suffering cookies

Every year we hold a post-Christmas party for family, church friends, work friends, significant others, neighbors, random strangers… lots of people. This year that party proved Murphy’s Law.

Let’s start with these cookies, which have been dubbed “Heartache cookies”, “$60 Cookies”, and “Suffering cookies” at different intervals.

They are a great big pain in the ass!

It started with the Washington Post cookie special in the Food section. They do it every year. This year ALL the recipes looked like a pain in the ass. Weird ingredients, complicated methodologies, general sense of fussiness. However, my mom thought the Oaxacan Chocolate Cookies, from Jaleo, Jose Andres’ original restaurant in D.C., sounded sufficiently interesting that they were worth the fuss.

Well, let’s recount what happened:

- The recipe called for 2 teaspoons of mezcal. Mezcal, for those of you who do not know (as I did not until relatively recently), mezcal might be considered the Scotch of tequila. It’s agave liquor, aged. Wonderfully smoky and delicious. But we only needed 2 teaspoons. And the smallest amount the liquor store carried was a fifth. For $28.

- Then we needed 10 1/2 ounces of very high cacao percentage dark chocolate. My sister was kind enough to donate two chocolate bars she got for Christmas to the cause. We needed one more and opted to get Mexican chocolate, as the recipe called for. A bar of Taza chocolate (which is delicious, and direct trade, admittedly) was $9, without tax. Absurdly expensive ingredient #2. And let’s not forget the massive amount of butter going into this, too.

- The methodology was bizarre, and instructed the cookie maker (my mom, at this phase in the process) to quit using a mixer and fold, by hand, an enormous amount of flour into wet ingredients that were not all that wet and did not particularly care for that process. It took forever, and resulted in dough with the consistency of gravel.

- Then that gravel was supposed to be formed into logs. Yeah. Right. When my mom finally succeeded (seemingly) in forming one log, she wrapped it in wax paper and went to, per the recipe’s instructions, chill it in the fridge. When the log promptly collapsed, causing a very very large amount of dough to scatter all over the kitchen floor. Awe. some.

- Lest you think the suffering was complete, after the lengthy chilling time we then had to follow absurd instructions that involved baking for seven minutes, rotating sheets, baking another seven minutes, brushing the cookies with egg and salt (which I made the executive decision to change to sugar, spiked with salt to make flavors pop, because the cookies were barely sweet at all)

The cookies were good, but NOT WORTH THE SUFFERING.

   

Along with suffering cookies, however, I completed a fun and emotionally satisfying baking project: vasilopita. Also known as Saint Basil’s bread, it’s a Greek tradition: every New Years Day (which is the Saint’s Day of Saint Basil a major saint in the Greek Orthodox church) this bread is made. Inside is hidden a coin. Whoever gets the slice with that coin supposedly has good luck for a year.

This was a recipe from Flavors of Greece, truly the only Greek cookbook you will ever need. It has the perfect, Platonic (get it? get it?!) recipes for all of the Greek standards, as well as some creative unexpected recipes. This vasilopita was quiiiiiite decadent, with lotsa butter, honey, sugar, etc. But what gives it its signature va-va-va-voom is a flavorful combination of anise and orange. SO good.

Furthermore, we very sadly lost my dear great aunt Rose, very unexpectedly, a few weeks before I made this. She made delicious traditional Greek specialties, and her vasilopita was always gorgeous and tasty.

So this was also a bit of a tribute to her.

Also, it was ENORMOUS.

 

Also on the list of things made by me was gluten-free shortbread. Our choir director’s wife Betty, who sings soprano with me, has Celiac disease.. and her husband just got diagnosed too! Guys, is it contagious?! If so, I NEED TO STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

But at least I know how to make good gluten-free shortbread. This recipe, using all-purpose gf flour and rice flour, pleased everyone, including those of us who can (thank God) process gluten.

 

I wasn’t around these parts for Thanksgiving this year, but according to multiple sources, the White House recipe for thyme-roasted turkey, which my aunt Jeanie made for that holiday, was “the best turkey ever”.

So my sister nominated it for our party.

Hint: butter.

 

(Go Redskins! Or Seahawks?! Both Washingtons are in a certain sense my home! Eek!)

My sister also made bacon-wrapped dates. SO good.

 

And deviled eggs with caviar on top, which people ate in like thirty seconds.

ANOTHER Murphy’s law story: we had a container of caviar in the kitchen, which my mom said she had bought for deviled eggs in the past. But the not-too-distant past. But there was no expiration date.

So, we called the company, gave them the serial number on the jar, and they said the caviar didn’t expire until March 2013. Awesome. Oh, but… “We see there are some black spots in the caviar. Is that anything to worry about?” “… We’ll call you back.”

Well, fortunately they did, because it turns out that the kind of caviar we’d bought had been discontinued in 2011. Furthermore, the serial numbers apparently repeat (?!) in canned goods and as a result the jar could’ve been from 2003 or 2006. SO IT’S GOOD WE CHECKED HUH?

Let the record state, my family doesn’t buy caviar regularly. (Clearly!)

Also present at the party were dips: lotsa dips.

Our “secret family recipe” for artichoke dip (artichoke hearts from a can, mayo, garlic, and cheese), made by my mom. A white bean dip I made.

 

From the Greek store, labneh (white) and taramosalata (pink).

My favorite project, a new recipe. The Washington Post food section (attempting to redeem themselves in my eyes for those cookies? I’m sure) did a special section on vegetable pates. The carrot ginger pate caught my eye, as I anticipated great flavor and beautiful color. It delivered on both fronts. Make it! It’s a keeper!

The bacon wrapped dates and, in the other category of stuff-wrapped-in-meat, cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto.

More Murphy’s Law: my mom brought fruit salad to Christmas Eve. We went to H-Mart a few days prior, which can usually be counted on to have beautiful produce that’s exceedingly ripe. We got mangos, pineapple, and cantaloupe. And… Christmas Eve, none of it was ripe. The other stuff got used, but I figured out-of-season melon would be best served with something else.

It was good with the prosciutto. My grandma made that, back in the day.

Took ANOTHER trip to the delightful Red, White, and Bleu, my new favorite cheese shop, because my mother had bought the Groupon too!

This was a delicious selection that disappeared almost immediately.

Unpictured are the finished meats, but in addition to the turkey (which was good but not earth-shattering, in my opinion) we also had a ham. People went NUTS for the ham, which is funny since I spent a total of 20 seconds making the glaze for it (you’ll see why below)- dumped mustard, brown sugar, and cider vinegar in a bowl, tasted it, went “yeah okay”.

For making little sandwiches, we bought an assortment of rolls. They all looked similar, so you were playing “roll-ette” (HAHAHA!)

Anyway, here’s a photo conveying the general scene.

 

The reason there are fewer pictures, and perhaps they’re a bit blurred, was the state of UTTER CHAOS in our house prior to the party.

I have two words for you: plumbing emergency.

I’m not shedding details, but suffice it to say that while it wasn’t fun running out for a last minute emergency errand to buy scented candles, praying the plumber would be there by the time I returned, it was really nice getting out of a very stressful house.

Anyway. It all worked out. The cookies were good.

 

pasta and anger

So all the funnel cake and cookie bar action in Jersey was HEAPS of fun but I also had HEAPS of extra layers on my midsection, as did the boyf. So we made a bet.

Steve: I’m going to run more than I ever have this week!
Lele: What’s your record?
Steve: 24. So I’m going to run FIFTY!
Lele: … how about 30? I’ll shake to 30. Just 30. Don’t hurt yourself. How about 30?
Steve: 50 it is!

Did he do it in a week? No. He did it in two and a half days. Because he felt so anxious about it. 50 miles in 60 hours. Steve is a ridiculous human being.

(I, pathetically, gave up sweets for a week. Whoo. I did it. This is a meager accomplishment)

The terms of the wager were this: if I completed my bet, Steve had to make me homemade sushi per my specifications (brown sushi rice, fish of ethical origins, whacky fillings, I-don’t-care-if-you-don’t-like-wasabi-I-do, etc.).

If Steve completed his, I’d break in my pasta maker.

Gulp.

My cousin Lara gave this to me after her boyfriend, not knowing that she already had a pasta maker, got her one (er, Lara, sorry if Robert reads this. But he probably has better things to do. Like appear on Jon Stewart LARA WHEN IS HE DOING THAT AGAIN? HE SAID HE’D BRING ME. Robert’s a writer. Wow this is a tangent).

So I’ve had the pasta machine, but I was intimidated by the pasta machine.

But, a bet’s a bet. And I’d promised Steve not just pasta, a POUND of pasta (his ultimate dream is to eat at Carmine’s, where they serve pasta by the pound), and a pound of homemade pasta.

So dammit I was.

I started with the Time Life Good Cooks series, which is sort of my cooking bible (my mom worked for Time Life as they were making it, and my grandmother’s hands actually appear in several of the cooking photographs. Awesome, eh?!) They talk you through the homemade pasta dough making and the machine rolling…

And gave a chopped herbs variation that looked promising, particularly since we’ve got a big bag o’ basil from the farmer’s market and oregano that’s sort of taking over our deck garden box.

And lo and behold, I remembered a dust-covered box in the back of our pantry that turned out to contain semolina flour! The authentic, higher-protein, Italian, designed-for-pasta stuff.

 

Got my stuff together. I entirely followed the recipe on the box, which called for the flour, an egg, oil (I used olive), and warm water.

 

You make a circle with a valley in the middle in the flour, then crack your egg and put your oil into that valley…

 

And work from the outside in, folding the flour into the wet stuff and adding water to moisturize it.

This is a lot harder than it looks. And I ended up with kind of… dry lumps.

So I added another egg, and it started to come together.

And lo and behold. Dough lumps! Half for plain pasta, half for herbs. Unofficially, I was plain girl, Steve was herb man.

And so it began. Rolling pasta. For hours and hours and hours of my life. And both of us being oldest children, at any activity we do at least one of us becomes irrationally competitive and perfectionist and obsessive and has to get their pasta rolled into the PERFECT SHAPE and kind of micromanages how the other person feeds the pasta into the machine as it cranks and it just becomes HORRID AND JOYLESS.

I won’t say which of us got crazy at this particular activity.

 

The noodles were quite lovely as they dried upon the table, getting ready to slice.

  

Initially my first round seemed too thick to go into the slicer attachment, so I just did it by hand. I surprised myself with the symmetry of it all, actually. It was good lookin’.

 

I plated it up with a wee pat of butter (our house keeps running out of butter. We need to just go to Costco and buy the 3 pound slab thing we get), and some olive oil, parmesan, and pepper. We sort of passed it back and forth, slurping down noodles as the task of finishing and perfecting the seemingly RELENTLESS procession of pasta continued.

It tasted good.

Gave me the confidence to brave the slicer, which did indeed produce pretty, albeit not that much prettier noodles. These guys were thinner (it depends how many times you put it between the squooshing machine before you cut it), and so we just cooked them separately.

We cooked everything separately, actually. Fresh pasta doesn’t allow you to set a timer (usually I’m an intuitive cook but when I make pasta I just follow the time on the box) and I just truly had to go by testing as I went (I borrowed my mother’s “bite a noodle in half and inspect its center for starch” strategy).

    

Steve put together the first herb-flecked noodles, which were lovely.

And plated them up as only he can, gobbed with condiments, one of which seemed truly bizarre, super fatty… and fantastic.

Fresh pasta… lotsa olive oil… lotsa basil (in addition to the stuff already in the pasta)… lotsa cheese… and, of course, Sriracha.

It was deliiiiiiiiiicious.

  

I immediately made one of my own. It fortified me greatly.

Which was good, because I discovered homeless dough! It blended in too well with my table!

Dough… plus laughing cow…

    

Ravioli!

Ugly but tasty (though the filling was thin and the edges were way too thick…. though this would soon prove amusing).

So once the food was served, the previously somber and tense mood lifted. It helps when if perhaps the corners of your ravioli are too tough to eat you reappropriate them as Mr. Spock vulcan ears.

And to conclude, may I call your attention to the yummy veggie side dish I made: okra! My mom made a recipe for the first time when I wasn’t home and is now super mega into it. It can be found here: Stir Fried Okra.

The main thing is just to outfit oneself with screamingly fresh ingredients: fresh ‘n local farmer’s market tomatoes and okra, green onion, and fresh from the deck thyme to mix with the dressing. (More backup pasta herbs on the left)

   

Heat up an oil-butter mix (far far less butter than called for due to the aforementioned always-being-out-of-butter-lately sitch)

And stir fry! Huh! Unusual but splendid way to make okra!

  

Results were quite yummy. Lemon, thyme, and tomato are where it’s at.

So there was a lot of pasta, with different flavors and textures and toppings. A healthy veggie-filled side.

So all I wanted was baked goods.

It was the birthday of a dear friend of the family’s, who suffers from celiac disease. My sister made her gluten-free fruit bars, with berry ‘n peach fruity filling… but wasn’t sure about the recipe because she’d made prune butter (!?!?! this is something she read about or something) as a fat substitute and wasn’t sure about the final results.

Packed full o’ fruit (and, uh, holy fiber!), I could not stop eating them. Mmm.