Easter, etc.

Cookies!

 

Inquiring minds who want to know: oatmeal date nut cookies, which are already vegan, can also be made gluten free. They’re just a little crunchier and snappier, and who minds that?!

I baked those tasty things for a church choir potluck. For Easter! It being June as I write this and Easter, of course, not being a June holiday, let me clarify. I celebrate Orthodox Easter (the Easter of the Orthodox Christian church- if you have Greek, Russian, Lebanese, Romanian, etc. friends it may be theirs, too) and it’s on a different calendar than Catholic and Protestant churches. So it was a LOT later than American Easter. (Though, er, still awhile ago).

So anyway this Easter potluck was so we could practice the complicated and difficult music. Except only five people showed up (and two of us were related). So it was not all that successful, except the food part!

Making the food was actually a fun challenge since for food to be Lent-appropriate, it should be vegan (I don’t eat totally vegan during Lent because of calcium fears, but many in my church do, and the food served at the church itself should be supportive of the church’s official policy, obvi).

It also had to be gluten free (or should be, out of kindness) because both our church’s choir director John and his wife Betty have Celiac disease.

Also, Betty for charming reasons best understood by her had come up to me in the middle of church one Sunday and handed me this pad thai sauce container:

I appreciated her gift, and figured I might as well use it on something I could share with her.

So I cooked up some rice noodles, made some tofu:

threw in some veggies:

And voila, pad thai. Ish. No final picture- it was ugly. But good!

And we also brought, of course, dessert.

But the really exciting dessert was a week later, on Easter itself. Something I have allllllllllways wanted to make? Olive oil cake!

I discovered this scrumptious-sounding if ever so slightly vague recipe for olive oil cake and mostly followed it (subbing a mix of white flour, whole wheat, and semolina for the plain flour) then consulted this overly complicated but methodologically clear olive oil cake for timing (which caused me to let the cake rise for two hours before baking it) and anyway it was great!

Heat some olive oil

Infuse with lemon

 

Plus anise seeds (mm)

 

The recipe wasn’t clear whether or not you were supposed to strain out the seeds, and I thought a few might be nice to help retain the flavor, so I casually poured the oil mixture in the batter, leaving behind the lemon and approximately half the seeds in the pot.

Batter was SUCCULENT! Could’ve eaten the whole thing with a spoon. So dense and creamy.

Baked that off- it didn’t rise much but it was real tasty! For the finished cake, I improvised a glaze which involved orange marmalade thinned with water- not a lot more complicated than that.

This ended up REALLY good.

 

Meanwhile, right before Easter, we received a VERY generous Easter basket from a very sweet family friend. It contained this GI-NORMOUS sweet, almond-paste-studded Easter bread.

   

And the Easter celebration itself was at my sister’s godparents’ home. They had gotten a lot of it catered. The spread was quite beautiful.

 

They had requested that all the lamb be cooked well done (…) I snuck into the kitchen with the caterers and begged them to save a medium rare bit for me. They obliged, and were very very nice :)

My dinner plate:

Blessedly medium-rare lamb with scads of tzaziki (definitely eyes>stomach on that one, but Steve was nearby so all was good), grilled vegetables (done by caterers- EXCELLENT! Perfectly cooked!), spinach and cheese pies, roasted potatoes that were wonderful, and salad. And wine! Gave up booze for Lent. Such a worthwhile thing to do. I’m no lush, but I only want to drink when I feel like drinking, not when everyone around me is. It was a useful exercise in mindfulness.

Spent much of the meal lounging by their pool, looking at their e-normous house!

 

Believe me when I say this barely scratched the surface on dessert. Phase 1 was enjoyed poolside.

Gazillions of berries, koulourakia (traditional Greek cookies), some of my olive oil cake, one of Steve’s oatmeal-toffee cookies.

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.

 

very full Wednesday

Okay, want to know the reason I went so long without blogging?

Here’s the thing: Amy (who had been my immediate supervisor at work, the person who gave me all my training, the person who knew how to do everything, and also a cool person who ended up being my friend and whose travels through Europe- prior to heading to school to get an MBA- I am eagerly following) left. And I got her job. Whoo, promotion. Exceeeeeeeept… no one got my job. For three months.

So one me… one new job… plus one old job no one else was doing.

Plus participating for the first time in a new summer program which is generally really exciting- your tax dollars at work!- but a sh** ton of work in terms of administration, paperwork, training, site visits, etc., with a new leadership reorganization that makes me want to staple said paperwork to my face when I think about it too much.

Plus generally not knowing at all what to do with my life- more classes to move me towards my RD/MPH goal? Finally FINALLY move out of my childhood home and live as an independent adult? But with who? And gosh I’m stressed out so I think I’ll eat 100 cookies to help- etc. etc.

But… I’m dealing. My old job FINALLY got replaced with someone who is fantastic- sweet, conscientious, a quick learner. And everything else, I’m making it up as I go.

So here’s the day we had a work celebration saying farewell to Amy! Er, three months ago. I’ll also add that the director of our department just had a super awesome and cute baby last weekend. So we were celebrating that, a little, and also being all “Eesh, more stuff to do with Kendra gone!”

But hurray for working with good people, and hurray for deviled eggs.

 

In general work events, perhaps unsurprisingly when you remember I work at an organization with “Food” in its title, are kind of ridiculous.

Really surprisingly healthy too, minus the Doritos :) Mmm.

Kendra had a dope new patio, and her exceedingly nice husband grilled everything for us.

Mmm. 

More mmm.

Oooh, Michael’s cheesy thing just came out of the oven, mm!

Aww…

   

Lest you think I hadn’t had enough tables overflowing with food that day, I then had a family event! Two of my great aunts (who I may have never met?) were visiting my other beloved great aunt Rose, and she had a shindig to get the family together. It was in Silver Spring at night (an hour and a half during rush hour, eesh, but we love our family so!) held in the super nice clubhouse-type-space at the Leisure World where aunt Rose lives.

Sometimes Dena remembers she is a really good photographer and demands that we pose for family pictures at these events.

Aunt Rose looks great but the rest of us do kind of the Chandler Bing smile in front of cameras.

Anyway, the table was a tasty mix of stuff made by family and things catered by a great Greek restaurant nearby.

 

Legit Greek salad! No lettuce!

 

My oh-so-yummy plate. Freed from the tyranny of having to choose between spinach pie and squash pie.

So fun catching up with family. Also met new cousins who shared how their family had dealt with their first threat of a tornado after moving East from California (climbing into the bathtub wearing bike helmets… to me, this seems very practical).

Obligatory dessert. On the left was a Macedonian variation on Baklava that was somehow… wetter? Good stuff.

If your days are going to be crammed with huge amounts of work they might as well be crammed with huge amounts of food, eh?

full of the joys

It’s that time of the year!

The time we invite everyone we know to stuff themselves into our house and stuff themselves with delicious, delicious food!

This year was no exception.

Some goodies, in no particular order.

Skordalia!

What is skordalia? Good question! Due to an overabundance of potatoes (Steve was going home for Christmas and said I had to take his uneaten potatoes or they would “go bad”. Do potatoes ever go bad, ever?), I thought it would be great to make the garlic-packed, olive-oil rich tangy Greek potato dip known as skordalia.

You begin with 4-6 cloves of garlic (!), which I tried to mellow out by mincing up and then mashing into a paste with kosher salt.

 

Then (so fun!) I got out the POTATO RICER we inherited from my grandmother. I had yet to play with this but I love cool (yet useful) kitchen tools.

 

Sure enough, the potatoes, once cooked (I steamed mine) come out in strands as thin as rice.

 

You give them an initial mash…

Then richen them up with red wine vinegar, a LOT of olive oil, and white pepper.

So simple, so delicious.

Though I was concerned that party guests would be confused (because for some reason rather than forming a smooth dip this resembled mashed potatoes instead; perhaps I used an overly starchy type of potato?), and also thought they deserved fair warning for the sake of their breath of the EXTREME quantities of garlic contained therein.

Thus:

Last year’s retro-chic date walnut blue cheese ball was ridiculously popular, so it seemed obvious to bring it back.

Once again I doubled it, but instead of doing an awkward oblong football shape as I did last year, I patted it out into a pretty impressive rectangle.

 

Yet people seemed confused by the final product.

Fortunately, I ensure that everything I make is delicious enough that I enjoy, even cherish having leftovers of them.

The piece de resistance is always the turkey, and the reason people lovvvvvvvvvvvve our turkey is because we brine it.

Seriously, I know it’s an extra step in the cooking process and I know space is an issue, but it idiot-proofs the entire cooking process. You can cook it for a really really long time at high heat, you can likely make all kinds of mistakes, you can forget to baste it… it WILL taste awesome.

And if space is really an issue, you can throw it in a bag… in a bowl… in a box… with binder clips :D

And put it in your nice cold garage!

As for the carving of the turkey, it is usually done by my uncle Louie, but he and my aunt Dena were returning from visiting grandbaby Jack (!) in Austin (my awesome cousin Rachel whose happy and delicious home in Austin I’ve waxed rhapsodies of here in the blog had a baby!).

So.

I got myself a YouTube tutorial and CARVED ME SOME TURKEY! My sister thoughtfully got some blurry action shots.

Like most things boys brag about doing, it turns out to be RIDICULOUSLY easy.

Yes, I spent most of the evening bragging to anyone who would listen that I had carved the turkey. My sister plans to get it put on a shirt for me.

And so the table was laid.

When you need a good centerpiece, it’s hard to go wrong with fresh fruit and candles.

Everyone likes cheese. Obviously. So we had that in great quantities. And also in various rearranged forms including pinwheels of mozzarella and prosciutto; wonderful tangy Lebanese kefir cheese (labneh); my date “ball” (log) in its final form with walnuts and parsley atop. And more in the Greek department with a tray of taramosalata (fish roe dip); caponata (eggplant awesomeness); and olives. And stuffed grape leaves.

    

Very popular (if, I must admit, slightly overcooked), was my artichoke dip (the usual family recipe- artichoke hearts, cheddar cheese, garlic, mayo).

We did a variety of crackers and breads for dunkables and I also put out crudite for the gluten-intolerant among us (and that’s not all! See further on!)

We had years of guests sort of ignoring shrimp and didn’t bother serving it last year. But my sister demanded it this year, saying “Everyone loves shrimp cocktail!” And by everyone she meant my sister.

An attractive shrimp station.

The main attraction was rolls for sammiches and my beautiful turkey…

… as well as some ham (do yourself a favor and buy bone in if you want it to taste good!)

Now, unsurprisingly from earlier posts this holiday season, I also decided it was important to make some Christmas cookies. Shocking, I know.

The most labor-intensive (but visually rewarding upon completion) was this Cooking Light recipe for coconut biscotti. It begins with a somewhat sticky dough (that, somewhat disconcertingly, contains NO BUTTER! I really wasn’t sure how I felt about this).

“Patting it out” was easier in theory than in practice, and getting the right size was a bit tricky.

 

Then I had to get that sticky mass on a cookie sheet. Thank goodness for teamwork!

But after its first round in the oven, it started to look REAL pretty!

 

Oh, I should add that while that biscotti slicing was happening… there were recipes on the laptop, ingredients on the counter…

… additional cookies being put on baking sheets…

 

… and still more cookie dough chilling in the fridge.

But back to that biscotti!

You sliced it after its first round of baking into that familiar biscotti shape.

Then laid it out sideways on a baking sheet so that both top and bottom would brown evenly.

 

One toasty oven trip later, and I had perfect looking golden coconut biscotti!

Gosh I was proud of these.

They were also quite yummy

  

Next: let’s talk GLUTEN FREE.

We have a dear friend at church (who sings soprano in the choir with me) with Celiac disease. I wanted her to enjoy some delicious cookies at our party, and moreover wanted her to enjoy something that she’d been lacking since going gluten free (because I love a challenge :D) So I said, “What cookie have you missed the most?” and she said shortbread.

So some poring over the Internet and a test run later, I came up with:

Gluten Free Shortbread Cookies

6 T cornstarch
½ cup white rice flour
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
6 ¼ tablespoons of butter, still cool, cut into very small pieces

Toss together cornstarch, rice flour, and sugar. Use your fingers to crumble in the butter until just combined (it will be more like a piecrust than a cookie dough- it’ll be easier to push together once it’s been chilled)

Chill for at least one hour in the refrigerator.

Take spoonfuls of the butter and roll them into balls, using the warmth of your hands to hold them together. Press down in a crosshatch pattern with a fork sprayed with cooking spray (you should spray the fork intermittently to keep it from sticking to the dough).

Preheat oven to 300. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned.

Optional: if you want prettier cookies, approximately halfway through baking time, use the side of a fork to gently push pieces that have broken/oozed off the cookie back to the central cookie mass. All the butter will kind of fuse them together and the finished cookies will be prettier and more entire!

The cookies look a little busted going onto the sheet…

But, particularly if you do the recommended touch-up during the baking time, they end up right adorable and hold together surprisingly well (a great big thank you to BUTTER!)

 

And the taste is great. Again: BUTTER!

 

For the most intriguing flavor and texture, I’d definitely recommend lemon cornmeal cookies. Another from Cooking Light, I found them to be a really unique cookie.

 

As usual for our party, I made my all time favorite cookies, macadamia butter cookies with dried cranberries

     

And then, when I pulled out a tin to store the cookies in before the big party day, I found these:

The cookie tin had been in storage in our garage, and so we realized that these guys must have been left over from the last time I made gingerbread people! (Yes, I made them this year, but didn’t decorate them).

Here’s the thing: I know from checking in my blog that we didn’t make gingerbread men for the party last year… or the year before. These were MANY YEARS OLD! Moreover, they still smelled FINE and were suprisingly supple feeling on the outside due to, I supposed, an impressively airtight container!

Awesome. Regretfully, fearing health concerns, I threw them away.

We still had PLENTY of cookies!

Along with my contributions, we had several trays of delicious baklava made by my mom, as well as her labor-of-love Linzer hearts.

I tried to make brownies but something went horribly wrong and they were DRY! Not terrible, but tasted more like cake than my usual blissful fudgy brownies. So I melted a huge amount of sour cherry preserves and drizzle them on top, and called them “cherry chocolate cake bites”. Huge hit.

Gluten free for our gluten free loved one!

  

Biscotti, beautifully vertical as arranged by my sister, rather whimsically, in my ice cream bowl.

And thus ends my pictures, upon the arrival of our first guests, because everyone knows the best thing about a party, no matter what incredible culinary creations are present, is the people.

I really am full of the joys, even at the prospect of returning to work tomorrow, because I was reminded at that party, as I am most days, at what an amazing group of family and friends we really do have. My super awesome boyfriend hung out with my super awesome family, my super awesome neighbors bonded with my super awesome church members.

Guys, let’s promise ourselves that this Christmas/holiday joy should carry over, because anyone who is loved is blessed every day.