Quite Possibly The Best Christmas Cookies. Ever.

I rarely claim to offer the "best" recipe for anything, but there are two items that I'm pretty confident about: apple pie and Christmas cookies.

I can't take credit for these marvelous cookies. They came to me by way of my mother, from her friend Susan Christensen, as part of a cache of recipes printed in Courier New font onto white paper and stapled into a packet. I don't know where Susan got them, but I assume that they were handed down over the years through her family. Our packet is now covered in egg white and slicks of chocolate and other varied kitchen detritus, as any well-loved recipe should be after many years of service.

The Christensen Classic Cookie Collection, as it is so called, includes eight or nine recipes, including Tea Time Tassies, Icebox Cookies, Almond Crescents, and Miniature Pecan Pies. My favorite has always been the English Toffee Squares. They are simple, unfussy, utterly indulgent, and they freeze and ship well. They are divine with a cup of tea. They are nearly impossible to flub.

Over the years I've adapted the Christensen recipe slightly. I've switched from light brown sugar to dark and from Hershey's bars to fancier chocolate, as well as adding fleur de sel, which provides a nice counterpoint to the cookies' sweetness.

I make several batches of English Toffee Squares every year, serving them at my Christmas party and packing them off to my father, grandfather, godfather, and this year at least, to my boss. I really believe that in each of these cases, handmade sweets are just about the best present I can give.


So, for all of you sitting at home or at work wringing your hands about yet unpurchased Christmas prezzies, my advice is to buy a a few pretty cookie tins and some ribbon and make these cookies (one batch will fill 2-3 tins). You will probably be done baking before you would get through the checkout line at Best Buy. Plus, Best Buy doesn't let you lick the bowl.


English Toffee Squares
Adapted from The Christensen Classic Cookie Collection

Makes 30 large cookies

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 ounces good milk or dark chocolate (Scharffen Berger, Valrhona)
1 cup chopped pecans
Fleur de sel or Maldon's Sea Salt for sprinkling

1. Cream well together butter and brown sugar, then add flour, egg yolk, and vanilla.

2. Spread evenly on an 11x17 baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven (until lightly brown).

3. Scatter chocolate on top and return to oven for 1 minute to melt. Remove from oven, spread chocolate evenly, and sprinkle with chopped nuts.

4. Let cool slightly then sprinkle with fleur de sel. Cut into squares while still warm.

There Is Exactly No One Who Really Needs This Pineapple Tool For Christmas

Well, maybe that's not fair. Maybe you have a friend who is especially enamoured with fresh pineapple, eats several on a daily basis, and is desperately seeking a tool that will shave seconds off his pineapple slicing time. But most of us? Most of us really do not need this thing.

I'll admit that I'm a real snob when it comes to kitchen gadgets. I'm convinced that 90% of the things for sale in a kitchen store are a waste of money. Sometimes I go into Williams Sonoma just to see the young couples with their wedding registry gun scanning things like an olive and cherry pitter, a corn stripper, specialty pancake flipping tools, a frozen margarita machine. Amateurs, I think. Just buy a good paring knife and call it a day.

But, if you're a known kitchen enthusiast, people will always want to buy you kitchen stuff. There are good choices and bad ones. As I write this, there are only five more shopping days until Christmas (actually, four days, thirteen hours, and twenty six more shopping minutes), so I thought I would provide all the last-minute shoppers out there with a little guidance.

In an earlier post, I told you about the only eight pots and pans that you need to cook almost anything; for those that already have those essentials as well as your typical compliment of spatulas, wooden spoons, measuring cups, and the like, here's my list of my favorite kitchen implements (in no particular order):

1. Food processor - I started out with a mini food processor and then used it so much that I graduated to a full sized one. I have never looked back. This machine can blend, chop, slice, and even knead dough. Heck, it's so handy that Mark Bittman wrote a whole piece in the New York Times praising it. I use my food processor frequently to make pureed soups, dips, and ravioli fillings, and as a tear-free way to chop large quantities of onions.

2. Hand mixer - If you're a dedicated baker then it probably makes sense to splurge for the full-on stand mixer, but everyone should be equipped with at least a hand blender. It's inexpensive and compact and can foam egg whites, mix dough, whip cream, and much, much more.

3. Digital kitchen scale - Not just for people on Weight Watchers! Indispensable if you cook from any non-American cookbooks, which measure most things by weight instead of volume (note: this is actually a much, much more accurate way to do things). Even if you don't, weight measurements come up all over the place. It's best to have a scale.

4. Mandoline slicer - For slicing/chopping, much more precise than a knife and much speedier. Can slice to 1/16" thickness and dispenses with large chopping jobs in a blink of an eye.

5. Pasta maker - If you're like me and think that there's no better way to spend an afternoon than rolling out fresh pasta on a hand crank machine, this little Imperia is perfect for you. I probably use this machine once a month, and having it around has thoroughly ruined me for store bought pasta.

6. Spice grinder - Freshly ground spices beat the pants off the pre-ground variety. If you invest in a small spice grinder, you can buy whole spices and grind them to use. You'll find that they're more pungent and their flavors more complex.

7. Mise en place bowls - When I'm cooking, I do all the chopping/slicing work at the beginning and have all of my prepared ingredients ready to go in individual bowls (a practice called mise en place by the French). This makes the actual cooking process a breeze, and lets you feel like you're on a cooking show!

8. How To Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman - There was a time in my life when I used to think that Googling a cooking question was a reliable way to find the right answer. Now I turn to How to Cook Everything and I can promise that I end up with much better information. It's a fantastic, comprehensive reference material for to getting everything from basic information (what internal temperature should pork be cooked to?) to creative guidance (what are some variations I can make to a basic red sauce?).

9. Pepper mill - Along the same lines as freshly ground spices, there is even less excuse to EVER use pre-ground pepper, which pales in comparison to the fresh stuff.

10. Pastry bag and tips -This might seem intimidating, but once you get a little bit of practice with a pastry bag, it becomes very easy to use. It can be used for everything from filling ravioli to decorating a cake.


And, some items on my wish list:

1. Food mill - Essential for making things like apple sauce, smooth jams, anything where you're separating seeds, skins, and fibers away from pulp/juice.

2. Salad spinner - Somehow I just haven't gotten around to buying a salad spinner, and it's really annoying to have to towel dry vegetables after washing them. This collapsible one would be perfect for a 'storage challenged' person such as myself.

3. Japanese chef's knife - The most important tool you have in your kitchen is a your chef's knife. Most of the chefs that I know use Western style, Japanese made knives. This one by Togiharu is far from the priciest option (think $500 and up for really high-end ones), but comes highly recommended.

4. Sharpening stone and DVD - There's no point in having great knives unless you keep them sharp (sharp is different than honed, which is what you do when you scrape them across that wand-like honing steel in your knife block). I currently trek downtown to Sur La Table once every couple of months to have my knives sharpened. It's a waste of time and money, so I'm intent on learning to do it myself.

5. Nutmegs - It's nice to keep a whole nutmeg or two on hand and grind a dusting into anything from mac and cheese to cookies to sauteed greens. The spice deepens the flavors of both sweet and savory dishes, and loses its pungency quickly once ground.

6. Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce - When you hear enough good things about a cookbook, you just have to buy it. I've heard Boyce's chocolate chip cookies alone are worth the price of the book.

7. Kitchen timer - You can spend $20 on a kitchen timer, or you can keep telling yourself that you'll remember to get up from the couch when 17 minutes are up. Your choice.

8. Mortar & pestle - I love manual tools, and picture myself muddling things with this mortar and pestle, or making garlic paste, I don't know. Plus, it's nice looking and therefore decorative?

9. Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman - Sounds like it should be a Malcolm Gladwell book, but it's actually by baker extraordinaire Michael Ruhlman. I'm really drawn to cookbooks that deal with principles rather than just providing recipes, and this one exposes the standard ratios (fat:flour, flour:water, etc) at the heart of all cooking and baking.

10. Slow cooker - Say what you will about slow cookers but who wouldn't want to come home this February to short ribs and potatoes that had been in an all-day braise?

Yep, That Just About Sums It Up

Christmas Party As Viewed By Hostess, December 10, 2010

Well, the annual Christmas party is now over. It came and went in a blur, partially due to the freely flowing Gruet and mulled cider (spiked with Brandy to toxic levels by my own hand), but mostly as a side-effect of playing hostess. I should just admit it up front: I'm never going to have meaningful conversations when I'm putting on a cocktail party for sixty. It might as well be a law of physics. There are always fires to put out -- hopefully not literal ones -- but empty glasses, that inevitable guest foundering alone in a corner, gougeres on the verge of burning. One day maybe I'll have people to refill the empty dip bowl and replace the toilet paper...but, as The Viking never ceases to remind me, that won't be anytime soon.

Last week I gave you a preview of some of the party treats that had already been baked. Below is a continuation of the series.

This year, for the first time, I made masala-spiced popcorn. It wasn't exactly a blockbuster, but I think it could have been if I was a little more liberal with the butter. Since it was very, very cheap (less than $10 yields gallons of it) and beyond easy to make (pop corn; add butter, spices, salt), I think it's a recipe worth perfecting.

The above represents my first foray into paté, and I'm quite proud of my maiden effort. The number one thing that I learned about making paté is that you probably shouldn't, if you'd like to continue enjoying eating it with the same abandon. This one is made from chicken liver, and the secret ingredient that lends it sweetness and depth of flavor is caramelized onion. The not-remotely-secret ingredient that makes it taste so rich: butter.

These raspberry macaroons look far better than they tasted. I love a good macaron, and this is not one of them. The recipe called for the delicate little cookies to be filled with store bought raspberry jam. I knew up front that that couldn't be a formula for success, and I had the best intentions of making my own raspberry filling. I had the ingredients in hand but at the critical moment -- which had to have been about 11 PM on Wednesday night -- I wimped out. All the talk of food mills and pectin and candy thermometers was too much for me. I used store bought jam instead, and the final product turned out sickly-sweet and only weakly reminiscent of raspberries.

Not pictured here are two lovely dips: an avocado green goddess dip with crudites, and a roasted red pepper and feta dip with toasted flatbreads. Oh, and a cheese plate. I never did take pictures of any of them.

This Danish almond cake was only modestly popular with party guests, but I think that it suffered unfairly in comparison to its richer, showier fellow hors d'oeuvres (those English Toffee Squares are such sluts). I can report that it is absolutely unbeatable with your morning coffee or afternoon tea.

Danish almond cake is something that my mother used to make at her Christmas parties when I was a toddler, back in the [decade redacted to protect the innocent]. Luckily for me, she has always kept a notebook in which she records each party that she hosts, what was served, who attended, and how the various dishes were received. Thumbing through the notebook over Thanksgiving I saw the Danish almond cake with a note reading "A big hit!" and I decided to take it for a spin. The recipe comes from a little book who's name escapes me, but that I remember as old, non-commercial, and flimsy enough looking to make me feel like the recipe was a real find.

Danish Almond Cake

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons almond extract
1/3 cup boiling water

For glaze:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 drops almond extract
3 teaspoons warm water

Cream butter and sugar until fully combined. Add eggs and mix well. Gradually add flour sifted with baking powder and salt. Beat thoroughly. Add almond extract and boiling water. Mix well. Pour into greased 9 or 10 inch spring-form or tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, reduce to 325 for last 30 minutes. Cool 10 minutes and remove from pan. Pour glaze over the cake, spreading it over the surface of the cake and letting it sink into the crumb. Decorate with whole blanched almonds.

Christmas Entertaining, The Prequel

Welcome to my first, and oh so belated, Christmas post. I hope that it is the first of several to be crammed into the next two weeks.

Yes, I am a nut for the holidays. The infectious songs, shiny ornaments, the old movies, claymation TV specials, the smell of pine, the cooking, entertaining, merry-making, carol-singing, present-wrapping, and even better, present-unwrapping. At what other time of year do people actually trample each other outside malls in a quest to buy toys? It's magical. I even love, in a certain way, the frenetic pace of things as our social lives go on steroids at the same time as we're scrambling to make year-end professional deadlines. In December, I am virtually always working, drunk, hungover, or some combination of the three. Glorious.

One of the tent poles of my holiday season for six years running has been a Christmas cocktail party. I tend to go a little bit overboard. I know this. Last year there was a Croquembouche involved, and meringue mushrooms. Before our 2008 party I asked The Scribe, my then roommate, if he was looking forward to co-hosting the event. He nodded unconvincingly, so I pressed him. "I'm scared," he said in a small voice. "I'm scared that I'm going to mess something up."

I believe that when you've realized that you posses some undesirable character trait, you have two options: you can apologize for yourself and try to reform, or embrace it as one of your defining quirks. I chose the latter. I told him that fear was a powerful motivator and suggested that he not touch the jar of creme fraiche ripening on the counter.

Now I live with The Viking, and he has taken over the role of 'supporting male roommate' with true aplomb. He refers to me as 'her majesty' and mostly stays out of my way, swooping in at key moments to take out the trash, say, or taste-test the pate in my moments of personal doubt ("Yummy! You're so clever. Who knew livers could taste this good.").

This year's Christmas party is happening tomorrow night. There will be a full report after the fact (including food shots and casualty figures for wine, beer, and liquor consumed) but for now, some previews of what I've baked so far. Isn't it amazing what can happen when you take photos in natural light?

Gougeres (aka french cheese puff thingies), from Alain Ducasse's recipe, are an annual Christmas party fixture.

Kourabiedes, a Greek cookie flavored with clove, from my mother's recipe.

My go-to Christmas cookies: English Toffee Squares.

As soon as I discovered that a Sugar Plum was a real thing (containing no real plum, but lots of dried fruit, ground nuts, and spices), I had to make them. They might be the most underrated Christmas treat out there.

My Thanksgiving In Pictures

10:30 AM: The best thing about getting an 8 lb turkey is that you don't need to wake up at the crack of dawn on Thanksgiving to start cooking it. The first task of the day (post-coffee, while watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) was to make a compound butter for the turkey, this one with chopped thyme. Every chef I spoke to for advice about how to cook a wild turkey told me to use plenty of butter on the lean breasts.

11 AM: You may be saying to yourself, "What is she doing with that dead bat?" or "Why is her turkey anorexic?" Never fear, this is perfectly normal physiognomy for a wild turkey, which I might remind you is in fact a bird, and therefore built to fly. Note that he or she is built like a marathoner, with long, lean legs, a protruding breast bone, and teeny tiny (A-cup!) breasts.

11:30 AM: On to the stuffing. This one contains white sandwich bread (cubed and dried for an hour in a low oven), sausage, fennel, granny smith apples, sage, thyme, onion, celery, stock, and butter.

12:30 PM: What's missing from this picture? Our turkey's legs, which have been removed and will be braised separately in stock and white wine (which, incidentally, becomes the perfect base for a gravy). Legless turkey is now smeared with butter and ready to go into its 275 degree oven. Legless turkey will be basted, from time to time, with a mixture of melted butter and chicken stock.

3 PM: No Thanksgiving is complete without an appearance by butternut squash. Mine is sprinkled with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary, and roasted. It's then drizzled with a dressing of grain mustard, olive oil, and cider vinegar before serving.

4 PM: After 3.5 hours, legless turkey had reached an internal temperature of 165 degrees and was removed from the oven to rest before carving. I'm aware that this photo of legless turkey listing to one side next to a glass of champagne makes legless turkey look drunk. Teehee.

4:45 PM: Our holiday table, courtesy of my mother, who has a knack for such things.


5 PM: Thanksgiving dinner just seconds before it was devoured by the hungry cook: wild turkey, Brussels sprouts with bacon, roasted butternut squash, stuffing with sausage, fennel, and apples, and gravy. Mmmmmm.

A Perfect(ly Good) Turkey Recipe

It's just going to be my dad, my mom, and me this Thanksgiving. That might lead you to wonder whether it's really worth all the fuss of cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner for just three people. I reject this line of thinking, partly because I'm in the habit of cooking all day for just two people, and that's in celebration of nothing much in particular. But also because I think that a Thanksgiving that's short on personnel needs to make up for it in holiday cheer, which means plenty of cooking, eating, music, parade-watching, and of course alcoholic beverages.

My plan for Thursday is to cook just enough to keep me busy throughout the afternoon but not so much as to be exhausting. I'll do turkey of course, traditional stuffing, a brussels sprout dish, and a butternut squash dish. I'm buying our pumpkin pie from 'wichcraft - I know what you're thinking, but they're inexpensive and at least as good as anything I would make (using fresh Greenmarket pumpkin, no less) so I'm not ashamed about outsourcing this.

Of all the dishes served on Thanksgiving, it is without a doubt the turkey that provokes the most angst among cooks.

Maybe that's because the turkey is the only thing that nearly all Thanksgiving tables share in common, or maybe because it's the centerpiece of the meal, or maybe just because turkeys can be so incredibly bad when overcooked. At any rate, it's a funny-looking bird to get so upset about.

The questions circulating around turkey cookery are endless and terribly specific, as if proper cooking them is like a geometry proof and one foul digit can ruin the whole thing. Should you brine? Dry brine or wet brine? For how long? What brining solution should you use? If you brine it, can you stuff it? What temperature should you cook the turkey at at? For how long? Should you use a rub? How about a glaze? How often should you baste? Should you rotate it in the oven?

I'd imagine that if you care deeply about the quality of your roasted turkey you've probably already consulted multiple cookbooks and magazines as well as poring over Google search results to the query "the perfect turkey." There's no shortage of material out there about cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, and I'm sure that I'm not going to provide you with any original insight here.

So this one goes out to everybody else: the folks who mainly just want to roast a turkey that might be a pleasant surprise to the naysaying family and friends with takeout Chinese on speed dial.

After doing a fair amount of research and realizing that I was creating more questions for myself than I answered, I finally just spoke to one of the chefs de cuisine at our restaurant company to see what he recommended. His advice is below. It's not revolutionary, nor is it probably the Ultimate, Indisputable Best Turkey Recipe Out There. I know that it's somehow more fun to think that it requires a rigorous rotation schedule, temperature variation, and secret rub ingredients to unlock the code to A Great Turkey, but what's below will get you to the dinner table with minimal fuss and maximal results.

A quick word about brining. Brining is when you use a salt/sugar/water bath to make the turkey more tender and moist by witchcraft osmosis. I've heard many impassioned arguments in favor of brining and no persuasive reasons against it, other than the obvious one that most of us have better things to do than worrying about submersing a 20 lb carcass in a water bath the day before Thanksgiving. If you have the time and inclination to brine then by all means. But at the risk of inflaming all those brine advocates out there...you can skip the brining step without seriously damaging your turkey cookery. Update: I just got a persuasive argument against brining from my boss. He says that that brining dries out the meat and that what people are responding to when they say it's "moist" is the fact that the meat is thoroughly seasoned. Instead, season under the skin and in the cavity well with salt and pepper.

For those that might be interested: this year I got a wild turkey, from Quattro Farm in Pleasant Valley, New York. The main reasons for this decision were a) after seeing Food, Inc. and reading every Michael Pollan book this year, I could not conscience buying an industrially produced turkey and b) the little guy only weighs 7-8 lbs, perfect for a small Thanksgiving gathering. I'll let you know how it goes.

A Perfectly Good Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe

Start with high quality turkey. The biggest single factor in how good your Thanksgiving turkey tastes is what type of animal you start with. It's too late at this point to special order a turkey from a local farm but you should consider it next year (you should get your order in by mid-October). In the New York area, Quattro's Game Farm, Stone Barns, and Dickson's Farmstand Meat all sell turkeys. If you're going the grocery store route, try to get a bird that's been raised pastured (cage-free) without antibiotics, hormones, or other additives. The turkey will have a much richer, fuller flavor.

Separate the legs from the turkey. The legs and breast take different amounts of time to cook, so they need to be cooked apart. I know that this ruins the table-presentation flourish of a whole turkey. Get over it.

Prep the breast and cavity. Rub the turkey with salt, pepper, and butter, both on top of and underneath the skin. Let it come to room temperature before going in the oven. Fill the cavity with stuffing, if desired.

Braise the legs. Put a little oil in a dutch oven over medium high heat and brown the legs. Then remove the legs and add chopped carrot, onion, celery, garlic, and a couple of sprigs of thyme. Let those soften, and then add a little bit of white wine to deglaze the pan (read: loosen the brown bits). Add back the legs and enough chicken stock to partially cover them. Keep covered and at a low simmer until the legs register 165 degrees.

Roast the breast. 325 degrees is a good oven temperature. Roast the breast until it hits an internal temperature of 165 (a pop-up poultry timer lodged in the bird's breast is set to pop at 180 degrees, at which point a turkey is already dried out and overcooked, so do not rely on that), basting occasionally.

And that's it! Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Cotes de Veau & Compromise

I am a dedicated meal planner. This will come as no surprise anyone who knows me, given that one of my most salient character traits is that I plan everything. My life can be more or less boiled down to a complex hierarchy of lists, ones that only I understand. Often my 'To Do' list will feature sub-lists as well as reminders to make other lists, a fact which is frightening and comic and tragic all at once.

So once a week --usually Thursday -- I sit down and look at the seven days ahead. I look at which nights I'll be at home and I plan what I'd like to cook. Sometimes I'll cruise through magazines and cookbooks for inspiration, sometimes I'll just get a load of vegetables and a protein and wing it.

The advantages of planning meals this way are manyfold: I can tackle all the food ordering for the week in one go (from Freshdirect, which means that I can do it from my desk instead of braving the yuppie mosh pit that is Wholefoods); it removes all day-to-day 'what are we doing for dinner tonight' anxiety; and it drastically reduces the number of sheepish takeout food orders made due to lack of creativity, energy, motivation.

The big downside: sometimes I get ahead of myself in these meal planning sessions, and my ambition wanes in between the actual planning and execution of said meals.

For instance, last night. There's a recipe in the November issue of Saveur for Braised Veal Breast with Artichokes. Now doesn't everything about that sound completely fantastic? I thought so too. No-brainer. Monday night dinner!

Unfortunately so preoccupied was I by the elegance and very French-ness of this dish that I lost site of the fact that, oh I don't know, I have a day job. The recipe involved straining and reducing a sauce, many different different pots and pans, a 2 hour braise. In my French culinary fantasy none of this would be an issue because I would turn on some jazz and uncork a bottle of Sancerre around 4 PM -- so that's right after my afternoon nap -- and then spend the rest of the evening tending to dinner in a leisurely yet perfectionist fashion.

In my actual life I arrived home at 7 PM, to an apartment that looked like it had been trashed by thugs, limping because I had worn shoes all day that were too small (but on such a good sale!) and my feet were now riddled with blisters. What I really, truly wanted to do was to stare into space for a couple hours, or at the very most watch cable and do my laundry in peace.

So what to do under these circumstances? When you have $35 worth of veal rib chops in your refrigerator and less than zero desire to do right by them?

I compromised. I did not leave the veal languishing in the fridge and dine on white wine and popcorn, as I had half a mind to do. But I did dispense with the fussy, lengthy recipe and looked for the simplest way to prepare the perishable ingredients that I had stocked.

So, I roasted a Delicata squash that I had hanging around. I prepped the artichoke hearts, tossed them in boiling water with half a lemon for 15 minutes, sliced them thin, and then sauteed them in a hot skillet with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

For the veal chops: I turned to Julia Child, who can always be counted on to give you a straightforward and reliable way to cook nearly any cut of meat. Her recommendation for cotes de veau was to brown them, then transfer them to the oven in a casserole dish with some shallots and white wine and let them cook for 20 minutes. The white wine braising liquid then gets heated on the stovetop and reduced down, with butter, a splash of stock, and salt and pepper added in at the end. I put a veal chop together on a plate with the artichokes and Delicata squash and ladled the sauce over the whole thing.

Say It With Me Now: Duck Ham!

It's really a shame that this is probably the single most uninspiring food photo that I've ever posted, because it doesn't do justice to the wonderful root vegetable soup and duck ham that I made yesterday.

"Duck ham" is quick-cured duck breast. I just love saying it. Duck ham!

The idea is that you wrap a duck breast in a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, garlic, thyme, and black pepper for 24 hours and out comes something like a very young prosciutto. Since the recipe for duck ham(!) doesn't involve an oven or a stove, it might be tempting to say but it's raw, it's raw poultry. Danger. It's not raw though -- it's cured.

Here's the thing: the definition of "cooking" is manipulating ingredients chemically. I don't know if that's what it says when you look "cooking" up in the dictionary, but that's what chefs mean when they use the word. When home cooks talk about cooking they're pretty much always talking about heat. But curing is cooking too: salt and sugar draw the water out of meat (osmosis, heard of it?), and dehydrated meat cannot host bacteria, because bacteria need water to survive. Ergo, the meat is safe to eat.

Once the duck was done curing yesterday, I sliced it as thin as possible, but to be honest it was still a little bit too gummy and wet for my taste to eat plain (none of you will be surprised to hear that The Viking sucked it down just fine). But it was perfect as a compliment to the rustic, earthy roasted root vegetable soup.

Root vegetables, roasted almost to the point of burning along with a duck or a chicken, are some of my favorite things to eat in the fall/winter months. This soup captures exactly that flavor in liquid form, which shouldn't be a surprise given the ingredients (root vegetables; chicken stock). Somehow, it was still amazing to me how complex and evocative of a mid-winter dinner the soup was. It's roasted chicken and root vegetables for people who are too lazy to chew. Relatedly, this would be amazing as baby food.

Both recipes are from Tom Colicchio's Think Like A Chef. If you want the full recipes, I encourage you to buy the book here. If you want the executive summaries, see below.


Duck Ham

Remove most of that fat from a duck breast, leaving just a thin protective coating. Mix 1 cup Kosher salt, 3 Tablespoons sugar, 1 Tablespoon thyme leaves, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 Tablespoon black pepper. Put half the salt mixture on a piece of plastic wrap, lay the duck breast on top, and cover the breast with the remaining mixture. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for 24 hours. Remove from the fridge, gently rinse the breast, and pat dry.


Roasted Root Vegetable Soup

Put some oil in a big stew pot (think 5 - 6 quart). Peel, slice, and add the following: 1 parsnip, 1/2 bulb fennel, 1 carrot, 1 small butternut squash, 1 leek (white part only), 1/2 granny smith apple, 1 clove garlic. Let veggies soften, add a knob of butter and a sprig of thyme, let soften further. Add 3 cups of chicken stock gradually, bring to a simmer, and simmer partially covered for 40 minutes. Then puree, thin with another cup of stock, and salt and pepper to taste. Sherry is not called for in the recipe, but indeed would not be out of place.

Nuts For Pumpkins

What is it with Americans and the pumpkin?

Pumpkins have a special role in this country: they're not just a fruit, they're a seasonal mascot. We carve faces on them and call them Jack O'Lanterns (in an earlier post I mentioned our October visit to see 4,000 carved, illuminated pumpkins), we chu(n)ck them, we compete to see who has the biggest one.

In addition to all of that, we just love to eat them, in every conceivable form from pumpkin beer to ice cream, soup, lattes, pies, breads, pastas, and beyond. This is unique. In other countries, there's not so much fanfare. The humble pumpkin is just another type of winter squash.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I love pumpkins! Nothing gets you into the holiday season like eating something made with pumpkin. Unfortunately for the home cook, they're a real pain to prepare. Almost anything you want to do with a pumpkin involves peeling it, removing the guts (which smell putrid...what a wild contrast there is between raw and cooked pumpkin. God bless the man or woman who first thought to cook something as smelly as a pumpkin), cubing its flesh, cooking it, and pureeing it.

Canned pumpkin puree is widely available (two different brands are pictured above), but I've been told by chefs that there's "no comparison" between pureeing a good pumpkin yourself and using the canned stuff. One of these days I'm going to test it out by making side by side pumpkin soups, breads, and pies comparing fresh vs. canned pumpkin.

Yes, one of these days, right after I back up my hard drive and alphabetize our DVD collection.

Here are some fun facts about pumpkins:

-Out of the seven continents, only Antarctica is unable to produce pumpkins.

-As one of the most popular crops in the U.S., 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins are produced each year.

-The town of Morton, Illinois, the self-declared pumpkin capital of the world.


And here's a summary of this week's pumpkin consumption:

-On Sunday night, Halloween, I drank Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale (very tasty, pictured above) and we watched lesser-known Hitchcock movies - specifically, Stage Fright and The Lady Vanishes.



-On Monday night, I made pumpkin soup, and I used a real pumpkin to do it. Isn't it pretty? Almost too pretty to eat, I think. Almost.

When it comes to tackling whole pumpkins, there are a couple of things that will help you out: a very sharp knife, and a Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale. Once I survived the tedium of peeling, gutting, and cubing the pumpkin, the rest was a piece of cake. The soup turned out to be very tasty, thanks in part to 1/4 cup of shaved Parmesan added in at the end, which lends a richness and tang (the recipe calls for Gruyere, but I didn't have any on hand, although for whatever reason I always seem to have a cache of half-used domestic Parmesan in the fridge). The recipe is from Fine Cooking, it's very healthy, and can be found here. In retrospect, I think the soup would have been even better if I added sherry. Every soup is better with sherry.




-Last night I made pumpkin bread, using canned pumpkin, and it wasn't very good at all. Just flat. Dull. By the time I finished eating a slice this morning, I had already forgotten about it. I don't know whether to attribute that to a shortcoming of the canned stuff, or the fact that I decided to "wing it" instead of using a recipe. Probably a combination of the two.

And that, friends, is the pumpkin report.

The Banana Bread That Almost Was

In many places around the world, it's customary after a birth for friends to bring along gifts of food. It's something nice that people do for each other not only to relieve some of the burden from discombobulated new parents, but as an expression of love and a pleasant reminder that "Hey, we're all in this together."

Of course, not in New York City. Now maybe that's because good delivery food is so easy to come by, or maybe it's because no one knows how to cook here, but I think it's largely because in NYC we're not all in this for each other, we're all in it for ourselves, or else we would live somewhere different and less anonymous, rude, and frenetic.

Our friends The Bomber and The Bomber's Husband just had their first baby, Maxwell, and I am going to meet him today. I intended to bake banana bread to bring to them -- really, I did -- but instead I stayed too late at work last night and then made the last-minute decision to attend a drinks reception for The Viking's prep school. If this sounds tedious, then you do not know The Viking's prep school. Going to a drinks reception adds up to mingling with people with names like Hugo Cadogan Finchley-Armitage and Richard Frederick von Wriothesley (pronounced: Risley) , all of whom are wearing ties and socks that mean something and are several measures wittier than the wittiest Americans I know. It's like walking into a staged production of Right Ho, Jeeves!, and opportunities like this one are not to be missed. But, as a result, now I'm just another one of those selfish New York people who doesn't bring anything homemade to new parents.

I've already seen pictures of baby Max, and he's a real dreamboat. I'm not just saying that. The truth is, some babies are ugly -- of course not your baby, reader, but some babies. I've seen babies who look like Vladmir Putin, Luciano Pavarotti, and Yoda. I know that it would be social suicide to indicate this to new parents but I do I feel that saying every baby is cute really takes something away from the babies who actually are cute, in the same way that "participation trophies" take something away from the person who really did win the 100 meter dash or had, without a doubt, the best original limerick of anyone in her fourth grade class. I'm just saying.

Back to the banana bread. I know it's not as fun to talk about a hypothetical banana bread as an actual one (and even less fun if you're The Viking, because hypothetical banana breads do not taste great with a cup of tea), but the recipe I had in mind last night was a really, really good one from Cook's Illustrated. I first made it in August, which is when the above picture was taken.

I love Cook's Illustrated. While the rest of us are groping around in the dark trying to get it right, Cooks applies not only the scientific method to cooking but also actual science, referencing things like sodium receptors and osmosis and fermentation and other terms that you have not thought about since a final exam when you were 14. Cooks Illustrated is the unfashionable yet clever lab partner who methodically completed the experiment while you spend all period "borrowing more sodium carbonate" from the cute soccer players one bench over. The main innovation in their banana bread is that they evaporate off some of the water from the bananas to pack flavor into the bread without making it soggy and dense. I can't vouch for it being the best banana bread in the whole wide world, but it's incredibly moist, crumbly, and addictive, and I for one will look no further for my banana bread needs.

You can get the recipe for the "Ultimate Banana Bread" here. Unless you're The Bomber, her husband, and Max, in which case you'll probably get the Ultimate Banana Bread sometime next week.

An Armchair Scientist Takes On The Hangover

Today, I have hangovers on the brain. Literally and figuratively.

Last night was The Scribe's birthday, and a group of us went to DBGB and gorged ourselves on thick, unctuous hamburgers, shoestring fries, and sausages. To drink, I had a martini and [an unnamed quantity of] beer -- all in all it wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the red wine-soaked dinner at Aureole the night before, which left my systems teetering on the brink of collapse.

And thus the situation that I find myself in today. It would all be fine and dandy if I could sit around feeling sorry for myself all day, eating junkfood, snoozing on the couch, watching House reruns, and getting better on my own time. Clearly that is not in the agenda, and I'll assume the same is true for most of you on any given Thursday in October. We lead busy lives, and we need to stay in fighting form.

So, I'm doing damage control. Just as there is a right and wrong way to roast a chicken, there is a right a wrong way to treat a hangover, and after years of experimentation I believe that I've found the winning formula. Let's be clear: there is absolutely no science or data of any kind to back up the following claims. Just one bon vivant's experiences.

First of all, hangovers are not just about the alcohol. Sometime you should try eating a big, rich meal loaded with butter and red meat and carbohydrates while drinking sugary, acidic non-alcoholic beverages and see how you feel the next day. Probably pretty hungover.

Think of it like this: after a night of intense drinking and dining your stomach is like a war zone, and the goal of your hangover treatment is to negotiate peace. Most people will tell you that the best solution is to eat greasy food: a bacony breakfast sandwich, Chipotle, a big, hulking bowl of pad thai. This is certainly what you feel like eating, but it's like sending another unit into combat. It's exactly the type of rationale that led you to say, "Sure, I'd love a nightcap!" And look how that turned out for you.

Without further ado, my hangover cure:

1. Tylenol and coffee: Tylenol dulls the pain, and the caffeine is going to be necessary to keep you alert thanks to the awful night of sleep that you just had (both alcohol and a full stomach keep you from getting into REM sleep, meaning that you aren't really getting your rest).

2. 2 liters of water: Dehydration is more than half your problem after a night on the town, so get a liter of water down the trap the next morning and then drink another liter throughout the day. And by water I mean water --not Gatorade, which is really high in sugar.

3. A 30 minute jog: Going for a slow, steady run raises your metabolism, which I personally believe "sweats out" the alcohol (so to speak), flushing your system and speeding the entire recovery process.

4. Vegetable juice: Yes, vegetable juice. Not a burger and fries. Vegetable juice is a mild, low sugar, high nutrient way to cleanse a system which needs a break in order to get itself back to normal. Ideally, I go to a juice bar and order the stuff fresh, but in a pinch I'll take V-8. Trust me on this -- if you can exert enough self control to pass on the pizza and stick to vegetable juice until dinner, you will be the better for it.

Recipe Edits: Campanelle with Sausage, Pumpkin, & Cavolo Nero

Pictured above is the pasta with pumpkin, sausage, and cavolo nero that I cooked for dinner last night. I dunno, it was okay. The Viking thought that it was phenomenal but I suspect that's just because he was long overdue for a home-cooked meal.

I was out of town at the end of last week and in that short amount of time, The Viking had already begun to go feral. When I returned to the apartment on Saturday I found the shards of a broken espresso cup strewn across the floor, peels, cores, and bones of various foodstuffs scattered about the dining area, and evidence of what I believe to be early attempts at toolmaking. All that was missing was the cave paintings. Maybe if I had stayed away an extra day.

Anyway, I think what my Early Man was responding to in last night's dinner was the flavor combination, which I agree was appetizing...but given a few small changes in execution, the dish could have excellent (not to mention easier). Raw squash/pumpkin is punishingly difficult to peel and dice; the sausage was overcooked and rubbery from sitting in the pan too long; the kale had a slippery, boiled quality most closely associated with seaweed; the whole thing was bound together in a watery broth that I could have been reduced down to better effect.

Most of the time we choose recipes because the ingredients sound good: sausage, pasta, cavelo nero, pumpkin. What's not to like? The actual flesh and bones of the recipe, though, may not be all that inspired. That's why it's always important to read fully through a recipe before beginning to cook, making substitutions or changes in technique as you see fit (or, looking for a new recipe using the same ingredients, if the whole thing just doesn't seem right). A recipe ought not to be the boss of you. It should just be a guideline, open to your changes and interpretations.

I'll use this recipe as an example. I'm not going to include the source, because I don't mean to pick on its creators - but here's how I might have done things differently, if I could do it over again.

Pasta with Pumpkin, Sausage, and Cavolo Nero

Kosher salt
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage, casings removed if using links
1 Tbs. olive oil (optional
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 cups 3/4-inch-diced peeled, seeded pumpkin 1 small pumpkin or butternut squash, halved
1/4 cup dry white wine
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried Marjorem a pinch nutmeg
1-1/2 cups lower-salt 3/4 c. chicken broth
10 oz. cavolo nero kale (aka Lacinato, black, or dinosaur kale), trimmed, ribs removed, leaves cut into 1-inch pieces
8 oz. dried campanelle pasta
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano; more for serving
Freshly ground black pepper

Their instructions:

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil over high heat.

In a heavy-duty 12-inch skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces with a wooden spoon, until mostly browned, 6 to 8 minutes.Push the sausage towards the edge of the skillet and add the olive oil if the center of the pan is dry (this will depend on the amount of fat in the sausage). Add the onion and cook until golden and the sausage is well browned, about 8 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin, wine, garlic, and marjoram and cook until the wine evaporates, 3 to 4 minutes. Add 3/4 cup of the broth and cook until the pumpkin is almost tender, about 8 minutes. Add the kale and the remaining 3/4 cup broth, cover, and cook until the pumpkin and kale are tender, about 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in the boiling water according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water and then drain well. Add the pasta to the skillet with enough of the pasta water to coat the pasta and vegetables generously. Stir in the Parmigiano and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with additional Parmigiano.


My Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and place pumpkin halves cut-side down in a baking dish. Cook for 30-45 minutes, until a knife can be inserted fairly easily into the pumpkin. Remove from the oven, cool, remove peel, and cut into 3/4 inch dice. Set aside.

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil over high heat.

In a heavy-duty 12-inch skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces with a wooden spoon, until well browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove sausage from pan with slotted spoon and set aside.

Add olive oil if the center of the pan is dry (this will depend on the amount of fat in the sausage). Add the onion and cook until golden, 6-8 minutes. Stir in kale, wine, garlic, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, and cook until the wine evaporates, 3 to 4 minutes. Add chicken broth, bring to a simmer, and cook until kale is tender and broth has reduced to half, about 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in the boiling water according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water and then drain well. Add the pasta, pumpkin, and sausage to the skillet with enough of the pasta water to coat the pasta and vegetables generously. Stir in the Parmigiano and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with additional Parmigiano.

I Think We Should All Have A Chair Like This

This past week we got a taste of family life. Ours friends The Vegetarian and The Botanist visited us in NYC along with their Munchkin, which provided not only a much-needed excuse to cook with vegetables, but a fascinating window into the habits and customs of those small people that we call babies.

The Munchkin likes: The Big Red Barn and other board books, puppies, fries, bananas, Swedish children's music, farm animals of all sorts, stuffed animals > she is.

The Munchkin does not like: Having her face and hands cleaned, socks, bedtime, strange men.




On to the vegetables. First up on Tuesday night was this vegetarian tagine. It was not dissimilar to the tagines that we ate throughout the mountains in Morocco, which didn't have much in the way of meat in them either. This one featured turnips, carrots, chickpeas, and lots of sweet potatoes. The tagine itself was wonderfully flavorful, likely due to the fact that all of the spices were toasted whole and then ground immediately before use (finally, a reason to break into the spices I bought in Marrakesh!). I was distracted by the limp texture and dull flavor of the couscous that I served along with it, but nobody else seemed to mind.



On Thursday I cut up root vegetables (beats, turnips, radishes, cool purple carrots, regular carrots) and roasted them with sea salt, black pepper, and olive oil. I also made an herb and Parmesan risotto, and for dessert, apple crisp. For the non-vegetarians, I cooked flounder en papillote (read: in a foil packet) with sun dried tomatoes, olives, and dried thyme and oregano. This remains the easiest and most hassle-free method of cooking fish that I have yet to discover.

Then came the weekend. We headed out to stay with my mother in the Hudson Valley in order to show The Vegetarian, The Botanist, and their Munchkin a proper Northeastern fall. This meant taking in a spectacle of over 4,000 individually hand-carved, illuminated jack o'lanterns, a hike to the top of Monument Mountain famously walked by Hawthorne and Melville (but never, I don't think, by a jet lagged 13 month old), a hayride, many pumpkin foodstuffs (pancakes, pasta sauce, fudge), lunch at an old fashioned burger shack, and much, much more. Somehow I didn't see fit to take pictures of any of these wonderful activities -- I need to get better at that.



When we returned to the city on Sunday night, The Vegetarian and the The Viking were responsible for dinner. This marked the second time The Viking has ever prepared dinner for me, so needless to say, I was excited. The menfolk went out on a hunting/gathering expedition to Wholefoods, and brought back two big bags of groceries including but not limited to soup, bread, an heirloom tomato the size of a kickball, and Icelandic yogurt (because who can resist yogurt from Iceland?). Then we all drank a middling Malbec and ate insalata caprese, vegetable soup, and tortellini with pesto (served in a souffle dish, shown above). It was a fabulous meal, largely due to the excellent company, partly because I didn't lift a finger.

Now The Vegetarian, The Botanist, and The Munchkin are all gone. It's sad and silent in the apartment and once again the cooking has come to a temporary halt.

Is There Such A Thing As A Desk Potato?

Hi there. Long time no blog.

Things have gotten a little out of hand in recent weeks. I've fallen off the wagon -- the cooking wagon, that is -- so much so that I don't even have a kitchen-related photograph to show you today. Instead, I give you the view that I've been seeing a lot of lately: my desk at work. This is where the magic happens. Can't you tell?

Of course, I would be lying if I said that work has been the only thing keeping me from my chef's knife...

Usually on Saturdays I potter around in the kitchen. This is not a kitchen so much as a swanky hotel pool in Miami. The occasion: a bachelorette weekend. We spent the day reading Wolf Hall US Weekly and talking about Rahm Emmanuel's mayoral bid weddings.


And this? This is trouble.


This is the two laptop-sized pieces of Artichoke Basille pizza that I inhaled on the way to work on Sunday, in a frantic attempt to combat my hangover. A.K.A. double trouble.



These are gorgeous desserts about to leave the kitchen during a charity event at one of our restaurants on Sunday night. At least someone's been doing some cooking...

Listen, I'm not looking for pity here. I'm just pointing out that a busy schedule makes it difficult to take care of oneself properly; not taking care of oneself makes one feel exhausted; feeling exhausted makes it hard to care for oneself. And the vicious cycle goes on and on. Maybe I haven't been a couch potato lately but I've been the next worst thing, which is someone glued in front of a computer screen for many too many hours each day. Yes, a desk potato. And when not desk potatoing I've been spending my time consuming alcohol and animal fat in various forms.

And notice what isn't pictured above? Vegetables. Unless you count the ones swimming in grease and cheese on the pizza. Which I do not.

This calls to mind a New York Times article that I read last week about how you just can't get Americans to eat more vegetables. No matter what you do! Partly because they don't taste as good as, say, Twinkies, but they're also more expensive than Twinkies, and more time consuming to prepare and inferior in their shelf-life to the Twinkie. This makes them a very hard sell.

Even as someone who takes nutrition seriously, as you may have noticed, my enthusiasm for the CSA deliveries has waned in recent weeks. As it turns out getting odd quantities of strange vegetables at inconvenient times is not all that it's cracked up to be. I miss going to the greenmarket. I hate myself for putting Swiss Chard directly into the trash every single time. I'm annoyed at having to puzzle about what I could make that requires exactly three red onions, 5 baby turnips, and a head of bok choy. I don't always have the time, or at least the mental energy, to grapple with the multi-step process of preparing Jerusalem artichokes at the end of a long day. If it comes to that, I'd rather just eat a Twinkie. The CSA box is not for me.

I have to remind myself (and so do we all) that there are plenty of ways to incorporate vegetables into a meal without all that peeling, chopping, blanching, and roasting. Just a few of them:

1. An omelet and a green salad - If you have an extra vegetable or two lying about, omelets are a fantastic way to use them up. Just chop up the vegetables and saute them with some onions and garlic and they're a perfect filling. If you buy a head of Boston lettuce at the beginning of the week and keep it in the crisper drawer, you can shred a few leaves at a time into a simple salad in a matter of minutes.

2. Frozen vegetables and (lean) hamburgers-- A shortage of time to cook usually means a shortage of time for planning, and a major issue with vegetables is that you really need to plan out in advance what you'll use and when so that they don't spoil and go to waste. This is why frozen vegetables are so clutch; not only are they already prepped, but they can stay in the freezer for months at a time if necessary. Frozen broccoli, green beans, and peas are some of my alternatives to fresh versions. Steam them with a little water on the stove and then saute them in a hot pan with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and whatever spices catch your fancy. To go along with the vegetables, you can defrost individual hamburger patties as you need them.

3. If all else fails...V-8 and an energy bar -- It lacks the romance of my go-to 'no cook' dinner, a glass of red wine with cheese and crackers, but has the advantages of a) being something that you can probably buy at your local drugstore, b) not making you fall asleep within 25 minutes and c) generally leaving you feeling top notch the next morning.

This week, I'm aiming to get back in the swing of things. The Viking's dear friend The Vegetarian is visiting for the week with his family, which will give me the perfect excuse to spend some quality time in the kitchen with vegetables. Who knows, maybe I'll even keep the Swiss Chard around this time.

I'm Stearing Clear Of Heavy Machinery

Hello from soggy England! I'm in no condition to be writing right now, having spent the past 13 hours in transit, having slept for only 2 or 3 of those hours, and having taken a dose of over-the-counter sleeping medication too small to put me to sleep but just large enough to partially incapacitate me. Nonetheless, I'll try my best to string a few sentences together, because I really am so behind in telling you about last weekend's kitchen antics.

Last Saturday night we had The Viking's cycling team over for cocktails on the terrace. For them, it was a rare opportunity to socialize in a spandex-free environment; for me, it was a chance to attach faces to names and to corroborate The Viking's dubious-sounding claim that when he leaves the house at 5:45 every morning, it really is to ride a bike in circles around the park and not to hold up convenience stores or do drug deals or similar.

A cycling team is the perfect audience for an eager cook, consisting of the sort of stringbeany, twitchy men that need to eat almost constantly just to keep up with their raging metabolisms. Aside from the typical spread of assorted party foods (chips, dips, cheese plate, whathaveyou) I had two homemade items: roasted tomato, mozzarella, basil and brioche 'sliders,' and peanut butter and Concord grape jam sandwich cookies.



I was really worried about the brioche (this might be an overstatement. I really worry about the fact that I don't contribute to a 401k; I was somewhat nervous about the brioche.). I've never made it before and, well, given my track record with breads, I think I had legitimate cause for concern. Luckily the rolls came out of the oven soft and fluffy, and if not tasting exactly like the brioche that I'm used to, they did at least taste good. The 'sliders' (for the record, I think the word 'sliders' sounds trendy and ridiculous but I don't know what else to call these. Sandwiches? Canapes? I don't know.) were summery and fresh, wholesome without being heavy, which is exactly what I was going for.

As for the cookies: I have nothing but good things to say about the jam-making experience. I've been told before that "there's nothing to it," but only by the same type of people who say that there's nothing to knitting and there's nothing to refinishing your own furniture, so people who apparently have a higher threshold for tedious projects than I do. But there really is nothing to making jam. You heat the fruit with some lemon juice and sugar, strain out the juices, and then simmer the fruit juice on its own for 10 minutes or so. Then you wait for it to cool. That's it! And you have jam that is so, so much better than the store bought stuff.



When I saw Concord grapes at the greenmarket last week my mind immediately landed on jelly, and from there it drifted to peanut butter. Ergo peanut butter and jelly sandwiches -- hold the bread. I thought that they would be perfect for the gaggle of small children in attendance, but in the end it was their moms and dads that oooo'd and aaaahh'd over the cookies with a plainly nostalgic glow.



On a different subject, but before I forget it, sad news about our tomato plants: after having almost perished while we were in Morocco and then made a miraculous recovery, this week the tomato plants were stricken by tomato hornworms that have managed to eat every last leaf and most of our ripening fruit within a space of 72 hours. The Viking has had his eye on those tomatoes for over a month and is indignant; I don't really care about the tomatoes and mostly just mind being outsmarted by an invertebrate. This gardening stuff is hard.

How Pizza Turned Into Jerusalem Artichoke Risotto (By Accident)

I get a lot of questions about my cooking habits. Questions, and general puzzlement, and facial expressions that seem to say, "But why did you make your own salsa? Did that really seem like the best use of an hour of your life?"

Well, first of all, I don't have children. That frees up lots of time and creative energy right there. Second of all, the cooking sometimes happens by accident.

Take Friday night. I called The Viking utterly exhausted from the work week, and the conversation went something like this:

The Viking: What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Me: I don't know. I'm exhausted. I'm definitely not cooking tonight. Definitely not.

The Viking: OK, well we should just order pizza. Go home, put your feet up, and we'll order a pizza.

Me: Perfect.

And then my thoughts went something like this:

I'll just stop by the grocery store for some paper towels and OJ, on my way home.

...Now that I'm at the grocery store, I might as well pick up a frozen pizza. That will be cheaper than ordering pizza.

...But frozen pizza is so unhealthy, and it's never any good. As long as I'm here I might as well buy a chicken to roast. That's barely cooking.

....Ugh, look at this industrial, mass-produced chicken. It's so disgusting. I cannot, in good conscience, buy and eat this chicken.

....Hey look, arborio rice! I could make risotto, I even have Parmesan and white wine and chicken stock in the fridge. I haven't made risotto in ages. I'll just make really easy risotto and be done with it.

...Actually, I have those Jerusalem artichokes too. I wonder how you cook a Jerusalem artichoke? I wonder if you can make Jerusalem artichoke risotto...?

Fast forward to 9 PM, at which point I was pureeing sauteed Jerusalem artichokes in a food processor and folding them into a risotto with herbs and pancetta.

It was my first experience with Jerusalem artichokes, which are neither artichokes nor are they from Jerusalem.



They're a tuber that looks like a cross between ginger and a massage tool and tastes like a cross between a mushroom and an artichoke. Pureed and mixed into the risotto they in fact did add an earthy compliment to the smokey pancetta and full-bodied Parmesan. All in all, it was a nice dish.

Nicer than an evening on the couch with a beer, a slice, and an episode of Mad Men? That's up for debate.