Apple crisped

Sometimes you have a good idea. Sometimes that idea is somebody else's and they tell it to you, but you can't stop thinking about what a good idea it is until it is so familiar in your head that it becomes your idea. And then you are making apple crisp and topping it with vanilla yogurt, even though you don’t like vanilla yogurt. I’ve tried to get into yogurt before – who hasn’t tried switching to plain Greek for ten o’clock snack once or twice? I just couldn’t stick with it. But after making this apple crisp, I am back on the yogurt wagon. It’s a gateway drug. Next come the Tupperware, walnuts, and honey. Ship me to Russia. First, let’s talk about apple crisp.

Over at smittenkitchen it has been proclaimed that the crisp is not just for dessert. If this is revolution, I am Heath Ledger in the Patriot. Fruit and granola? Of course this is breakfast food! The apples go juicy and soft, like apple pie filling, while the granola browns into a chewy crust (with the help of butter and honey). Less sugar, no butterscotch sauce, ice cream swapped for yogurt. I could be writing a health blog.

On a side note, I appreciated that this recipe allowed for flexibility: I didn’t have nuts on hand, I added allspice for kicks, I measured nothing, and my crisp still turned out delicious. These are ingredients you can’t mess up.

So hear me when I say, “I made an apple crisp and topped it with vanilla yogurt.” Now think about it until you have to make your own. Viva la revolution!

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Gateway Apple Crisp (adapted from smittenkitchen)

6-ish (mixed) apples, peeled, cored and chopped

Juice of half a lemon

2 tablespoons sugar


3 tablespoons flour


1 teaspoon allspice


Freshly grated nutmeg

Freshly grated cinnamon

Salt
pinch!

4 tablespoons unsalted butter


1/4 cup honey


1/2 cup flour


2 heaping cups oats


Preheat oven to 350°F. Squeeze lemon half over apple slices. Mix in sugar, flour, allspice, and dust with freshly grated nutmeg and cinnamon for depth. Pour mixture into that 9-inch spring-form pan you bought thinking you would never use it until you realized you have no other smallish baking dish. Melt butter in a small saucepan and add honey. Combine flour and oats and melty, sticky saucepan contents. Pinch of salt! Pour this over the apples and bake until the apples are bubbling and the granola is toasty brown—about 1 hour (maybe more if your oven is like my oven and cannot regulate its temperature to cook a chicken).

Mustard greens, three ways

The colder it gets, the harder it is to shop for fruits and vegetables exclusively at the farmers’ market. I miss strawberries on my cheerios. I crave plantains like it’s my job. Eating seasonally is rough, but eating local is even harder. I can make do without asparagus until spring, but it’s clementine season and I don’t think there are any thriving groves in Chicago. Eventually I’m going to break down and buy more than the occasional lemon or lime, but I’m trying to stick to the market for now.

This week market shopping paid off as we picked up our first pound of mustard greens (not to be mistaken for “big parsley”). I know neither Alex nor I would ever have chosen mustard greens at the g-store, where the commonplace mixed-lettuce bag reigns supreme, but in a basket on a folding table, next to a big pile of sweet potatoes (because what else is there?), the mustard greens found their moment.

We’ve had three preparations of mustard greens this week, each showcasing a different element of their exceedingly pleasing character.

The first was a salad. Raw, these curly leaves are delightfully spicy and crisp, without being watery. They have more chew than your regular salad lettuce, but there is no lack of bite. I dressed the greens in olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, then added anything I found in the fridge in an attempt to disguise the raging pep of the mustard. Apples, toasted almonds, radishes, goat cheese. The apple/almond/goatcheese pairing was spot on, but not for the reason I’d thought. (The radishes were a mistake: unnecessary and out of place. I pushed them to the side (not pictured).) The toasty nuttiness, sweet juice, and creamy tang were just right with the peppery greens, intensifying the zing, not masking it. Alex described it as “light… with a bite... [and] topped with crunch.” Take what you will from that.

The real winner for me this week has been my lunch sandwich: sourdough toast, fresh goat cheese, and mustard greens. Tang and zing—bangarang! It is fantastic. It is such a simple sandwich, however, complex in flavor. The key is the quality of the ingredients. Bread, cheese, and veg are all fresh and local. These ingredients are like three fifth-grade girls with broken necklaces that say “Best” and “Friends” and “Forever.”

Thirdly, we had wilted mustard greens. The greens in this preparation are blanched in boiling water, then cooled to stop the cooking, drained of excess liquid, chopped, and sautéed in butter and garlic. (My own BFF, Sarah, sent me a recipe; clearly, I worked from different quantities.) With less than a pound of starting material, we had barely two servings of cooked greens but they were worth it. I’d describe the finished product with one word: Bitter—in a good way. On a plate with chicken in cider-mustard sauce (see what I did there?) and cheese-crusted squash, the bitter greens provided a much-needed balance. I’d go so far as to say, “They put the ‘must’ in mustard greens.” Except I don’t want to sound lame.

So I’ve discovered a new flavorite, and it’s been recipe-successipe here this week. I am planning on cheating soon, though. These are on my Christmas list:

Cranberry teacake

Let’s talk about cranberries.

I made Everyday Food’s cranberry upside-down cake as our Thanksgiving offering, and it was pretty good. But cold from the fridge, two days old: it is wonderful. I guess it needed to ripen? In any case, it couldn’t compete with pumpkin pie in the Thanksgiving dessert lineup, but slam this puppy down with tea and sandwiches and you’ve got a winner!

I worried about the cake turning out, what with the “upside-down” concept, but it flipped with ease, and a satisfying, graceful plonk. Truth be told, the hardest part was getting the batter from the bowl onto the cranberry layer in the pan (the batter was quite sticky and I had to mash it to the edges of the cake pan with my fingers).

On a cake stand, the cranberries glitter a deep, syrupy red and the whole thing becomes a shiny jewel—like in the Cave of Wonders when Abu’s eyes gleam with the reflection of that ginormous, forbidden ruby. It is as pretty the first day, as it is delicious the next. The cranberries are tart, juicy, and fantastic, while the cake is not too sweet, and dense without being dry. It really is more of a teacake than a dessert cake.

You’ll go ruby-eyed for this one: it’s right-side-up flavor, in an upside-down package.

From chicken comes broth.

I didn’t know this at the time, but the best part about roasting a chicken is the soup you make with the leftover carcass. After I failed to roast my chicken, I embarked on a new journey with the remains: Chicken broth. I plopped that medium-rare salmonella fest in my Dutch oven, filled it with water to cover, turned on the heat, and walked away. I thought about adding some herbs and aromatics—I keep onions, bay leaves, and rosemary on hand—but I didn’t want a stock, I wanted a broth.

I let the chicken simmer for about two and half hours, then I strained it with a fine sieve and transferred the liquid to Tupperware containers, storing half in the fridge and half in the freezer. Next, I picked through the bones and muck, separating out all the nice (fully cooked) chickeny bits. Fantastic: I had a homemade Make Your Own Chicken Soup kit.

And not a moment too soon. Alex has come down with what my sister refers to as a “man cold.” It’s been three weeks and he’s still coughing, and whining about it. In an effort to appease his inner little baby girl with some wholesome, genetically relevant food, I gave my chicken soup kit a Mexican twist.

When I cook (not bake), I don’t like to follow recipes. Rather, I prefer to go to experts I trust for a method (in this case, shock, I looked to Martha Stewart and Rick Bayless). Once I know how they would do it, I pare down their recipes to something that I consider more reasonable—I mean, yeah I think Rick es muy fabuloso, but I don’t keep any epazote in the house).

So I arrived at this simplified, yet delicious, chicken soup for el alma.

Tortilla soup, serves two

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided

1 small onion

1 cup shredded chicken

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon chili powder (I am a wimp—if you like more heat, up this)

3 and half cups of chicken broth (rescued from the chicken you undercooked)

Salt and pepper

Mandatory garnishes

½ cup shredded Chihuahua cheese

1 diced avocado

1 sliced lime

Tortilla strips (Take four corn tortillas, brush them with vegetable oil, cut them into strips, salt them, and bake in 400-degree oven for about fifteen minutes.)

Heat up your soup pot with some oil. Add the chopped onion. Season with a nice pinch coarse salt and a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper. When the onion is translucent, add the chili powder and tomato paste. Stir to incorporate and cook for about two minutes longer before adding the chicken broth and shredded chicken. Bring to a boil, then take the heat back and allow to simmer for however long you can. We waited about ten minutes because we were hungry.

Divide cheese between serving bowls, placing a sizeable mound at the very bottom of each. Laddle soup into bowls and garnish with tortilla strips and avocado chunks. Serve with lime wedge and Tabasco sauce.

Added bonus: we used the leftover leftover chicken, tortillas, and cheese for quesadillas. Bam! said the lady.

My First Roast Chicken

When I decided two weeks ago that I just had to roast a chicken, Alex and I had a long discussion about whose method to use. It came down to the big hitters: Martha Stewart and Laurie Colwin. In my favorite cookbook, Great Food Fast, Martha’s team lays out the high temperature/short time approach that I think most people (not in our family, mind—Mother makes dinner with her credit card) are familiar with. Laurie Colwin’s roast chicken “recipe” advocates for the chicken’s right to low and slow cooking. Although this may sound like a dry mess to those in the know, Laurie assures us that this chicken is tender and moist. Alex falls off the bone for meat that falls off the bone, so we decided to trust Laurie.

If only we hadn’t trusted our oven.

Sunday lunch is traditionally a meal we have in the late afternoon as we’ve no doubt had a large, late brunch. I like to use my extra time to try new things, serving up dishes like chicken pot-pie, mussels over linguine, and mushroom lasagna. And now I can add roast chicken to that list—well, whole chicken, in any case.

Since it didn’t seem likely that Alex and I would eat the entire chicken, we invited the Moms to join us for a Sunday feast.
At 1 pm I put my beautiful Gunthrop Farms chicken—which had been stuffed with lemon, surrounded by garlic cloves, and sprinkled with paprika, as per Laurie’s bequest—into a 300-degree oven, where it would cook for two hours. According to Laurie, “The chicken is done when the leg bone wiggles and the skin is the color of teak.” Super.

Laurie wanted me to baste my chicken every 15 minutes, which wouldn’t have been a problem, except that my chicken released no liquid for the first half hour it was in the oven. Was I supposed to add stock to the chicken pan? I wondered. Is that a common practice that people just know? I was so desperate I called my mother. I know. She told me not to fret, Laurie doesn’t believe in panicking over a meal. I added some water to the roasting pan, which soaked in some of the garlic flavor, and, as I basted, incorporated with the chicken’s natural juices. Crisis averted, I got started on my sides.

Because I was roasting a chicken, I decided to do it up. I found four colors of cauliflower at the farmers’ market, along with apples, brussels sprouts, chestnuts, and sweet potatoes. A menu was formed: applesauce (of course), roasted cauliflower with lemon, brussels sprouts sautéed in butter with chestnuts and hazelnuts, and my new best friend, sweet potato biscuits. I even bought a scalloped-edge biscuit cutter for the occasion. And also for the occasion that it was adorable and $2.

I was able to score and roast the chestnuts while the chicken was in the oven, but the cauliflower and biscuits needed higher temps and had to wait until the chicken was done out.

Around 3 pm, I checked the chicken. It had been two hours, and the leg was wiggly, although I could not tell if the breast was the color of teak. Was teak a dark wood? Or a pale yellow? I’m not a carpenter, so I swapped it out anyway (giving it time to rest, I told myself), raised the oven temp, and popped in my cauliflower and biscuit trays (the brussels sprouts were done on the stove).

At 3:45 pm, the table was set, the Moms were seated, and Alex cut into my roast to find one side was perfectly cooked, and the other a lovely apple pink (thanks Laurie) that meant only one thing: My chicken was undercooked. The oven only roasted one side of the stupid bird! And I had to microwave it. My fresh, organic, local, slow-roasted chicken had to spend its last ten minutes of cooking time in the cancer box.

Surprisingly, it didn’t seem as bad as the time I served a 5-pound pot roast to a vegetarian and a cholesterol-watcher. Probably because the Moms were there. And the biscuits. The biscuits definitely helped.

A is for Applesauce

I make my own applesauce now. No big deal. No, actually: no big deal. It’s so simple, I almost don’t want to brag about it. After you make homemade applesauce, you feel lame calling it homemade—it’s like saying you make homemade ice cubes. Even if you make them in a Tetris mold.

My personal library service (that is, my sister) recently provided me with mom-favorite Laurie Colwin’s two kitchen essay compilations: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. These books have been bedside-table staples for twenty years, and yet, in my first reading this fall, they were completely relevant to topics we continue to wrestle with as home chefs. Laurie writes about her preference for organic meats, farmers’ markets, and wholesome cooking—and she does it well. So well, in fact, that she convinced me to roast my first chicken, which, unlike my adventures in applesauce, was an undercooked exploit.

Let’s focus on my success for now: Laurie’s applesauce recipe annoyed me at first. In her own words, applesauce is “so simple to make that it almost does not require a recipe.”

I once tried to make cookies without a recipe, and I now firmly believe there are some things that you cannot wing. As a first timer, I didn’t appreciate Laurie’s relaxed attitude. “Any number of apples”? WTF, Laurie? I need answers.

But Laurie Colwin was right: applesauce is a breeze. Once you get over the seemingly lackadaisical instructions, her method is very straightforward:

1. Core and chop apples. (I use four to seven, depending on size, and I never have any leftovers.) Laurie and I agree that variety is best for flavor. I like to keep the peels on for reasons of both nutritional and indolent natures. Laurie sweetened the pot by asserting my peel-in “result will be a lovely apple pink.” Win win.
2. Put apples in pot/saucepan and add half a cup of cider.
3. Cook low and slow for about a half hour, stirring sometimes.

I deviated from the path by adding a cinnamon stick at Step 2—I recommend you do the same. Our apartment smelled like a holiday cheer factory.

I’ve made a number of batches in the last couple of weeks, all in a continuing spiral of neglect for the method. However, each batch turned out fantastic. One time I had no cider, so I added water and lemon. The next time I had no lemon, so I only added water. One time I left the heat too high, all the water evaporated, and the cinnamon stick began to burn. I added more water, reduced the heat, and ate half the ’sauce still warm on a slice of buttered toast a half hour later.

You can’t lose with applesauce. It’s the dish of champions.

We Are Semi-Veganese, If You Please

One big change in our daily diet that has kept me from updating the past few weeks: we have decided to become vegetarians! So now in addition to no dairy, we also now are trying to eat no meat. We've agreed to continue eating eggs and fish, in large part because otherwise no one would ever want to invite us over for brunch or dinner, and also because it would be nigh impossible for us to eat when on the road. (There are only so many times we can eat fresco bean burritos from Taco Bell.)

I've been wanting to make the transition for a while. We rarely eat red meat--when we did, it was always not from our kitchen. I was a vegetarian for about three years when I was a teenager, but I did a horrible job of making sure I was getting what I was missing from meat. The audiobook of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen is what finally convinced Sham that we can not eat meat and still be healthy athletes.

So I've been busy trying to make sure we Do This Thing Right.

I've checked out dozens of vegetarian cookbooks from the library and I used my iPhone to take photos of all the recipes that caught my eye. The next rainy Saturday I hope to start a catalog system of these recipes on our computer. I also bought a digital subscription to Vegetarian Times for $10.

We purchased chia seeds and corn meal so that I could make iskiate* and pinole*, which Sham had heard about so much in Born to Run. Chia seeds are a surprisingly little-known super food: a energizing muscle and tissue builder, they are also high in protein, calcium, and fatty acids like Omega-3 (see here for more)!

Our typical weeknight meal consists of plate of vegetables (peppers, spinach, tomatoes), corn tortillas heated up on the stove, salsa, and Trader Joe’s incredible 99¢ refried black beans with jalapeno peppers. We make tacos out of them until we are full. It's a yummy, healthy, and fast go-to meal, but I'd like to find other quick vegetarian meals that I can prepare parts of ahead of time.

Here are some of the vegetarian recipes I've found on line that I'm interested in trying out:
* Cauliflower Mash with Miso and Sage
* Mushroom Chili Stew
* Chickpea Sunflower Burger
* Rustic Bread & Eggplant Lasagna
* Bubble and Squeak Cakes
* Curried Red Lentil Soup with Lemon
* Quick Walnut Pâté Sandwiches with Pears and Arugula
* Super Quick Tomato Basil Cream Pasta
* Pepita Fettucini with Spinach and Cranberries
* Broccoli Lentil Soup with Roasted Pepper Coulis

Have you thought about going vegetarian? Are you a carnivore who has a favorite vegetarian dish? Do you have any expert, veteran vegetarian advice for newbies?

* denotes there will be a future post about these!

Greens and Beans Soup

Alex’s dad, Fred, is famous in the family for his soups. (He is also famous for a continuing failure known as Gummy-Bear Pie, but I’m not going to get into that because in his own words, “It was like eating a tire.”) Fred serves a soup to start almost every meal we have at his house; most of the time it’s the crowd-pleasing lentil soup with triangular chunks of bright orange carrots and salty turkey sausage. Sometimes it’s a new creation, like last week’s butternut squash and ginger soup. His best experimental soup—which has become a staple in the rotation—was brought to being when Alex’s vegetarian cousin came for dinner and he couldn’t use the old lentil standby. He calls it “Greens and Beans Soup” and not only is it delicious, it is crazy easy. Crazy like Steve Buscemi looks and easy like your mom. Boom—roasted!

I whipped up a batch last night, subbing out broccoli rabe (which I didn’t see at the farmers’ market) for kale (which I did). Fred’s recipe (displayed at the end of this post in its original) calls for three main steps: Add the onions. Add the greens. Add the beans.

Both the greens and the beans give this soup a great texture: softness from the cannellini and chew from the kale. The broth, which is naturally thickened by the beans, is minimal (a plus for me), so if you like a soupier soup, I’d recommend adding more liquid (water or stock). The best part (for the cheese eaters in the crowd) is the freshly grated parmesan that melts over the hot soup, a sharp burst of flavor blanketing the bowl like a winter’s first snowfall.

If you’re like me, and you can’t just eat soup, serve with toast (rubbed while hot with a fresh garlic clove for kick). The crispy bread will sop up the soup juice nicely and its crunch in your head will help drown out whatever it is your company is telling you about petroleum or mixed martial arts so you can focus on how super your dinner is.

GREENS AND BEANS SOUP

1-2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 bunch broccolini (aka broccoli rabe). Chop up, stems and all.

1 large onion, diced

2 cans cannellini (white kidney beans)

2 cups water

1 vegetable stock cube (or chicken stock cube)

Salt (and black pepper?)

Grated parmesan cheese

Heat oil in soup pot; add diced onion and let simmer until translucent. Add chopped broccolini and cook until it begins to wilt. Add water and stock cube. Add beans, including liquid from cans. Stir and let simmer about 20 minutes or more. Before serving, add salt (and pepper) to taste.

Serve in open soup plates with a generous spoonful of parmesan on top.

Cheese It

The theme of this post is laziness. I didn’t want to waste any energy weaving a subtle web around my point so there it is. I’m not even going to try to find a synonym for lazy so I don’t say lazy a hundred times in this post.

This week I have been lazy. Which brings me to my next point (sans a time-consuming segue): My favorite thing to make for dinner when I’m lazy is a cheese plate. Sure sometimes we just eat out, most of the time we just eat eggs, but sometimes I still feel the need to “make” something and I don’t want to dirty a pan. A cheese plate is the perfect thing. (This post is also about cheese.)

On Monday I left work ten minutes early and went down to Pastoral, my favorite cheesery. It’s a small, pleasant shop filled with fancy meats, imported jam, wine, olives, and, of course, cheese. And though I trip on the ramp coming in most visits, and yeah, sometimes I say the cheese’s place of origin instead of its name because neither are familiar to me—fine the sandwiches are overpriced, too—I still love it in there. And on Monday I loved how easy it was to put together some dinner.

Listening to Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey (which they not only play, but sell) I perused their nibble-worthy selection, settling on three cheeses: two of Prairie Fruit Farm’s goat options—one being my favorite, a fresh goat cheese which is creamy and fluffy and delightful—and a crumbly Little Darling for sharpness.

At home I sliced a demi baguette on a diagonal (also found at Pastoral) and dug through the fridge for acceptable accompaniments to round out my supper. Left-over chicken, cabbage and apple slaw, a jar of local honey, and some banging pickles all found their way onto my biggest cutting board, which makes any cheese arrangement look polished. Dinner was served.

Cheese can be dressed up or dressed down, served for one or many, an appetizer or a main—if you aren’t lactose intolerant, it can be your miracle dinner.

I’ve chronicled my culinary ventures for a year in my wildly successful flickr series, Food I eat. I eat food. So in addition to a snapshot of Monday night’s laze-fest, I’ve included two of my other most successful cheesings. I recommend the obvious choices: your favorite cheeses, fresh fruit, crisp veg, nuts, deli meats, jellies, and a really big cutting board.

Cup o' Tea!

In addition to edible messes, Hot Mess Garlic Press is also interested in crafty chaos!

A few weeks ago, I made a birthday gift for my father-in-law, who drinks a lot of tea and will only drink said tea from clear glasses. While rummaging through the internet for handmade gifts appropriate for men, I was very excited when I discovered this tutorial for creating personalized, etched glasses.

The hardest part of this craft? Finding simple, clear glasses appropriate for tea! I finally scooped these up from World Market.

I wasn't able to follow Martha's guide exactly, since the Michael's I went to in Chicago's South Loop cannot legally sell etching cream, but I adapted the instructions by using glass paint, which I purchased at Starvin' Artist , a local art supply store in Oak Park.

I found a great H via Google image search, printed the image, cut out the H and taped the resulting stencil to the glass. Then I painted in the silver, let it sit to dry for 15 minutes, removed the stencil, and painted the black border around the letter. I repeated the painting process on the second glass, reusing the stencil.

Once the paint had dried for 24 hours, I put the glasses into a cool oven. After turning the oven on to 325 degrees, I left the glasses there for 45 minutes. The baking sets the paint and makes the glasses dishwasher safe.

I plain to give only handmade presents to almost all of our large, extended family this upcoming holiday season. But of course that means I won't be able to post those projects until the end of the year! Sad face goes here.

Until then! What's the best craft you've ever made? What would you create tomorrow, if you had the time, the tools, and the materials? Where do you get inspired when you're looking for inventive crafty ideas?

Painted Personalized Glasses

Time: less than 2 hours to paint the glasess, 24 hours for paint to dry, 45 minutes in the oven to bake and set the paint

Tools/Materials: stencil, glass paint, paint brush, glass(es), tape, functioning oven

Sweet potato biscones

I’ve had two difficulties with our transition to shopping for fruits and vegetables exclusively at the farmers’ market. One, I never seem to get enough food to last us to the next market, and two, I find myself in a roasting rut.

Roasted potatoes, roasted squash, roasted cauliflower, roasted brussel sprouts—all delicious, yes, but sometimes I just want more from my vegetables. I came to the cross section of these two problems when I realized that two days from Saturday’s market I had exactly one sweet potato—and I didn’t want to roast it.

Today was the first cold day in October. We’ve had chilly and wet—and surprisingly warm—but today, scarves became more than accessories. Winter snuck in to remind us that Chicago is about to get serious. Don’t get the wrong idea, I didn’t zip the lining into my trench. However, I did consider it.

Enter sweet potato biscuits. Something warm, something savory, something that can be made with just one sweet potato.

A quick search through Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food app and I had a recipe. The bad news: My pantry was not stocked with all of the ingredients. I did like Martha and got crafty.

Martha’s recipe calls for chilled sweet potato puree, “see page 233.”

…So I boiled The One until tender, mashed it with a fork (same pot points), and set it on the porch to cool. Chilled sweet potato puree, check.

While the SPP C-ed, I started measuring my drys. Flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt… light-brown sugar! Oh, Martha. You think you can fool me so easily? Joy the Baker, for the win.

Next, Martha really got serious: buttermilk. Cue the lightning and thunder, Jay from last night’s Halloween episode of Modern Family. Not so bad, actually. Turns out you can make buttermilk from vinegar and regular milk. Bangarang, Rufio!

Thus, with all my components manufactured I began compiling. Mix up the dough, knead it (read: smush it together on your too-small cutting board), roll it out (smush it in a downwards motion), cut the dough into rounds (ahem, tear off regular-ish sizes and smush them into rounds), shove together on baking sheet (no really, that’s what she recommends), brush with butter, and bake.

The twenty-minute oven period is long enough to sweep the eighth-biscuit worth of crumbs off the floor and do just enough dishes to make your request that your boyfriend finish the washing reasonable.

Out of the oven and split in half, the biscuits are beautifully golden and flecked with orange, a tangerine reminder of their humble origins. I topped one with butter and drizzled it liberally with honey. It was quite dense in a way that I liked, almost like a scone (maybe a factor of my kneading technique). The butter melted into the hot biscone, creating a tender, salty inside while the top was slightly crispy and sticky from the sweet, floral honey.

Martha sure does know a thing or two about baking.

Chicken potfantastic

“If an egg isn’t cooked the way you want it, it’s the most disappointing thing. The only thing I know as disappointing is a bath that’s not hot enough.”

That’s straight from the gob of Nigella Lawson, famous Brit cook and jean-jacket wearer, and I completely agree. I’ve experienced both of these disappointments in the last week, but she was there to understand and pick me back up. I sought comfort and Nigella delivered with her Chicken Mushroom and Bacon Pie.

Her recipe is lovely, however I made a few adjustments, adapting to what I had on hand. No Marsala, for one. Love of carrots, for another. What I enjoyed most about this recipe was the ease of making it. Nigella really is serious about there being “no fuss” in her food. Besides two ramekins, the cooking is all done in one pot. It’s also a terrific two-person meal—I get tired of so many delicious dishes meant for four, six, and eight.

I think that what made this potpie extra terrific was the quality of ingredients. All the veggies came from the farmers’ market. I’m okay with sounding snobby because when you peel a real carrot, the whole kitchen smells sweet, fresh, and slightly spicy. It’s hard to go back to the dry, woody stalks of the grocery store. I bought the puff pastry at Trader Joe’s because I found the simplicity of the ingredient list calming. It’s reassuring to see flour, butter, and salt as the top three components. We got the bacon and chicken from CityProvisions, a delicatessen that specializes in local farms and fresh food. The bacon (which was house-cured) was intoxicatingly smoky and the Gunthrop Farms chicken (which, like all of CityProvision’s meat, was labeled with its farm of origin) tasted, to borrow a term from Julia Child, more chickeny than that of the grocery store.

Your spoon crackles through the flaky top crust, revealing a gooey underside and provoking a deeply smoky steam. It dips into the thick filling and arises coated with a rich gravy, carrying chicken and veggies, all of which are tender and flavorful. It’s the kind of meal you eat through foggy glasses, burning your tongue on most bites, not caring to slow down.

I lit my jack-o-lantern for ambiance and enjoyed Nigella’s chicken potpie as a perfect Sunday supper in late October.

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Chicken Potpie for two

3 strips of bacon, cut into pieces

1 clove of garlic, diced

2 cups cremini mushrooms, quartered

½ carrot, diced

1 chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces

2 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves separated from stems

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/4 cups hot chicken stock

½ tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

½ tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

1 (13-ounce) 9 by 16-inch sheet all-butter ready-rolled puff pastry (defrosted)

Start by preheating the oven to 425 degrees F. Fry up the bacon pieces in a large saucepan until beginning to crisp, then add the mushrooms, carrots, and garlic.

As veggies soften, toss the chicken with flour and thyme, then melt the butter in the pan. Add the coated chicken and the remaining flour that did not stick to the chicken. When the chicken has begun to brown and the flour has cooked into the butter, add the stock, Worcestershire, and balsamic. Stir to incorporate, allowing the flour to thicken the sauce. Nigella then directs you to “let this bubble away for about 5 minutes.”

Cut a thin strip of pastry to make a rim on each of your ramekins. That is, lay the strip over the edge of the ramekin and fold it down over the sides. I did mine in three sections, overlapping the strips. Next, cut a lid-sized circle to drape over the top of the pie.

Fill the pastry-rimmed ramekins with the thickened chicken and vegetable mixture and top with the pastry lid. Use a fork to seal the edges.

Cook in oven for 20 minutes, until they “puff up magnificently.”

Souper sweet Saturday

I put two cookbooks through the rigors of the Miller test kitchen: the recently released Soups and Sides by Catherine Walthers and seemingly author-less oldie but goodie Cookies! A Cookie Lover's Collection.

Both cookbooks have a hearty variety of recipes all thoughtfully organized in useful groupings. I scanned them all and found myself needing more scraps of paper to indicate must-try recipes because almost all are tempting. Perhaps a first, but I didn't notice any recipes in either cookbook that made me want to turn the page because I had no idea who would want to make—or eat!—the shown foods.

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Soups and Sides ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I made "Cauliflower Soup with Great Hill Blue Cheese" with "Parsley Sauce" (modified per Walthers' "optional" suggestion, swapping out blue cheese for sharp cheddar—creamy and yummy!, p. 64); "Potato-Leek Soup" (perfect exactly as she advises you make it—tasty and straight-forward!, p. 69); "Mexican Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Corn, and Edamame" (my only change was to not add my food nemesis cilantro—delish and quick!, p. 88); and, "Lime Spice Cookies" (an easy-to-make, simple shortbread-esque tea cookie with an unexpected but delightful hint of lime—special and a new fave!, p. 198). The time listed for each step to make in each of these recipes was accurately described and not exorbitant. Any of these dishes would be do-able, even in a pinch after a long day at work. The servings were also on the money. I only wish she had provided ballpark nutritional information. Most of the recipes, save for the butter-tastic cookies, seem healthy enough.

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Cookies! A Cookie Lover's Collection ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
I made "Choco-Cherry Macaroons" (these were so simple to make and they smelled like heaven because of the recommended addition of almond extract, p. 67) and "Crunchy Butterscotch Chip Cookies" (bizarre in texture but über-addictive in the taste department—definitely a keeper!, p. 105). I need to invest in a new oven thermometer because the cooking time for each was more than listed, but that was the only snag I encountered. The nice thing about all of the cookie recipes in this book is that they don't require too many odd-ball, not-in-your-pantry ingredients. Plus, every single darn cookie has a big and beautiful picture so you know exactly what you'll wind up with when you're done. Hurrah for retro cookbooks with gratuitous photography budgets!

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I recommend both of these cookbooks without reservations. Queue up Soups and Sides for your cookbook wish list and troll your library for their old copy of Cookies!. Neither will disappoint you—or, the people you make eat the treats you cook using recipes from them.