The Lovechild of a Gingerbread Man and a Snickerdoodle

Most of my Christmas standards are things I make because other people like them or because they’re my grandma’s recipes. In some ways, isn’t Christmas really all about grandmas? These are the one exception. They’re the cookies I make because I like them.

Texturally, they’re almost identical to snickerdoodles—they have the same ratio of butter : sugar : flour :  eggs and they’re also rolled in sugar before baking, so the outside gets crackly and has a little crunch. But flavor-wise, they’re all gingerbread: molasses and cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and cloves. You can imagine how they smell as they bake.

The best part about these cookies is that if you don’t over-bake them, they turn out amazingly soft. And they stay that way even after they cool, even if you don’t store them in a perfectly airtight container, even if you want to make them a week before Christmas and savor them until New Year’s Day. I think it must be because of the little bit of oil in the dough. It does make them a little more prone to falling apart, but I think that’s a small price to pay for enduring just-out-of-the-oven softness.

If you like the kind of gingerbread that bites back, you might want to double all the spices. I think they’re  perfect as is: as much butter as you can possibly get into a cookie without it melting into a puddle of goo (which they occasionally do anyway, as you can see at approximately 3 o’clock in the picture above), just enough molasses and spices to be festive without getting too overbearing, and a little sparkle from the sugary coating. They’re also the easiest part of this year’s pared-down cookie assortment.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Read more »

Christmas kind of snuck up on me this year. Normally, I’d be at least a week into a meticulously worked-out plan to make a dozen different edible gifts and send them all over the country. It started in high school, when I’d bake a dozen kinds of cookies, carefully selected to represent a balance of chocolate/fruit/nuts/mint and a variety of shapes and colors and textures. Last year, I got excited about giving people mulled wine kits with little cheesecloth bags of mulling spices and made four different kinds of chocolate-covered buttercreams. This year, it wasn’t until a week before the holiday that I had the sudden realization that if I didn’t make cookies right now, I would not be making any Christmas cookies at all this year. 

The upside of having to pare my usual holiday efforts down to a bare minimum is that it made me discover what my traditions are—the recipes that have become my “standards,” the things I absolutely have to make in order to feel like the holidays are happening. So instead of scouring the internet for new ideas or comparing half a dozen different recipes to find the common denominator, this year I’m relying on tried-and-true favorites, a combination of inherited recipes and new favorites discovered somewhere along the way:

• Old-fashioned Sour Cream Sugar Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
• Date-Nut Pinwheels
• Soft Molasses Cookies (recipe coming soon in Part II of “Holy Crap it’s Christmas! Cookies”)
• Cheese Straws
• Spiced Nuts

Why Date-Nut Pinwheels Make the Cut

My grandmother made these every year at Christmas: a rich sugar cookie dough filled with a mixture of dates and walnuts or pecans, simmered with sugar and water until they’re like a thick jam. The cookie dough calls for half brown sugar and half white sugar, so it has just a hint of warm molasses flavor. It also calls for half butter and half shortening, so the texture is in between soft and crispy. Normally, I like cookies baked just until they’re barely done and gooey in the middle when they’re hot. But one of my uncles likes these almost “overdone,” and in this case, I think he’s onto something. The date mixture keeps them soft in the middle, but the edges get crisp and the deeper color represents more caramelization and the slightly-nutty flavor of browned butter.

You could use all butter, which will result in a slightly flatter and crisper cookie (due to the water content in the butter), or all shortening/lard, which will result in a slightly softer and puffier cookie without the buttery flavor. I like the flavor and texture you get by using half and half.

They’re not quite as simple as a drop cookie, but also not really designed to impress anyone. The logs are never quite perfectly circular and the ends are always a little wonky. I was never a big fan as a kid, but I’ve gotten increasingly fond of them. They seem to symbolize the caring labor of holiday baking. They’re something you make because they’re someone’s favorite, because they’re familiar, because your grandma made them, not to show off. And although the combination of butter, dates, and pecans may not be inventive or aspirational, it’s still pretty delicious. Read more »

My friend Voxphoto gave me some tasty homemade sauerkraut, which reminded me of the kielbasa appetizer recipe from Sarita Ciatti that we included in the wedding cookbook. The only two ingredients in the appetizer are kielbasa and sauerkraut—you slice the kielbasa thinly, fry it until it’s crisp, refrigerate it overnight, and then spread it in a pan on top of a bunch of drained, rinsed sauerkraut and bake it until the whole mess gets sweet and tender and starts caramelizing around the edges. So. Good.

But I’m not entertaining much these days. Not really cooking much either. Working 60+ hours a week will do that to you. So I decided to look for something similar that would be a little less “party” and a little more “something resembling a meal you can make a lot of on Sunday and eat all week.”

Combining elements from half a dozen other recipes, this is what I came up with—it’s basically a stovetop version of the appetizer served alongside stewed cabbage and potatoes. The kielbasa got some beer and brown sugar and the cabbage stew also has carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, some herbs and mushroom bouillon. All of that is probably optional, but if you’re only going to cook once a week, might as well pull out the bay leaves, right?

Turned out pretty tasty, and pretty cheap, too, even if you don’t get your sauerkraut for free.

Read more »

 Nearly 3 pounds of smoked ham hock!

Soup Swap, Hunter’s Widow Edition

I went to another gathering of the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers last weekend. Mother’s Kitchen had a half-empty house because her menfolk were off hunting, so she invited us over for a third annual MLFB soup swap, which is just like a cookie swap: everyone brings a pot of soup and some containers and takes a little bit of each kind home. Perfect timing—my freezer is now full of diverse, delicious meals ready to be reheated on a moment’s notice, which will definitely come in handy on busy, chilly nights this Fall when there’s too much going on to cook. Including a flavorful, creamy Roasted Tomato Soup from Fruitcake or Nuts and nourishing, zesty White Chicken Chili from Mother’s Kitchen.

My contribution was a smoky black bean soup, inspired by the gigantic ham hocks I got from Ernst  Farms. I bought two of them sight-unseen through Lunasa, a bimonthly Market Day-style order & pickup system for Ann Arbor-area farms, expecting them to be roughly the size of my fist like the ones I typically see at the grocery store. Instead, they’re the size of my head. And then, remembering that TeacherPatti doesn’t eat pork, I picked up some smoked turkey necks to make a pig-free version (and she didn’t even show up! The nerve!). The pork and turkey versions turned out remarkably similar. I imagine any smoked meat product would work. You could probably even do a passable vegan version with pimenton and/or liquid smoke.

Bean Basics I: Taming the Magical Fruit

Some people claim that the foam that rises to the top of a pot of simmering beans is connected to the gas many people get after eating them, and that skimming it off will prevent or reduce that effect. Not true. The reason beans make people fart is because of the indigestible carbohydrates—mostly oligosaccharides—that pass through most of the human GI system intact and then get devoured by bacteria in our lower intestine, causing a sudden spike in gas production. The foam in the pot, on the other hand, is produced by water-soluble proteins that trap air bubbles as they rise to the surface of the water. You can skim it if it bothers you, but it won’t affect how flatulent the soup is, or how it tastes or looks.

Hock shoved mostly beneath the surface, this batch got one turkey neck too.

So how do you make beans less flatulent? There are basically two options: 1) soak them overnight and throw out the soaking liquid (along with lots of nutrients and flavor) or 2) cook them a long time, which breaks the oligosaccharides down into easier-to-digest sugars and starches. Various folk traditions also claim that adding a slice of ginger, a bay leaf, a piece of kombu seaweed, epazote, cumin, and/or fennel seeds to a pot of beans helps reduce gassiness too. I’ve also seen a few recipes that claim adding baking soda helps, but according to Harold McGee, all that does is decrease the cooking time, which works against flatulence-reduction (McGee 2004 [1984] : 486-9). Since it’s basic, it can also make the soup taste alkalai or soapy. Read more »

If you like food history, or like reading the occasional blog post that references food history, you might be interested in supporting the American Eats digital archive project.

The Lansing-area non-profit Sustainable Farmer and MSU departments of Journalism and  History want to send food historian Helen Veit to digitize documents related to the Depression-era WPA program America Eats. The program put unemployed writers to work, including Saul Bellow and Zora Neale Hurston, by sending them around the country to write about regional food specialties. A selection of the essays edited by Mark Kurlansky was published a few years ago as The Food of a Younger Land. As you can tell from the cover & subtitle, “Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal, Regional, and Traditional—from the lost WPA files,” Kurlansky is heavily invested in the myth that everyone ate fresh, local, authentic food back in the Good Old Days three decades after The Jungle. That’s despite the fact that the essays and other materials he included reveal that people involved in America Eats were really divided over questions of what to include, particularly regarding recipes and events that involved industrial, commercial products. Because counter to the pastoral image on the right, those were were a huge part of the inter-war American diet and the basis for many unique, regional practices like Coca-Cola parties in Atlanta. The decision to focus instead on ethnically and regionally-marked church suppers and first and second-generation immigrant practices resurrected primarily for holiday meals was driven by particular ideologies about the nation and the goals of documentary. 

The planned WPA book series never materialized, partially because of the conflicts over what to include, but primarily because attention and resources were diverted by World War II. Many of the documents generated by the project were scattered to state archives or thrown away, but there are four boxes of material at the Library of Congress. The goal of the Kickstarter campaign is to send Dr. Veit to DC to scan all of that in and make it available online. I’ve never seen Kickstarter used as academic fund-raising before, but I guess for a project with potential public appeal like this one, why not?

As little as $1 gets your name on the website as a supporter and access to all the material they digitize (unclear if they’re planning on restricting access, which would make me a little cranky, but I guess if the price barrier stays as low as $1 that’s not too bad). For a little more, you can get heirloom tomato seeds, a tote bag, and/or a t-shirt. The America Eats Today site, where the archival materials will eventually be available, appears to be a work in progress, but there’s a short video up on the Kickstarter page where you can hear a little more about the project from Dr. Veit.

Them’s Fightin’ Words

Anthony Bourdain set the food world aflutter about a week ago when he criticized Paula Deen for encouraging Americans to eat food that’s “killing us” and “sucks.” Here’s the full text of the quote that started the whole thing, which appeared in TV Guide Magazine August 18:

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she's proud of the fact that her food is f---ing bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks.

It was a stupid, incendiary remark. Spite masquerading as “straight talk” and a shameless attempt (on TV Guide’s part, if not Bourdain’s) to manufacture controversy and attract page views. And hypocritical to boot. The claim that Deen has “unholy connections with evil corporations” is mighty rich coming from a guy who shills for Chase Sapphire. Furthermore, Bourdain himself isn’t exactly shy about eating rich, “fattening” foods on his show or serving them at his restaurant, which offers traditional French brasserie fare, including all the requisite butter, beef, bacon, sausage, foie gras, eggs, cream, white bread and fried potatoes. Check out the clip from No Reservations titled "Bourdain makes a deep-fried discovery," in which he points out that in almost every cuisine and every region, someone has figured out that dipping things in batter and cooking them in hot fat tastes pretty darn good before enjoying some deep-fried crab cakes and walleye. I’m not convinced that butter and fried foods are “killing us” or that either he or Paula Deen has a meaningful impact on how very many Americans eat, but I’m also pretty confused why he thinks her cooking is significantly worse for people’s health than he stuff he tells people it’s OK to eat.

Bourdain eventually backed off the hyperbole of his initial remarks on twitter, clarifying that he didn’t say Deen was the worst person in America, just the cook on the Food Network who’s the worst for America and adding that she’s probably very nice “as a person.” He also groused about how no one ever asks him who the best chefs on the Food Network are, and said the next time someone asks him about the worst ones, he’ll keep his mouth shut.

Meanwhile, Deen fired back with a populist appeal. In an interview with The New York Post, she defended her cooking on the grounds that she and the other maligned Food Network hosts feed “regular families” who struggle to put food on the table. She also claimed that she uses her wealth and celebrity for good, pointing out that her “partners” (i.e. the “evil corporations” Bourdain referred to) donate meat to food banks and that the other Food Network hosts also work to help uncontroversial charity targets: the hungry, sick children, and abandoned animals:

“Anthony Bourdain needs to get a life. You don’t have to like my food, or Rachael’s, Sandra’s and Guy’s. But it’s another thing to attack our character. I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It’s not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.”

Basting Bourdain for his apparent lack of charity and his attitude, she said, “My good friends Rachael, Guy and Sandra are the most generous charitable folks I know. They give so much of their time and money to help the food-deprived, sick children and abandoned animals. I have no idea what Anthony has done to contribute besides being irritable.

Deen continued, “You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills . . . It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too.”

Her attempt to align herself with “regular families” and portray her role as Smithfield’s spokesperson as some kind of charity work is just as ludicrous as Bourdain’s remarks.* She admits she has “no idea” what kind of charitable work Bourdain does or doesn’t do, but certainly implies it’s less than her. And then she mentions expensive foods, as if $650 wine has anything to do with Bourdain’s comments. As Rebecca Marx of the Village Voice pointed out, “Deen is no less a member of the culinary aristocracy than Bourdain—they just belong to country clubs with different rules.”

*Which is not to say that Deen doesn’t do any good work as Smithfield’s spokesperson. Perhaps, like Sandra Lee (another of Bourdain’s targets, although in the TV Guide article he mostly sounds scared of her), she uses her influence as spokesperson to get more food from Smithfield to hungry people. Taking their money and promoting the brand doesn’t mean she necessarily agrees with everything they do; perhaps she figures she can do more good that way than by refusing their money on principle. But I also doubt her deal with them is entirely about charity and not at all about personal gain. Read more »