline, really. Keep back just a bit for the cornstarch.

-Cook for ten minutes. Stir a lot, but once the cranberries have been well coated, you can relax a bit.

-While you are relaxing, take 2 tsp of cornstarch & dissolve it in the rum you held back. 2 tbs of rum is plenty, but more works, too.

-Stir the cornstarch in with the cranberries, keep stirring two more minutes on lowered heat.

-Scope into clean-Clean-CLEAN jars & tighten those lids. They will seal just fine for the few weeks until Thanksgiving dinner. If you are a worrier, pour boiled water into the jars & let them sit a minute. Tip them out & turn upside down until you are adding the sauce. I find rum helps. Not with the cleaning but with the worrying. It probably makes things more sterile as well, now that I think about it.

The day will come when you can get the heat & the sugar just right & you will not need the cornstarch. This may actually happen on your first try, but you won't know for sure until you open those jars again. When you get that perfect balance, cut the cornstarch, keep the rum.

Enjoy!