nothing like the real thing

One: I have a wonderful husband who loves me a lot.

In addition to being a master taste-tester, idea-guy, dishwasher, and kitchen-hand extraordinaire who provides musical entertainment while I cook and occasionally whips up a mean Irish beef stew, he now bakes! 

Chocolate chip cookies.  For me.  As a surprise.  When I am exhausted from working constantly.   

And he uses the Cook’s Illustrated recipe I have been testing, substituting light brown sugar for dark and topping the cookies with sea salt before baking – just the adjustments I had been planning to try!

The sea salt garnish was perfect.  I think the cookies look prettier and still have plenty of flavor when made with light brown sugar.  I do still plan to do a side-by-side taste test of dark vs. light and a couple more hybrid versions of the CI and NYT recipes  at some point.

Two: Homemade chocolate hazelnut spread will do in a pinch, but there’s really only one thing that can help ease my separation anxiety. 

 

Get your own here!

Fall Back, Part 4

These last few days have felt like a marathon of catch-up blogging.  The following gets us through most of  October and constitutes the final segment of “Fall Back.”

October 6, 2009

I worked on a recipe for pumpkin cookies.  All of the many variations (including one with molasses and another with chocolate chips!) were yummy, but not quite what I was going for.  There were very cakey and thus felt more like muffin tops than cookies.
 

October 13, 2009
Orecchiette con Verdure e Pesce
orecchiette with vegetables and fish

This was the first recipe I attempted from my latest issue of La Cucina Italiana.  I adapted it to the ingredients I had on hand:
mahi mahi instead of monkfish,
chard instead of dandelion greens,
kohlrabi instead of celery root,
broccoli instead of cauliflower,
and homemade orecchiette instead of pasta shells.
The dish also included butternut squash, carrots and onions.
All the vegetables were julienned and sautéed, with the fish added in the last several minutes of cooking.

It was my first attempt at making orecchiette by hand.  It’s a fairly simple shape to make.  Just take a small ball of pasta dough (about the diameter of the nail of your index finger) and press it into the palm of your hand with the opposite thumb.  The dough should curl up around your finger. 


The challenge is making them all the same size and thickness.  Mine were all over the place, and thus did not all get cooked to the same degree. 

Oh, well.



October 25, 2009

Carnival Squash Soup
The following recipe will work with any winter squash.  I like carnival squash not only for it’s sweet, nutty flavor, but also because it make a great table decoration before it’s used for cooking.
Serves 6 as a starter.
2 medium carnival squash
olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
4-8 cups vegetable stock (store bought or homemade, see below*)
Preheat oven to 425 F.
Halve the squash.  Not an easy task.  I initially went with the Cook’s Illustrated recommendations to used a large chef’s knife or a metal bench scraper and a hammer.  Neither method worked well for me, so I ended up sawing through the squash with a serrated bread knife.
 
Clean out the seeds and fibers and reserve for vegetable broth. 
Place squash halves on sheet pan or baking dish and drizzle with olive oil (not extra virgin).
 
Roast in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, until flesh is tender and can be easily pierced with a fork.  Set aside to cool.


Meanwhile heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil a medium saucepan.  Sauté onions in oil until translucent, stirring frequently.

When squash is cool enough to handle, remove skin and roughly chop squash.  Add squash to saucepan.   Add 4 cups vegetable stock and allow to simmer for several minutes. 

Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches in a traditional blender or food processor.

Add more vegetable broth until desired consistency is reached.  Season to taste with salt and white pepper.

At this point, you can add cream to the soup, but I find it is just as delicious (and a little healthier) without the cream!

 
Garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, fried sage, or freshly cracked black pepper.

*For this particular soup, I improvised a vegetable stock, using things I had on hand.  Feel free to use a store-bought stock or any other recipe for vegetable stock.  Do use the squash seeds and fibers for the stock, if possible.  It will boost the squash flavor in your final soup.  While the squash is roasting, fill a stockpot with onion scraps, a few stalks of celery (including leaves), parsley, reserved squash seeds and fibers.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for at least an hour.  Season with salt.

Grandma’s Soup (Fall Back, Part 3)

October 1, 2009

No one knows the exact history of this soup, except that my mother’s family has been making it for a long time.  Whether my grandmother or her mother or some previous  generation originated the recipe I am not sure, but it has since been passed down through my mother to my sisters and me.  It’s something like what Americans think of as “Tuscan bean soup” or “pasta e fagioli”: a rustic, inexpensive but filling soup of homemade pasta, vegetables, and beans.  The perfect meal for those days when you’re short on cash or abstaining from meat.  Or if you just feel like a hug from your grandma who may not be around anymore…

Some of my most vivid memories of visits to my grandparents’ farm in Northwest Arkansas are of this soup.  We always arrived late in the evening, and Grandma always had a pot of soup keeping warm on the stove for us.  As we groggily stumbled through the door, disoriented by the long car ride, the  first thing I would notice was the familiar aroma of Grandma’s soup.  Sitting around the table with a hot bowl of soup and a few saltine crackers or a slice of homemade bread was the perfect welcome. 

The first time I ever made this soup was during my junior year of undergrad, about two years after my grandmother had passed away.  I remember standing over the stove in a townhouse I share with two friends, waiting for the soup to come together.  The moment that familiar smell hit my nose, it brought me to tears.  It’s still one of the most significant cooking moments of my life.  I remember thinking how amazing it was that something so simple could be so powerful, that the aroma of this soup could affect me so deeply and make me feel like I was right back in Grandma’s kitchen. 

Even now it brings back so many memories:   My adult relatives crowded around the table after dinner playing cards and my grandmother’s laugh.   Snipping fresh green beans on the front porch with Grandma.  Picking blackberries for cobbler.  Exploring the “timber.”  Tractor rides.  Getting unexpectedly snowed in and Grandpa building us a sled from scratch. Playing on bales stacked to the top of the hay barn in the late Fall and our disappointment  in finding the barn empty come Spring.   

There’s certainly a part of me that longs for those days.  I would appreciate so many things about my grandparents’ way of life  so much more now.   Vegetables came straight from the garden, and those that weren’t eaten fresh my grandma canned for the winter.  Grandpa’s cows grazed freely in large, open pastures.   The recent movement towards eating locally and reports on the significant health benefits of grass-fed beef make me think of the farm.  Whenever I succeed in doing something like not buying bread in over a month (baking it myself), I feel that in some small way, I am closer to them and the spirit of simpler times.  Maybe someday I’ll even have a vegetable garden of my own.

Pasta e Fagioli alla Nonna
     (or Grandma’s Soup)

2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cans cannellini beans*, undrained
3-4 chicken bouillon cubes (I use 3-4 tsp. “Better than Bouillon”)
2 medium potatoes**, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
~1/3 cup ketchup
Homemade pasta (about 3 cups)
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash of oregano

In a large soup pot heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil.  Sauté onion, stirring occasionally.


Meanwhile, mash 1 can of beans with a potato masher or fork.  (This will make for a nice, thick broth!)

 
When onions are translucent, add mashed beans and 4 cups water.  Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

 

Add chicken bouillon, stir to dissolve.  Add vegetables and second can of beans.  Stir in ketchup and a dash of oregano.
Cook until vegetables are tender.
Add pasta and cook about 10 minutes more. 
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

* My grandmother used something called “horticulture beans,” but since they are not easy to find, cannellini, great northern, and pinto beans (or a combination of the above) can be used. 

**  I always add (frozen) green peas and sometimes leave out the potatoes in favor of more green vegetables. 

Ravioli, fatti a mano (Fall Back, Part 2)

September 29, 2009

Butternut Squash Ravioli
Handmade stuffed pasta is truly a labor of love:  it can be quite time-consuming, but so fulfilling--especially when there is someone special to share it with.  At least once each fall, I like to make either pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli.  My first batch this year was butternut squash.  You can use the same method for any other winter squash, such as pumpkin or acorn.

for the filling
(This can be done up to a day in advance or while the pasta dough is being made.)

about 1 pound butternut squash
olive oil
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
nutmeg
salt
pepper
Preheat the oven to 425°F.  Quarter the squash (carefully!), remove seeds and fibers (reserve for another use, if desired),  drizzle with olive oil (not extra virgin) and roast in a baking dish for 30-40 minutes, until the flesh is tender and can be pierced easily with a fork. 
Once the squash is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and puree the squash. (You can mash it with a fork or potato masher.  A food mill or potato ricer would also work well.) 
Combine pureed squash with freshly grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

fresh pasta for ravioli
2 3/4 cups of flour*, plus extra as needed for dusting                           
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
water, as needed

*Up to 1 1/2 cups whole wheat “pastry” flour can be substituted.

On a clean surface measure flour and salt.   Stir to combine and form a mound.

Create a well in the center and crack one egg.
  

Slowly incorporate the egg and flour by gradually drawing flour from the sides of the well with a fork.  Be careful not to go through the sides of the flour mound or you will have egg all over the counter!


Once first egg is mostly incorporated, crack second egg and incorporate as before.
 

Repeat with the third egg.



Once all three are incorporated, use your hands to carefully combine the remaining dry flour with the egg mixture.  It should look something like this:
 

Add water a few drops at a time until all the flour is moistened and you have a cohesive dough.
Knead for 5 – 10 minutes until ingredients are thoroughly incorporated.  (The dough won't be completely smooth.)
  

Wrap dough in plastic and let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes.


After resting the dough should be supple and elastic and much easier to work with.


Cut off 1/4 of the dough and wrap the remainder in plastic wrap.  Flatten dough with your hands until it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Using the flat plates of a pasta machine set to the widest setting (a rolling pin works too, but isn’t as precise), roll dough through to flatten.  Fold the dough into thirds (like a letter), rotate 90° and feed back through the pasta machine on the same setting.  Repeat one or two more times until the dough is a smooth, uniform shape the same width as the pasta machine.

Roll the dough back through the machine (not folding or turning), gradually decreasing the width each time, until you reach the desired thickness. (The last two settings both work, all the final setting makes for a more delicate pasta.  If you go all the way to the final setting, be sure not to over stuff the ravioli, so that the filling won't break through the pasta during cooking.)

At this point, you should have a long strip of pasta about 5 inches wide.  Lay it across a clean, lightly floured surface.  Place about 2 teaspoons of filling approximately 3/4  inch from the closest edge and spaced 1-2 inches apart down the length of the dough. 

Using water and a pastry brush or your fingers, moisten the edges of the dough (in a square around each mound of filling) and carefully fold the far edge over the near edge, enclosing the filling as pictured below:
  

Using your fingers, carefully press the dough on the far side of each mound of filling and in between each mound.  Gradually work your way to the near edge of the dough, ensuring that any extra air is allowed to escape before the near edge is sealed.


Starting with the long edges, trim the dough with a ridged ravioli-cutter (a pizza cutter will work too).  Then cut between each mound to create individual ravioli.
 

Seal the edges of each raviolo with the tines of a fork to ensure that no filling escapes during cooking.
 
 

Place finished ravioli on a floured surface to dry slightly before cooking.  (I used floured waxed paper on a cookie sheet).
 
Repeat with remaining dough (1/4 at a time).

Don’t discard the pasta scraps!  Toss them with flour, and spread them out to dry.  Once they are completely dry (usually overnight), they can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature and used for soup.
 

Cooking and serving

with Sage and Brown Butter Sauce, for two:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
fresh sage leaves ( about 6-8 large or 10 small)
salt
pepper
freshly grated parmesan

Bring a large pot of water to boil. (A pot with a pasta insert works particularly well for fragile stuffed pastas.)  Generously salt the water. 

Carefully add about 20 ravioli* to the pot and cook until desired tenderness is reached.  (Cooking times will vary.  Start with 5 minutes.  Remove a raviolo and test a small corner for doneness at 5 minutes and every minute or 2 after that until pasta is al dente).  To drain, either lift pasta insert or remove ravioli with a slotted spoon or mesh strainer.

While the pasta cooks, melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Once butter is melted, add sage and fry until sage is crispy and butter is browned.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  (At this point, you could also add cream to the sauce, but the butter and sage are excellent on their own.)


Arrange drained ravioli on two plates.  Top with browned butter and garnish with sage leaves, freshly grated pepper and parmesan. 

  

 

Serve immediately.

*8-10 of these ravioli are usually plenty for one person as a main course.  The recipe makes about 50.  The remaining ravioli can be stored in the refrigerator (layer with flour and waxed paper in a sealed container) for a few days or frozen for several months.

Fall Back, Part 1

I’ve been working really long hours the past several weeks and most of my free time has been spent cooking instead of writing about cooking.  My work schedule has finally let up, and in honor of the time change, here’s a recap of the last week of September:

September 24, 2009

We made pretzels:

Until we started our little pantry project, there were many things that found their way into our pantry and never found their way out again.  Among the ranks was a make-your-own pretzel kit that we got in a gift exchange last Christmas (see what I mean).   Despite our best intentions, it didn’t see the light of day until a few weeks ago.  It was a fun change of pace to have a project we could both work on in the kitchen.  

September 25, 2009

We stopped buying bread.

This is my first multigrain loaf -- from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, with a couple of adjustments.  
 
Although  I own a couple of appliances that will do it for me, I really enjoy kneading dough by hand.  It’s a pretty good upper body workout and makes for a much more satisfying bread-baking experience.   That said, I did break down and let my stand mixer do the work for me on a whole wheat loaf I made last week.  I was in the middle of another cooking project (more on that later) and with the help of the mixer, turned out a loaf of bread in less than 30 minutes of active time!

Complete with freshly cooked wheat berries in the mix.

There was enough dough left over to make a couple of rolls….
 
…which were perfect for roast beef sandwiches the next day.


You’ll notice my imperfect shaping skills in the gap at the top of the loaf… I’m getting there…

September 26, 2009

I attempted my first French omelet a la Cook’s Illustrated. 

My pan was 9” instead of the recommended 8,” so I didn’t quite have enough egg mixture to go around. 

I didn’t have chives, so minced red onion served as a substitute.
   
It didn’t roll out of the pan quite as easily as promised.

I ended up rolling it up with my fingers, instead  of the recommended paper towel.  The paper towel is supposed to protect your fingers from the hot omelet, while providing an aide to roll it perfectly.  I found it unnecessary for the heat and easier to roll without the paper towel. 
 
Cheating?  Probably…


It still tasted quite good, however. 

Next time, I’ll give Julia’s method a go – and make sure I have an 8” pan.

September 27, 2009

I made my very own sourdough starter from scratch (also with the help of The Bread Baker's Apprentice).  The first attempt didn’t go so well:

I read up on the unwanted bacteria that exist in the air and can grow in a sourdough starter and prevent the good bacteria (yeast) from growing.  After finding some solutions online, I attempted to rescue the first batch of starter and began building a second batch, which went off without a hitch.   I tested the first batch by making a loaf with it. 
  
Although it didn’t rise as much as I wanted, but it tasted great and gave me high hopes for the other batch of starter.
  
My second mostly-whole-wheat sourdough boule rose properly and was just delicious.   Hopefully this week, I’ll have time to refresh the starter and make some more!

September 29, 2009

I concocted a slightly healthier twist on my mother’s recipe for pumpkin bread, substituting whole wheat for half of the flour, reducing the sugar, and reducing the oil.   The addition of whole wheat flour was undetectable and the sugar and oil were hardly missed.

The Original Recipe                              The New Recipe
3 cups sugar                                                  2 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup oil                                                          just more than 3/4 cup oil
4 eggs                                                              4 eggs
½ cup water                                                 1/2 cup water
3 ½ cups flour                                             2 cups whole wheat flour 
                                                                           1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda                                       2 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon                                            3 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg                                                 1 tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cloves (optional)                           ¼ tsp cloves (optional) 
1 ½ tsp salt                                                    1 ½ tsp salt   
2 cups (16oz) pumpkin                             2 ½ cups (20 oz) pumpkin
1 cup walnuts (opt)                                     1 cup walnuts (optional)
Beat together oil and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time, beating between each.  Add water and beat until combined.   Sift together dry ingredients, add to wet ingredients and beat until blended.   Stir in pumpkin until blended. Pour into greased and floured loaf pans and bake at 350 for 1 hour.
 

Concord Grape Streusel

What do we do with extra concord grapes that are going to go bad if we don’t eat them soon?


Bake them, of course.
This is a little experiment I like to call “Concord Grape Streusel” – so named because the crust is streusel, and I couldn’t come up with anything better.
Ingredients:
for the filling:
2 cups concord grapes, washed and de-stemmed
2 Tbsp flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
pinch of salt
for the streusel:
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Remove the skins from the grapes by pinching the end opposite the stem.  Set skins aside.
 

In a small saucepan, bring grape pulp to a boil.  Cook for about 3 minutes, until the pulp is soft.  While it is still hot, press pulp through a fine mesh sieve with a spatula (or run through a food mill) to remove the seeds.

In a medium bowl, combine pulp with grape skins,  sugar, flour, lemon juice, and salt.  Set aside.


For the streusel, combine the first three ingredients.  Then cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until it is evenly distributed.
 
Press a little more than half the streusel into the bottom of a small baking dish. (Mine was a 9in x 6in oval.)


Pour filling over the crust and sprinkle remaining streusel  evenly over the top.

Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and topping is melted.

We had it warm immediately and then at room temperature the next morning with coffee.  It was great both ways.  We didn’t have any at the time, but I’m sure vanilla ice cream or whipped cream would go beautifully.

On Risotto

I was in college the first time I attempted risotto.  My best friend and I followed a recipe for basic risotto, cooking arborio rice with chicken stock and other various ingredients.  An hour later, the rice was still firm, but we were too tired of standing over the stove stirring to really care anymore.  So we ate slightly crunchy risotto on the back porch on a warm summer evening in Arkansas.

I really learned to make risotto in Italy, with helpful tips from two Italian home cooks, including the mother of my favorite Venetian.   I know I wrote these things down as she was telling me, but I can’t seem to find them in the notebooks I kept while in Italy. 

Off the top of my head, some of the tips I learned (keep in mind that some have a Venetian slant):
- use one espresso-cupful of uncooked rice per person, plus one for the pan
- be sure to toast the rice before adding the liquid
- never use garlic in risotto
- white wine is usually used only in seafood (not vegetable) risottos
- cook the vegetables (or fruit or meat or seafood) with the rice before adding liquid, so that the rice absorbs as much of their flavor as possible

I  broke several of these rules is this last batch of risotto, but it still turned out well. 

So without further ado, another meal fresh from the pantry:
arborio rice (a pantry staple),
olive oil, shallots, garlic, white wine, chicken stock, parmesan, a bit of butter, ground nutmeg (all ingredients I had on hand),
sage (growing in our living room),
and a butternut squash from the farmer’s market.

The method is that used for basic risotto, with a couple of tips from Cook’s Illustrated (steeping the seeds/fibers in broth and removing half the squash while the rice cooks):

Sauté the peeled, diced, and deseeded butternut squash in oil, with salt and pepper:

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan bring to a boil 4 cups of chicken stock and the squash seeds and fibers.

Once the squash is tender and beginning to brown, remove the squash from the pan and set aside.  Strain the seeds and fibers from the stock.  Return stock to a bare simmer.

Heat additional oil or butter in the same pan.  Add 2-3 finely chopped shallots, 2 cloves minced garlic, and salt. Sauté  until shallots and garlic are translucent. 

Return half of squash to pan.  Add rice and toast, stirring constantly,  for 3-4 minutes, until rice becomes translucent around the edges and just begins to stick to the bottom of the pan.

Add about 1/2 cup dry white wine.   Stir.  Once the wine has cooked down, add about 1 cup of chicken stock (enough to almost cover the rice).  Stir constantly until stock as cooked down.  Then add another ladleful. 

Repeat this process until rice is al dente.  (About 20 minutes.) 
 
Rice will gradually release starches, creating a creamy texture.  (If you run out of chicken stock before the rice is cooked, you can heat additional chicken stock or water and use in the same manner to finish cooking the rice.)

Once rice has reached the desired texture, return remaining squash to pan, remove from heat, and add about 1 tablespoon butter, grated parmesan, finely chopped sage and a pinch of nutmeg (or to taste). 

Stir to combine and serve on a plate or a wide, shallow bowl topped with more parmesan and sage, if desired.

Risotto has the most flavor when eaten slightly warmer than room temperature.  For this reason, many Italians flatten it out on a plate so that it will cool faster.

The Pantry Project

We had a well-stocked pantry growing up.  It was one of the many things I always appreciated about my mother's kitchen and one of the many habits I adopted.  Her penchant for stashing nonperishables is probably rooted in the fact that she grew up on a farm, where the nearest grocery store was a half-hour drive from home.  Although we lived 5 minutes from the nearest grocery store, it was always useful to have things on hand, especially with six people in the house.

Now that I live in a household of two, I still like to keep my pantry stocked.  Whether it's baking a batch of cookies on a whim or throwing together a last-minute dinner, a stocked pantry comes in handy.  The problem occurs when I find myself without a specific ingredient at a crucial point and then overbuy it the next time.  Or I purchase food thinking, "Oh, I'll use this to make such-and-such at some point."  And then I never do.  I get distracted by perishable items and never use the nonperishables. Before I know it, the pantry is overstocked.  Items in the front row or at eye level get used, while things in the back sit for months.  For example, I have two cans of pumpkin puree that I intended to use for pumpkin bread last fall and a can of artichoke hearts, intended for a quick artichoke dip, that's been there who knows how long.  Luckily, these things keep for quite a while.

In conjunction with my recent realization that we need to clean out (and by "clean out," I mean make use of) many of our pantry items came the decision to be more mindful of our spending habits (and groceries make up what is probably a disproportionately large part of our monthly expenditures).  So we decided to challenge ourselves to use everything in our pantry before we restock.  Within reason.  Of course, things like fresh veggies, meat, and dairy products are excluded, and we're not going to wait until we've used up our flour and sugar before we buy another can of tomatoes.

Saturday was the perfect day to get started.  The gorgeous fall weather made it an ideal afternoon for Chicken-Pesto Panini on the roof. (From frozen chicken breast, frozen homemade pesto, cheddar, and whole wheat bread.)






Two cans of corn and half a bag of coarse-ground corn meal  in the pantry inspired me to make cornbread.  What better accompaniment--and more effective pantry-clearer, as it turns out--is there than chili?  Throw in an Arkansas-Georgia football game on ESPN 2 and a six-pack of cheap beer, and you've got yourself a near-perfect autumn evening in. (It would have been perfect, if the Razorbacks had actually won.  What an exciting game, though!)






The cornbread recipe came from Cook's Illustrated.  I used canned corn where they called for frozen and substituted 3/4 cup plain lowfat yogurt and 1/4 cup 2% milk for 1 cup buttermilk.  The cornbread was delicious on its own and even better with butter or molasses!  Below is my recipe for Pantry Chili.  The ingredients and quantities reflect what I had on hand and can be adjusted as desired.


Pantry Chili
1 1/3 pounds ground beef (I used 85/15 that I had bought on sale and frozen.)
1 large red onion, chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste

3 Tbsp taco seasoning (See recipe below)

3 Tbsp chili powder

1 can dark red kidney beans, undrained
1 can cannelini (white kidney beans), undrained
1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
1 large can whole, peeled tomatoes packed in puree
1 can corn, drained
4 cups beef broth (Mine came from 4 tsp of "Better Than Bouillon" beef base and 4 c. water)
1/2 jar jalapeño peppers
8 oz frozen spinach, thawed
Cheddar cheese, for serving

In a large pot or dutch oven, brown meat over medium heat, breaking up the meat as it cooks.  After a couple of minutes, add onions and garlic.  Season with salt and pepper.  When the meat is no longer pink and the onions and garlic start to become translucent, add taco seasoning and chili powder.  Stir to combine.

Then add the beans, tomatoes (whole tomatoes should be chopped or crushed by hand, but be careful not to lose the liquid), corn, broth, and jalapeños.  Stir to combine.  Bring to a boil.  Then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add more water if it cooks down too much.  Taste about halfway through cooking and adjust seasoning as needed.

During the last few minutes of cooking, stir in thawed spinach.  Serve topped with shredded cheddar cheese.

Homemade Taco Seasoning
2 Tbsp chili powder
2 Tbsp paprika
4 1/2 tsp cumin
2 1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Stir all ingredients until well combined.
Makes about 6 tablespoons and will keep in a sealed container in the pantry for several months.

Cookie Wars

The chocolate chip cookie holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first thing I ever baked by myself, the first recipe I memorized, and for years my claim to fame in the kitchen.
The summer before my 11th birthday, my siblings and I spent three days a week at home by ourselves while my mother worked. We were old enough that we didn’t need a babysitter, but hadn’t really gotten the hang of entertaining ourselves all day. We often got bored around the house—with no neighborhood pool and no one to drive us around. We rode our bikes and played outside, but even 10-year-olds grow tired of the humidity and soaring temperatures of the Arkansas summer. So I baked. Happily, my mother always kept our pantry and fridge well-stocked, so the ingredients were on hand whenever I had a whim. I remember how excited I would be to surprise my mother with a fresh batch of cookies when she walked in the door from a long day at the hospital. (I unfortunately had not yet perfected the art of cleaning up after myself, so it was often a bittersweet homecoming for Mom.)
I would continue to resort to cookie-baking whenever I got bored, even after I was perfectly capable of driving myself anywhere I wanted to go. I loved to bake cookies because I saw how happy they made the people around me. A close friend of the family was never satisfied with a visit to our house without a few homemade chocolate chip cookies. Often my sisters and I would whip up a batch while the adults sat around the table playing cards after dinner. And we were happy to do so. How could we not be, with all the praise we got in return? (And of course, the cookies themselves).
Fifteen years later, my recipe has gone through a few changes. Some of my earliest attempts produced cookies that were too dark. I remember a particular instance in which I brought cookies to share with my sixth grade class, and I came home that afternoon feeling like I had served burnt cookies. My mother suggested that they were not overcooked, but were darker because I had used dark brown sugar. I switched to light brown sugar, and the problem was solved.
As a teenager, I came across a recipe that called for equal amounts brown and white sugar, which was a change from the 2:1 ratio in the recipe I had been using. I adopted this recipe and have used it ever since, with a tweak here and there. I discovered that adding a little extra vanilla and a heaping, rather than level, teaspoon of salt gave the cookies a little extra kick. In college, I picked up from a friend the habit of throwing a cup or two of oatmeal into the batter. No one seemed to mind it, and I thought they were delicious (and maybe even a little healthier).
Before I knew the dangers of trans fat, I achieved a nearly perfect cookie texture by substituting half of the butter in the recipe with butter-flavored Crisco (a trick I learned from my mother). It has been several years now that I have stopped using partially hydrogenated shortening, and I have struggled to turn out a consistent product. Sometimes the texture would come out perfectly and sometimes the cookies would be too cakey or too flat or too crunchy or have any number of textural flaws. (An added bonus of using oatmeal was that it masked these flaws.)
When my father-in-law showed me last summer’s New York Times piece “Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret” (or “quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie”), I was fascinated by the article and really excited to try the recipe. Between one thing and another (read: grad school and I couldn’t find cake flour anywhere), I never got around to trying it. I did, however, make my old stand-by recipe, cooking half the batter immediately and allowing the remainder to rest in the fridge over night, as suggested in the article. When I baked off the second round of cookies the next day, I was floored by the difference in texture between the rested cookies and those baked immediately. The second batch was perfectly soft in the center, had just the right amount of “lift,” and boasted that crispy-dense-chewy crumb structure that I thought I could only attain consistently with Crisco.
Shortly thereafter, in the May/June ‘09 issue, the folks at Cook’s Illustrated tried their hand at perfecting the chocolate chip cookie. Timely, I thought. In the print version of the article (the online one is pared down quite a bit), the author references the New York Times article/recipe, but soon into his testing abandons the idea of the 24-hour rest, claiming that the benefits don’t outweigh the inconvenience of the wait. Over 40 batches later, he had developed a “perfect” chocolate chip cookie recipe, which involves browned butter, dissolving the sugars in the melted butter, leaving out an egg white, and much to my surprise a 3:2 ratio of dark brown sugar to white.
Of course, I was not content to leave all the experimenting to others, so I did a little test of my own, pitting the Cook’s Illustrated recipe against the New York Times recipe. (Yes, I finally found cake flour.)
I started last Friday night with the NYT recipe, which went straight into the fridge:

Sunday afternoon, I prepared the CI recipe, and baked a sheet of each batch one after the other, so they could be tasted side by side.

The first thing I noticed about the CI recipe was that the dough tasted like toffee! (I just can’t help myself when it comes to cookie dough. I was even able to convince my husband, who never indulges in raw dough, to give it a try.) This seemed slightly incongruous with the conclusions drawn in the article, which assert that the toffee flavors in the final product are a result of dissolving the sugar in melted butter and the subsequent caramelization of the the sugars in the oven. I found that the uncooked dough had more toffee flavor than the final product. Although the cookie still had a good bit of toffee, it seemed that the baking tempered the toffee flavors, which leads me to think that the flavor was less a result of the caramelization in the oven and more a result of other factors—I think the browned butter had a lot to do with it, but I won’t know that for sure until I do a little more experimenting.
When the cookies came out of the oven, two things were immediately apparent:

the NYT cookies had quite a bit more height than the CI cookies
and the CI cookies were darker than the NYT cookies.
The first difference can be attributed to the fact that the NYT cookies call for baking powder and baking soda, whereas the CI cookies had only a relatively small amount of baking soda.

NYT Cookie

CI cookie
Also, the NYT cookies were baked straight from the fridge, so they had less time to flatten out. (A second round of baking the following day supported my hypotheses: straight from the fridge, the CI cookies had more height than when baked from a warm batter, but they still did not have the appealing height of the NYT batch.)
The CI cookies were darker because of the 3:2 ratio of dark brown to white sugar, as compared to the NYT’s 5:4 ratio (almost equal amounts) of light brown sugar to white.
Visually, I much preferred the NYT cookie to the CI cookie. The NYT cookie was blonder and fluffier, had lots of delicious-looking cracks and crags, and was topped with coarse sea salt. Pretty picture perfect, if you ask me.
NYT was the clear winner when it came to appearance, but when it came to tasting, the front-runner was the CI cookie. As promised, it boasted deep toffee and butterscotch notes and a crisp edge with a soft, chewy center. We initially tasted the NYT cookie too soon out of the oven. Although the texture was perfectly gooey in the center and firm on the edges, the taste was just sweet. My husband tasted the individual ingredients, rather than a cohesive whole, and I encountered some unexpected notes of banana. (It was so strange that I even wondered if the dough had picked up off flavors sitting in the fridge wrapped in plastic overnight, but there was nothing remotely resembling a banana in our fridge). After the cookies cooled completely, the banana was gone, the flavors melded, and the coarse salt added a nice crunch and burst of flavor, but there was still not as much depth as the CI cookies had.
I think both recipes would benefit from less chocolate. I love the stuff, but I don’t like it when there’ so much chocolate that you can’t taste the cookie itself.
Round two, the next day:
(I baked both a minute longer than I did before.)


The CI cookie is almost as tall as the NYT cookie this time.

Salt!

I do really like the caramelized “sheen” on the CI cookie.

Using “disks” instead of “chips” makes a big difference. Look at all those wonderful layers of chocolate! (I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips – they have great flavor and are wider and flatter than traditional chocolate chips.)

There’s still not an overall winner. Both are delicious and, in Brian’s opinion, appropriate for different types of cookie-eating: the CI cookie’s complexity makes it a more meditative cookie that’s meant to be savored, while the NYT cookie is more the classic “cookies-and-milk” variety.
In my opinion, neither is the perfect chocolate chip cookie. If I could combine the flavor of the Cook’s Illustrated cookie with the appearance and texture of the New York Times cookie….now that would be perfect.
Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion…In the mean time, give either recipe a try. They’re both fabulous!

first signs of fall at the farmers’ market

Honeycrisp apples are my favorite;
Concord grapes remind me of home;
And soon I’ll get to make soup and ravioli from acorn and butternut squash!