Bacon wrapped, almond stuffed dates

Not much of a lead up to this one since I've been cooking for hours and I need to go to bed but I thought it might be useful to any of you who--like us--are planning appetizers for New Years parties.

This is our own recipe, an attempted deconstruction of a dish Collegetown Bagels used to bring to Cornell English Department functions that everyone would completely flip over.  It was hard to get more than one on your plate given the push of the crowd behind you and almost impossible to make that one bacony little package last until you found a quiet corner in which to sit and shovel hors'dourves into your mouth with your greasy fingers.  Life at a University is so illustrious!

Almond-stuffed bacon-wrapped dates 

• 12 oz bacon (a whole package) strips separated and cut in half
• 30ish dates, pitted (the -ish suffix because this really depends on how many strips of bacon are in your package.  We had 30, your mileage may vary.)
• 30ish raw almonds (I used almonds from the farm that I picked, cracked, and peeled with my own two hands.  If you want to be lame, you could probably just buy some.)
• 30ish toothpicks, soaked in water for twenty minutes

Preheat your oven to 400˚F.  

Unless you have blanched almonds, the first thing you'll want to do is remove their skins.  They add a bit of bitterness to the final dish that doesn't lend well to its balance.  

To blanch the nuts, heat a small saucepan of water to boiling and add a dash of baking soda.  Toss in the almonds and let sit until the skins start to look loose and puckered as a fingertip when you've been too long in the bath. Remove from water and transfer to towel to cool a bit.  When cool enough to handle, you should be able to remove the skins with a slight squeeze on one end of the nut.  

Stuff one peeled nut into the hole at the end of each pitted date and wrap tightly in bacon, using the soaked toothpick to pin the end.

Bake on a wired rack set above a rimmed baking sheet (do not use a flat cookie sheet.  You will get bacon grease in your oven and you will be sad and you'll come to me crying and I'll be like nah, girl which will be insulting to you no matter your gender. No one wants that.) for around 30 minutes or until the bacon looks crispy and delicious.

Carefully remove toothpicks and serve slightly cooled or room temperature.  They should even keep fine in a sealed container overnight.

Alternative version: replace the almond with a bit of pungent blue cheese and wrap as above.  I have no idea how this will be but it sounds really good.

Z-z-z-zeppole!

One of the things I miss most about Ithaca is sauntering up to the counter at Smart Monkey Cafe, ordering an organic lunch, an obscenely large cup of Gimme! Coffee and freshly made zeppole. I miss it so much, in fact, that I decided last weekend that the only thing I wanted to do on Saturday morning was make those crunchy little Italian donuts at home. Having never attempted donuts before, I feared that this was a doomed prospect, but no! They were surprisingly easy, deliciously custardy when still warm, and they made for lovely little holiday gifts to all the friends and family we saw throughout the day.

According to my friend Steven, zeppole are an Italian holiday staple (at least at his house), and not always prepared sweetly. Apparently his grandfather stuffs them with anchovies every year, and from what I've read about zeppole, that's fairly traditional. I stuck with the cinnamon/sugar variety because I'm not a fan of anchovies in the morning, but you know, stuff these with whatever floats your boat. Jelly? Sure! Chocolate ganache? Why not! Steak tartare? Go for it. Just don't ask me to share.


Zeppole
adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

• 1/2 cup sugar, plus 3 tablespoons
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1 stick butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 eggs
• vegetable oil, for frying

1. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon and stir. Set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan over a burner set to medium heat, bring butter, salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar and water to boil. When melted and combined, remove pan from heat and stir in flour. Return to heat and stir until the mixture forms a ball.

3. Pour enough oil into a frying pan to reach a depth of 2 inches. We didn't want to waste too much oil, so we went with a medium sized pan, and made the zeppole in batches. Heat oil over medium heat until a candy thermometer registers 375 degrees F. Make sure you keep an eye on the temperature throughout the process, and adjust the flame when needed.

4. Transfer dough to bowl of electric mixer. At low speed, mix in eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is completely incorporated before adding another. Beat until smooth.

5. Using a melon baller, mini ice cream scoop or a spoon, carefully drop dough into hot oil a tablespoon at a time. Play around to see how many you can fit into the pan - we were able to do batches of six zeppole at a time. Turn the donuts a few times so that they're evenly golden and puffy, about 5-6 minutes. Drain on paper towels, roll in cinnamon-sugar mixture and eat. Eat! You're too skinny, you need some meat on your bones.

I actually enjoyed the donuts more after they'd cooled down a bit since the initial, just-fried bite is extremely rich and custardy. Either way, make sure you eat them the day you make them - this is one of those treats that doesn't keep.

My First Risotto(tm)

The longer I pursue cooking as a serious avocation, the more I find I know nothing about it. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, since that's often the way learning goes. The whole process is inevitably fractal, each explored avenue opens into a dozen throughways with a thousand offshoots branching from each. I know that that's why formal education works the way it does: you start off mild and generalized with your crayons and block letters and as you invest the years, the process becomes increasingly specialized and intensive and you seem to get progressively worse at sussing it all out. By the time you're in grad school you're either grading stacks of papers four feet tall or so intently focused on ten words in an ancient manuscript that you can barely even make your eyes focus. Is this just me? Maybe.

Anyway, I was saying that just to get here: the more I cook, the more I realize I haven't eaten. At least not thoroughly enough. I've mentioned my first forays into certain foods on the blog before, I know, but it strikes me as peculiar every time. Yesterday, I'd cooked all the way through my first risotto--stirring until my forearms were screaming from clenching the spoon--and eaten half my serving of the resulting slurry before Dana asked "is this what you wanted?" and I realized that I had no idea of what I wanted, that I'd never actually had risotto before, and that any judgment I had on this was uninformed. That said, I guess it kind of was what I was expecting.

I cooked this from our newest cookbook: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, an early Christmas present from Dana's lovely aunt and, from my limited experience a thoroughly engrossing primer on a cuisine thats familiarity has been so thoroughly Americanized I hardly know where to start my exploration. Should I go with pasta, a subject that takes up probably a third of the considerable volume, or maybe the appetizer section which boasts proto-favorites like tomatoes stuffed with shrimp or salmon foam (SALMON FOAM???). Even the basic pasta sauce seems like a wonderful adventure. I've made so many tomato sauces out of crap gathered from our cupboard that I fear I may have to unlearn everything I've ever done just to pick up a new skill or two. Totally totally worth it.

Back to the risotto, the texture was spot on--creamy and rich without being sticky--and the taste, while not terribly deep, was good. I did specifically violate the instructions by using a chicken stock I'd made "in the french fashion" which was said to make the risotto bitter but I wasn't going to cook up another pot of stock just for an experimental side dish. If you have italian meat stock around with its requisite veal bones or want to make some give it a go, but you'd probably be fine just doing what I did: making obscene gestures at the recipe and using whatever. I thought the final dish could have benefited from a bit more earthiness, something that a few well-chosen mushrooms or a dollop of truffle oil (or, as the recipe suggests for the millionaires among us, shaved white truffles) could have remedied but I thought it worked out well overall. Not mind-blowing but decent. A platform from which to work. Here's the recipe:

Risotto with Parmesan Cheese

from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

5 cups meat broth

3 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

2 Tbsp onion chopped very fine

2 cups Arborio rice

1/2 heaping cup parmigiano-reggiano cheese

salt to taste

Bring the broth to a low simmer on a burner near where you'll be cooking the risotto. In a broad sturdy pot on medium high heat, put 1 Tbsp butter, the vegetable oil, and the chopped onion. Cook stirring until the onion becomes translucent then stir in the rice. Stir until the grains are coated well.

Add 1/2 cup of simmering broth and cook the rice stirring constantly until the liquid is gone. Make sure you wipe the bottom and sides of the pot free of any grains that are threatening to stick. Fifteen minutes in they will stick and they will burn and you will hate yourself. Proceed like this, adding 1/2 cup of broth whenever there is no more liquid in the pot continuously stirring the ever-expanding mass until you can imagine no other job but this in all of the world, until the spoon becomes part of your hand and your arm puffs up and looks like Popeye's. Come to think of it, maybe switch hands before that happens.

After about twenty minutes, when the rice is tender but still kind of toothsome, gradually reduce the amount of liquid so that when it is fully cooked it is slightly moist but not runny. This would probably be a good time to stir in all the cheese and the remaining butter so that it's all melty and thoroughly coats the rice grains. Also taste and adjust for salt.

Transfer to a platter and serve promptly. Later, wake yourself from a deep dreamless sleep with the motion of your arm stirring, still stirring.

Always stirring.

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies of Magical Deliciousness

I prefer chewy cookies over crisp ones, gingerbread over sugar, frugal over extravagant, Coke over Pepsi, Martha over Julia, Nabokov over Tolstoy, cake over death. Hold on, that got away from me somewhere. My point is: Martha Stewart's chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies have blown my mind. Did you know chocolate kills in gingerbread? Because it does. Kills. It. Dead. Or at least it mortally injures your sweet tooth, rendering you incapable of eating any other holiday desserts. I do, of course, mean that in the best way.

To be honest, J & I aren't particularly big on ginger. I suspect that if you love ginger, this recipe is even better, and if so, you should make the version posted on Martha Stewart's site, and not mine, which omits the fresh variety. I should also confess that the main reason I left it out is monetary - when you're just scraping by, it's hard enough to justify keeping cocoa powder or chocolate chips around, let along a strange root that you'll only use in a cookie recipe and probably never touch again. But enough about me - I know what you're really here for.

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies of Magical Deliciousness
(makes 24)

• 1 heaping cup semisweet chocolate chips
  
• 1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon all spice
  
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon Dutch process cocoa powder
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water
  
• granulated sugar, for rolling cookies

Note: I've simplified these instructions a bit in an attempt to address some of the issues from the comments on Martha's site.

1. Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper (or silpat). In medium bowl, sift together flour, ginger, cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, and cocoa. Place a small amount of water in a tea kettle, and heat on high.
2. Afix paddle attachment to electric mixer. In bowl of mixer, beat butter until whitened, about 3 minutes. Beat in brown sugar, mixing until combined. Pour in molasses and beat until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water. Taking turns, alternately beat half of flour mixture into butter/sugar/molasses, then all of the dissolved baking soda, then the rest of the flour. Mix in chocolate chips, then turn dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Pat into a 1 inch thick rectangle, seal the plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm (at least two hours).
4. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Cut dough into 24 equal parts using a serrated knife.
5. Roll each square into a ball, roll each ball in granulated sugar, then place on baking sheet.
6. If dough gets too sticky, put it back in the fridge for twenty minutes or so - I had to do this about halfway through. Also, to avoid a too-round final product, smush the balls a tiny bit with the flat of your hand.
   
7. Bake cookies until the surfaces crack slightly, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool on pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Devour.

The combination of gingerbread and chocolate in these cookies is unbeatable. This is a holiday cookie win, no question.

Seriously guys, why are you not eating these right now?

Holiday baking, an overview

What with Thanksgiving and Christmas being all up in our grills and us being tremendously poor, we've been doing a lot of baking.  I know, I know, on the surface those seem like they don't fit together but let me assure you, they do.  See, while food itself is not priced out of our range, food prepared by other people is a distant memory.  At times the past couple of months, the idea of going out has been completely unreachable.  Going to a restaurant, even an order-at-the-counter place, is a good twenty bucks, enough to feed us for almost a week at home.  No matter how much we might want a burrito, we know objectively that we can barely afford to leave the house so we swallow our laziness and we stay here and we cook.  And when it gets close to the end of the month and our supplies are running low, well we just scrape together our flour reserves and we bake.

Have I mentioned that being unemployed and poor sucks?  Given the state of the economy, it's entirely too likely that you already know this.

Anyway, here's an overview of what's been slithering out of our kitchen to keep us busy the last couple of weeks:

For Thanksgiving, Dana pulled together this ridiculous Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake from Smitten Kitchen that was good.  Note that I'm not saying spectacular but good.  This is a conscious decision.  It was solidly good, the hints of toasted hazelnut blended well with the nuttiness of the browned butter and the lightness of the egg white based batter carried through the cake.  The ganache, though, that's where the whole thing kind of fell through for me.  Throwing a candy shell on top of something so intentionally airy is a contradiction of intention.  Do you want it sugar-drenched and dense or do you want it to float two millimeters above the fork?  You don't get it both ways. Hazelnut brown butter cake, you're on notice.

While Dana was wrestling that cake to the ground, I put together an apple pie and some pie crust cookies.  You know those, right?  They're exactly what they sound like, sure, but the name doesn't really do justice to how much these are a part of my childhood.  Every time my Mom has made a pie in my memory, these were the treasured byproduct: the little extra bits of pie crust laid flat and baked with cinnamon sugar or pie spice, quick to brown and easy to eat, like a preview of the pie to come.  For someone who is a long-time compulsive pie crust picker (I can't keep my hands off it!  I don't care that I'm just stealing from the future pie slice, I have to break off those little browned bits!  I have to!), these little confections are heaven sent.  Not to mention easy.

In case you haven't put it together or, I don't know, haven't grown up with it for some reason (you poor thing), here's the process: take all the little pie crust bits you have left over after putting together your beautiful delicious pie and roll them out flat.  Then just slice them up, egg or milk wash them and sprinkle with sugar and bake with the pie for eight to ten minutes or until browned.  Then just try not to eat all of them.  Try.

Other than that, Dana has baked up some mocha chocolate chip cookies, a decadent almost-disgusting five layer bar (candy, it's just candy, no matter what I call it), I turned out a couple loaves of Julia Child's classic white sandwich bread, quite a few pans of cornbread (to accompany this badass turkey chili we've been perfecting that I'll tell you about later), a few pizzas--we've been stuck on the Cheeseboard recipe so I haven't been posting them lately but I have to say, I'm kind of in love with the breakfast pizza thing.  You know, chopped bacon bits, a whole egg, that sort of thing, it's so incredibly delicious I want to make and eat another whole pizza while I'm still eating the first slice. 

Tomorrow morning, Dana's off to our sister-in-law's house to join a group of bakers in holiday preparations.  We're talking all the classics: gingerbread, sugar cookies, peanut butter balls, butter on a stick, peppermint flamethrowers, chocolate range rovers.  Everything. 

Lastly, it's not a baked good exactly but I have to mention it anyway.  First, allow me to properly emphasize.  ahem.   

SQUASH. 

BLOSSOM. 

QUESADILLA!

also starring black beans and fresh cilantro!  Maybe one of the best dishes I have ever cooked.  Agonizingly, tortuously good. I hate to torture you with it since it's way way too late for squash blossoms in this hemisphere, but there it is.  Definitely look for more of this little champion starting in the spring which, since we're in California, should be any day now.  Jealous?