apropos of anything

All butter, to be exact.

For Thanksgiving I wanted a to make pecan pie, mostly because I felt like we need to have either a pumpkin pie or a pecan pie at Thanksgiving and pecan would be the desi preference of choice, but given our guest list was upwards of 50 people, I didn’t think a single pie would cut it. Neither did I have time to roll out five pie crusts or any desire to have so much pecan pie on my hands that I wouldn’t be able to stand the smell of it until the next November.

Surely, I thought, there must be a bar version of pecan pie, something I can cut up into squares and put on a plate so that everyone can have a taste of pecan pie since a taste is all they really want anyway, especially with the dessert extravaganza we spread out every year. When I found this recipe in the Gourmet Cookbook that I’d lugged all the way to Augusta I was so thrilled I didn’t consider at first how much butter was involved and whether it was appropriate for the buy-one-get-one heart attackers on our guest list.

Between these and the mashed potatoes (butter! half and half! more butter!), my subconscious was clearly trying to bump some people off.

They are incredibly good, though (as are the mashed potatoes) and perfect to serve with chai or to package up in tins as a hostess gift. If you use the pre-chopped pecans, which I did not because the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is not a time when the grocery stores are bursting with pecans, the prep time on these is minimal, and even the chopping only adds a few extra minutes. These are definitely going into my arsenal of reliable standbys.

Couple notes on this recipe:

• I used orange blossom honey because that’s the one I have on hand for jamming, but I thought the lovely citrusy floral undertones that add so much to jam were a little intrusive here. Next time I’ll probably use straight clover honey.
• Despite the 12 tbsp of butter in the shortbread crust, these did stick to the pan a bit, mostly because of the topping. In the future I’ll be lining the pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Greasing the pan probably wouldn’t help with the sticking and might just make the shortbread too oily.
• I used a hand-held pastry blender instead of a food processor to do the shortbread crust and just a knife and cutting board to chop the pecans.

We put the handful of these that survived Thanksgiving into an airtight container. The leftovers got eaten within a day or two, so I cannot confirm or deny Gourmet’s assertion that these will keep 5 days when properly stored and refrigerated.

Pecan pie bars
The Gourmet Cookbook

For base:
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

For topping:
2 c. (8 oz.) pecans
1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter
1 c. packed light brown sugar
1/3 c. honey
2 tbsp. heavy cream

Make the shortbread base: Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350° F. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until the mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle mixture into an ungreased 13-by-9 inch baking pan and press evenly onto bottom with a metal spatula. Bake shortbread until golden, about 20 minutes.

Make the topping: Coarsely chop pecans in a food processor. Melt butter in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderately low heat. Stir in brown sugar, honey, and  cream and bring to a simmer, stirring. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1 minute, and then stir in pecans. Remove from heat. Pour pecan mixture over hot shortbread and spread evenly. Bake until bubbling, about 20 minutes.

Cool completely in pan on a rack, then cut into bars.

The right cupcake-to-frosting ratio. The frosting should not overpower the cake. Period. I don’t agree that the cake part of a cupcake is simply a vehicle for transporting the frosting to your mouth. I think the cake is the true star of the cupcake, and the frosting is its little black dress.

Sadly I haven’t really found a cupcake shop in Atlanta that understands the ratio (perhaps the now-defunct Chocolate Pink, but I didn’t care much for most of their cupcakes in general), but last week in D.C. Georgetown Cupcakes reminded me just how good a cupcake can be. The ratio is one of the things Georgetown Cupcakes does best — instead of constructing a multi-inch frosting monument on top of a cakey base, they do a simple swirl, just enough to add a little bit of richness and sugar but not so much as to induce an immediate onset of diabetes.

On a related note, Shereen, who absolutely agrees with me about the cupcake-to-frosting ratio, planted an idea in my head last week that won’t go away, even though every time I think it I run away screaming: she wants us to try out for Cupcake Wars, the Food Network reality show where teams bake cupcakes under various constraints (usually time and ingredient/theme). She said she doesn’t have the courage to do it alone… neither do I, but I’m not even sure I have the courage to do it with her! Unlike most of the other contestants on that show, we don’t own a business together, so we’d have to practice for a while to get our recipes and methods in synch. That would be the easy part. The hard part would be not melting down in front of the producers and cameras. I’m not afraid of losing. I’m just afraid of the 100% chance I’d make a total idiot out of myself.

Words With Friends Alicia recommended I install this app on my iPhone earlier this year as an indulgence to my love for Scrabble. I started out playing with only Alicia and Shannon, but that was before I discovered just how many people are addicted to this electronic Scrabble-knock-off. Today I have eight games going with friends and family, some with elaborately tight boards and some with sprawl reminiscent of metro Atlanta (and yet nary a spot to place a word). I love being able to take my time about building a word and also always having at least a game or two going on. Words With Friends lets you play some crazy words — two days ago Mansoor played “usque”, which doesn’t appear on Dictionary.com but Wiktionary.com tells me it’s a Irish and Scots Gaelic version of “whiskey” &#8212 so the more I play, the more I expand my in-person Scrabble arsenal (did you know “coz” is an acceptable word in both WWF and Scrabble?). I love this game that lets me get my Scrabble fix on a daily basis.

Scoutmob Every day this local Atlanta start-up emails me a smart, well-written introduction to an area restaurant or small business. Some, like Murphy’s, Scoutmob’s inaugural “find”, I’m old friends with, but there are others, like Urban Pl8, that I’d never heard of and probably have avoided based on destruction of the English language alone had Scoutmob’s review not convinced me to check out their menu.

Unlike Groupon, though, Scoutmob doesn’t make you buy the coupon in advance. You simply present it at checkout time (if you remember, that is  is like — after Thanksgiving, Heather, Leta, and I went to Varasno’s because of the Scoutmob discount but we totally forgot about the coupon until after we’d already paid the bill) and the bill is reduced accordingly. I love this, and even more I love the iPhone app that lets me carry Scoutmob and its discounts with me wherever I go.

What I love most, though, is finding new local non-chain places to try, like Anis Bistro and Cafe or Boogaloos Boutique, and supporting a new local startup while I’m at it. (Not sure where this new-found affection for Atlanta startups comes from, but I suspect the trail leads back to Shannon eventually.) As whiny as I’ve been about technology lately, it’s lovely to find some tech that really does make my horizons broader and my life a little bit richer.

Over the last six months, I’ve done a lot of typing, and a lot of talking. An average of seventeen hours a day of typing and talking, for the most part. I haven’t done a lot of sleeping, or seeing my friends, and definitely I haven’t touched a pot or a pan… I’ve pretty much become a takeout girl, the Lois Lane of digital advertising, except that when I take the time to bother, I actually can boil pasta without burning it.

But this week, I’m on vacation. And this week, I’ve been trying to cram six months’ worth of socializing and entertaining into a few short days, which means I’ve been cooking up a storm. My refrigerator is crammed full of half-eaten meals, but I keep making more because I can’t serve half of yesterday’s strata to tomorrow’s guest. At this rate, I won’t have to cook again until after the MLK holiday, but I’m so happy to be chopping and simmering again, and also for the opportunity to try out some new recipes and to revisit some old favorites.

Buttermilk waffles From poor defunct Gourmet magazine, these waffles are my go-to standby when I want to serve something other than cereal for breakfast, especially if the “when” happens to be a weekday and I’m rushing to prep breakfast and still make it to work on time. These take all of ten minutes to put together, start to finish, and people are usually pretty happy to make their own as they want them so I don’t have to spend breakfast as the Waffle Monitor.

I couldn’t find the recipe on Epicurious or any of the other recipe collection sites, so here it is if any of y’all are looking for good, quick, easy buttermilk waffles:

3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 1/4 c. well-shaken buttermilk
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
vegetable oil for brushing waffle iron, if necessary (I use butter)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add buttermilk, butter, and eggs and stirl until smooth (batter will be thick).  Spoon batter into waffle iron, spreading batter evenly. Cook according to manufacturer’s instructions. Makes twelve 4-inch Belgian waffles or twenty-four 4-inch standard waffles.

This recipe, with its proportions in multiples of threes, scales up or down beautifully. I like to serve mine with fruit and maple syrup.

Spinach and cheese strata I read Deb’s post about hosting brunch AND sleeping in and thought, she has a point. I shouldn’t be slogging my way through brunch in desperate anticipation of when I can crawl back into bed because I’m just so tired if my guests don’t leave soon I’m going to fall asleep in the last of the omelet fixings. Plus, if I’m honest with myself, I can’t really flip omelets to save my life… they always end up looking deformed, like a five year old made them.

Brunches require something eggy and substantial, though, and this strata (also from poor defunct Gourmet magazine) seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I put it together the night before and baked it in the morning. It made my house smell lovely, but it really does have a bread-pudding texture, and I’m not sure I’m in love with bread pudding. I did like the leftovers cold the next day, though.

Latkes I made zucchini fritters for a Mediterranean-themed iftaar two years ago, and they went over like gangbusters… but they kicked my ass in the making. When I got home from the iftaar that night and saw the mess still left to clean up, I resolved never again to make anything remotely resembling a fritter because they were so obnoxious to fry, but I was desperate for one additional substantial something for brunch. Alicia convinced me that latkes reheat splendidly, so I grated some potatoes, added some sliced onion, and started with the frying.

Fresh out of the pan, these are AMAZING. I cannot believe I waited this long to try or make a latke, which basically tastes like a large homemade tater tot. I LOVE tater tots. However, I think I did a mediocre job of reheating them because the next day they were a little doughy and not nearly so delicious as they’d been the night before. I’m going to need to play around with the reheating process because the cooking process left my house smelling like Fried, and a couple hours plus a healthy dosage of Oust was pretty much necessary to make things livable again.

Breakfast apple granola crisp This granola was my attempt to healthy up brunch a little, and also to provide something sweet in case I didn’t get around to making individual lemon tarts (which I did not). I learned from Deb’s notes and added the lemon juice, sugar, and cornstarch to the apples after I’d cut my way through a pound, so my apples didn’t brown. I simply stirred to coat after every additional apple. The coconut in my crisp burned well before the 45 minutes were up (or the apples fully cooked), which I initially suspected was due to my using sweetened coconut and Deb using unsweetened. Reading through the comments the next day, I realized the coconut burned for several people, so I think I’m going to drop the temperature to 375 and cover the pan about 30 minutes into the bake next time. I served with full-fat Greek yogurt and will probably be putting this together for just myself, no guests, once I start back at work. It’s that good.

Easiest baked mac and cheese I’ve never made mac and cheese before, largely because the calorie count of the dish plus my lack of enthusiasm for making bechamel sauces inevitably steered me towards lighter, red saucier pastas. This one tastes just like classic, unfussy mac and cheese, and is the perfect recipe if you’ve got a four-year-old showing up in a few hours and you haven’t begun to make his lunch, much less his mother’s. It’s so simple it doesn’t even require pre-boiling the macaroni — just puree, stir, and bake.

Chocolate-chocolate chunk muffins I wanted to take something when I went to visit brand new baby Maya, but I’d promised Maya’s mother that I’d be over by three, and as it was just after one, I didn’t think I had time to do cookies or cake, but muffins… muffins whip together quickly and don’t require frosting, and these even had chocolate in them in case anyone wanted to have them for dessert anyway. They came together in twenty minutes and smelled just like cupcakes, but they have a distinctly non-cakey texture.  I wouldn’t want to serve them for dessert (but ate the extra one for dessert anway because they are yummy and chocolate is chocolate).

Tuna nicoise sandwich Uzmaa bought me a subscription to Everyday Food last year. The magazine shows up in my mailbox every other month, but I’ve never actually made anything out of it… until now. I’d bookmarked this sandwich as something to take to Braves games, but who had time to go to Braves games this summer? Or, at least, to plan ahead the food? Wish I had, though, because this sandwich is a hundred times better than anything I could buy at Turner Field, and much healthier too.

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar (I used regular, as that’s what I had)
1 tbsp Dijon mustard (I used spicy brown, as that’s what I had)
8-inch country-style loaf of bread
12 oz. oil-packed tuna, drained
1/4 English cucumber, thinly sliced
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 tbsp olive tapenade
1 c. packed fresh basil
2 large hard-boiled eggs, sliced
coarse salt
ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, and mustard; season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer 2 tbsp dressing to another bowl. Toss with tuna. To remaining dressing, add cucumber onion; toss to combine.

Cut bread in half horizontally. Remove most of soft interior bread. Spread tapenade on bottom half. Top with basil, then sliced eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Top with tuna, then cucumber mixture, and close sandwich.

Wrap sandwich tightly in plastic and place between two baking sheets. Weight with a heavy skillet. Let stand 1 hour (or refrigerate, up to overnight).

The dressing soaked through to the bottom half of the loaf, so I’m glad I accidentally cut the loaf unevenly so the bottom was thicker than the top. Also I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with the remaining 3/4 of the English cucumber (last-ditch options: raita or salad), but this one’s a keeper.

Photo credits: Waffles and cheese.

The Shaamir wedding has come and gone (and of course the pictures are on Facebook already), leaving us all with just enough time to turn our focus elsewhere: Ramadan. It has arrived. Quietly, this year, or possibly that was just me, since I’ve been caught up in the Shaamir extravaganza for the past couple of weeks.

On Sunday Alicia and I made jam, partly because I had oodles of fruit left over from the Shaamir festivities and partly because I think we are both just slightly nuts. Why make jam when you can buy jam? Because ours doesn’t have preservatives, or even pectin! Plus, on which supermarket shelf are you going to find blackberry plum jam where the plums are direct from Chile and the blackberries from a riverbank in Tennessee, hmm?

I meant to take pictures, but with all the boiling and taking care not to suddenly find ourselves covered in varying degrees of burns, the only photos I managed to snap were of Mars sitting in a box we thought was too small for him. (Silly humans that we are, we were wrong.) I’ll photograph Jamming: Round Two whenever it happens (because plum jam is yummy and I really do want to be Anne Shirley when I grow up) and document the recipe in case anyone else is also slightly nuts and wants to make their own, but…

On Sunday Alicia and I made jam, which ran a little longer than I expected and so I didn’t quite get to Al Farooq at 9:30 like I’d planned… and then I had to circle for a few minutes before I found a parking space in a section of the deck they’d meant to cordon off but didn’t quite get to. It was a larger-than-normal crowd for the first night of taraweeh, but I figured, hey, it’s a holiday weekend, people are taking advantage of not having to work tomorrow.

Al Farooq Masjid in midtown Atlanta. Photo courtesy of R. David Coolidge.

On Monday, it was worse. I was even later because the perverse part of me didn’t want to go, and it wasn’t until I got a text message from Randa asking if I’d left yet that I actually got in the car and drove down to midtown. I’ve never seen taraweeh is never so full on a weeknight except for when they are finishing the Quran. It was equally surprising and exhilarating because we are so blessed to have this beautiful shiny new masjid, Alhumdulillah, and to have it be FULL like it should be. What a wonderful way to start off the month of Ramadan.

Now if only those Al Farooq board members could do something about the complete and total lack of parking, that would be fabulous.

Ramadan mubarak, everyone. May we all strive to new heights this year, insha’Allah.

There are cherries at the grocery store. I love cherries. I wanted to make a cherry pie, my very first. (NO INAPPROPRIATE JOKES. This is a PG blog.) Living in the South, I have limited access to cherries, which means the plethora of sour cherry pie recipes available on the internets does me no good at all.

Alas for the demise (possibly short-lived) of Tastespotting, I thought. If only I could search its archives for sweet cherry pie recipes. I could always Google, but that opens me up to results that are not from respected and reputable food blogs, and nobody wants to spend time rolling out crust for a mediocre pie. And yet, so much do I want to make a cherry pie that I thought, okay, I’ll Google… but first I should check Smitten Kitchen to see if maybe one of her recipes is adaptable.

Today, Deb posted this:

Sweet cherry pie. A pie made of sweet cherries, the very cherries that are currently available in such abundance at my neighborhood grocery stores. Hers looks too pretty to eat; mine will not be nearly so pretty, but it is entirely possible I will spend this week making not dinner, but pie, pie, and more pie: sweet cherry, strawberry, and summer berry. After all, berries are only in season for a few short weeks…

Coming tomorrow because a) my carpal tunnel has been acting up and b) some unexpected work blindsided me this evening. I know what I want to say, though, so… tomorrow.

In other news, lemon yogurt cake is even yummier when you actually top it with the lemon/sugar syrup, but I think if I were going to adapt it into muffins, I’d leave the syrup off. And much as I love the lemon/blackberry (blueberries are currently expensive, blackberries are currently on sale, you do the math), the next time I make it, I think I’m trying the orange/chocolate combination.

When you’re out of practice with pie crust, it takes a long time to roll out, especially if maybe you didn’t add quite as much water as you should have the night before when you set it to refrigerate. And if it takes a long time to roll out and you didn’t exactly start early because you had to finish up some work first, you might end up pulling the pie out of the oven on what is technically the next day, but at least you can go straight to bed because you spent the 40 minutes of baking time cleaning up the kitchen.

Up tomorrow: monsoon season detours in the southeastern United States on its way to Asia, and Obama and Clinton duke it out in Texas and Ohio. Things are never dull, are they?

Tonight, as I was in Publix picking up for a few things for the week and chatting with Dan (and by extension, Micah) when suddenly something caught my attention, causing me to break off the conversation mid-sentence.

“What? What happened?” Dan asked in the tone of voice a person might use if he suspected the person on the other end of the telephone had just been, say, run over by a shopping cart and was currently lying incapacitated on the grocery store’s linoleum floor.

It took me a moment to respond. “Guess what I found at Publix!”

“…food?”

“Nabisco Chocolate Wafers!!!”

It seems my neighborhood Publix has decided to begin stocking the cookies I spent days hunting down this fall. I don’t know if it’s because the icebox cake is growing in popularity (because really, there’s not much else to make with these cookies, and if I’m going to eat a cookie out of a box (not much of a chance anymore because I am a self-declared snoob (not a typo) about cookies these days) it would not be a chocolate wafer) or because the manager who said he’d order them for me and call me when they were in (despite not taking my number or name) kept his word.

Still, it’s interesting. And funny. If only my camera hadn’t committed seppuku, I’d have a photograph for y’all.

In other news, can somebody please explain to me why I’m actually watching Cashmere Mafia?

Ahh, cookies. ‘Tis the season, you know.

(Although, really, I don’t understand that. Why is it the season for cookies? Why not cupcakes? Are cupcakes just a trend? Why don’t people churn out cookies by the dozen for, oh, Fourth of July? Or Arbor Day? Aren’t those perfectly good days to eat cookies?)

The last few pages of Tastespotting are full of cookie recipes. Smitten Kitchen has devoted a whole week to them. There are chips of all flavors and shapes on sale at Publix, as well as sugars brown and white, vanilla, and of course, Pam. (I have never used Pam. It kind of skeeves me out.) And I, of course I have succumbed to the tremendous peer pressure and have been baking up cookies all week long, in the evenings, mornings, afternoons. I have been measuring out my life with coffee spoons!

Mostly, though, it’s been the same cookie, Alice Medrich’s delicious and versatile chewy cocoa cookies as adapted by Orangette to include chocolate chips. I love these cookies. Love them so much I have memorized the recipe and can now mix them up while doing laundry and getting dressed for work at seven in the morning. They have become my go-to recipe for hostess gifts and sorry-I-made-you-run-that-script-eleventy-billion-times offerings and just plain yay-you-cleaned-the-garage snacks.

But, you know, sometimes you’re totally madly in love with Something and you want Something around all the time, and then suddenly one morning you wake up and go, Hmm, Something? I think we should start seeing other Things. And then you and Something are still friends, even gloriously so, but you’re now splitting your time between Something and its cousin Other Thing.

I think that’s where I am tonight after baking up two batches of chewy cocoa cookies (now with Heath bar bits!), my third such effort this week. I think it might be time to give thumbprints a whirl, or to cave and start the hunt for fleur de sel so I can finally bring about world peace.

Because honestly, I don’t know what it is, but right now, I’m not in the mood to make cakes or pie, or even cobblers or puddings. Right now, it’s cookies for me, so tomorrow’s semi-impromptu Eid bash/gathering might end up just being plates and plates of cookies.

After all, ’tis the season.

The second time around, the tarts were much more manageable, and very yummy too.

Here’s hoping your Thanksgivings were awesome… any culinary triumphs (or disasters) to report on your end?