It seems that I quite often say something like, "if you've been reading along here for a while, you may have noticed that I can be a bit obsessive about (insert name of food here)." Recently, it occurred to me that to uncover this "secret" of mine, perhaps it's really not necessary to read along for a while, perhaps you only need to read along here once in a while (or have just one face-to-face encounter with good, ole, OCD me) to realize that, ah, yeah, girlfriend's a bit nutty about certain food items.
One such item is egg nog. I know, I know. This is strange to many people. I hear the eeeeewwwws and gaaaaaahs right through the internet, I do. And I'm not necessarily talking about homemade egg nog (though it is a delight, to be sure), which aids some egg nog revilers in looking past their usual derision of the nog.
No, pretty much any egg nog will do when I'm in obsessive mode, which, coincidentally, runs from the fourth Friday in November (well, maybe the fourth Saturday. I'm generally still embroiled in turkey-overload on the fourth Friday) through December 29th.
Why the 29th? Sure, the obsession could continue through New Year's Eve, but I thought I'd use 2009 as the benchmark for this particular fixation (the blog forcing me to keep records of these things as it does, and finding that holiday 2009 posting and my trusty recipe development notebook clearly indicated an egg nog infatuation). And, as it happened, my friend Artie sent me a recipe for his egg nog cookies on December 30, 2009.
I wanted to make them right away. Really, I did.
Remember, I am obsessed. And/or obsessive.
However (and please note that I am a lazy, pre-made egg nog purchaser), the dairy farm that sells exquisite egg nog at the Providence Wintertime Farmers Market was fresh out of nog, and this fact was made more painful (if there could be something more painful than a shortage of egg nog) by this cruel joke: As I approached, on that first Saturday after December 30, 2009, the farm's prominently displayed Bill of Goods still listed egg nog among their offerings. Available egg nog. And sadder still this trick became, as a crumpled napkin came out of the farmer's pocket to wipe away the dry-erase marker indicating its existence and availability, even as I spoke of the nog.
The script "Egg nog: $3.00/Qt." disappeared into the creases of his napkin, as I stood, forlorn, pointing and muttering something like, "But....buuuuuut...it says it...you haaaaave it...there."
Bill of Goods cleared of egg nog, I retreated, head slumped down, muttering still, this time at the ground.
As luck would have it, so, too, had it disappeared from the shelves of every grocery store within a 20 mile radius of my house (I'm obsessive, but I'm also a bit of a homebody, you know. Twenty miles around the pivot point of my house is the limit for grocery shopping excursions).
But the promise of soft egg nog cookies hadn't left my consciousness. Oh, no. It hadn't. So, on the fourth Saturday in November - 2010, of course - I dispatched myself to the grocery store in search of egg nog. And egg nog I shall have (and you shall, too, should you so desire it). All the way through December 29th (possibly even 30th or 31st if the nog despisers have assisted in keeping some on the shelves for us).
Artie's cookies are soft because that's the way he likes them. I know that this is the case because he worked on this recipe for a while before getting these cookies to come out exactly as he desired.
Another obsessive? How refreshing. It's so nice to not be alone in the world.
The cookies are a little cake-like, and somewhat deceptive - they seem at first simple of flavor, but then you find yourself wanting another, and realizing how well they go with coffee (dessert for breakfast? But of course.), then realizing how well they'd work with a bit of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between a pair.
Artie sprinkles his with grated nutmeg before baking, though I found I liked a crunch with these cookies, so I recommend a sprinkle of turbinado sugar (also known as Sugar in the Raw). Or you could work up a little egg nog glaze to top them off if glaze speaks to you.
Artie's Egg Nog Cookies: Makes 3 1/2 to 4 dozen, contingent upon whether or not you are a dough eater
3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup egg nog 1 teaspoon vanilla extract2 large egg yolks
optional toppings: grated nutmeg turbinado sugar egg nog glaze Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Get that 10 by 15-inch rimmed baking sheet of yours out - or use your favorite cookie sheet. Line it with parchment paper, and set aside.
In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugars, and mix until the butter-sugar mixture is a light and fluffy consistency (also known as creamed). Add the egg nog and vanilla extract and mix until they are incorporated into the butter-sugar mixture, then add the egg yolks, and mix until they are just incorporated.
Add the dry ingredients to the buttery-egg noggy-sugary concoction, mixing on low speed if using a mixer, and mix just until the dry ingredients have been blended into the wet.
Scoop out a tablespoon of dough per cookie, and place it on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Place the dough mounds at least 1-inch apart from one another on the sheet, then sprinkle with nutmeg or turbinado sugar, place the cookies into the oven, and bake until the edges are golden brown, 20 to 22 minutes.
Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the baking sheet, then transfer them to a cooling rack. If continuing on to glaze, allow the cookies to cool completely before glazing, as the glaze will melt if applied to warm cookies (though it would give a good excuse to eat a cookie straight away. You know, to hide the evidence of imperfect toppings. We can't have imperfect toppings.). Just in case you don't have an eggnog glaze recipe, there's one right here.
The cookies will keep for up to 5 days if they're sealed away in an air-tight container.
Estimated cost for one batch of egg nog cookies: $4.05. The flour costs $4.49 for a bag containing 19 cups, therefore, the flour costs us 52-cents. The baking powder costs around 1 penny, the nutmeg is approximately 30-cents, and the cinnamon 15-cents. We don't count salt because it and pepper get a free pass in the math here (though it would be a fraction of a penny if counted, as it comes from a box of kosher salt that contains 1,133 1/4-teaspoons of salt and that box costs a mere $1.99). The dairy and sugar ingredients have gone up in price a touch this year, as I'm sure you bakers know, so the brown sugar costs us 45-cents, the granulated sugar costs 18-cents. Even the trusty Whole Foods 365 brand butter has gone up 50-cents per package, so 1 and 1/2 sticks now costs us $1.23 (it used to be $1.05), the egg nog is a veritable bargain, $3.99 for a half-gallon, so our 6-ounces cost 37-cents. The vanilla extract costs around 22-cents per teaspoon. The egg yolks should cost no more than 26-cents per egg, so 52-cents, and you can stash those egg whites away for future use (up to 6 months if frozen, no more than 2 days in the refrigerator), but we'll count the full expense of the eggs in case you haven't the storage space and/or the will to store. Less than 10-cents per cookie, even if you experience some loss due to (highly recommended against) dough eating.
You may be wondering what to do with the additional egg nog from our half gallon, and so was I.
So here's what happened: these cookies, and the desire to use up the remaining egg nog, begat these cupcakes (those ones. Down below there.). They need another test run or two, but they're so pretty - and so darned tasty - that I couldn't help but post a photo before the recipe hits the blog. Egg nog-hazelnut cupcakes with Nutella buttercream is what I'm talkin' about. Uh-huh. Figure 6 or 8 dozen into it, and we'll have all of our egg nog used up. I don't see this as a problem, either, mind you.
For those of you who don't live in the greater Boston-area, or who didn't have a chance to catch these money-saving tips on FOX 25 Boston this morning, here is video of Cindy Fitzgibbon and me discussing ways to save money on your holiday - and everyday - groceries.
Before we all head off to our respective kitchens to continue with our Thanksgiving preparations, here are a few other quick holiday tips that I wanted to share:
1.) Embrace the pot-luck - it cuts down on prep, stress, and cost.
2.) If you are embracing the pot-luck and you use disposable aluminum pans, take a look at your local party supply store (such as iParty). Two lasagne-sized pans are $4.99 at the local chain supermarket in my area, yet the same size pans are on sale for 44-cents - yes, CENTS - at the iParty near me. (pssst: don't forget to recycle.)
3.) Don't shun the box o' wine, or the BOX-O, as one of my dear friends has it coined. We'll be drinking Duca del FrassinoCorvina-Cabernet and Duca del Frassino Garganega-Pinot Grigio this weekend (there will be more on both of these wines here, but not today, I'm afraid. Must get my pot-luck dishes started stat!).
At $18.99 (plus tax) per box - and there is the equivalent of four bottles contained within each box - our holiday wine spending has plunged significantly, and I'm pretty sure (no guarantee, though) that I'll have wine left over in those boxes - wine that will remain fresh for a couple of weeks beyond the holiday. All that for less than five buckaroos a bottle. And, as my friend who came up with BOX-O will tell you, if you didn't see the box, you would have no idea that the wine came from a box. The days of Franzia propping open our college apartment windows (to chill the wine, of course. Oh, and to let the cigarette smoke out.) are safely behind us now, and good-quality wine can be had in a box at significant savings.
If you aren't able to locate the Duca del Frassino boxes, ask your local wine merchant which boxes they stock that contain good-quality wine - there are quite a few options out there.
And with that, I'm headed back to the kitchen to start making my bargain stuffing. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday, that the day is relaxing and joyful, and that your table is full of your favorite foods, shared with your loved ones.
I'm in New York right now, but when I return home, we have to talk about this honey-thyme roasted beet soup with honey-thyme compound butter, pickled beets, and toasted walnuts. See what I'm saying?
And we all wanna know, what the heck to serve with that (please tell me that you are sing-songing this with me, right? Those cursed early-play, always-play Christmas carol radio stations have gotten the best of me. Clearly.).
The main event at our family's Thanksgiving celebration is a special kind of madness which we fondly call turkey-in-a-hole-in-the-ground. FineCooking.com recently caught wind of the hijinks, and, as it was very astutely noted in their post, beer plays almost as large a role as fire does in the whole affair.
You can read about it here, though I strongly recommend against you trying these shenanigans at home. We've been cooking our turkey in a hole in the ground for fourteen years now, which makes us nearly professional, and heck, we even have a volunteer firefighter in the family (hey, they train for fire extinguishing, too, you know.).
Along with mashed potatoes (made with butter and cream, of course - it is a holiday and therefore no time to skimp), my Mom's Mushy Stuffing is a favorite starch. Nothing fancy, no fruit, no sausage, just buttery, mushy, aromatic bread with sauteed onions and celery.
If you're cooking for a crew that likes a little smoky meatiness with their potatoes (especially if you go the mushy stuffing route and have nary another bite of sausage in your meal), the recently posted chourico and potato hash is a make-on-the-stovetop mashed potato alternative (I know, I know, you have no room in that oven of yours for a gratin. Trust me, we don't either.).
JR's family has always made Welsh Rabbit (I'll steal the recipe card for this dish this year, I promise), and a carrot casserole, only they omit the curry from theirs. So my version would be reviled, ridiculed, then banned, but if you like curry, this version is worth a try.
Should you have a vegetarian in your midst this Thanksgiving, this butternut squash lasagna fills that main dish void without trying to recreate a large fowl in sculptured soy matter. No one really likes a faux turkey extruded out of a mold, do they?
For the gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and/or omnivorous human who simply enjoys the nuttiness of quinoa, and also enjoys squash and beans (not to mention honey - honey AND walnuts), this quinoa, squash, and black bean salad could be your new Thanksgiving tradition (to work the "this is our heritage" angle, use heirloom pumpkin and Christmas lima beans - these went into the first version I made of this dish, and it's worth seeking out the Christmas lima and pumpkin. Check your local farmers market for interesting pumpkins or squash - just like that, you've got a Thanksgiving scavenger hunt going on. Of course, that's only fun if you're a food dork like me and enjoy that sort of thing. Far be it for me to add more work to your Turkey Day prep.)
Cranberry sauce, cranberry sauce, oh, cranberry sauce. Why push it out of a can when it's so easy to make? Here's a more tart version, and here's a less tart version (read: kid-friendly).
No festa is complete without sweets, and you may know that I heart pumpkin, so if you have overnight guests, perhaps they'd like a pumpkin scone or two. Or maybe pumpkin pancakes? Or maybe they should eat pumpkin-maple tiramisu with their coffee? Sounds like a good idea to me.
Of course, a person can get pumpkined out (though I'm not really clear on how), so an apple dessert could be a good change of pace. I'm thinking something like this ricotta apple cake with cider-maple glaze, which also doubles as breakfast pastry (yes. this is intentional. I do like me some dessert for breakfast every once in a while, in case you hadn't guessed.).
With any luck, this list helps you out with your Thanksgiving planning. For us, well, we have to get to work stashing away 30-packs of domestic, watery beer lest we run out on Thanksgiving Eve. The only thing worse than that would be if we ran out of fire before midnight (notice that the bird itself doesn't factor into the list. There are plenty of side dishes, we know we can live without turkey. But without beer? Hell, no.).
"You have to go to the potato store yourself," JR insisted, with me standing, petulant, in the kitchen, chouriço and onion all chopped up and ready to go.
"Why? Why can't you? I mean, you're right there," I whined back.
And he was. In the living room, glancing back at me over the island separating the living room from the kitchen, right next to the basement door. (Lest you envision a luxurious kitchen space at the mention of "island", I should be clear that "island" in our case is more accurately defined as "divider-with-drawers-and-a-couple-cabinet-like-storage-spaces" crafted out of cheap, yet darkly stained, plywood by the 1970s owners of our house. At least they sprung for cherry for the island countertops - that's saved us the hassle of renovating our 8 by 9-foot kitchen for years, thankyouverymuch.)
Down the stairs, just feet away from where JR stood, lay our stash of potatoes, the "potato store." From our harvest of 80 or so pounds, at least 70 remained. And JR wanted me to go down there and select them myself. Hello, audible groan.
Our house is over one hundred and sixty years old, so you might imagine that the basement is constructed of fieldstone, and you would be right. As such, it maintains a constant 58 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes the potatoes happy, and that, in turn, makes us happy. However, what doesn't make me so happy is the steep stairs, the poor lighting, and the bonanza of spiderwebs, all part of the potato store's rustic ambiance.
Still, JR was insistent, and finally I relented. But only after realizing that this was an I-go-to-the-potato-store-or-there's-no-hash-for-dinner situation. In response to my pouting as I passed by, JR handed me a paper lunch bag - or perhaps it was a beer bag - and pointed me to the door. About thirty seconds later, I yelled up the stairs to him, "This is cool!"
"Yes. It is cool," he responded. Hence, the adamant demand that I shop for the potatoes myself.
"This is really !@#$ing cool," I yelled again. You know. For emphasis.
Because shopping for small, hash-ready potatoes - from a table set up with 7 trays of potatoes, each one holding more than 10 pounds of spuds - in your own basement, cobwebs and all, is cool. I've got no better vocabulary word than that. And I do apologize. I'll try to do better next time.
Two European varieties of potato were planted in our potato patch this year: German butterball and La Ratte fingerling. The German butterball sounds like it's the Euro cousin of our American Yukon Golds, a good, all-purpose buttery-fleshed potato, while the fingerlings are described as commanding high prices both at the market and on restaurant menus.
It's nice to dodge the high prices that these potatoes apparently demand (this is, if ever we were able to find them at our local markets - perhaps during tomorrow's visit to the wintertime farmers market, I'll see the pricey bastards toppling out of bushel basket displays), particularly when the total cost for more organic seed potato than we could plant (we will prepare more area next year, believe me you) was around thirty dollars, including shipping. And for that small investment, we ended up with 80 pounds of potatoes stashed away for winter (you know how I like math here, so that's 37 and 1/2 cents per pound for organic, homegrown potatoes).
"Forget about pasta," a chef friend said to me a few weeks back, "unless it's gnocchi - you're set with starches for the whole winter." Of course, there's no way that I can actually do away with egg-and-wheat-flour pasta during the winter, but I sense a lot more gnocchi on the menu here, starting, well, now. Or right after I'm over the hash fetish I'm currently riding out.
The potato patch got off to a somewhat late start (notice how I'm blaming the potato patch. This has nothing to do with the gardeners being at fault, of course), and the butterballs didn't fare as well as the fingerlings (though we do have plenty of baby butterballs - not a bad thing). The fingerlings could be characterized as, um, giant - some are 6-inches long, and could pass for slightly thinner-than-average russets, with smoother skin, of course - though there are a good number of tiny 1-inch long potatoes that work beautifully as-is, in dishes like hash. Keeps the chopping to a minimum, and, heck, they're just plain adorable.
Chouriço and Adorable Small Potato Hash (or you can use regular-sized potatoes. that's - ahem - cool, too.) Serves 4 to 6
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 pounds fingerling potatoes, well-washed, and cut into 1-inch cubes if they aren't tiny fingerlings 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped 1 link mild chouriço (approximately 1/2 pound), cut into 1/2-inch pieces (Andouille sausage will work if you're unable to locate chouriço, and if you like spicy, by all means, go with spicy chouriço instead of the mild)
kosher salt freshly ground black pepper
optional garnishes: chopped parsley or chives a dollop of sour cream per serving (I'll leave it to you to determine the size of the dollop - could be large, could be small.)
The other great thing about this dish is, it couldn't be easier. It takes 45 minutes or so, can be made in a cast iron skillet or a stainless saute pan (though I wouldn't use non-stick - you'll never get the browning you want in non-stick), and I'm thinking it would be a great change of pace from mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.
Pour the olive oil into your trusty cast-iron skillet or "stick" saute pan, then add the butter, and warm over medium heat until the butter melts.
Give the melted butter and warmed olive oil a stir, then add the potatoes, stirring occasionally (we want browning, after all).
Twenty minutes into the potato-cooking time, add the onion. Stir that into the mix, and cook, stirring occasionally, for twenty more minutes - your onions will become very dark brown. Not to worry, this is what you want.
After that twenty minutes following the addition of the onions has passed, add the chouriço, stir it into the potato-onion mix, and cook just until the chouriço is heated through and is slightly browned, approximately 5 minutes. Chouriço is a pre-cooked sausage, so the goal here is to add its smoky flavor to the dish, and to warm the chouriço to serving temperature without drying it out.
Season the hash with salt and pepper, then serve the hash forth with a dollop - or four - of sour cream, chopped parsley or chopped chives, and start plotting your very own potato patch (they can be grown in trash cans, apartment and condo-dwellers).
Estimated cost for one batch of hash: $5.61. The olive oil costs 12-cents per tablespoon, so 36-cents. The butter costs 35-cents for 1/4 cup (1/2 a stick) Two pounds of potatoes should cost around 2 bucks, one medium onion should cost around 40-cents, chouriço costs $4.89 per pound where I live, and my one link has been costing $2.50 or thereabouts the last few times I've purchased it. So for around $1.40 per serving, you've got yourself a new smoky, sausage-y, potato-y side dish.
