Going Dutch...

My mother likes to say that I was born forty, and while that is probably true for the most part, I do have a healthy, if somewhat repressed, inner child. Like any child, I do love my toys; my "toys" just happen to be mostly baking and cooking tools.

I have just about every cookie tool imaginable: icing tips, piping bags, boxes of cutters, a cookie press -- you name it, and I've probably got it. Up until last year, however, there was a tool missing from my formidable arsenal. I didn't have any cookie molds, usually used to make springerle cookies, which I've never been able to get excited about because I'm not a fan of anise. However, when I was putting together the line-up for last year's Cookie Bonanza, I encountered another type of cookie that uses molds for decorating -- speculaas.

Speculaas are Dutch spice cookies reminiscent of gingerbread, but without the molasses that drives me away from most cookies in that category. As soon as I discovered them, I was consumed with the idea of trying them, but I didn't have any cookie molds, and I had already picked out a spice cookie for my giveaway anyway. Still, I couldn't get them out of my mind. I came across a website that sold a huge variety of striking molds reproduced from antique springerle and speculaas molds, and formulated a rather daunting wish list, knowing full well that I wouldn't be able to afford the expensive tools.

After heavy hinting around the holiday season, my aunt, Brenda, came through for me at Christmas, and I was the proud owner of a nutcracker-embossed cookie mold. The nutcracker was a particularly evocative image for me, as I had collected the ugly-cute figurines as a child, and still have them today, though I haven't used them for seasonal decorations in years. Now that I had the mold, all I had to do was wait for Christmas to roll around, so I could try give my new toy a spin.

I've been trying to scale back my plans for this year's Cookie Bonanza, in light of all the time and energy I'm expending on our move, so I decided that speculaas, in addition to being this year's spice cookie, would also have to function as this year's decorated cookie. I simply don't have time this year to spend three days meticulously piping sugar cookies, even though I firmly believe they're the primary "wow-factor" in each year's giveaway. Since I'd never made them before, it was a decided risk.

I took my recipe from Martha Stewart, though not from Cookies, my usual source of inspiration. Clearly, Martha's professional food stylists have struck again, because my cookies were not nearly as attractive as hers. Their surface was cracked, and the designs were not as crisp as I had hoped. Plus, the powdered sugar that I was instructed to apply to the molds left dusty residue on the cookies that couldn't be brushed off, leaving them looking almost moldy. I was somewhat disappointed, to be sure.

People tell me, however, that the appearance of my baked goods is secondary to their taste, and these speculaas are winners in that department. They are light and crisp, almost like a graham cracker, but with a warm, spicy flavor to them. Being Dutch, they have more cardamom and less ginger than your typical American spice cookie, which I found to be a refreshing change of pace.

Even if they won't be the aesthetic star of the show I had hoped they would be, I'm not ashamed to give away these speculaas for my friends and colleagues to eat. If you have a cookie mold hanging on your kitchen wall for decoration (they seem to float around many people's homes as family heirlooms, especially if you are of central European descent), certainly consider giving speculaas a try. They're easier to make than springerle (no pesky drying period prior to baking), and no objectionable anise flavor. Put your toys to use as well!

Speculaas

adapted from Martha Stewart

3 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon cardamom

1/4 teaspoon mace

1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper

pinch of ground cloves

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 c. light brown sugar, packed

1/3 c. water

powdered sugar, for work surface

1. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, mace, white pepper, and cloves in a large bowl.

2. Cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in half the flour mixture. Beat in water, then remaining flour mixture. Shape into 3 disks. Pat each to a 1-inch thickness, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

3. Dust surface and springerle mold lightly with confectioners' sugar. Roll out dough to a 1/4- to 3/8-inch thickness (deeper molds will need thicker dough). Cut a piece of dough about the size of the mold. Press mold firmly into dough, flip over, and gently roll over dough with a rolling pin. Flip over, and press onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Using a knife, trim excess dough. Gently coax dough out of mold with fingertips and onto a baking sheet. Repeat, spacing cookies 1 inch apart, and placing same-size cookies on same sheet. Freeze until firm, about 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place 1 sheet of cookies in oven, and immediately reduce temperature to 250. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until cookies are set and just beginning to turn light gold around edges, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

If At First You Don't Suceed...

Mom is back at home today and resting as comfortably as possible after a second surgery to reposition her organs after last year’s surgical intervention failed to correct her pelvic organ prolapse. Since then, she sought the opinion of a different doctor, and had a much less invasive procedure performed this time around. Here’s hoping for not only a swift and simple recovery, but let’s all also say a prayer that this will be the last time she has to go through this…

One Potato, Two Potato...

Generally speaking, I try to refrain from imposing my beliefs on others. Evangelism is not my style; in fact, it kind of drives me crazy. I feel that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, as long as they don’t force them on anyone else. Ever since a relative of mine locked me in a room and read the Bible to me in an effort to “save” me, I’ve been a proponent of the “live and let live” approach to life. I suppose I should be touched that said relative cared enough about my eternal soul to want to “help” me, but if a major religious conversion is in my future, I’d rather find Jesus when the time is right for me, not when someone else decides is convenient.

Nevertheless, I have seen the light about something in my life recently, and I want to share it with you. You see, I have recently discovered that I love sweet potatoes. All my life, I associated the vegetable with the sickly sweet marshmallow and canned yam dish served on Thanksgiving, and I wouldn’t let them creep onto my plate in any form. Then, earlier this year, the café at work snuck some sweet potato fries onto my plate in lieu of the normal variety, and I tried one for the hell of it. I was hooked.

I started ordering sweet potato fries any time I saw them on a menu, but I assumed that my love for them was rooted in the fact that they were fried. I mean, when does frying not make something tastier? I started getting curious, however, if I could make myself eat them in other forms. After all, they’re perennially listed as a superfood, and touted for their nutritional superiority. Given that I don’t really like vegetables in general, it would be nice to find something healthy that I actually like to eat.

By then, it was fall, and a spate of sweet potato recipes were popping up all over the cooking blogosphere. I filed some away on Pinterest, but it wasn’t until I found some Italian sausage languishing in the freezer (I’m trying, seemingly in vain, to reduce its contents in preparation for our move), that I decided to actually give one a try. I was very glad I did.

The recipe was for a sweet potato and sausage hash, and Justin and I made it for a weekend breakfast a few weeks ago before heading over to our new place to work for the day. The complex carbohydrates in the sweet potatoes kept us full much of the day and fortified us for a day of manual labor. More importantly, however, it tasted amazing. The sweetness of the vegetables paired perfectly with the salt and spiciness of the sausage. Basil added a fresh herbal note. With a breath of relief that I could get myself to eat non-fried sweet potatoes and still love them, I vowed to make it again soon.

Tonight, I did just that. I had a couple sweet potatoes left over from the previous batch, and some Italian sausage from last week’s lasagna soup, and both items needed to go. I topped the hash with a fried egg, and it was the perfect breakfast-for-dinner. Seriously, even if you think you don’t like sweet potatoes, this might be the dish to win you over. Just make it.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Hash

adapted from Improv Kitchen

4 c. sweet potatoes (from about 4 sweet potatoes), diced

3 links spicy Italian sausage, casings removed

1/2 onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

8 basil leaves, chiffonaded

3 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 450.

1. Drizzle the diced sweet potatoes with 3 tablespoons olive oil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven approximately 20 minutes, stirring once or twice, while you complete the remainder of the recipe.

2. Cook sausage and garlic powder over medium-high heat in a large saute pan until browned. Add onions and a pinch of salt, and cook until softened. Add the minced garlic and cook one minute more. Remove the sweet potatoes from the oven, add to the saute pan, and cook two more minutes. Toss in the chiffonaded basil just before serving. Top with a fried egg if desired.

Slow But Steady...

When the deal on our condo finally went through, I had hopes of being moved in by Christmas. I thought we’d be hosting a holiday party in our new space, and that I’d be baking my Cookie Bonanza treats in my new oven. I thought wrong.

This entire process is taking way longer than I anticipated, like some sort of tired home renovation cliché, but my sense of urgency, and my eagerness to be done with the process is mounting all the time. Last night, we hurried back from a somber day trip to Springfield for the memorial service of Justin’s granny, who passed away while I was in Italy in October, so that we could be at our new place bright and early to take advantage of Mom’s last day to help us before she has another surgery to reposition her insides after last year’s pelvic organ prolapsed correction failed.

Mom and Justin are still focusing on patching and priming the walls to be painted. I can only hope that whenever this process is complete, we can get the paint up relatively quickly, and be done with it. Mom is still working on painting the window wells in the kitchen/dining/living room, so that room isn’t done yet, though it’s still the room with the most progress made.

For my part, I worked on a number of small projects today. I put some artwork into frames, in the hope of finishing at least one task in a timely manner so I could obtain some small sense of accomplishment, but the mats didn’t fit into their designated frames, and required trimming. In a way, the task was emblematic of this whole moving process – everything looked okay at first appearance, I thought it would go quickly, and then it rapidly became more complicated and required far more time and frustration to complete than I would have expected.

I also worked on unpacking some boxes that had arrived in the mail this week, including a vase from Crate and Barrel, and some light fixtures. Finally, I managed to finish cleaning and sanitizing the interior of the freezer, which will hopefully bring an end to my weekends spent elbow-deep in bleach, at least until we’re done painting the bathrooms and I get to do some deep cleaning in there.

Overall, we’re chipping away at it. The slow progress is demoralizing to me, though Justin seems largely unaffected, and his positive outlook is helping to keep me sane. If I had to go through this process with anyone, I am so, so thankful that it is him. He brings balance to my life, when my impulse would be to freak out. It’s times like this that he truly is my better half.

Soup for the Soul...

As we enter the last month of the year, I’ve been thinking about my New Year’s resolutions, and how well I ended up fulfilling them. In January, which simultaneously seems like a lifetime ago, and just yesterday, I resolved to try more new recipes for food other than desserts, and to carry on with my local church architecture project. Although I didn’t accomplish either task to quite the extent that I had planned, I made better progress on the first resolution than the second. 

I only made it to three Chicago churches this year, and I only had time to write about the first one (the other two posts will come eventually, they’re just languishing in blog purgatory until I have more time.) I made up an itinerary to see the majority of the ones remaining on my list in one day, but Dad wanted to go with me, and between his summer golf schedule and dedication to watching his beloved Fighting Illini play terrible football all fall, we couldn’t find a day to go. Now that the weather’s turned miserable, it’ll have to wait for next year.

I made slightly better progress on the recipe experimentation front. I’d originally wanted to try at least one new recipe a month, and I only ended up trying ten new recipes instead of twelve, but I had about a 50% success rate in terms of finding things that I’d want to make again, which isn’t so bad. I must say, that signing up for Pinterest has helped my cause considerably. Being able to see a photo of each recipe in my queue instead of just a long list of links, or worse, a closed binder full of clippings, is much more inspiring. After all, they do say that you eat with your eyes first.

Tonight I made another one of the recipes saved to my “Things I Want to Cook” board – lasagna soup. I’ve been crazy for soup ever since it started getting cold, which included attempting a new potato/cheddar soup a couple weeks ago that ended up not being blog-worthy, and the idea of capturing the flavors of lasagna in soup was appealing. I ended up making a few changes to the original recipe, so some of the lasagna-like elements of the dish were eliminated, but the vaguely Italian soup I ended up with was still delicious, and certainly worth making again.

The original recipe called for a ricotta cheese garnish, which I substituted out for small pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, since I absolutely abhor ricotta. In future iterations, I would puree the fire-roasted tomatoes before adding them to the soup, because the flavor was worth using them instead of plain crushed tomatoes (my usual choice for cooking) but I don’t like the texture of large tomato chunks. I would also consider adding some spinach, in order to up the nutritional content of the meal, since I find soup is often a good way to trick myself into eating vegetables that I wouldn’t otherwise find palatable.

This hearty soup is perfect for a cold winter’s day, and it’s hearty enough to fuel you for a day of playing in the snow (or shoveling, as the case may be.) I was glad I took a chance on this new recipe, and you will be too.

Lasagna Soup

adapted from A Farmgirl's Dabbles

1 1/2 lbs. hot Italian sausage

1 1/2 onions, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp. dried oregano

2 tablespoons tomato paste

28 oz. fire-roasted tomatoes, pureed 

2 bay leaves

6 c. chicken stock

Parmesan cheese rind

1/2 package frozen spinach, thawed and drained

8 oz. short pasta (I used ditalini)

1/2 c. fresh basil, chiffonaded

1/2 c. Parmesan cheese

8 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese pearls

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add sausage, breaking up into bite sized pieces, and brown for about 5 minutes. Add onions and cook until softened, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and oregano. Cook for 1 minute. Add tomato paste and stir well to incorporate. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the tomato paste turns a rusty brown color.

Add pureed tomatoes, bay leaves, chicken stock, Parmesan rind, and spinach. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir in 1/2 c. Parmesan cheese until melted. Add uncooked pasta and cook until al dente. Do not over cook or let soup simmer for a long period of time at this point, as the pasta will get mushy. Stir in basil and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

To serve, ladle into bowls and top with bits of mozzarella cheese. Add additional Parmesan cheese on top, if desired.

Open House...

Ever since Justin and I first looked at our new home, one of the greatest proponents of our move (after my mother, who has been, by far, our biggest champion) has been my friend, Lauren. This could have something to do with the fact that we used to live about a mile and half from each other, and got to hang out all the time, until she moved with her husband to Evanston. When I told her we were looking in Roger's Park, she was thrilled at the prospect that we might be living close to each other once again, and when our short sale finally came through, she began eagerly lobbying to see our new place.

Generally speaking, I've been reluctant to let anyone see it until it's completed, since it's full of dust and our much patched and yet-to-be-painted walls look rather diseased, but today was Lauren's birthday, so I invited her to come hang out in our new dining room table while Justin and I worked on painting and cleaning. Though I would usually bake something to commemorate such an event, because I'd only been in town one night since returning from St. Louis, Justin and I picked up some treats from a bakery for Lauren's birthday, and proceeded to do our first entertaining in our new house.

It was low-key, and I worked on scrubbing old grease off the fronts of our kitchen cabinets while we talked, but it was nice to open our home to a friend who's been such a supporter of our move. We're both looking forward to having Lauren and Clarence over as guests more often in the future -- after all, we're back to being kinda-almost-sorta neighbors!

The Muppets...

The day I have been waiting for all year has finally arrived – after months and months of teasers, trailers, and other marketing devices designed to drum up interest that, for me, had started the moment I first heard about it, I have finally seen The Muppets. As I’ve explored here before on several occasions, my love for the Muppets runs deep, and may, in fact, be genetic. I’d probably go see anything involving the Muppets, but even a fan of my intensity must admit that movies haven’t really been their best medium in recent years. 1999’s Muppets from Space was an unmitigated disaster, and the movie that almost killed the franchise. A string of lackluster television movies followed, all of them equally forgettable. The new millennium has been unkind to the Muppet fan base. 

Still, I held out hope that the puppets' latest outing would turn things around, like Star Trek did for its eponymous franchise in 2009, or Batman Begins did in 2005. Luckily, my hope proved to be very well-placed. 

I was a little skeptical when I saw that the film was being written by Jason Segel, whose writing credits include Forgetting Sarah Marshall. What would a man primarily known for his television work and for doing full frontal nudity know about the Muppets? As it turns out, quite a lot – he’s a life-long fan with an interest in puppetry. Accordingly, while The Muppets had a bit of a more modern sensibility, it still felt true to its roots.

There was less gross-out humor than I would have expected from a man with Segel’s oeuvre, and the movie was imbued with a whimsical sense of innocence that occasionally seemed a bit too self-conscious. Aside from these moments when the movie felt like it was veering into taking an overly ironic view of itself, it was still a highly enjoyable film overall.

It felt good to be reunited with characters that are so familiar they’re almost like friends. The gang was all there, and no single character received too much screen time, except maybe the film’s new character, Walter. My only criticism on that front would be that I would have liked more time with Kermit, Piggy, Fozzy and crew, but Walter’s storyline was sweet nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed his rendition of “Man or Muppet” with Segel and a cameo by Segel’s fellow CBS star, Jim Parsons. Plus, Walter’s defining moment, which I shan’t spoil for you, comes complete with a performance by the incomparable Andrew Bird, which is always a good thing in my book.

I feel like it's safe to say that the Muppets have finally found their way in the new millennium. They're back, hopefully to stay. Even if you aren't the superfan that I am, go check out The Muppets. You won't regret it.