Weekly Dish

One of the challenging things about cooking during the holidays is that you’re also trying to do a million other things at the same time: shop, wrap, decorate, plan, attend parties, not to mention whatever other daily activities you have that don’t stop just because the holidays are near. For us, besides the daily what-to-fix-for-dinner dilemma, that busyness also can interfere with one of the things we love to do, which is to have people into our home for meals.

This pie serves two major functions for me: it gives me something quick but yummy to take when we’re invited to dinner and something to make in a hurry when guests are on their way and I haven’t planned dessert. The best things about this recipe are that you almost always have everything to make it in your pantry and you can mix it up in about 10 minutes and pop it into the oven to bake while you’re having dinner.

I got this recipe from my Aunt Cindi, who wrote it on one of those brightly colored index cards in the Aunts’ Recipe Book; she cites Cotton Country as her source. I’m pretty sure it’s the Monroe Junior League version, but I can’t be sure (this is how recipes develop in the South: very organically!). At any rate, I’ve amended the original Fudge Pie recipe to dress it up a bit for the holidays.

Almond Fudge Pie

1 cup sugar

1 stick butter, softened

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

Dash salt

1/3 cup cocoa

1 1/2 t. almond extract

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1 refrigerated pie crust

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cook the pie shell for 5 minutes. Reduce the oven’s temperature to 300 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until combined thoroughly. Add everything else except the almonds, and beat until the mixture is thick and creamy. Pour into the pie shell; sprinkle almonds on top. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the center jiggles only slightly. If you want to be really fancy, you can serve the pie with a dollop of amaretto-spiked whipped cream. It’s also rich and delicious enough to stand on its own, especially with a strong cup of coffee. 

I’ve been tagged by Kalyn to tell you all about my ten favorite foods. Although ten is not many, I will do my best. In no particular order, here they are:

#1 Pizza! I love pizza of all kinds, especially homemade.

Here’s one with ham, artichokes, capers, and feta cheese that I made a couple of months ago. Perhaps my love of pizza has to do with the fact that it’s so versatile, or maybe I’m just a sucker for bread products of any kind. At any rate, I do love it so.

#2 Sweet Potatoes Evidenced by my self-proclaimed sweet potato week during Thanksgiving, my love for this tuber is no secret. For one thing, they are my favorite color. For another, they can take so many different forms: sweet, salty, baked, roasted, fried. My mom brought me a big bag of them for Thanksgiving, so there may be more sweet potato recipes on the way…beware!

#3 Mangoes Aaahhh, the mango. The fruit love of my life. I love these all by themselves when they are just ripe, super sweet and spicy, but not mushy. One of my favorite ways to dress them up is by pouring a little coconut milk in the bowl with the slices and letting the flesh soak it up. Yum…summer, hurry up! Why don’t I live in a tropical climate again?

#4 Pad Thai This spicy noodle dish has been one of my favorites ever since I was a waitress at the (sadly now closed) Brick-Oven Cafe in Jackson, Mississippi, a long time ago. As a matter of fact, when my husband proposed to me, Pad Thai from the Brick-Oven is the food he used to get me to say yes. It worked! This one here is my attempt to copy that version I originally learned to love.

#5 Boiled Shrimp One of the traditions in my family is that for your birthday dinner, you get to pick what we eat. I always choose boiled shrimp because my birthday is in June, and boiled shrimp are, to me, the perfect summer food. I love them with cocktail sauce, a simple salad, French bread, and really cold white wine. Have I mentioned already that I’m a summertime girl?

#6 Citrus One of the things I’m learning about my tastes, even as I write this up, is that I love contrast. I love oranges that are sweet and sour at the same time, and I like any dessert with (real) lemon that plays the sour effectively against something sweet (especially using butter, like in really good lemon squares. I need to post a recipe for those soon.) With the exception of garlic, lemons are probably the food item you’re most likely to find in my kitchen if you pop in for a random visit. I rarely am without at least a half of one in my produce drawer.

#7 Oysters I have always loved raw oysters, even as a child, and my dad would often buy them for us to swallow down with Saltine crackers, a squeeze of lemon and salt. Enjoying food in its simplicity doesn’t get any better than that for me.

#8 Cheese Another food I like to eat in its unadulterated simplicity, I can’t think of a cheese I don’t like. When we get the chance and the weather is nice, David and I love to have a picnic with good cheese, bread, and wine. We really are easy people to please.

#9 Peaches My second favorite fruit, one that also appears on my annual birthday dinner at Mom and Dad’s. My mom makes this fabulous dessert with a cream cheese layer, peaches in gelatin, and a pecan crust. When they come in season, I promise to make it and share the recipe. Other than in that dish, though, I love peaches with the tiniest sprinkle of sugar and a spoonful of cream. Simplicity and summer, these seem to be the things I love.

#10 Anything Sweet and Salty Again, contrasts are really what drive my passion for food, but this one is the one that kills me. I don’t snack too often because when I do, I’m not prone to stop until all of the snack food is gone. Here’s why: snacking for me means eating something sweet and then something salty, and the cycle never ends. This is the reason I love this Christmas Cracker candy–it is both all in one. Plus it is super easy to make (10 minutes, start to finish), fun to take to parties (people can never figure out exactly what it is), and makes a lovely gift. If you don’t believe me, you can just ask Chef Kristy. I sent her some for Blogging By Mail

Alright, so now you know what 10 foods I like the most! The 5 people I tag to tell us about their top 10 foods are, in a spirit of community, the last 5 people (not related to me) who left comments on my blog:

1. Chef Kristy, who wrote a lovely post about the package I sent her.

2. Rorie at Milk & Honey, whose blog I recently discovered through the delicious-sounding muffin-ish cookies she made for the Cookie Swap.

3. S’kat at Skat and the Food, who, from the looks of things started her blog around the same time I did, but I’m just now discovering it.

4. Chanit at Mom’s Recipes and More, who writes about very interesting food from Israel. Her blog is also new to me through the Cookie Swap.

5. Heather at Eating for One, who recently sent me a package full of delightful goodies.

Happy Meme-ing, everyone!

And here’s the recipe for the candy pictured at the top, as promised. Just don’t make it when it’s humid or raining; the caramel will be chewy instead of hard.

Christmas Cracker Candy

1 cup brown sugar

2 sticks butter (preferably salted)

Saltine or other soda crackers

1 12-ounce package chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil and coat with cooking spray. Lay the crackers side by side in a single layer on the foil. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the brown sugar and stir until it’s dissolved. Boil for 3 minutes without stirring. Pour carefully over the crackers, making sure to coat them evenly. Bake at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top, and spread to coat as they melt (carefully, so as not to mix with the caramel). Cool to room temperature, and then wrap in wax paper and foil and freeze. I love to eat it really cold, straight out of the freezer, but you can also let it return to room temperature. I make batches of this to freeze, a few at a time, and then give it away for Christmas. Of course, I always make enough to cure my sweet-salty cravings too!

P.S. It’s time to vote for your favorite cookies from the Cookie Swap. Jennifer and Alberto have posted the round-up, and you can vote for your top 3 picks by emailing them at cookieswap@gmail.com. Remember those spicy sweet potato ones with the sticky maple orange glaze…?

Alright, so the first three Paper Chef ingredients this month were not so exciting for me. Carrots are cute and sweet, but in my opinion, the best thing about them is their color (I love orange) and their nutritional benefits. Rice is flexible at least, and offers the possibility for many adaptations. Anchovies, though?? I am no anchovy fan. Tiny fishes packed in oil: with the exception of a Puttanesca sauce I made once, anchovies have not had a place in my pantry. The last ingredient, however, I found intriguing: “Something from the other side of the world that helps make this dish a celebration for you.” Hmmm…the other side of the world…celebration…maybe I can find a way to make this work.

So, here are the things I’m celebrating through my entry: 1. This holiday season. I love this time of year, and I love to throw a good party. This one will be my warm-up. 2. The sheer cultural variety of food traditions in the world, represented visibly by the lovely montage of culinary prowess I find in the international food blogging community. 3. People who contribute to this cultural variety in my personal life. 4. The opportunity to clean out my fridge and pantry. 5. The end of my first semester as a Ph.D. student, without the stress of which I’m sure I would not have enough pent-up creative energy to pull this off!!

How do I plan to celebrate these things, you ask? Why, through a Clean-Out-My-Fridge Holiday Cocktail Party, using the Paper Chef ingredients plus whatever I have on hand, including foods from around the world that remind me of people and cultural traditions I cherish, of course!

Actually, I had both rice and carrots already, so I picked up a tin of anchovies from the market and set about examining the culinary contents of my kitchen. Although it is possible to pinpoint the exact location of “around the world” from you, as my husband cleverly discovered, I chose to think of the term more broadly. The three places from around the world I wanted to make sure I represented are: India, as my lovely office-mate has recently arrived in the U.S. from Calcutta, and brings with her many of the country’s delicious culinary traditions (which she has been kind enough to share!); Italy, where my husband and I first learned to love food and wine together (a long time ago!); and Australia, home of this month’s distinguished Paper Chef judge, who always manages to produce some of the most unusual and creative food I’ve ever seen.

India would be easy: I usually keep basmati rice, Indian curry paste, and spices on hand. In fact, I recently bought some whole cardamom pods that were on sale at my grocer…maybe they could be of use.

Italy shouldn’t be too hard either. I cook Italian food quite a bit, and I found just the thing: half a container of mascarpone cheese left from a sauce I made last week!

Australia: Hmmm. This would be trickier. After searching my pantry high and low and researching traditional Australian ingredients, I was pretty certain I’d have to go back to the store and forsake my self-made rules. Rats.

But wait! On the wine rack there…isn’t that chardonnay made in…yes, Australia! Hooray–Yellow Tail to the rescue!

With the ingredients all in place and my party hat on, here is the menu I created:

Drunken Australian Rice Cakes with Carrot Coulis

Cardamom-Spiced Basmati Rice Pudding with Anchovy Butter

Wontons with Poblano-Mascarpone Filling

Orange Coconut Sticky Rice Brulèe

(more…)

For the combination Sugar High Friday/Is My Blog Burning? Cookie Swap, I bring you a cookie recipe in keeping with the Week of the Sweet Potato. These Spicy Sweet Potato Cookies with Maple-Orange Glaze are very dense and moist on the inside, almost cake-like, and crispy on the outside. They are a combination of my favorite accoutrements for the sweet potato when it makes its appearance in a dessert dish: orange, maple syrup, and a plethora of spices. I made these for a certain package that should be arriving any day now–I hope they held up in the mail!

What I love about the dough is that it is very flexible; you can drop the cookies by spoonfuls to get a simple cookie-shape (the ones immediately above are an example), or you can roll out the dough and cut your own shapes (like the little snowflakes at the top). The glaze is a simple powdered sugar one, but the fresh orange juice makes it really delicious. Please, if you make these cookies, squeeze the juice right from an orange–it makes a big difference.

SPICY SWEET POTATO COOKIES WITH MAPLE-ORANGE GLAZE

For the cookies:

1 c. brown sugar

2 sticks butter

1 T. maple syrup

1 c. sweet potato, mashed

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. allspice

1/2 t. cinnamon

2 1/2 c. flour

1 t. grated orange rind (from one orange)

For the glaze:

1 c. powdered sugar plus more to thicken, if necessary

Juice of 1 orange

1 T. butter, softened

1 T. maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cream the butter, sugar, and maple syrup until light and fluffy. Beat in the sweet potato. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl; add to the potato mixture with the mixer running on low. Mix until just combined. Roll the dough into a ball and either drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, pressing them flat with the back of your spoon, or refrigerate the dough to roll out later. (It will be sticky, and if you are going to cut shapes from it, you’ll want it to be a little firmer.) Bake each batch of cookies for about 8-10 minutes, or until the outsides are nice and brown and they don’t give too much when you touch them. While they’re baking, mix up the glaze. I just use a fork to combine the ingredients, but if you want a super-smooth glaze, you might like to use your mixer. Beat together the butter and maple syrup. Add the powdered sugar, a little bit at a time, beating continuously, until you have a thick paste. Add the juice from the orange, stirring until the mixture is spreadable or pourable, depending on how you like your glaze. To thicken, just add powdered sugar. If you look at the pictures, I used thicker glaze for the round cookies (more sugar) and a thin, pourable one for the snowflakes. The thick glaze will retain its white color; if it’s thin, it will be translucent. When the cookies are finished baking, remove them from the oven to cool. Let them cool slightly before glazing, or the glaze will melt and run right off. I think these would also be good as sandwich cookies, with an orange cream cheese icing in the middle. I might try that next time. Until then, happy cookie swap!

If you’re still looking for the perfect dessert to take to Thanksgiving dinner, I highly recommend this one. Especially if you have cooked sweet potatoes on hand, this pie is easy to make, and wow, is it good. This recipe belonged to my great-grandmother, and my mom has taken on the task of making it every Christmas. As soon as the weather turned cool, (and I began buying and cooking sweet potatoes like a mad woman) I craved this pie.

My affection for this particular recipe has much to do with my memory, I know; it’s been several years since my great-grandmother was here to share the holiday with us. But also, I think this pie does what all of my favorite recipes do: it relies on the simplicity of the ingredients. The sweet potato flavor is highlighted by the orange zest, and those are really the only flavors you taste. The evaporated milk or cream imparts a fluffiness to the potatoes that enhances their own texture. My mom serves it with a dollop of slightly sweetened cream and freshly grated nutmeg, and I like it warm or cold. Really, as far as pies go, this one for me is hard to beat.

NANNY’S SWEET POTATO PIE

Nanny is famous for writing down cryptic recipes. I’m going to type it up exactly as my mom recited it to me over the phone, and then I’ll explain what I actually did when I made the pie. Her instructions:

1-2 potatoes

1 can Carnation

2 eggs

Grated orange rind

Vanilla

Salt

3/4 cup sugar

Whip the potatoes, Carnation, and eggs; then add sugar. Add vanilla and salt. Bake 15 min. at 375, 30 minutes at 350.

What I did:

Bake a pie shell for 10 minutes at 425; remove from oven and reduce the temperature to 375 degrees. I used 2 small potatoes (about 2 cups of cooked, mashed potato) and 1 cup of whipping cream instead of Carnation (because I couldn’t figure out whether she meant sweetened condensed or evaporated milk. Mom says evaporated, but the cream worked fine too). Whip the potatoes, cream, and eggs together in the mixer. Then, add the sugar, the grated rind of 1 orange, 1/2 t. of vanilla, and 1/4 t. salt. Whip for a couple of minutes. The mixture should be very light and fluffy. Pour the filling into the slightly baked pie crust, and return to the oven. Bake for 15 minutes; then reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for 30 minutes more. The pie should be set so that it jiggles only slightly in the center when you shake it. (It will firm up as it cools, but I can never wait, so my pieces are always falling apart a little bit.)  Serve as you wish, hot or cold, with whipped cream and nutmeg, or just some grated orange rind on top, with coffee, tea, or a tall glass of milk. I’m telling you, you really can’t go wrong.

Last weekend, I went to a fall party for my department. We were assigned dishes to bring, based on our rank in the program; first-year PhD’s were assigned dessert. I had a lot going on that day, and I didn’t need the stress of trying something new, so I made this pound cake. It is simple, fast, and unfailingly good. I’ve never messed up this cake, and I’ve made it a lot. It turned out perfectly, as usual, and when I arrived, I was immediately glad I made it.

Graduate students in English are apparently not known for their culinary skills. The other desserts there were small and in plastic wrappers: Little Debbie Snack Cakes! The side dishes consisted mostly of chips and some sour cream dip, although one other southern girl did bring a hot green bean casserole. I have occasionally been accused of food snobbery, but come on. Little Debbie? The moral to this story is: when you go to an unknown social function, always take something you don’t mind eating for dinner. I had three pieces of cake and some red wine. All in all, not a bad night.

Here’s how you make the cake:

One Bowl Pound Cake

3 cups sugar

1 cup butter

6 eggs

3 cups cake flour

1 cup buttermilk

2 t. almond extract

1 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in the mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour and buttermilk alternately, with the mixer on low, until the mixture is thoroughly combined. Stir in flavorings. Pour into a greased bundt pan. Bake for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, but check frequently towards the end. The only trick to this cake is making sure you don’t cook it too long. When a knife comes out almost-clean and the top is beginning to brown, it’s done. Turn out onto a rack to cool, and dust with powdered sugar.

You know that feeling you get when it’s about an hour after dinner and you just NEED something sweet? Whenever that craving strikes at our house, I usually ransack the pantry, knowing all the while that I’ll not find anything. But, if, by some chance, I happen to have a banana and some ice cream, my night gets a whole lot better.

Aunt Jennifer, for whom I was named, gave this recipe to me in the Aunts’ Recipe Book when I got married. On the recipe card beside the title–Bananas Foster–she wrote in parentheses: our favorite dessert! After I made it the first time, I knew why. She and I share that love of very, very sweet things, and this dessert fits that description perfectly. If you don’t like your treats ultra-sweet, this is not the dish for you. But, if you do, here’s the easiest dessert I know how to make! I copy the recipe verbatim from Aunt Jennifer because it has not once failed me:

Bananas Foster

bananas, split lengthwise

cup of brown sugar

1/2 stick butter

dash of cinnamon

Melt butter in pan. Add brown sugar and stir until smooth and un-grainy. Put bananas in gently and heat through. Sprinkle cinnamon on. Serve over really good vanilla ice cream.

After experimenting with the lace cookie recipes used for the sherbet dessert (below), I tried a few other recipes and came up with my own. This one I like because the cookies are pliable when they’re warm, so you can form them into different shapes. For this dessert, I made a filling with mascarpone cheese and raspberries, and shaped the cookies into little cups.

They are more caramel-y in texture and flavor than either of the other two recipes, probably because they’re mostly butter and sugar. The nuts add a nice layer of flavor too. These cookie cups could easily hold ice cream or other custard-based desserts; they make a lovely presentation and taste good too. I think of this dessert kind of like a grown-up ice cream cone.

The inspiration comes from Paula Lambert’s The Cheese Lover’s Cookbook & Guide. This recipe is a simpler variation of her Lace Cookies with Orange-Mascarpone Filling and Raspberries. Here’s my version:

Nutty Lace Cookies

1 cup pecans

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 T. flour

1 t. salt

1 stick butter, melted

1 t. vanilla

1 egg, beaten

Mix the pecans and sugars in a food processor until the nuts are finely ground. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until well-mixed. Refrigerate the dough for an hour. Drop spoonfuls onto a greased, foil-lined cookie sheet. They will spread like crazy, so make sure they are very far apart (I only get about 5 or 6 on a cookie sheet). Bake at 325 degrees for about 7 minutes per batch. When the cookies are done, let them cool until the foil is cool enough to handle (I have to use oven mitts). Tear the foil between cookies, and form each one into a cup shape. You can set them in ramekins or muffin tins to help them hold their shapes. When completely cool, peel off foil.

Raspberry-Mascarpone Cream

4 ounces mascarpone cheese

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

3 T. framboise or other raspberry liqueur

1/2 cup raspberries, plus more for garnish

1/4 cup sugar, divided

Toss the raspberries with 1/8 cup of sugar; set aside. In a mixer, beat the whipping cream and mascarpone cheese until soft peaks form. Add the liqueur, 1/8 cup of sugar, and 1/2 cup raspberries.

To assemble: In shallow dishes, place cookie cups. Top with a scoopful of the mascarpone mixture and a handful of raspberries.