The Christmas season

'Tis the Christmas season.   Gosh, I love the holidays.  For me Thanksgiving is the beginning of Christmas time and it doesn't end until New Years.  I put the tree up on Thanksgiving Day and take it down on New Years Day.  And in between, the lights on the tree stay on 24 hours a day. 

The beginning of the Christmas season also means the beginning of feasting.  As a kid, there's always a lot of focus on toys and other presents during December, but for me as a kid it also meant a big roasting pan filled with cookies and brownies.  The roasting pan happened to be the biggest pan in the kitchen and it had a tall lid so it made perfect sense to use it to store all sorts of Christmas goodies that were made.  In my grown-up years the allure of presents waned and the holiday season became more about everything else:  the festive music, beautiful decorations, people gathering together, and sharing in lots of great food. 

Of course, that means a lot of cooking and baking. Interestingly, in all the years of holiday food making, I've never yet made a yule log.  I often start out with the intent to make one as I plan potential holiday foods.  But every year I get distracted with other culinary endeavors.  Perhaps this year I will actually do it.  If I don't, no big deal.  It's always something to look forward to next year.  And that means it's always something that can be postponed again next year, too.  And so the cycle continues.

Today I'm making bouchons.  Bouchon is a French word for cork.  In food terms, a bouchon is a cork-shaped small chocolaty dessert similar to a brownie.  Today I'm experimenting with different types of chocolate in multiple iterations of the recipe.  Every type of chocolate is good but I'm wanting to settle on one type of chocolate that I will use the majority of the time with my bouchons.

More to come.  Have a great start to the big holiday month!

Unexpected happenings

mise en place for chocolate cookies

Since my last blog entry three days ago, I have had an eventful week.  I know .... three days isn't a week.  But it kind of felt like a week.  Starting Sunday, I tested out a few recipe tweaks, played a lot of online chess, learned some new repertoire on the piano, and then dealt with an unexpected issue on Monday.  That morning, I laid out my ingredients (mise en place, to use the French phrase) for cookies, and planned out what items I wanted to take to a Thanksgiving dinner this week.  Among those things were the ingredients for hot chocolate ... not hot cocoa, but hot chocolate.  There is a difference, you know.  And Thanksgiving Day here is supposed to be chilly, perfect for hot chocolate.  I planned other things to take as well, but plans are always subject to change by design or chance.

As Monday morning progressed, I could tell something was wrong.  I had some pressure building on a tooth as well as the surrounding areas in cheek and jaw, specifically one of two lower wisdom teeth that had never been extracted in my younger years.  I already had an appointment for later in December to have it extracted but it was beginning to feel like maybe I would be forced to move it up.  By Monday night, I had decided to head out to my dentist's office first thing in the morning and be there when they opened.  I wasn't going to just call them in the morning.  I wanted to be there to grab some time before their scheduled day started, so I just showed up.  Fortunately for me, my dentist and his staff would not be at all dismissive if someone just walked in without calling.  Well, by 2:00 PM Tuesday afternoon that offending tooth was a problem no longer and my appointment for December had been cancelled.  So Tuesday afternoon and evening, rather than spending the time planning and preparing for Thanksgiving cooking over the next couple days, I was sitting quietly, moving as little as possible on instructions from my dentist as the healing process began after my extraction.  On the plus side, I got to eat a lot of ice cream both yesterday and this morning.  Yes, I got to start out my day with ice cream.  Anyone who knows me knows that ice cream is my favorite food of all time.  Of course, I'm not eating any ice cream that has lots of mix-ins out of respect for that tender area of my mouth and jaw.  Still, ice cream is ice cream, and that's always good.

So here it is Wednesday morning, and I'm still supposed to be relatively inactive today but I'm feeling pretty good.  Still no cooking today, and for me Thanksgiving dinner will be less an event than it would have been otherwise.  It's supposed to be OK for me to eat many soft Thanksgiving foods, but I'm going to eat on the side of caution tomorrow, and stay home rather than take advantage of my Thanksgiving dinner invites. 

I think I got through this entry with no typos.  I hope I did.  I re-read it just to make sure.  Then again, I might be bit loopy from pain medication and too much ice cream, so if anyone spots one, just let me know.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Holiday weeks

The holidays are here.  Thanksgiving is this week.  Christmas is just 31 days away.  The end of the year is almost upon us.   Flowers from spring and summer are giving way to the cold of our soon-to-be winter.  Leaves are falling in the autumnal winds.  It's a wonderful time.  Many people don't like the fall and winter, but I do.  I love them as much as spring and summer. 

While the weather turns colder, inside it's time to make great food.  It's time to watch for falling snowflakes.  It's time to think about the year that has been. 

It's time for some lazy days where we can lean back in a comfy chair, drink some hot chocolate, and read a good book or watch a good movie. 

This week I have several foods I am hoping to make.  As we head toward Thanksgiving day, I have no obligations all week other than simply existing, so I plan to exist in the kitchen quite a bit.  I will have holiday movies playing on the television, but those are just for background as I've seen them all many times before.  I will listen to the dialogue while I make cookies and breads and broiled salmon among other things over the next few days.  I have several invites for Thanksgiving dinner so I will leave it to someone else to make turkey.  So here I go, off to the kitchen.  Up first today, oatmeal cookies.  And then I will look at my "cook this soon" list, and decides what comes next.  It's going to be a fun day and week ahead. 

Brittle and baking soda

brittle served and ready to enjoy

Brittle has been around a long long time.  It's made all over the world, and everywhere it's made different kinds of nuts and seeds might be added to it as dictated by history and tradition, by prevailing preferences for certain nuts in different places, and other regional factors.

Brittle is quite simply a hard sugar candy with embedded nuts.  That's it.  Nothing more complicated than that.

brittle hot out of the saucepan ready to cool

A sugar solution (sugar, corn syrup, and water) is cooked to 300 F or a bit more.  If it's not cooked long enough to reach that temperature, the brittle won't be a brittle at all.  After reaching that temperature, nuts are added, sometimes butter, and flavorings, and some salt.  But my favorite part of making this is the addition of the last ingredient at the very end:  baking soda.

brittle cooled and ready to be broken - doesn't look much different from hot

The saucepan has this very hot mixture of all the nuts, sugars and other ingredients, and to this is added the baking soda.  As soon as it is stirred in, the baking soda (which is alkaline) reacts with the acids in the sugar solution (which result from chemical changes in the sugars as they cook), and lots of carbon dioxide is released.  The mixture foams up quite a bit and the color is changed a bit as well.  Within seconds after stirring in the baking soda, the mixture is ready to be poured from the saucepan onto a baking tray where it can be spread out to a reasonable thickness. 

brittle pieces, brittle crumbs, brittle dust

This baking soda reaction helps give the candy a more porous texture than would otherwise result.  The addition of a small amount of butter also helps with the texture, richness and flavor.  (Corn syrup in the initial sugar solution also has an affect, but that's a more involved chemistry lesson for another day using such terms as fructose, glucose, and inversion.)  All of this means that you have a brittle which is much more enjoyable to eat than simply a rock hard shard of sugar candy.

The brittle has to cool for quite a while.  I always let mine sit for a few hours before breaking it up, and I always break it up with a knife.  No hands, no mallet.  I get out a bit strong knife and slowly break it into bite size pieces, eliminating sharp points so it's nicer for everyone.  The candy has enough porousness that it breaks quite easily under the knife.  (And it also breaks quite easily in your mouth, without requiring undue amounts of pressure that threaten to break other things as well.)  Using a knife in this way gives me lots of little crumbs and brittle dust, more than I would get from using a mallet.  I love to use the brittle dust to sprinkle on ice creams, or as an embellishment to cream toppings on pies and puddings, and once I even sprinkled some on cinnamon toast and it was pretty darn good.

brittle dust to save for other desserts and a whole bowl of pieces for guests to enjoy

Try making it sometime.  It doesn't take that long.  And the baking soda part is pure fun. Read up on the chemistry of the whole process and you can easily become sufficiently knowledgeable to talk about it at social gatherings. 

Pulla

pulla dough after kneading

Making breads is great.  There is something really nice about putting together a dough, then watching it rise once or twice, popping it into the oven, and pulling out something that tastes and smells heavenly.

Pulla (sometimes called nisu) is a bread from Finland that is flavored with cardamom.  Most people think of India with respect to cardamom.  But traditional Scandinavian cooking frequently uses it as well.  Finland has made use of this spice with style in this bread.  I have never been to Finland, but I am told that one finds this bread everywhere, in every good eating establishment, in every home, at every social gathering.  Perhaps that is exaggerated, but it tastes so wonderful that I would be surprised if it weren't everywhere.

pulla dough ready to rise

The ingredients in pulla include flour, melted butter, salt, milk, yeast, sugar, eggs and cardamom, usually crushed cardamom seeds, but in a pinch ground cardamom is fine.  Only a small amount of sugar is used so this is a very lightly sweet bread.  The eggs and melted butter add richness and are a big reason why the texture of the bread is so nice.  The dough once made is kneaded for several minutes, but I always find that it is such a silky smooth dough that no flour is required in the kneading process.  It simply doesn't stick to a surface as is the case with so many other doughs.  And as it is kneaded, it gets smoother and smoother until finally it is ready to go into a bowl for rising.

pulla dough after rising

I enjoy seeing the difference between a dough pre-rise and post-rise.  One of these days I should video an entire rise session and then post it here in time-lapse.  That would be a captivating sight, I would think.  I'm certain that's been done elsewhere, but it's something I might try in the future anyway just for the satisfaction of doing it myself.

small and large pulla braided loaves

The dough can be made into a variety of shapes.  I love making braided loaves because I can make them small or large quite easily.

pulla ring

But one of the most often used shapes is the ring loaf.  As you can see, it looks fun and festive.  Pulla is usually brushed with egg wash (I use milk with this particular egg wash), and then sprinkled with sliced almonds and sugar before going into the oven.  I always use Swedish pearl sugar which is one of my favorite decorative sugars, especially for breads of various types.  

The end product is lightly sweet, has a mild aroma, a wonderful texture, and that taste of cardamom that is delicately present in every bite.  If you've never had a chance to try pulla, take the opportunity when it comes.  You won't be sorry.

Spritz cookies

I love making spritz cookies.  It seems they are made most often around the Christmas season, but I enjoy them all year.

The original full name of this cookie was spritzgebach.  The name comes from the German spritzen which means to squirt or spray or splash (think spritzing plants with a fine spray of water).  It seems this cookie was made as far back as the 1500s.  Traditionally families would have their own special recipe for this buttery cookie, one that was handed down through the generations.  I understand that today parents and children still spend considerable time baking these cookies during the holiday season in northern European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Norway, and others.  They are made by extruding the dough through a cookie press.  Most often these are seen with some sort of floral design or perhaps in the shapes of S's or O's.  But I always make mine the way I had them when I was young, in long planks with sawtooth ridges.

I hadn't made them for quite some time after I entered my adult years, but then one spring I decided it was time to revisit them.  I went shopping for a cookie press which I didn't in have in my kitchen.  Over a few months I tried a couple different presses, but each one was incapable of producing the desired result.  It seems these days, at least with the cookie presses I could find, they are made with cheap plastic and inefficient and weak handles which gradually push out the dough in a way which doesn't allow for much control.  I was not happy with what I could find.  So I went searching online for the one used in my family years and years ago.  I found out they aren't made anymore.  So Ebay was next and, voila!, I found a great press in fantastic shape.

Seeing that item for the first when it was delivered brought back many memories of eating truckloads of Christmas cookies and other holiday treats.  This press, made by Mirro, is all metal, and has a corkscrew handle which makes it really easy to extrude cookie dough whether soft or not.  Could it be engineered more efficiently?  Probably.  But this would do.  I have used it now for a long time in my kitchen.

It comes with a variety of press plates and some tips, but I always use the one in the center in the picture above, theplate with the single long narrow opening.  This one gives me the long planks with the ridges that I so loved when I was a kid.  I still prefer it because it gives a cookie which has much more surface area and can be made into as long a plank as one desires.  When I make them for people I usually do so in 4-inch planks.  They are easier to package without breaking them.  But when I'm making them at home, I often take them to 6 or 8 inches.  It is so much fun to display a platter of those long long cookies to guests who seems to love them made that way as much as I do.  And when they are extruded you can add little waves to the ridges.  They don't have be flat.  Tthe planks with wavy undulations that are created look very artistic and are fun to eat.  The basic recipe I use for my spritz cookies is actually the one Mirro used to package with its press, but with just a single minor alteration of my own.  There was no real need to mess with perfection as I saw it.  Cooking these takes patience and close careful watching.  I like to get them out of the oven when the edges are browned just right.  Earlier or later than that "just right" moment and they are still good which is one of the great things about this cookie.  As we are approaching the holiday season, I've had many students and friends already asking if I will be making spritz.

And the answer is, "Yes, of course!"

Eggs

I love eggs.  They are a remarkable food.  There are so many ways to cook them, so many things in them that are good for you, and so many things they can do inside other foods.

Eggs.  (Or as Gollum would say, eggses -- a nod for all like-minded Tolkien fans in the world.)

I am quite fortunate that a family I know raises chickens which produce a lot of eggs.  So I am able to purchase a quantity of farm fresh eggs every week for use in my kitchen from someone I know who raises their chickens in a manner of which I approve.  Each week I can hardly wait to look at the varied colors, the speckles on some of the shells, the slightly varying sizes.  It's a totally different experience from picking up a standard carton at the store.  It all seems so real and non-factory, which of course it is. 

Eggs provide flavor, structure, and texture to a variety of foods, all depending on how they are used and how they are incorporated.  And by themselves, they are to be relished.  It's amazing that something so simple as a fried egg can taste so good.  And don't get me started on deviled eggs, or omelets, or scrambled eggs... I could go on and on.

In baking, most of the time a recipe calls simply for a specific quantity of large eggs.  But sometimes a recipe will be so precise that the required weight in grams is given.  I love working with something that is so precise sometimes.  There is something rewarding about paying attention to that level of detail when preparing a delicious bakery item.

When picked up at the grocery store, all eggs of course are already in cartons by size.  Jumbo, extra-large, large and medium are typically the ones that are seen. But other defined sizes include small and pee-wee.  All these sizes are defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The USDA sets standards by weight for all eggs sold commercially in the USA.

According to the USDA size specifications, large eggs are 56 grams in the shell.  This is important to know for a couple reasons.  If you are working with farm fresh eggs which are not necessarily sorted and sold by the dozen with the same sort of weight sorting that is done in a commercial facility, then you need to know whether the quantity of eggs you are using in a recipe that calls for "2 large eggs" is really the required amount by weight for your recipe.  This means you might want to weigh your farm fresh eggs if you have any doubt about their size and if a potential difference will significantly impact what you are making.

Another reason it is important to know about USDA weight specs pertains to recipes you might be using from non-US sources.  Canada, for instance, has virtually the same size specs as the USDA. However in Europe, my understanding is that they are quite different.  A "large" egg there is defined as one that is 63 grams.  Other parts of the world also have differing size specs, some minor compared to US specs, some not so minor.  So if you are using a recipe from a non-US source, it's probably a good idea to ensure that you are using the right quantity of eggs as measured by weight.  For some recipes, it might not matter so much.  But sometimes it matters a whole lot.

OK.... I 'm going to fix myself some breakfast.  Three guesses as to what I'm having today.

Chocolate chip cookies

I have a busy day ahead of me.  It's still fairly early in the morning and I've already made allspice muffins and brown sugar pecan shortbread.  In a short bit I will take a break from the kitchen and teach a few piano lessons.  Then later, I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies. 

In Whitman, Massachusetts in the 1930s (I have seen multiple exact years given in various written sources), Ruth Wakefield at the Toll House Inn created the first known chocolate chip cookie.  Some have reported that it was accidental, but she herself said that she did it intentionally.  They became enormously popular once the recipe was published in 1938 in her cookbook.  The recipe was originally called the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie.  During World War II, soldiers stationed overseas asked constantly for these cookies to be included in care packages and that spread their fame as they were shared again and again with other soldiers from different parts of the country.

Try to find someone who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies and you have a difficult task indeed.  I met someone once who didn't like them and all I could say when he announced it was, "You can not be serious?!"  This moment was made doubly fun at the time by the fact that was I was holding a tennis racket while standing at net as I chatted with my opponent just after we had played a casual match.  (If you don't get that tangent, then you don't know about McEnroe's famous tirades on the tennis court.  That's OK.  I won't hold it against you.)

Back to the subject at hand...  I actually have about a half dozen different variations on chocolate chip cookies that I keep in my recipe notebook to use as whim or cravings dictate.  I have a lot of fun trying to tweak the basic cookie in different ways, sometimes varying types and amounts of chocolate, experimenting with different combinations of flours, baking them in pastry rings or other molds, etc. 

But there are two things that are always the same no matter what else I do to the basic recipe. 

One, I always chill the dough in the bowl after it is mixed.  Give the dough a good long chill before baking, let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours, and then finally shape the dough and pop the cookies into the oven.  I always find that I have a better end result when this step is followed.

Two, the importance of the quality of the butter can not be underestimated.  I know, I know, so many people say to use a vegetable shortening, or that margarine is just fine.  But for me, I have to use butter, and certainly I go to my reliable European style butter.

Now, one more word on this.  Many people go with the ubiquitous semi-sweet chocolate morsels found in the familiar yellow bag with the Toll House cookie recipe on the back.  And that's fine.  It gives a good cookie, certainly, and one that we are all accustomed to.  But I like to go with chocolate that is of a higher level of quality.  It's usually more expensive to be sure, but I love the result.  I use a variety of chocolates from various places in my different cookies, some already bagged as morsels or chips or small discs, some that require that I chop it up myself.  And I almost always use a least two different types of chocolate every time I make chocolate chip cookies as I find this gives a more complex chocolate flavor and a more satisfying chocolate experience.  (That's one sentence with the word "chocolate" used four times, in case you didn't notice.  That's how important it is to me.)

Gosh, after writing all that, I'm really craving them now.  I think I will go prep the ingredients for baking later today.    Au revoir, for now.

 

Applesauce tarts

I love fruit and pie crust, or fruit and tart crust, or ... well, you get the idea.  Cooked sweetened fruit in its own sauce balanced against a flavorful crust of just about any type is always a treat.  When I was kid I used to make something I called applesauce pocket tarts.  In reality, they weren't actual tarts since a tart by definition is an open pastry crust containing a filling of some type, meaning they aren't covered as is the case with many pies.  However, then (when I was a kid) as now, store-bought pop tarts were a popular item, and they are a closed pastry containing a filling.  So when I made applesauce tarts I called them tarts since they looked a lot like pop tarts.

Recently I was making a chocolate cream pie, and I happened to have some pie crust dough left over.  So I rolled it out fairly thin and used a bench knife to cut the edges straight.  Pie crust dough works really well for this little snack and you don't have to think about trying to keep it flaky.  I worked the dough fairly vigorously since it was comprised of left over scraps from making the pie and I wanted it all to hold together really well for my tart that really isn't a tart.

Tarts have been around a long time, since somewhere in the 1400s or 1500s, while pies came a bit earlier, perhaps by a couple hundred years.  Tarts are typically made with a different type of crust which allows them to be free-standing and therefore do not require being served from a pie plate.  When they came about, it is thought that they were considered to be something more fitting for the noble class while pies were for the ordinary commoners in society.

My understanding is that tarts originally were savory with meat fillings while sweet fillings began to be used later.  For my tart I chose unsweetened applesauce, just as I did when I was a kid.  Sure, an apple compote would have been better but I had no apples, just plenty of applesauce.  I added a bit of sugar to it, some cinnamon and then heated it in a saucepan.  This is important since a cold applesauce will slow the cooking of the inside layer of the tart crust.  I spooned it onto my prepared  crust, folded it over to make a pocket (hence the name "pocket tart" from when I was a kid), and sealed it by pressing the edges with the tines of a fork.  Then I brushed it with an egg wash.  Sometime I also sprinkle some decorator's sugar over the top, but not this time.

Pop it into the oven at 375 for 15 or 20 minutes and out comes a very tasty snack.  The applesauce filling is nothing fancy, but this isn't supposed to be fancy.  I always like it when a little applesauce escapes the pocket.  When I'm making something on the fly like this I'm often not too fussy about perfection and so the sealed edges sometimes let a little filling ooze out.  But that's OK because the sugars in that leaked filling caramelize which adds a nice touch to our little dessert.

When I was a kid we never had store-bought pop tarts around and so it was fun to bake my own version.  It seems everyone ate them all the time for breakfast back then.  I wonder if anyone knew that the idea for the original store-bought pop tarts came from a dog food that was moist but didn't require refrigeration.  It was thought that people would love to have the same thing in an easy-to-prepare breakfast food so the same technology used to make the dog food was applied to the idea of pop tarts.  Apparently when they first came out in 1964 they were so popular that the first shipments sold out in two weeks, and Kellogg's ran advertisements admitting they goofed in underestimating the potential demand.  I don't know if any of that first shipment was fed by owners to their dogs, but I'm sure the dogs wouldn't have complained.  I don't have a dog, and my cat certainly wasn't interested in my applesauce tart, so I had it all to myself. 



 

A friendly kitchen

Several years ago, I read something about how traditional kitchens in many places in Europe (France was most specifically referenced) were built differently than here in the US.  These traditional kitchens in homes that had been built years and years ago were designed long and narrow as opposed to blocky and open.  The idea was that someone cooking could be at the stove and turn around and find a countertop fairly close behind them and they could go back and forth very easily without having to take several steps.  That got me thinking about my own kitchen.  For a long while, every time I cooked I wished my kitchen was built differently.  I began to look closely at kitchens when I was out somewhere else besides my home, when I visited eating establishments that didn't completely hide their kitchens, when I saw one on a TV show or a movie, and especially when I watched a cooking show.  Ideas started percolating and finally I decided to put a plan in motion.

With the help of my kids, I began to tear out all the kitchen cabinets.  I always had a love/hate relationship with cabinets.  One the one hand, they could hide everything so the kitchen could look perfect on the outside.  On the other hand, it took a lot of work to take things out, put them back in, and keep them organized, especially with some of the more crowded cabinets.  They always seemed to become more crowded as time passed no matter what I did to keep them organized.  And sometimes a cabinet might be hiding something inside that was pushed further and further back as each day passed until eventually it simply faded from existence and I forgot it was even there.  On days where I was doing a lot of cooking, the cabinets and the way their contents were organized and stored simply made things more difficult.

Well, I was exhilarated to be taking out all the cabinets.  It took a while since it was all done a bit at a time over the course of weeks.  As each section was removed, in it's place were built simple unpretentious wooden shelves using 2x6's and support brackets from my local hardware store.  My youngest son helped me coat them with a nice finish and stain, and although the finishing job wasn't perfect since neither of us was too worried about making it so, I loved it.  I see the imperfections now and I remember those times when we were working on this project, when we were seeing the kitchen being reshaped bit by bit.  So the cabinets were gone and these shelves went from floor to ceiling and were completely open.  I loved them then and still do now.

This project, of all the home projects I have done over the years, is the one that has most directly impacted day-to-day life in this house.  The open shelves allow me to access everything easily.  They allow me to quickly find all my kitchen tools and pans and gadgets and utensils.  Spices are organized on shelves just for them.  Salts are all on display in a row.  Chocolate, all the various varieties that I keep on hand, are ready to grab.  The microwave has its own special spot, out of the way, but readily accessible and not taking up valuable countertop space.

I did the same thing with a small pantry/closet in the kitchen:  took off the door, removed the shelves and put up new ones.  Also a winner in terms of how it impacted kitchen functionality.  I put restaurant style wire racks over my stove, and it was another winner.  And I hung many of my frequently used utensils on the wall in multiple spots.  No more drawers since they disappeared with the cabinets.

These days when I cook, my kitchen structure and design is a friend to me instead of a hindrance.  From time to time I ponder small additional changes, but by and large it has stayed the same now for several years and I have been quite happy with it.  For someone who is in the kitchen as much I am, that's a pretty nice thing.