Something Fishy...

As I've written before, the popularity of salmon in our household means that I'm always on the lookout for new ways to prepare it. We probably don't have it as often as is recommended by health professionals, but salmon is still a frequent enough guest on our dinner table that it risks getting tired and boring. I tend to buy it whenever I can find it at a decent price, and after preparing it recently using my favorite, tried-and-true method, it was time to try something different when I found it on sale again.

This time around, I looked to a recipe that shared a lot in common with my beloved salmon recipe. Both dishes were cooked en papillote (or in a parchment paper pouch, over a pile of vegetables. While my recipe is simple, and focuses on the pure flavors of the fish and vegetables, this new version called for a sassy Asian sauce that would liven things up a bit. Since we love us some Asian food around here, I figured this spin on a classic would be a surefire hit.

Throwing together the sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and green onion was simple enough that it barely added to the time needed to finish my usual recipe. I was originally going to serve the fish over a bed of baby bok choy, but it was nowhere to be found at the grocery store this week, so I opted for green beans instead. Everything cooked in a flash in the microwave dirtying very few dishes -- things I've always loved about preparing fish in this way.

However, despite bearing so many similarities to a meal that I adore, I wasn't crazy about this. I've had Asian-inspired salmon dishes in the past, but something about this sauce just wasn't working for me. There was a little too much ginger, and the soy sauce was oddly overpowering. The fish was no longer the star of the show, and all my attention was focused on the strong flavors of the sauce instead. Plus, the green beans ended up way overcooked, something that never happens with the melange of carrots, zucchini and shallots that I usually employ. 

Still, I'm glad I gave it a try. Even if this particular variation didn't work, it got me thinking about other flavor combinations I could use to put a different spin on one of the classic dishes in my cooking repertoire. Miso might be a good direction to pursue, or perhaps something involving mustard. Ah, the possibilities...

Pucker Up...

As a general rule of thumb, I do not much enjoy being outside, especially in the summer when the weather is hot and sticky. I'm not exactly sure how people survived in the days before air conditioning, but I'm happy to have been born into the era of central air. Otherwise, I would have had to pursue science as a career track, so I could spend my life engaged in research in Antarctica.

Nevertheless, for some reason, I really enjoy picnics. I loved them when I was little, and my mom would fill up a cooler with special treats, pack up an old Native American blanket she'd purchased long before I was born, and take me to the park to eat and play. In college, my friends and I made a tradition of having a picnic every year, often in old, dilapidated cemeteries around St. Louis. I've tried to maintain that tradition on my own, and I've been moderately successful with making it to Grant Park for an annual alfresco dining experience. Justin and I even went on a picnic on our second date.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Mireya, Natasha, and Natasha's family for my annual pilgrimage to the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park for a free concert, so it seemed only right to combine a picnic with the evening's events. Naturally, I assumed responsibility for dessert production, but with my self-imposed moratorium on Martha Stewart, I had to look elsewhere for inspiration. I settled on a recipe I'd bookmarked from one of my favorite food sites, Serious Eats. They have a seemingly ever-expanding roster of authors contributing there, and have recently launched a dessert-focused subsection called "Sweets," where I'd spotted a recipe for Lemon Ginger Bars. Since I've become a convert to the ease of baking bar cookies, I was saving this recipe for just the right occasion.

As it turns out, Natasha is a huge fan of ginger (I've used her as a guinea pig for my last two ginger-centric baking experiments), and Justin loves lemon, so I figured this picnic gathering was the perfect opportunity to test this recipe. Despite making a rookie mistake when I turned the bars out of their baking pan that resulted in them shattering into a dozen or so irregular shards, the resulting cookie shrapnel turned out delicious, if somewhat unattractive by my usual standards. Not being a fan of lemon myself, I preferred the bits that had less glaze, as the bars themselves have a subtle hint of lemon flavor from the included zest, while the majority of the lemon punch comes from the topping. The cookies are warm from the ginger, with an occasional kick from the chunks of crystallized ginger, in addition to being pleasantly soft and buttery.

Besides being quite tasty (which is hard for me to admit, as a self-identifying hater of lemon-flavored desserts), this recipe came together quickly, which I also appreciated. They'll definitely be a strong contender for the citrus cookie category in this year's Cookie Bonanza come December. Until then, consider giving them a try of your own.


Lemon Ginger Bars
adapted from Nick Malgieri

Bars
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 large egg
1/4 c. crystallized ginger, finely chopped
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons lemon zest

Lemon Glaze
2 c. powdered sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice, plus extra if needed

Preheat oven to 375. Line a 9x13-inch jelly roll pan with foil and spray with Pam.
1. Mix the flour, sugar, ginger, and baking powder in a medium bowl.
2. Melt the butter in a glass container in the microwave, and immediately add to the dry ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to stir into a smooth, shiny dough. Add the egg, crystallized ginger, honey, and lemon zest, beating vigorously until smooth.
3. Press the dough into the prepared pan, smoothing the surface with the palms of your hands.
4. Bake the bars until well-risen, golden brown, and firm, about 20-25 minutes.
5. While the bars are baking, combine the lemon juice and powdered sugar. Add additional lemon juice to thin to a spreadable consistency, if needed.
6. As soon as the bars are baked, remove from the oven. Place a cooling rack on top of the pan and invert, removing the foil. Pour the glaze over the bars, spreading to coat, and allow to cool completely before cutting into 2-inch squares.

Raising the Bar...

As much as I love to bake cookies (and if the 30 posts tagged "cookies" here is any indicator, that would be a whole heck of a lot), I must admit that I am not a equal cookie opportunist. Indeed, there is one type of cookie that I never make -- bar cookies. Although many fantastic bakers, my grandma included, prefer bars for their speed and simplicity, for me, a cookie isn't a cookie unless it's shaped and baked as its own separate entity. This adds considerable time and effort to the baking process, as only 10-12 cookies fit on a sheet at a given time, so they must be baked in multiple batches. Bar cookies, however, are baked all at once and cut into single portion sizes, which makes them much faster. Although adding a bar cookie to my Cookie Bonanza lineup would free up time to dedicate to something else, I had still never really entertained the idea until this week.

Recently, I had traveled to Whole Foods in search of short-grain brown rice in their bulk section. I'd already torn off a bag, but was unable to locate the grain I was looking for, despite the presence of copious more obscure items. Feeling guilty about wasting a plastic bag at the bastion of sustainability, I looked around for something else to find when I located crystallized ginger at a price per pound that was lower than what I had paid for the tiny glass jar I'd previously had in my pantry. I picked up a pound for the heck of it, figuring I'd find some sort of Christmas cookie recipe to use it in.

The crystallized ginger sat in its baggie in the cabinet for a week, until I needed a treat to bring along to a picnic I was going to today. However, given the time restrictions of my over-scheduled weekend, I needed something I could bake in advance on Friday night that would hold up until Sunday. Drawn, as ever, to Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats To Bake and to Share for inspiration, I found a recipe for Iced Hermits, a bar cookie that hails from the East Coast, that were originally baked by sailors' wives for their husbands to take on long voyages. Not only did they have a good shelf life, the recipe called for crystallized ginger; my mind was made up.


I did make one major change to the recipe -- I substituted dried apples for Martha's suggestion of raisins. For me, raisins are a food I would rather eat plain than as an ingredient in something else. If I ever encounter them in a baked good, I always pick them out. To top the bars, I followed Martha's instructions to the letter, icing them with a drizzle of brown sugar glaze (which was so tasty even I liked it, and I almost always find glazes and icings to be cloyingly sweet), and a sprinkling of additional crystallized ginger. Annoyingly, the extra ginger did not adhere well to the icing at all, making the cookies messy and difficult to transport. Also, I found the ginger flavor in the cookies to be a little overpowering, so I resolved to leave the extra ginger off the cookies the next go around.

And there will almost certainly be another go around for these cookies, which received an overwhelmingly positive response from everyone I shared them with. Granted, some of them were avowed fans of ginger, but once I brushed the surplus ginger off, even I liked the spicy punch of these cookies. The make-in-advance capability for this recipe also gives it definite appeal for the holiday season. In my experience, the longer the cookies sat, the softer and more intensely flavored they became. I think I might have found this year's spice cookie for my giveaway...


Iced Hermits

adapted from Martha Stewart

For bars:

1/2 c. unsalted butter, softened

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon mace

3/4 c. dried apples, cut into 1/4 inch pieces

1/2 c. candied ginger, cut into 1/4 inch pieces

1/4 c. unsulfured molasses

1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk

1 1/4 c. packed dark brown sugar

For icing:

1/4 c. packed light brown sugar

2 tablespoons milk, plus more if needed

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 c. powdered sugar, sifted, plus more if needed

1. Make bars: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 10-by-15-inch rimmed baking sheet with Pam. Line bottom with parchment paper, and spray parchment; set aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, pepper, cloves, and mace in a medium bowl; set aside.

2. Put butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until smooth. Add sugar; mix until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in egg and yolk, and molasses. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture. Mix in 1/2 cup candied ginger and the dried apples.
3. With moistened hands, spread dough evenly onto prepared baking sheet. Bake, rotating sheet halfway through, until firm, 18 to 22 minutes. Let cool completely in baking sheet on a wire rack.
4. Make icing: Put brown sugar, milk, and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat; whisk in vanilla and confectioners sugar. If icing is too thick to drizzle, stir in more milk, a teaspoon at a time. If icing is too thin, stir in more confectioners sugar, a teaspoon at a time. Let cool slightly.
5. Drizzle bars with icing. Let stand until icing has set, about 15 minutes. Cut into 2-inch squares. Bars can be stored in single layers in airtight containers at room temperature up to 5 days.

Tis The Season...

The holidays are all about the joy of giving. We give presents so that we can see the joy on people's faces when they open them, and to show them how much we care for them. I prefer to show my love through baking, which sometimes means that I bake things not because I enjoy eating them, but because it will make somebody else happy to eat them. Such was the case with the first thing I remember learning how to bake -- lemon bundt cake. My Aunt Lois was staying with me while my mother was out of town (with Dad working long hours as always, someone needed to be there when I got home from school), and we decided to bake something for Dad that he would like. Dad had had Lois' lemon cake before and liked it, so that's what we made that day, and for several years, it was the only thing I knew how to bake, which is ironic, because I don't even like lemon. I've lost track of how many times I've made that cake -- lemon is always a crowd pleaser -- and while I always enjoy the process of baking it, never once have I enjoyed eating it. It is something that I only do for the benefit of others.

Similarly, when I was curating the list of cookies to include in my annual Cookie Bonanza, I was trying to achieve a balance of flavors. I already had chocolate and peppermint, in the form of my Chocolate Peppermint Cookies; maple in the form of my Maple Pecan Shortbreads; I knew I was going to make some decorated sugar cookies utilizing my new decorating set, and some spritz cookies using my new cookie press; I wanted a spice cookie, and that left me an opening for one more. I wanted to make thumbprint cookies with a chocolate filling (I don't care for fruit in my cookies), but I already had a chocolate cookie in the mix. Going through my spice shelf for inspiration, I came across a bottle of crystallized ginger that was nearing its expiration date, so I started looking for a recipe to use it up. Lo and behold, I found one for a lemon ginger cookie. I don't care for lemon, but I knew that the people receiving my cookies would probably appreciate a lemon offering, so I made up a batch.

The unusual dough contained no leaveners, resulting in a sandy, crumbly cookie, accentuated by the crackly coating created by the pre-baking dip in egg white and sugar. The cookies were refreshing, and not exceptionally ginger-y, besides some residual heat on the palate after consumption. I'm sure the ginger flavor would have been more pronounced if I had used a fresher bottle of crystallized ginger. Since I knew I was doomed to dislike the cookies due to their flavor combination, I brought a few to work to test out on Natasha, a self-professed ginger enthusiast. They won her stamp of approval, so if you like lemon, feel free to treat yourself to a batch of these. If you don't like lemon, consider making them for someone in your life who does. They'll appreciate every tasty morsel.

Ginger & Lemon Cookies

adapted from The Best of Fine Living: Cookies, 2008

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 c. plus 2 T. granulated sugar

3 T. finely grated fresh ginger

finely grated zest of one lemon

1/4 tsp. salt

2 large egg yolks

1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. pure lemon extract

11 1/4 oz. all-purpose flour

2 T. finely chopped crystallized ginger

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, 3/4 cup of sugar, grated ginger, lemon zest, and salt, and beat on medium speed until well-blended and light, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the egg yolks and vanilla; continue mixing until well-blended, 30 to 60 seconds. Add the flour and mix on low speed until the dough is blended and just comes together.

3. In a small bowl, combine crystallized ginger and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll in eggs whites. Dip the tops of the dough balls in the sugar/crystallized ginger mixture, and set the balls 1 1/2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.

4. Bake 11-13 minutes until cookies are light brown around the edges. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to complete cooling.