Baking too close to the flame

Beating on pecans with a rolling pin is a great way to take out the frustrations, except that it inevitably creates more frustrations, to wit: little bits of chopped pecan flying all over the kitchen. But that's easier to clean up than spilled molasses. No matter how carefully I clean up the drops of molasses on the floor, I can't seem to get them all--and then someone (probably me) steps in a drop and spreads molasses around the house. 

I know that molasses is supposed to go in the cookie dough and not on the floor, but nobody's perfect, and some of us are the extreme opposite. I admit that I am a messy cook. I blame the fact that I'm always multitasking--baking one set of cookies while beating up batter for the next, and then when the oven timer beeps just as I'm pouring the molasses, something's gotta give.

For evidence, just look at my best-loved recipes: all splattered with splotches of batter and goo. Some are even burned on the edges, evidence of baking too close to the flame. This is why I rarely take my computer or phone anywhere near the food preparation space. Imagine molasses on the keyboard!

I prefer to imagine the end result: a clean floor, a house full of family, and platters of Christmas cookies that need to be decorated. Perfect? No, but delicious all the same.

 

Chilling out (without a fridge)

My husband informs me that our granddaughter told him (and this conversation is already too complicated for me to follow) that she's really looking forward to having Santa cookies for Christmas, and I assumed she meant cut-out cookies decoratef like Santa, but he said no, she wants Santa's Whiskers, and I said "How can I make Santa's Whiskers without a refrigerator? The dough has to be chilled!" And he said, "You can wrap it up and stick it out in the car overnight and then bake 'em in the morning."

Now I had already promised myself that I would not do any heroic holiday baking in the absence of a refrigerator, and I was feeling pretty much at peace about not baking since we won't even be home for Christmas this year. But if my granddaughter wants Santa's Whiskers, then by golly I'm not going to let a little thing like the absence of a refrigerator deprive me of the pleasure of baking them for her--and furthermore, if no one else is around to lick the mixing bowl, then I'll just have to take care of that little chore myself.

Which is why I now have flour all over my shirt and two cylinders of cookie dough chilling out in my car. 

It's not the first time we've used the car for cold storage. Yesterday's leftover lasagna spent last night out there, and so did a casserole last week. It's also not a bad place to store leftover pizza. In fact, I can think of only one place that would be better: an actual refrigerator.

People keep asking me whether it's a nightmare to live for two weeks without a refrigerator, and I keep saying no, it's more of an annoyance than a nightmare, except for the actual literal nightmares about errant refrigerators that kept waking me up the other night. That was the day when I had my most recent discussion with the guy in the appliance department who keeps trying to explain why the refrigerator that was supposed to be delivered Nov. 30 is still not on the premises. It may be here Saturday, or it may be here sometime after Jan.5.

The old refrigerator waltzed out the door in the company of the recycling dudes on Dec. 9. Since then, we've put a bunch of stuff in the deep freeze, sent some things over to the refrigerator in our son's apartment (so if you're looking for the hoisin sauce, you're out of luck), and stashed the things we use frequently in a pair of coolers that keep getting underfoot in the dining room. And then of course there's auxiliary cold storage in my car.

I'll bring the dough in tomorrow morning and bake the cookies while awaiting delivery of the new recliner for the living room. And if that delivery is also delayed, we can  sit on the floor and eat cookie dough. Try 'em yourself:

Santa's Whiskers

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2  1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries plus about a tablespoon of the juice
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (I like pecans)
flaked coconut

Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla, chopped cherries, flour, and nuts. Stir just until dough holds together. (Add more cherry juice if it's too dry.) Divide dough in half. Roll each half into a log. Roll each log in coconut until it's coated all over. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Chill a few hours or overnight. 

Cut logs into 1/4 inch slices. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. If coconut comes loose, sprinkle it over the cookies. Bake at 375 until golden, about 12 minutes. Cool and eat.
 

Pawpaws, part two: stuck on you

I thought I knew pawpaws pretty well. I mean, what's to know? They grow at the edge of the woods; we pick,  peel, and eat 'em and toss out the seeds, unless the resident husbandman wants to save the seeds to try to grow next spring. Whatever. I know they're delicious. What more do I need to know?

But I'd never tried cooking with pawpaws before, primarily because they tend to get gobbled up too quickly to become ingredients. But this year's crop is abundant and we can only peel and eat so many, so I found a recipe and set to work.


The recipe seemed simple enough: pawpaw pulp with eggs, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, butter, salt, and baking powder, mixed in the right order, dumped in a buttered baking pan, and baked for 50 minutes. The texture resembles that of lemon bars but there's no crust, while the spices suggest pumpkin pie--but again, no crust. I can't report on finished flavor because it's still baking, but I can report that I now know one salient fact about pawpaws that had previously escaped my notice: they're sticky.

We're not talking moderately sticky. We're talking the kind of sticky that makes it hard to scrape all the mashed pulp out of the mixing bowl, and then if you happen to set that sticky bowl aside while assembling the remaining ingredients, the lingering pulp will turn gluey and adamantly resist removal from the bowl.

Not only that, but after washing all the preparation dishes, I've had to go back and wash my hands two or three more times because I can't get rid of that sticky feeling. My fingertips keep feeling like they want to stick to the keys--and now I wonder whether I got some pulp on my laptop keyboard. The pulp is thicker than glue and stickier than honey and it just won't go away.
 
But my house is now full of the comforting aroma of cinnamon, vanilla, and pawpaw, a scent that can linger as long as it wants. I just hope the dessert will stick around long enough to banish the memory of all that sticky pulp. 

(Pass the soap, would you? I can't get my fingers off the keys.)

 


 

Nutty syntax

The peppery aroma of ground cardamon fills the kitchen but while the dough rises I'm puzzling over the syntax of a recipe calling for "1 cup roasted chopped almonds." It's clear that I am expected to perform three actions:

1. measure
2. roast
3. chop

But in which order? Measure then roast then chop, or roast then chop then measure, or chop first and then roast and measure at the end? What if the recipe called for one of the following instead:

1 cup almonds, roasted and chopped
1 cup roasted almonds, chopped
1 cup chopped almonds, roasted
1 cup chopped roasted almonds

And does any of this really make any difference?

Another turnip trauma

Now that the trauma is fading into memory and the household has been purged of all trace of the offending substance, I am at liberty to describe what may well have been the most wretched meal I have ever encountered. The only meal in memory that even comes close was the incident with the dog-hairs in the frosting, and that occurred in another time and another place--and it was not perpetrated by someone with whom I expect to spend the rest of my life. When a neighbor serves you a birthday cake studded with dog hairs, you can at least take comfort in mentally inventing excuses to avoid eating there again. This option is unavailable when the cook is the love of your life.

The current culinary trauma occurred last Thursday, when my wonderful helpful husband called me at the office with exciting news: "Don't worry about supper," he said. "I put some bratwurst and turnips in the crockpot."

I was not, as you would imagine, overcome with glee at his words, but I knew he was just trying to be supportive. Still, I steeled myself for the ordeal ahead by stopping at the grocery store on the way home and stocking up on ice cream, just in case we might need a little distraction after the main dish.

And what a dish it was. My husband makes bread to die for and grilled meats to make Bobby Flay salivate, but crockpot cooking is not his forte. While turnips and bratwurst made up the base of the stew, he had also added little dabs of this and that from the fridge: pepperoni, frozen summer squash, ground pork, mashed potatoes, green beans, and I was afraid to ask what else. These duelling ingredients congealed into a gloppy mass with a consistency and texture not unlike that of vomit, only with bigger chunks.

And the flavor! Let us pass silently over the folly of mixing the bland with the ridiculous. My son and I looked at each other over the crockpot and struggled to find words to express a complex message: "We appreciate the effort, but please don't ever do it again!" After dutifully finishing a petite portion, I put down my fork and said brightly, "I hope you like this, honey, because I suspect you'll be eating a lot of it in the next few days!"

And he did. The young man and I have been studiously ignoring the leftover Turnip and Bratwurst Surprise lingering loathesomely in the refrigerator, but the husband doesn't believe in wasting food so he has been making steady progress on the diminishing disaster. He doesn't complain, and neither do I. It was edible, after all, and it wasn't decorated with dog hairs.

And best of all, it's gone.

A tempting tradition

Tree decorated: check.
Gifts wrapped: check.
Stockings hung by chimney with care: check.
Traditional Christmas lasagne assembled: check.

Hold on there. Since when did lasagne become a traditional Christmas meal? Shouldn't that be a ham or a roast or a turkey? What kind of person cooks lasagne on Christmas?

This break from tradition is not entirely my fault. I tried to come up with another plan; in fact, I spent several weeks periodically asking family members what they wanted for Christmas dinner, and the most useful response I received was "something good." "Okay then," I said, "I'll just have to adjust that liver-and-onions with brussels sprouts menu and cancel that big order of Salmiak. What'll I do with this case of Spam, though? I know--let's exercise some holiday spirit and give it to the poor! I'm sure the poor like Spam!"

After going through this ridiculous exercise a few times, I realized that an important part of my constituency had gone unpolled. I immediately repaired the oversight: "Self," I said, "What would you like to eat on Christmas?" Hence, a big pan of lasagne is now nestled snug in the fridge, waiting to be popped in the oven tomorrow. That's right: all the hard work is done, so tomorrow I can just relax and enjoy. I think I like this tradition.

I'm not quite so crazy about the traditional Christmas Eve turnips, but I had to make room in the fridge for the lasagne so those turnips had to be cooked and consumed. I'm more sanguine about the pre-Christmas-Eve tacos and flan, which is also not traditional holiday fare but is quite appropriate for a house full of young people celebrating a birthday. The college chick turned 20 today, which means that 20 years ago today I was enjoying the traditional I.V. drip following an emergency C-section. That was the year I baked 14 dozen traditional Christmas cookies to serve at our Christmas Eve open house, but the trip to the hospital sort of relocated the party. I hope the maternity ward nurses enjoyed all those cookies. They earned them: on Christmas morning they brought me a Christmas stocking stuffed with a beautiful baby girl. We still hang that stocking by the chimney every year to remind us that tradition isn't everything, that sometimes the best gifts are unexpected. Twenty years ago, a baby girl; tomorrow, lasagne; a year from now--who knows?

For tonight, everything's checked off the list, except I ought to leave a little something out for Santa. Hope he likes turnips.

A stirring experence

Recipe for the sweetest spot in a busy season:

Put sugar, cream, and butter in a heavy saucepan. Pull up a tall chair, turn your back on the world, and stir.

Laundry needs folding? Sorry--keep stirring. Cat throwing up? Someone else will have to clean it up. Bills beg to be paid? It's not worth ruining the recipe.

Focus full attention on the pan. Watch the bubbles bursting open with a bloop. Give a stir. Glance at the candy thermometer. Stir some more. Drag the spoon through the bubbling sugar to make serpentine lines in bubbling chaos. Look at the thermometer. Look at the bubbles. Stir, stir, stir.

Wait with sweet anticipation for that moment of tension toward the end, when it appears as if the mercury might be ready to rise past that little line. Wait for it! Getting closer! Not quite yet, but maybe--yes, there it goes! Grab the pan off the heat and get ready to burst into action.

The moment of transcendence is over--but while it lasted, ahhhhh, how sweet.

Gruel R Us

Yesterday I ate at a new local lunch spot where I was served the worst potato soup I've ever encountered--it looked like gruel and tasted like seasoned cornstarch. With so many other local restaurants serving excellent soup, I doubt that the new place will last long. What annoyed me most, though, is that potato soup isn't exactly rocket science. It's not that difficult, people! Listen up:

In a large stock pot with a heavy bottom, melt a little olive oil and a little butter. (No cheating; use the real thing.) Toss in some chopped onion and celery and one chopped sweet red bell pepper or fresh pimento. If you like garlic, throw some in there. Saute for a few minutes and then throw in a pile of peeled, chopped potatoes. Add some salt and pepper and just enough water or chicken broth to cover the vegetables, and then put a lid on it and let it simmer for 30 minutes or so. If the potatoes aren't soft, cook it longer. If you like it smooth, puree the whole thing; if not, use a potato masher to smoosh some of the potatoes and leave it lumpy. Stir in just enough half-and-half to make it creamy. Heat just until warmed through. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed. Serve with hearty bread.

This is an easy dish: ten minutes to chop stuff, 30 minutes or so to cook it, and all the ingredients are readily available. When it's this easy, there's simply no excuse for serving gruel.

Dinner music

My taste buds are still singing after a meal 0f Thai fish curry and coconut rice topped with chopped Thai peppers (fresh from the garden) and pistachios briefly fried in very hot oil suffused with garlic, ginger, and more hot peppers, a meal we won't soon forget, particularly since I once again neglected to wear gloves while chopping the hot peppers. But here's what I wonder: who decided that the appropriate music to accompany this meal was a recording of the mayor's bluegrass band playing and singing "My Mama Cooked Groundhog" and "Eat More Possum"?

Baloney with everything

"Baloney with everything," I said, following the lead of my three colleagues who had just uttered the identical phrase. I don't know how they managed to convince me that my life would not be complete without at least once trying the fried baloney sandwich at a popular local lunchspot, but when they ordered their baloney with everything, I repeated their mantra.

But "baloney with everything" is too good a phrase to waste on a sandwich, no matter how special. Think of the groups that could adopt it as their motto: freshman composition students, advertising copywriters, parents inclined to give lectures in the "In my day young people knew how to respect their elders" pattern. As I prepare my syllabi for my fall courses, though, I am tempted to turn the motto around: "Everything without baloney." Not a bad motto for a student--or for a sandwich either.

Horsemen of the Esophagus

The May Atlantic contains an article on competitive eating by Jason Fagone, who penned the following remarkable statement:

Competitive eating is a symbolic hair ball coughed up by the American id. It is meaningful like a tumor is meaningful. It seems to have a purpose, a message, and its message is this: Look upon our gurgitators, ye Mighty, and despair. Behold these new super-gluttons, these ambassadors of the American appetite, these Horsemen of the Esophagus.

I am inspired to work the word "gurgitators" into my everyday speech. It sounds like either a vile insult or an essential part of a washing machine, second cousin to a widget. Either way I'll find a way to cough it up in conversation sometime soon in the full confidence that no one will know what I'm talking about. I guess I'm just a glutton for words.

Hands off my pizza!

An article in American Heritage about the history of pizza informs me that in the 1950s a fellow named Aldo Formica became a minor celebrity for his dough-tossing skills. If you put a character named Aldo Formica in a work of fiction and made him toss pizza dough, readers would balk. Too cheesy. Let Aldo Formica be a hit man or a con man or the front man for a band called Aldo and the Formicas, but for heaven's sake don't make him toss pizza dough.

The same article offers the following tasty tidbit:

...if cooks followed the advice offered by Good Housekeeping in 1951, their pizzas were biscuit rounds or English muffins topped with processed Cheddar cheese, chili sauce, salt, pepper, and salad oil. Cooks could also opt to add deviled ham, stuffed olives, or canned tuna to the "cheese treatment."

Or not, as the case may be.

Chili nirvana

There's nothing better on a cold day than the smell of homemade chili wafting through a warm house. The crock pot has been bubbling all morning, significantly spicing up my mundane Saturday activities: paying bills, plugging numbers into an online FAFSA, and grading papers featuring sentences like "During certain time periods, specific events were taking place in history." Every once in a while I reward myself by tasting the chili--just to make sure the spices are correct. Since we've started grinding our own chilis into chili powder, I have to be careful how much I put in; just a dab too much and the chili is inedible. But this batch would please even Goldilocks, assuming that Goldilocks likes her chili hot. We'll serve it with some homemade bread made by the househusband and forget all about bills, forms, and papers. Tonight's menu: chili nirvana.

You say tomato

Today I've been thinking about tomatoes. It started, I think, in the Concepts of Nature class when we discussed Meridel LeSueur's short story "Harvest," with its marvelously evocative description of the woman getting her hands dirty in the garden. "That's not the part of gardening I like," I said. "The part I like is when you take the fresh tomatoes inside and eat them."

Then later at the grocery store I looked with disgust at the pathetic packages of tiny, hard, flavorless tomatoes. March is a bad time to be a tomato lover. It's starting to look like spring outside, but the ground is still too cool to nurture tomato plants. It'll be months before we see any fresh tomatoes from the garden, and last season's tomatoes are just a dim memory. It seems impossible but it's true that not so long ago the kitchen counter was covered with tomatoes: big red juicy slicing tomatoes and tiny yellow salad tomatoes that burst in your mouth and Roma tomatoes for sauce and purply-black tomatoes full of luscious juices and low-acid yellow tomatoes glowing like sunshine.

They're all gone now except the ones that went into sauce. Recently I discovered how to turn homemade tomato sauce into a pretty fair approximation of Campbell's canned tomato soup. There are only three essential ingredients (tomato sauce, salt, sugar), although I'll add pepper, onion, cream, and worcester sauce to liven it up. It's not at all the same as fresh tomatoes sliced and eaten as a side dish at every meal, but the sauce preserves a bit of summer sunshine, which is just what the doctor ordered to combat the too-long-til-tomato-time blues.