Good Recipes (And Cooks Who Share Them!)

"There is nothing like a good old recipe.

If it has lasted, then it is good."

-- Yotam Ottolenghi

My grandma's cookbook 11-18-14

"I hate the notion of a secret recipe.

Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared --

that is how they improve, are changed, how new ideas are formed.

To stop a recipe in its tracks, to label it 'secret'

just seems mean."

-- Molly Wizenberg

I don't use recipes a lot. 

Recipes are rules, and, well.

Recipes 11-18-14

Anyway. When I cook, mostly I just wing it. I follow principles as a general guide, but after that I like to wander off the trail and explore the landscape on my own.

Unless I'm baking. 

Baking is an exact science. It involves chemical reactions and precise measurements and combinations of ingredients and heat and cold and time.

So when I bake, I definitely stick to the recipe.

I have a shelf loaded with cookbooks full of recipes and a shoe box stuffed with hundreds more. Some of them are hand-written from friends and family, others are printed from the Internet or taken from television chefs or ripped from magazines. 

You can tell easily which recipes are my favorites -- the trusty old reliable ones that I return to again and again -- because that's where the pages in the books stick together. They're the ones on the food-stained and spattered recipe cards. They're the ones copied onto sheets of notebook paper that's been handled and folded in half so many times that the paper is soft and delicate as tissue.

One of my favorites is a recipe for Madeleine cookies that a French chef jotted down on an order ticket and sent to me via our waiter.

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying I popped my pecan pie cherry yesterday.

I baked an absolutely perfect pecan pie using a recipe from a Food Network cook after watching her bake it on TV.

Pecan pie 11-18-14

Pie crust has always been a bugaboo for me. Because if the pastry isn't good, then the pie isn't good. I make fine, serviceable pie crust. But I've always wanted to be able to make a crust so tender and flaky and buttery that it makes your eyes roll back.

It finally happened. I made a perfect crust. 

That fucker was as tender, golden, flaky and buttery as shit.

And it wouldn't have happened if someone else wasn't generous enough to share her time-tested recipe.

A tender flaky crust! 

True confessions, though.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly. 

It called for a cup and a half of cold shortening, and I'd only chilled a cup. So I added a stick of cold butter instead, and it worked beautifully. And I'd venture to say my tweak made the recipe even better, because it made it buttery.

Thanksgiving is around the corner. And Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks, sure, but it's also a good time to do some plain old giving.

Good recipes will be trotted out and prepared on dinner tables across the country. If someone asks you for your recipe, don't be a Selfish McStingy Pants. Cough it up. Share it. Write it down for whoever it is. Let them know where you got it from. 

Good recipes have history. And that's part of the appeal -- knowing the path a recipe has traveled, whose hands and kitchens it has passed through. I love using a recipe that someone else gave me, especially if it's in their own handwriting. It's like looking at an old photograph. It's nostalgic and special. It makes me think of that person and evokes memories of a time and a place and the food we shared, and that feels good.

It tastes good too.

**(For the pecan pie recipe I used, click here.)**

Pie

"We must have a pie.

Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."

-- David Mamet, Boston Marriage

Blueberry pie 10-23-14

"Never promise to make a pie and

fail to deliver on that promise."

-- Kate Lebo, A Commonplace Book of Pie

According to family lore, my favorite baby food as an infant was something called "blueberry buckle."

Apparently I lapped the stuff up.

After the trauma of watching the family dog devour my birthday cake at the tender age of 4, I started requesting pie for my mid-summer birthday.

True to form, I always chose blueberry.

My grandma was a cracker-jack pie baker. Her pies didn't always look perfect, but they were always delicious. She judged other women's pies by the "shortness" of their crusts. She'd nudge at it with the edge of her fork, and if it flaked off just right, she'd pronounce, "That's short!"

(Short, in pie-speak, means flaky and tender. Hence the use of "shortening" in the crust.)

Apple pie was Grandma's specialty. But when I asked for blueberry, I got it.

I distinctly remember my older sister bitching a blue streak about the fact that I'd ordered up blueberry pie instead of cake for one of my birthdays. She didn't want to eat it because she was afraid it might stain her teeth. (The same sister bitched about and then puked up grandma's Rum Cake on the carpet at the end of our twin beds one Christmas Eve.)

We all assured her that her teeth would be fine. So she reluctantly ate some. Then she asked my dad if her teeth were blue, and he said "Oh my God! They're black!"

She lost her shit for days.

It was awesome.

I don't bake a lot of pies. Cake always seems easier, less complicated, less messy. You can make a pretty passable cake from a box mix and everybody likes it.

But pie? Pie is a religion.

I happen to only believe in fruit pies. I will not explain myself. It's just my firm belief  that a pie crust filled with pudding or gelatin or ice cream or pumpkin or congealed corn syrup or meringue or cooked cheese is just plain yucky. Also, pie must be baked. Cold "refrigerator" pies are caca poo poo. Just my opinion.

Give me fruit pie all day long -- cherry or blueberry, apple or peach, rhubarb or raspberry.

Also, frozen, store bought pie is the devil's work and Marie Callender is one of his minions. And canned pie filling is an abomination of desolation. Frozen, store bought crust is just plain sinful, and not in a good way. And any pie filled with fruit and custard mixed together is from the very center of the pit of Hell. Someone once served me "mock" apple pie with a filling made from green tomatoes, crushed Ritz crackers and cinnamon. It tasted like Satan's asshole.

If you lack the time or talent to bake your own homemade pie, at least purchase one that comes from an actual bakery and not a box.

I've known plenty of women who boast about how great their pies are. They often look plenty attractive on the outside, but are flavorless on the inside.

I'll take tasty and ugly over pretty and bland every time.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that Leo asked me to bake him a pie yesterday. So naturally, I went back to my roots and made blueberry.

I make no pretense of being a master pie baker. But I did kind of surprise myself with this one. It turned out alright. It was still a little warm when I cut into it.

It smelled pretty damn good.

It looked pretty damn good.

It tasted pretty damn good.

And watching my kid devour three whole slices made me feel pretty damn good too.

My New Stove

"Now ... cooking's a lot of fun ...

come in and I'll show you why."

-- Frigidaire electric range advertisement, 

Ladies Home Journal, 1940

Folded paper stove 10-17-14

"Don't worry dear, bring them ALL home.

Dinner for 8 is a cinch with our new Magic Chef."

-- 1950s Magic Chef gas range advertisement

I enjoy cooking, and therefore, I cook a lot.

As a result of so much use, my trusty old stove was showing some signs of wear and tear.

I wasn't concerned with the cosmetics. But the oven door wasn't closing properly anymore. And when the oven door doesn't close right, heat gets out and your baking gets fucked.

That's no good.

Also, sometimes the oven just shut itself off while I was still cooking in it.

When that happens, heat goes away and your baking gets fucked.

Again, no good.

Good cooking requires good-working equipment, and so my kick-ass husband went out and wrangled me a big shiny new professional grade gas "range."

It got installed yesterday.

It's the shit.

I plan on cooking up lots of good things.

Gingersnaps

"Oh, snap!"

-- Tracy Morgan

Ginger Snaps 9-3-14

"Zuzu, my little gingersnap. How do you feel?"

-- "George Bailey," It's A Wonderful Life

I feel good.

Because I made gingersnaps.

Gingersnaps are spicy little cookies with snappy crisp outsides, and soft chewy centers.

Gingersnaps smell good.

Gingersnaps taste good.

Gingersnaps even sound good.

Go ahead. Say "gingersnap" out loud a few times and see what I mean.

Gingersnap.

Gingersnap. Gingersnap. Gingersnap.

Now doesn't that cheer you right the fuck up?

If you bake some gingersnaps, be careful not to make the same mistake I did and go all guppy and eat and eat and eat these tasty li'l motherfuckers until you feel like you're about to explode -- or wish you would.

Trust me. I'm speaking from recent experience here. If you overindulge, even on something as lovely as gingersnaps, you'll feel not good.

(Note: if there are gingersnap flakes floating around in your tank, you are overdoing it.)

Banana Bread

"Oh, hallelujah, our problems are solved. We have banana bread."

-- Apu, "Eight Misbehavin," The Simpsons

Ripe banana 8-22-14

"What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Banana bread 8-22-14

"When life gives you bananas you can't make juice."

-- Yahg Mushu, aka Isabel Truax

There's a drug store in my town that sometimes sets a basket of over ripe bananas near the checkout register with a little handwritten sign that says "Baking Bananas, 25 cents each."

It's their not-so-clever attempt at the reverse psychology of marketing rotting produce.

Nice try, guys.

First of all: Who goes to the goddamn fucking drug store to buy bananas?

And secondly: Who stands the fuck there paying for their Tylenol, shoe laces  and Winston Lights thinking, "Gee, you know, perfectly fresh yellow bananas are only 25 cents a pound today over by the cough drops, but I think I'll pass on those and go ahead and pay 25 cents apiece for these special baking bananas right here at the register -- these ones with all the black shit on the skin and the squishy spots and the swarm of fruit flies. It sure is a good thing I came here to this drug store, because otherwise, I'd have missed out on this really awesome banana baking opportunity."

In my opinion, they should pay me the 25 cents to take their rotting fucking fruit off their hands.

I've never had to buy rotten bananas, and I don't plan to start now because in my house, the fresh ones get overripe about four seconds after I bring them home from the grocery store anyway.

It's a good thing I make really, really good banana bread. 

Poor banana bread. 

Banana bread gets a bad rap as the thing you bring when you don't know what else to bring  -- when someone dies, or moves in next door, or loses their job, or at the last possible minute says "Mom, I have to bring something to the (fill in school/sports/church/scout function that you knew nothing  about here). 

Showing up at work with a loaf of banana bread doesn't communicate "Hey, guys, you are all so very special to me that I baked you something great!" 

No.

Banana bread communicates "Hey, guys, these moldy bananas were liquefying on my kitchen counter and I was going to throw them in the garbage, but instead I scraped them off the Formica and made them into bread. Enjoy!"

Banana bread doesn't feel special, or intentional.

It feels like a consolation prize.

Well, all banana breads are not created equal, and I happen to make kick-ass banana bread that tastes like I meant it to -- like something special.

I put tiny chocolate chips in it.

I don't unload it on unsuspecting neighbors or co-workers or strangers.

It's too good for that.

I make it on purpose. 

For people I love.

Guys Who Bake

"You can cook like a man. 

But you can't bake like a man, because men don't bake.

Nancy said that because baking is easy, it's hard;

that because anyone can, a lot of men can't, or won't."

-- Tom Junod, "Men Don't Bake," Esquire.com

Sam 8-1-14

"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can."

-- English nursery rhyme

My son Sam has loved baking ever since he was a toddler. 

I used to swaddle him in one of my aprons, folded over and double wrapped around his tiny boy body, and stand him beside me up on a kitchen chair. 

I'd measure out flour and sugar and he'd dump them into the mixing bowl. Or I'd give him his own cups, bowls, spoons and ingredients and let him make up his own concoctions. He liked making an imaginary something that he called "Timbuktu Yummy." Only he knew what it was.

Sam's earliest "real" baking experiments were hit and miss, and usually he trashed the kitchen. But experimenting -- sometimes succeeding, sometimes not -- is how my independent-minded, self-sufficient, precise and determined son figured out baking for himself. I've coached and guided and helped along the way, but mostly I've just let him run with it. I always figured that if the experiment failed miserably (and some have), I wouldn't be out much (flour and eggs are cheap), and the lesson learned would more than offset the loss.

As a result, at age 19, Sam's cookies, muffins, biscuits, bread, brownies and pies are ridiculously good. He always bakes from scratch and pays close attention to important baking details like room-temperature butter, tempering his yeast, fully pre-heating the oven and measuring things exactly.

Sam bakes for everybody -- his friends, our neighbor, the ladies at work, the nurses at the hospital where he volunteers, the fire fighters at the firehouse where he took a CPR course. Sometimes he even bakes for us.

Also, because he's a compulsive neat-freak, the kitchen is always spit-shined and spotless when he's done.

As a mother of two sons, I feel like one of my most important responsibilities is to send my boys into the world as young men who are capable of feeding themselves and others without relying on takeout and drive thru, whether it's grilling a burger, building a proper sandwich, scrambling eggs, baking a perfect pumpkin pie or loaf of homemade bread.

But they say a man can't live by bread alone.

That's why it's a really good thing Sam can also make espresso chocolate chunk muffins with streusel.

Homemade Energy Bars

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

-- Hippocrates

Homemade energy bars 6-30-14

 "Processed foods not only extend the shelf life, 

but they extend the waistline as well."

-- Karen Sessions

Homemade energy bars 6-30-14

Processed, packaged energy bars are gross.

They look gross. They taste gross.

That's why I started making my own. One of these little protein-packed babies will power you through a whole morning, or stave off the afternoon munchies.

You won't find anything gross in my bars. That's because I use nothing but delicious, real ingredients like:

Real oats.
Real pumpkin, sunflower and hemp seeds.
Real peanut butter.
Real maple syrup.
Real butter.
Real coconut.
Real dark chocolate.
Real vanilla.

I don't have to add gross preservatives, because I don't have to worry about shelf life. They get gobbled up before it's even an issue.

Know why?

Because they're real good.

(And real good for you!)

Licking The Beaters

"Good moms let you lick the beaters.

Great moms turn them off first."

-- Unknown

Mixing beaters with brownie batter 3-19-14

"I love that when I breathe you in you smell like cake batter."

-- "Johnny," Because I Said So

I don't care what your mother said about the raw eggs giving you salmonella, or worms, or that a whole cake would grow in your stomach. Licking the beaters (and the spoons, and the bowl) is one of the simplest, purest pleasures in life.

And if your mother did recite these warnings, I'll bet you dollars to donuts she was just trying to get you the fuck out of her kitchen so she could lick 'em herself.

In my ongoing quest to bake gluten free brownies that are as good as the regular kind, I mixed up a new recipe. 

On my personal raw dough/batter spectrum, brownie is a biggie. In fact, if I get really honest, I'd have to admit that the impetus for yesterday's baking wasn't so much my craving for brownies as it was my craving for brownie batter. The actual baking part was just a cover and a strategy to keep me from slurping up the whole recipe raw with a spoon.

Brownie batter is also the safest, in my opinion. Not from a food-borne illness standpoint, but because it carries the least risk for overdoing it. 

Here's my theory: 

Because brownie batter is thin, more of it actually gets into the baking pan, leaving less of the dangerous residue clinging to the bowl and the beaters. Also, since all of the brownie batter goes into the oven at once, when it's gone, it's gone. Out of sight, out of mind. That's why cookie dough is the most dangerous. Because cookies bake in individual batches, you use the dough a little at a time, so there are repeated opportunities to go back in. It's a continuing binge-threat, which I personally think is the greater danger compared to food-borne illness. I've never rolled around on the couch gripping my gut and moaning because I'm bloated and in pain due to salmonella poisoning. I have, however, made myself all kinds of miserable from eating way too much cookie dough. But brownie batter? Never once.  

So yes, I licked the beaters, and it was good, and I didn't eat too much and I didn't die. The brownies were pretty good too.

I did a little digging, and it turns out that eating raw batter is unlikely to cause salmonella and your mother's raw-dough preaching was probably overblown. 

So go ahead. Lick 'em. You probably already do it anyway. But now you can do it without your mother's nagging warnings ringing in your head and without her greedy hidden motives shunting you away from her kitchen. 

And if she tries her old tricks, don't back down. 

Stand up to her. 

Tell that bitch swerve. 

Tell her you know what she's up to. 

Tell her she's wrong and that you've got proof and that you won't be bullied anymore. 

Take that, beyotch.

Baking Cookies

"Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world,

had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon

and then lay down on our blankets for a nap."

-- Barbara Jordan

Homemade cookie 2-23-14

"Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food.

They are very bite-sized and personal."

-- Sandra Lee

Here is my foolproof, step by step guide for adding a little goodness to your day, or to the day of someone you love. It's as easy as 1,2,3:

Step 1: Make A Mess

Step 2: Bake Some Little Dough Blobs

Step 3: Eat The Cookies

"I think cookies are sort of the unsung sweet, you know?"

-- Bobby Flay

Of course, if it is an emergency, you can skip steps 2 and 3 and just eat all of the dough. But then you might feel not-so-good, and that's not a good thing. It's definitely a risk you take when baking cookies. So I highly recommend following all of the steps.

There.

Now don't you feel just a little better?