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Seven-Layer Cookies

Christmas Cookie Tray

(I forgot to take a photo of the Seven-Layer Cookies, alone, so I only have them with the other cookies on a tray that I prepared for Christmas Eve at my mother-in-law’s, but you can still see how pretty these are. The photo on epicurious is even better.)

from bottom to top:

Seven-Layer Cookies

Swedish Spice Cookies

Orange Slice Cookies

My Grandmother’s Fudge

(click on name of each cookie for recipe)

This year was the first time that I made these traditional, Italian cookies from the beloved and departed Gourmet magazine (the other three on the platter, above, are time-tested family favorites,) but they will most likely be a new yearly addition to our holiday planning. They are rich and VERY sweet and a little finicky and time-consuming to make, but they are almond-y moist and deliciously sweet. They are quite good with the apricot jam, but would also be good with seedless raspberry or maybe even strawberry or cherry preserves, instead. The heating/straining step seems tedious, but I do believe that it’s necessary for easier spreading and to ensure that the layered bars remain intact. These cookies are breathtakingly colorful and gorgeous on a cookie tray. The colors are very intense and vividly eye-catching. If you are disturbed by the amount of food coloring, you can make them all white (it won’t change the flavor,) but I do think that the colors are part of the appeal (and, I’m sure, have some symbolic “colors of the Italian flag” meaning, like a Caprese salad.)

Gougeres

Absolutely delightful little bites of cheesy heaven. Filled with butter and cheese, they are decadently sinful. These things are both ridiculous and sublime. Ridiculously sublime. Virtue and vice together. Seriously. Just make them.

The recipe that I used is from the September 2009 issue of Wine Spectator magazine, but their website is subscription-only (how rude!,) so I can’t link to it directly. This recipe is the closest that I’ve seen. If you cut the amount of gruyere by a couple of tablespoons and substitute a couple of pinches of cayenne for the black pepper, you’re pretty much there. When I made mine, I added a little freshly minced sage, which was good, but maybe just a TINY bit too much. I will cut back a little next time. Parsley or thyme would also be delicious, but tread lightly. It’s easy too overdo it.

These are fabulous as an appetizer with a good glass of red wine, or, with dinner, in place of bread or rolls. The recipe is from Chef Terrance Brennan, of New York’s Artisanal, where Girl and I were lucky enough to have brunch with my mother last month. We had some of the gougeres there and they were fabulous, but this recipe is simple enough to recreate that they were just as good at home. The secret is really good quality cheese and eating them immediately fresh and warm out of the oven.

Girl at Artisanal, with a GIGANTIC cup of hot chocolate.

Spring Rolls

Clockwise from top right: julienned red and green bell pepper, thinly sliced teriyaki chicken and halved grilled shrimp, shredded lettuce, sliced baby corn and red onion, avocado and bean sprouts (which I grew myself! how’s that for advanced meal planning!), julienned carrot and cucumber. Rice noodles in round center section.

This was an experiment, but has become a favorite family meal. Everyone loves to be able to customize and assemble their own meal and make it EXACTLY how they like it and it’s exceedingly healthy and low fat. This is a VERY popular meal with the kids. I usually am the person that’s on “wrapper duty” and make sure that there’s always a new wrapper soaking in the hot water, so that there’s one ready when someone needs it. We usually can eat at least three per person.

Basically, it can be anything that you like:

julienned or thinly sliced veggies: cucumber, bell pepper, carrot, lettuce, red onion, avocado

bean sprouts, baby corn, baby spinach

teriyaki-marinated grilled shrimp and/or chicken

thin rice noodles: I cut these into smallish pieces with kitchen shears and put them in a heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over them (I use an electric kettle) and let them soak a few minutes until they’re softened. Drain before placing in your serving bowl.

Assemble all of the ingredients and fillings on a platter, in whatever configuration you choose.

Pour more boiling water (again, I use an electric kettle and keep refilling it, so that we can dump out the water and replace it as it cools during the meal) into a shallow and wide, heat-proof bowl (I use the salad bowl of my everyday stoneware.) Place one rice paper spring roll wrapper into the hot water at a time and let it soak to soften for a few seconds (10-15.) Remove quickly (using a fork or small tongs, if necessary, to avoid a burn) and place on your plate. Fill the wrapper with veggies or proteins of your choice and wrap up like a burrito. The rice paper will stick to itself and seal your spring roll. Two important tips:

1. Place the fillings in a tight, compact line about 1 and 1/2 inches wide, just off the center of the wrapper, stopping at least an inch away from each edge.

2. Gently compress the fillings as you roll up the wrapper, to make the roll as tight as possible. This will help it stay intact as you eat it. No worries, though, if your roll does come apart…just grab a fork!

Serve with your choice of sauces (duck sauce, soy sauce, my great homemade sauce recipe here) for dipping and maybe edamame on the side. Oh, and some riesling!

Back-to-School Raspberry Granola Bars

These bars, from Food & Wine magazine, are OUTSTANDING. They are loaded with fiber and the pecans add a little bit of protein. They do have a fair amount of fat (butter) and sugar, but aren’t as bad as some cookie/bar recipes. We LOVED it with the raspberry preserves, but it would also be great with grape, blackberry, blueberry or any other robustly-flavored preserve or jelly. I have a little bit of dulce de leche left over from another recipe and I’m tempted to make a batch with that…we’ll see!

The butter in these bars can go rancid/stale tasting pretty quickly, so I would refrigerate or freeze them if you’re not going to eat them all in 3 or 4 days. The recipe says 1 week, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I LOVE the little tang of saltiness that an entire teaspoon of kosher salt provides, but if you are very sensitive to salt, you might want to cut back a little.

Chicken al Mattone (Chicken under a brick)

When I saw this recipe on the cover of September’s (2009) Bon Appetit magazine, I knew that I would have to try it. I have an overabundance of pride about my ability to butterfly (spatchcock) a chicken, so I tend to get a little excited when I see a recipe that requires that particular technique. A recipe that also incorporates garlic, red pepper, rosemary and lemon? Well, where do I sign?

Going into the oven, under the foil-wrapped brick.
This was REALLY easy (the trickiest part is the butterflying, but it’s simple once you get the knack – there are lots of videos on YouTube – I’ll probably make my own soon) and absolutely gorgeous and delicious. I love cooking whole chickens, because everyone gets to pick their favorite: dark meat or light? drumstick or breast? The chicken stayed moist and had lots of great flavor. This will definitely be a “keeper.” If I make it again for adults only, I’ll up the level of red pepper flakes a bit.

Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie

Girl HATES peanut butter. She had an allergic reaction to it as a toddler and was told not to eat it for so many years that, even when she outgrew the allergy (it’s rare to outgrow an allergy, folks, so don’t give your kid something that they’ve been previously allergic to without a doctor’s supervision; we tried it in the allergist’s office, Epi-Pen at the ready…six years after the initial reaction,) she was still a bit leery of it and never developed a taste for it. It’s only in the past few years that she’ll tolerate other nuts, but she does now LOVE pecans and will eat almond or cashew butter. Peanuts, however, are still a powerful “NO.” At least she no longer has to be segregated at the “peanut-free” lunch table, which is a very good thing.
Anyway…Girl was away at a sleepover last night, so I decided to make this pie for Hubby and Boy, who are MAJOR peanut butter lovers. I made it a few weeks ago to take to a friend who has been sick, and it looked wonderful during assembly, but I didn’t get to taste any of it, so I figured a do-over was overdue. (Ha! I crack myself up!)
The pie is fabulous (recipe here) and rich. The vanilla pudding layer is VERY flavorful and the bananas stay surprisingly fresh after a short orange juice bath. The peanut butter layer is just a little salty and tangy. Mmmm…very nice.
The pie isn’t difficult or terribly time-consuming to make, but it has to be made in stages and requires chilling time in between the steps, so it definitely can’t be made at the last minute. In fact, if you’re planning to make it tonight, you should start the prep by at least noon, because it requires a total of 4 hours of chilling (plus some cooking/baking time.) If you don’t start early, you’ll be eating dessert at 11 pm.
Worth the effort, though. Hubby liked enough that he went back for seconds before bedtime. Enjoy!
Hint: 6 ounces of Nilla Wafers = 46 wafers, for anyone that might not have a kitchen scale.

Pioneer Woman’s Simple Scrumptious Caesar Salad

Wow. Really, just wow. This salad (recipe here) is awesome. Make it NOW; just trust me.
I added some grape tomatoes, because I love them, even though they’re not “officially” a part of Caesar salad. Seriously, this salad is just SO good. I’m craving it right now, just looking at the photo.

Alton Brown’s Vanilla-Poached Pears

These (recipe here) were so delicious and easy. The really wonderful thing is that they can be prepared in advance, so they’d be wonderful for a dinner party. I served them with ice cream, because I wasn’t sure how my crew would take to them, on their own. They definitely liked them with the ice cream, but we had some of the leftovers, plain, for breakfast the next morning and they were also, quite well-received. Instead of serving the entire pear, you could also cut the pear into slices for a different presentation, with smaller portion sizes.

Oatmeal-Buttermilk Pancakes

This recipe is another that I originally read about in a magazine recipe-request column. It appeared in Bon Appetit’s RSVP column MANY years ago. I cut the recipe out because it was from a restaurant (Tres Joli Bakery Cafe) in Oakton, VA, which was just a few miles from where we lived at the time. Unfortunately, Tres Joli closed (or has evolved into a catering-only business, I believe) before I got a chance to eat there, but I finally got around to trying these pancakes recently and they were delicious. Light and crusty and lacy and hearty… One thing that I dislike about pancakes for breakfast is that they fill you up and weigh you down for a little while, but are made of such simple (quickly processed by your body) carbohydrates that they really don’t stick you very long. If you have blood-sugar issues, as I do (I’m borderline hypoglycemic,) then you will appreciate the oatmeal in these pancakes, because they’ll give you a little more complex carbs so you won’t have that “crash and burn” feeling after a few hours.

Milk-Chocolate Cookies with Malted Cream

Milk-Chocolate Cookies with Malted Cream from Food & Wine magazine
Holy cow! These were perfection. Delicious, with wonderful consistency. I have had problems in the past with making sandwich cookies and having the filling be too soft for cookies that were too hard, so that filling squished out in the middle when you bite into them, but there were spot-on. The filling had the EXACT consistency of Oreo cookie filling and stayed put exactly as it was supposed to. Definitely have a glass of milk handy. Be really careful with the way that you roll the dough out – I should have rolled mine a little thinner to have thinner completed cookies, but these were still pretty fabulous.