Oh Joy....

All I'm saying is: I have three ripe bananas sitting on my counter that might make their way into some banana bread tomorrow.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies... From the Joy!

Philip came over last night for some dominoes and he arrived just in time. Turns out that I'd let myself run out of brown sugar. Not only that, but I never even had the coconut shavings that I hoped to add to the Joy Of Cooking's oatmeal raisin cookie recipe. Thankfully Phillip had both at his house and was willing to measure out and bring over the two ingredients. Meanwhile I walked to the Plaid Pantry for some beer.

I got home, Philip came over and we were ready to finish the dough. By now the butter had been sitting out for quite some time and gave no fight to the wooden spoon. We were ready before long. Then we opted to forgo dominoes for an introductory game of backgammon and moved on to a game of scrabble. Interspersed with our fierce competition were three batches of amazing oatmeal raisin cookies.

They were large enough that eating two was an unavoidable over-indulgence and their baking doubled as my heat for the evening. Like a lot of cookies, there is not that much work involved for what you get. Also, like many cookie recipes, you end up with more cookies than one person should eat within a couple of days. I cannot keep myself from eating cookies. Therefore I have resolved to halve the batch and bring them over to friends' houses tomorrow evening. Wednesday at the latest. I may wait to halve the batch until I'm ready to give them away.

Philip also brought me a great print he did! It just goes to show, you should always bake your friends cookie.

I miss your soup and I miss your bread....

and a letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead.
oh why hello there.

Did you think the Joys of Cooking had left town? Well, we haven't.
I seem to be the only one cooking anything from the book...but let's put that aside for now.


The other night I made Creamy Pasta with Chard and Tomatoes, page 328.


There is no picture because, frankly, it was kind of gruesome. ...I think because I used red-stalked chard. The brilliant redness of the chard seeped into the cream, and dyed the creamy sauce and stained the pasta. The result was kind of pinkish-bloody-looking. mmmm! It kind of reminded me of an accident at sea. Although I'm not sure why--since the sea wouldn't be creamy. It made me think of white whale meat--like an attack between a shark and a whale (which I'm fairly sure doesn't happen in real life--but that's what my brain thought).

That unpleasantness aside, I give it high marks. It was quite good.

If you hate all things creamy--or maybe you like cream, but don't like to think about it too much--you might think "gross! I could never use cream in a dinner-recipe!" as I did before trying this. But to be honest, if you just try it, it's not a heavy cream sauce: you can tell yourself to forget about the way the superthick, viscous, so-very-white liquid fat slowly poured from its tiny carton into the measuring cup, and then you'll later marvel that the sauce actually seems light! Impressive, Joy of Cooking!

The bit of red pepper gives it a hint of heat, which is nice.
The Parmesan added at the end really makes the sauce what it is.

Next time I will try it with not-red-stalked chard! I might also substitute spinach for the chard. I think that I will also use a little less cream than the recipe demands--and more tomatoes.

The hardest part for me? the pasta! I'm a mess with pasta. I added salt to the water...I added a little oil...I didn't overcook it. but still I ended up with clumpy chunks of fettuccine. sad. Nothing makes you feel less competent than bad pasta. Time to read "About Cooking Pasta, p320."!

Welcome to 2008!

Here's to a new year, hopefully, with many more Joys of Cooking posts.
To kick it off, this week, I made Peanut Butter Fudge, p 864.

I was flipping through the book, and came across the candies. I think it's amazing that there's a cookbook that has recipes for everything in it.

And there's something so appealing, so wholesome and frugal-seeming, about making one's own candy. "I do enjoy a sweet now and then, so I make an occasional batch of fudge/toffee/brittle/taffy to keep on hand." seems so much nicer than "I was starved for something sweet so I went to CVS and bought a giant bag of candy."

I chose Peanut Butter Fudge because it's one of the few candy recipes, and the only fudge recipe, that doesn't require a candy thermometer and close attention to candy-chemistry.
As it turns out, that attractive simplicity might reveal itself crudely in the finished product.

You should know that the ingredients are just: butter (a lot), peanut butter (a lot), and confectioner's sugar (a whopping 4½ cups), and a touch of vanilla.
So I guess it's not completely shocking that when you have a piece of this, it tastes like you're eating peanut butter supersaturated with fat and sugar...

I decided the real name of this fudge should be Rot Your Teeth Make You Fat Fudge.
The first taste experience was a bit repulsive. I could feel the sugar going straight into my teeth, and eating the enamel faster than I was eating the fudge--I felt a heavy sweetness unlike anything else. ...Then strangely, it seemed like a fine idea to have a second taste.

When all's said and done, making one's own candy and confections is not at all frugal. Tallying up the butter and peanut butter and sugar and vanilla puts this recipe at about $5.50. Not terrible--but certainly not cheap.

The enormous amounts of ingredients yielded an enormous amount of candy.
64 1x1" pieces. Although 1x1", each piece is nearly 2" deep.

I was faced with the problem of what to do with a huge excess of not-great peanut butter fudge... My primary thought was to send it out to P&C and T, to share the year's opening recipe...too bad it's so heavy that postage would probably be a million dollars. I also thought of sending it to Holland. ...but that would be a million and a half dollars, and would be month-old-fudge upon arrival.

So, I hid it in my refrigerator for a few days, a bit embarrassed that I had much more peanut butter fudge than I knew what to do with, and not enough confidence in it to give it away, until in conversation, I found a few willing fudge recipients--in fact, they begged.

Today I packaged it up and delivered it--and it was well-received.

A cellular text transmission reported: Fudge is Fabulous! Thank You!
That made me feel better.

Notes:

It was very dense and crumbly. The crumbling made it a little maddening to cut; the desire for smooth and perfect squares was unfulfilled. I have a sense that fudge is dense, by nature. However, the crumblyness might have been due to too much powdered sugar. I wondered, after the fact, whether I shouldn't have trusted my old Joy of Cooking knowledge from childhood, and re-measured the sugar after sifting... I was too lazy to do that, and figured it couldn't make that much of a difference. But I wonder if it did. I also used natural peanut butter--with no extra things aside from peanuts and salt; so I wonder if that might have had something to do with the slightly dry and crumbly nature of this batch. If I were to try it again, I would try a little less peanut butter and would re-measure the sugar after sifting.

It was quite easy.

It was not cheap.

It was well-received and, in fact, loved by those to whom I gave it. So the cringe-feeling I had, tasting it, might be only experienced by the maker, who cannot separate the candy from the knowledge that somewhere within the candy lies an ungodly amount of butter and sugar. People who receive the candy as a gift, merely taste a sweet decadent peanut butter fudge--and probably, in their enviable naïveté, feel up to several more pieces.

It might be a nice thing to make around Christmas time, for presents.

It did make me think about how great a treat it would have been in Little House times--like, I can picture Laura and Mary each getting a piece for Christmas and about five pages would be devoted to describing how extraordinary it was to get a piece of fudge. Did they have peanut butter in the midwest in the mid-19^th century?

Sweet morning, Sweet day

I took some vacation days a few weeks ago, when the school got out for summer--to feel the celebratory shift in schedule.

On this day, I drew all day, on assignment!, and drank coffee all day, and made scones. with chocolate chips.

Cream Scones, p 640
+ tiny chocolate chips, because they were in my refrigerator.

Cream scones are so ridiculously much easier than Classic Scones that I'm not sure why anyone would make the classic ones. Pour heavy cream vs. chop cold butter and cut it into a flour mixture, beat eggs separately, and pour heavy cream? obviously pouring heavy cream wins. "Heavy cream provides both the fat and the liquid in this simplest of all scone recipes." yes! Plus you end up with ideal scones.

Linzertorte, p 696

Almondy sweet crust + raspberry crunchy seed jam = lovely.

The recipe makes one 9 ½-inch torte.
But all cheap stores were out of the 9 ½-inch pop=out bottom tart pans...so I settled for a cheap set of 8 tiny pop-out bottom pans--not so cheap at $11 but just a dollar or two more than I'd allotted to spend on a regular pan. ...Now I have 8 tiny tart pans. If you come to my house for dinner, expect many tiny-tart-formed elements to the meal.
Anyway, I had to sort of guess and judge the baking time--just a little less than the recommended 40 minutes.

Most frustrating part? the lattice crust!!! man alive.

I have made complicated linzertorte cookies before--completely successfully--crisp, with tiny cut-outs, and lightly powdered sugar. But I'd not ever made a true linzertorte in a pan.

When I was in elementary school someone gave me an origami book and paper for my birthday--I remember wanting to make all of the great pictures, and I remember fury. I remember taking it out in my bedroom, alone, every now and then, determined to fold a whatever--and getting so angry I felt like spitting and grittng my teeth and ripping paper, hiding all signs of the defeat, eventually leaving my room, not letting on. Attempting the crust-weaving on these was a very similar experience. I hadn't felt that feeling of hand-frustration since about second grade... I actually had to step away from the stove-top work area... I had to put every thing in the freezer, and chill.

You can see in the photo linzertorte #1 (left corner) is very second grade angry--and the only reason it didn't end up thrown in the trash was because I reminded myself of the cost of ingredients--and that things taste fine even when they're ugly...and that I'm 32. not 8. ...I made myself press on.
And then linzertorte #2--much improved! It's sort of a fake lattice--(not woven)--however, it's much neater than #1-Linzer-of-Wrath--and the discipline and quick finger work, of which it was a product, was the true achievement, setting the groundwork for future improvement.

Most fun part? Popping the tarts out of the pans. like mechanical magic.


They tasted good.


I'll tell you this: I'm a master at origami now. The perfect lattice will come.

Cheese-Chile Corn Squares, p 272

Here we go...

Basically, you bake up frozen corn, monterey jack cheese, eggs, & jalepeño peppers, with some salt, pepper, and chile powder, and you come out with a pretty substantial meal.

1. this seemed more appealing when I was on a Joy-of-Cooking bender... Inspired by a conversation I'd had with a mutual egg-hating friend, about how we wish we loved eggs, and didn't hate them, because they are such a simple and versatile form of nutrition, I set aside my distaste for eggs, and focused on my love of the cheese-corn-casserole we have as the no-meat option at Thanksgiving... I delved into it, knowing that the Thanksgiving-corn-casserole, which I love, has eggs in it--that I just pretend aren't there.
2. this also was much more appealing in the cold weather--when I made it. keep that in mind.
3. the recipe calls for "6 large eggs."
3a. that is so gross. return to 1.
4. I couldn't bear to crack 6 eggs. so I made it 5. that's still gross. and it didn't seem to interfere with the end result.
5. later, when I conferred with mom about the Thanksgiving corn dish that I love, she said it take 2 eggs. TWO. Joy of Cooking, sometimes, you're disgusting.
6. Instead of 2 Tbsp. Chile Powder, I used only a little bit of Cayenne pepper, because I didn't have any chile powder.
7. It came out well! It was a good dinner for a week. (In the cold, remember.) It was definitely eggy. But not so terribly that I couldn't do a mind trick.



I'd recommend this for anyone looking for a simple quick dinner on a cold night--even if you hate eggs, but especially you love them!--also, this would make a great dish to bring to a potluck or a church banquet.