Anise-Almond Biscotti

I learned a lot of things about myself when I spent a month in Italy in college.

• I don't like to make grammatical mistakes, even in other languages.
• I like Italian coffee bars. Espresso or cappuccino, a biscotto or cornetto. A real cup, and a few seconds to enjoy.  No 20-ounce sugar-free, non-fat, super duper caramel latte, no giant mediocre muffin, none of this to-go nonsense.
• I can live without peanut butter.
• I love-love-love the flavor of anise. It started with my first sip of Sambuca, and I haven't been able to stay away since.

The word "biscotti" is the plural of "biscotto," which literally means "twice-cooked." You bake them once in a flat, oblong loaf, and then you slice them and bake them again!





These flavor of these cookies is subtle and sophisticated.  They make a fantastic gift, because they are fancy and impressive, and they keep well without becoming stale.

Give some away in cute little tins, but save a few for breakfast!

Anise-Almond Biscotti
adapted from Brown Eyed Baker
 
1.5 cups roasted unsalted almonds
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon anise extract
3 large eggs, plus 1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon anise seedes
Turbinado (raw) sugar for decorating the top

Preheat oven to 375.  Line a large baking sheet with parchment and set aside.  On a different rimmed baking sheet, arrange the almonds in a single layer.  Place in the oven and toast until golden and fragrant, about 6-8 minutes.  Cool completely.  Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt, and set aside.  Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add anise extract and beat to combine.  Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Add flour mixture and stir to combine.  Stir in almonds and anise seeds.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead to form a cohesive ball.  Make sure the nuts and seeds are evenly distributed.  My dough was very sticky, so make sure to have extra flour handy for your hands.  Divide dough in half, and shape each half into an oblong loaf, about 18 inches long, 6 inches wide, and 1 inch thick.  Don't worry too much if these loaves look smooth and pretty - it doesn't matter after you cut them up.  Transfer carefully to parchment-lined baking sheet and bake about 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the cooking time, until the loaves are golden and firm.  Transfer parchment and loaves to a wire rack and cool 20 minutes.  Decrease oven temperature to 300 degrees.

Using a serrated knife, slice loaves on the diagonal into 1/2-inch slices.  Place a wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet, and arrange slices cut-side up.  Bake about 30 minutes, and let cool completely on the rack.

Yield: about 4 dozen

7 Quick Takes: Dear Santa...

What's on your Christmas wish list this year?  A fancy electronic doo-dad?  A designer handbag?  Before the whole month of December sweeps by in a giant wave of parties and wrapping paper and baked goods, I wanted to give you some great gift ideas for your foodie friends, no matter what your budget!  Click on the pictures to be redirected to Amazon.com to view details and order these items!

1.

An enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is a perfect gift, especially as we are entering into stew and braise season.  These pots are equally at home on the stove, in the oven, and on a holiday table.  Le Creuset is the most popular and well-known brand, and they come in beautiful colors, but it comes with a designer price tag.  I use a 5.5-quart Martha Stewart Collection pot that I got as a wedding present more than three years ago, and I absolutely love it.  I looked around online, and apparently they've stopped making that particular one, but as long as the pot is enameled cast iron, I'd say go for a deal.  The 5.5-quart size is a great all-purpose soup-stew-braising-baking pot, and I use mine all the time.  It heats really evenly, so you can get a perfect sear on meats without scorching.  I've even used it to make pudding.  Check at your local TJ Maxx, Marshall's, or HomeGoods to find discounts on the Le Creuset brand.

2.

Oh Kitchen Aid, oh Kitchen Aid, how lovely are your features...  This thing is amazing.  It kneads dough, whips cream and egg whites (meringue, how I love thee), and creams butter in the flashiest of flashes.  If you already have a Kitchen Aid, I've heard great things about the ice cream maker attachment.  (I have heard equally lackluster things about the pasta machine attachment, but to be fair, I have never tried either one.)

                                       3.                                                  4.

A couple of different thermometers for you to consider.  On the left is a simple one that hangs from one of the shelves in your oven, and tells you the actual temperature inside!  The temperature gauge on an oven can have a 10- to 15-degree swing, and do you really want to risk that when you're baking?  I didn't think so.  The little one on the right is great for roasting meats - stick the probe in, set the digital part on the counter, and close the door.  No more opening the door and letting all the heat escape while you poke the meat (and release the juices!).  You can even set an alarm that goes off when the inside of the meat reaches the desired temperature.  Done and done.

5.

A Microplane grater/zester.  I finally bought myself one, and used it for the first time last night.  Oh. My. Gosh. I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally grated my knuckles while trying to zest a lemon or grate some fresh ginger.  If only I had known sooner that for ten measly dollars, my fingers could be saved... This thing is a miracle.  Get it.

6.

Tongs!  Another amazingly useful tool.  Before I had these, I didn't know I needed them.  Now, I find myself reaching for them all the time.  My favorite use for them: tossing hot pasta in a homemade sauce.

7.

This past weekend, I was rolling out the dough to make the butter horns (our homemade crescent rolls), and I was getting flour all over my black shirt (BLACK?!  What was I thinking?).  And then I remembered that old-timey stroke of genius, that item of clothing that has been worn by generations of women, but somehow forgotten by ours, THE APRON.  I have one, but I don't wear it, because it's indecent.  It's me as Venus.  It's...  funny and scandalous.  So it's basically like I don't have one.  But!  I want one and I love the ones they have at Anthropologie.  They're are whimsical and sweet.

Visit Jen for more quick takes!  Have a great weekend, friends!

Look what we made!

Post-Thanksgiving ritual: grapefruit and green tea for breakfast, and the advent wreath!

I think I'm addicted to yarn crafts.  I just finished my first sweater (!) during the drive up to Michigan and back this weekend, and my sister and I have established a new holiday tradition - the post-Thanksgiving Christmas craft project!

Knitting with double-pointed needles is ca-razy.  Believe it.

For our first annual post-Thanksgiving Christmas craft project, we made crocheted wreaths!  So easy and fun - they only took about an hour or so to make.  Since all the women in my family tend to not be able to sit still, crafting is a great way for us to get in some quality time.  It allows our hands to be doing something while we focus attention on each other.

Here's what we needed.  Not a lot, eh?

And here's what we got:

We're silly.  Want to make your own?  Oh my goodknits!  You can!

Thanksgiving: What To Drink

Choosing an appropriate wine for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with all its rich and varied components, can be a tricky thing.  There are a few different ways you can successfully go, but in the end, it's going to come down to personal preference.  If you're feeding a crowd, it's best to have some options.  The black pepper and mineral notes of a bold California Zinfandel provide a more interesting contrast than you might get from other, smoother reds.  My favorite is Storybook Mountain Vineyards Eastern Exposures Zinfandel.  For white, choose a Chardonnay that's not overly oaky, like Robert Mondavi Private Selection.

If you're a guest, consider bringing something a little more unexpected, like a sparkling wine.  Last year, I brought a sparkling dry rosé from Hesketh Wines which was unanimously loved.  A visually celebratory wine with a faint pink color, its dry effervescence provided some much-needed levity to the otherwise heavy and complex flavor profile of the meal.  And there's just something about bubbles that signals a special occasion.

Pumpkin Bread

It seems to me that it happened every single year in elementary school: there would be one day when we crowded around a bowl and made pumpkin muffins.  To this day, every time I open a can of pumpkin, that memory comes flying back.  It's as powerful as the smell of tempera paint or that hand soap in the bathrooms.  Isn't it strange how specific and tangible olfactory memory is?

This is my take on a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, the Fannie Farmer Baking Book.  When I was growing up, I think I baked almost every single cookie in it.  It's a fantastic reference book - every chapter begins with a "Basic Master Recipe" that goes through the steps for bread, pie, cake, quick breads, crackers, and cookies in painstaking detail.  There are drawings and suggestions for pairings and substitutions.  Most of all, everything I've ever made from it has turned out beautifully.  It also contains the recipe for the best scones in the world.  It's a great book.  When I moved out of my mom's house, I bought myself a copy, knowing that it wouldn't feel right to be in the kitchen without it!

This is a dense, spicy bread, studded generously with dates and nuts.  After the bread is baked, the dates become moist, unidentifiable pockets of sweetness.  It's best within a day or two, but after that it's fantastic toasted and spread with salted butter.

Pumpkin Bread

1 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup oat flour (grind old fashioned oats in the blender until powdery)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2/3 cup melted butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, slightly beaten
2/3 cup milk
1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
1 cup chopped pitted dates
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and grease and flour two standard loaf pans.  Stir together dry ingredients in a large bowl.  In another bowl, stir together butter, sugar, eggs, milk, pumpkin puree, dates and walnuts.  Add to dry ingredients and fold together, taking care not to over mix.  Divide evenly between loaf pans and bake 50-65 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in pans for 5 minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Yield: two loaves

Mushroom and Leek Wild Rice

Thanksgiving in my parents' house always goes about the same way.  Mom wakes up super early and makes coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls with nuts and raisins.  I'm the next to get up, and then we'll sit down together and start going through the stack of old, splattered, hand-written recipes that make up our family's traditional dinner.  Bajee's stuffing, supremely moist and studded with fruit and pecans, Grandmom's traditional cornbread stuffing, candied yams, cranberry sauce and orange-cranberry relish, fluffy pale green jello salad, crescent rolls, the obligatory green vegetable, and 3 kinds of pie: pumpkin, cherry, and pecan.  Nothing changes, and I wouldn't want it to.  This is the one day a year when I believe that nothing can be improved about the meal.

We cook all day, stopping briefly to eat the cinnamon rolls when they're ready and catch a glimpse of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  I always feel slightly bewildered when I see recipes for things like appetizers and starters for Thanksgiving.  It boggles my mind that people would put time and effort into fussy, complicated appetizers for people to eat before the biggest meal of the year.  There are so many problems with that!  First, who has time to make them?  Second, if people are munching on appetizers and snacks all day, how will they have room for dinner? 

Even though I think appetizers and new side dishes have no business near a Thanksgiving dinner, I am not immune to the pull of these things in other contexts.  So I'll make sausage, fig, and cranberry stuffing, or twice-baked sweet potatoes with chipotle-pecan streusel, or sweet potato cupcakes with toasted marshmallow frosting (!) some other time.  And I'll also eat mushroom and leek wild rice, stuffed into roasted winter squash, all week for lunch.

Mushroom and Leek Wild Rice

This would be a great vegan entree for Thanksgiving, if you tend that way.

1 cup wild rice, rinsed well
1/2 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
3 large portobello mushroom caps
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 bunch leeks, cleaned well, and sliced
1/4 teaspoon celery seed (or 1 rib fresh celery, chopped, if you have some on hand)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup dry sherry
salt and pepper to taste

Place dried mushrooms in a medium bowl, and pour 3 cups boiling water over them.  Allow to steep for 20 minutes, until the mushrooms are soft, and the liquid is caramel colored and very fragrant.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms and set aside.  Pour the mushroom broth into a medium saucepan with the wild rice, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.  This can take anywhere from 45-60 minutes, depending on the brand of rice you use, so keep your eye on it. 

While the rice is cooking, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with foil.  Gently scrape the gills from the portobello mushrooms using a spoon, taking care not to scoop out the mushroom flesh.  Slice into 1/2-inch-thick strips.  Arrange on a foil-lined baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for about 10 minutes, until mushrooms are tender. Set aside.

Place olive oil in a wide shallow saucepan or skillet over medium heat.  Add leeks and saute 2-3 minutes, until soft.  Chop porcini and portobello mushrooms into bite-sized pieces and add to the pan.  Add seasonings and stir to combine.  Add sherry, and deglaze the pan, scraping up any brown bits.  Stir in wild rice, and season with salt and pepper to taste. 

Yield: 4-6 servings

Note: This dish tastes great as is, but if you're not vegan, stir in a couple of tablespoons of butter after removing the finished dish from the heat.  The butter adds a silkiness and finesse that makes it taste even more like a special occasion.

"Your life is an occasion.  Rise to it." -Mr. Magorium

Southern Comfort Apple Pie and Thoughts about Crust

T-MINUS ONE WEEK UNTIL TURKEY DAY!

Are you ready?

Up until very recently, I had experienced nothing but failure when I tried to make pie crust on my own.  Oh, I could cobble together something moderately respectable, but I would never have called it a success.  So when my mom came to visit this summer, I dragged her to the kitchen to show me exactly how it's done.

There are a lot of different opinions floating around out there about pies.  Butter, lard, or vegetable shortening?  A combination?  Food processor, pastry blender, or by hand?

Here are my conclusions, based on a couple of months of research:

FATS:
Butter is best for flavor, but the crust does not hold shape as well as a combination butter-shortening crust.  Read this article for a full run-down on the pros and cons of different fats (and, incidentally, a step-by-step photo recipe of my preferred method for making dough).

METHOD:
I like the food-processor method.  It's consistent, it's easy, and it's fast.  If you want to do it by hand, there's a great tutorial over here.  I love the idea of doing it by hand.  I really do.  And I may change my mind in the future, but for now, this method is really working for me.

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
When I was baking test pies for the Bucktown Apple Pie Contest, I had this idea in my head that I should bake something extra-special into the crust.  I blame Pushing Daisies for putting a bee in my bonnet.



I tried baking in a little maple syrup, a little lemon zest, honey...  And none of them worked.  Pie dough is a very delicate balance, and you can't just throw extra things in.  The one exception I've found is Heidi's rye pie dough, which is hands-down the dreamiest, easiest-to-handle, flakiest, most amazing pie crust I've ever made or tasted.

The key ingredient, I've found, is patience.  Don't cut corners, don't rush, and you'll come out the other side with a buttery, golden pie crust you can be proud of.

Southern Comfort Apple Pie
adapted from 20 Something Cupcakes

It's important that you use a deep-dish pie plate for this recipe, because the caramel filling expands while baking, and you really, really don't want hot sticky stuff bubbling out of the pan onto your oven.  I baked my pie on a cookie sheet just in case, and my pie plate is ginormous.

Basic All-Butter Pie Crust:
This recipe makes enough for one 8- or 9-inch double-crust pie, two single-crust pies, or one 10-inch deep-dish single-crust pie.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup very cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
4-5 tablespoons ice water

Place flour and salt in a food processor with the blade attachment.  Pulse a few times.  Place half of butter cubes into food processor and pulse a few times, until pea-sized clumps form.  Add the rest of the butter, and pulse only two or three times, just to break it up a little and coat it with flour.  The next step will take care of the bigger pieces.  Add apple cider vinegar and water, one tablespoon at a time, pulsing a few times after each addition, and stopping the moment the dough starts to come together.  If it gets too wet, it's impossible to work with, and really hard to fix.  Dump the dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap, squeeze into a disc (or two, for two crusts), wrap tightly, and let rest in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes.  All day is fine - the colder it is, the easier it is to roll out.

Topping:

1/2 cup pecan halves, roughly chopped
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chilled unsalted butter

Place sugars, cinnamon, salt and flour into a food processor fitted with the blade attachment.  Pulse a few times until well incorporated.  Add butter and pulse a few times more, until uniform small-ish pieces form.  Remove to a bowl and stir in pecans. Set aside.

Filling:

5-7 medium-size baking apples, such as Cortland
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup Southern Comfort liqueur

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Peel and core the apples, and slice into 1/4-inch thick slices.  In a large skillet, melt 1/2 cup butter over medium heat.  Add apples, and saute for about 5 minutes.  Add sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, stirring to combine.  Using a slotted spoon, remove apples to a baking sheet, leaving as much liquid as possible.  Add Southern Comfort to the skillet, and cook about 10 minutes, until alcohol is burned off and mixture is thick.  Remove from heat and return the apples to the skillet, stirring to coat.  Roll out pie crust to a 1/8-inch thick circle, and place gently in pie plate.  Flute edges and prick all around bottom and sides with a fork.  Pour apple filling into prepared crust, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace at the top.  Sprinkle with pecan topping, and bake 50-60 minutes, until filling is bubbling and topping is crisp and brown.

Serve with unsweetened whipped cream.