Serinakaker – (buttery) Vanilla thumbprint cookies

We virtually never baked or had cookies around when I was growing up.  I HATED this when I was little.  (I thought my family was totally lame, and I pretty regularily snuck over to my friends’ houses to eat the treats they had.)  The only cookie baking my mother ever did was Christmas cookies, which made the cookies super special.  Now that I’m older, I’ve become more grateful for this.  I did internalize the message that cookies are special treats, not something you have all the time – but I’m not going to lie, I still definitely eat them more often than once per year these days.  I also learned how much harder it is to eat something that isn’t around, so I make a point of not baking regularly myself.  I know the weakness of my own willpower!  But, I also still make an exception for this time of the year, when I go home to Minnesota and right away begin to fill evenings with baking, churning out a variety of cookies (my grandmother apparently felt that you had to have at least six types of cookies to make a decent cookie tray, and so I find myself creaming bowl upon bowl of butter, sugar, and eggs.  I kind of thought six was a lot, until a Christmas party I went to today where there were literally at least two dozen different kinds of cookies.  Holy trays of sprinkles Batman!  That’ll pretty much be the death knell for anyone’s attempt to not eat too many cookies in one sitting.  It may also be the reason I’m awake writing at a time I generally consider to be way past bedtime.  Mega sugar high – yes, I know there’s no serious scientific proof for the phenomenon of sugar highs, but tell that to me in an hour when I’m still awake…).

Buttery Browned Cabbage

Mmmm, cabbage.  The food of my people.  For centuries Norway was a poor country, perched up at the top of the globe – the last stop before the North Pole.  If it hadn’t been for cabbage, cod, and rutabagas, (and various uplifting drinks, I’ll admit) Norwegians would never have survived their long, dark winters. (Then they discovered oil in the North Sea, which allowed them to become obnoxiously wealthy…but still loveable, I like to think).  Norwegians still eat a lot of cabbage now.  I know I, for one, have an affinity for cabbage set deep in my heart.  And, in Norway you can actually buy pre-cooked and spiced red or green cabbage in little plastic pouches that you heat and eat.  Talk about a culturally specific convenience food!

I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to cabbage, too.  You can do a lot of different things with cabbage, and I like most of them (except boiled.  Just say “no!” to boiling vegetables, especially cabbage!): coleslaw, sweet and sour, stir-fried, kimchee, sauerkraut, braised…This is great because it’s one of the cheapest veggies you can get throughout the winter, and it stores for a really long time in the refrigerator.  Though I love cabbage, I have a sneaky suspicion that there are many people out there who, shall we say, do not harbor quite such fond feelings toward the vegetable.  I know that if you really, truly, absolutely detest cabbage, I’m not going to be able to convince you otherwise.  But, I would like to think that a lot of the distrust toward cabbage out there is either due to not really giving it a try, or to suboptimal preparation.  I mean, otherwise how could you not want to eat a vegetable that looks kind of like a crazy green or purple brain when you cut it in half!  I used to do food programs with children, one of which consisted of preparing and sampling cabbage.  I would coax the kids to taste it, usually by acting like a total wacko and making up weird names for it like “purple power plant” and “fried green brain.”  And, to the shock and amazement of the parents, every child who actually tried the cabbage liked it.  I like to flatter (translation: delude) myself that I’ve really enriched some people’s lives as a result.

Greek-spiced Shepherd’s Pie

I apologize if it’s a bit hard to read this post over the sound of me patting myself on the back.  Yeah, I’m a little proud of this one – mainly because it rates pretty high on the tasty-deliciousness meter and it used up a hefty two pounds of mashed potatoes that I had leftover from a lefse party (lefse is a Norwegian potato flatbread that is really best made at a party, preferably with a beer in one hand!).  The temperature has finally gotten legitimately wintery here.  Of course, I grew up in northern Minnesota, so whenever the subject of the cold comes up I have to act all extra tough (I mean, because I am, of course), and say things like, “This isn’t cold!  It never even gets really cold in Boston.  Try a couple of weeks of minus 40 and then get back to me about cold.”  This generally gets a lot of looks of shock and horror at the idea of that kind of weather, and then everyone returns to complaining about how cold it is.  Because it is.  Certainly, it is at least cold enough to have me hovering near my oven every evening coming up with reasons to turn it on.  Even if I’m making something on the stovetop, I’ve been able to scheme up some way to end it in the oven.  Case in point, this spiced up rendition of something akin to shepherd’s pie.

What to bring to a potluck with foodies – rustic butternut squash tarts

No, I don’t consider myself a foodie. Seriously, I don’t. Don’t give me that look! Sure I like to eat, but come on, that’s just human nature. The species wouldn’t have survived very long if we were anti-eating. I like to eat good, high quality food, but I’m not going to freak if the texture or flavor of something I make doesn’t measure up to an ideal standard in my head. And I like to cook (well, on my good days), but I think I have too utilitarian of an approach to food preparation to be a foodie. Most of my cooking adventures are born out of the desire to make something that will taste good and be nourishing, without having to make an extra trip to the grocery store. And, If I see a recipe that looks inspiring, my first step is usually to figure out how I can do it with fewer steps, less complicated techniques, and fewer dirty bowls.

That said, now and then we all want to be a little bit impressive, whether it’s cooking for a date, a special party, or as was my case yesterday, for a potluck for a bunch of friends who actually are foodies. For these occasions, I have discovered that the best ways of being impressive are: making something actually complicated and unbelievable – probably involving phyllo dough, bringing a really nice big salad because that’s really hard to screw up, or making something that is visually impressive but is quite easy to make like a trifle (ie. layers of whipped cream, cake chunks, and berries) or a rustic tart.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Apples

The universe seems to have some sort of rule that I am not allowed to be productive for two days in a row.  Yesterday was fabulous!  I was completely focused and plowed through my work, which never happens on a Monday.  Today…oi!  It’s nearing lunch time and I have yet to accomplish anything beyond standing up to stretch every 5 minutes and then sitting down in front of my computer and finding myself checking the weather online for the 976^th time (it’s cold and sunny, by the way).  Somehow I think it may not have been in my best interest to decide to work from a café instead of my office today (Beyonce serenading me is somehow not helping with the process of curriculum editing, who’d’ve known?!).  So, in the hope of doing something at least very slightly productive, I have decided to stop trying altogether and instead think about butternut squash.

Why butternut squash?  Well, a) because I’ve been cooking a lot of it and b) because it is such a low maintenance vegetable I feel like I might be able to muster enough concentration to deal with the thought of one right now.  Butternut is one of those great vegetables to stock up on because if you keep them somewhere cool and dry, they’ll keep for a good long time without any extra attention and you can pull one out whenever you’re looking for something to cook.  My friends Griff and Liz bought a bunch of squash in bulk last year in the fall and stashed them all over their apartment – we kept discovering them peeking out from under the couches, behind the doors, on bookshelves (everywhere except the pantry!).  The squash lasted them right through until early summer, not once complaining of neglect.

Salmon cakes with spicy mayo

Woe is me! I am already out of Thanksgiving leftovers. Which means I am also almost entirely out of food in my house. Preparing for Thanksgiving kind of took over the grocery shopping part of my brain leaving me completely unable to plan ahead for what would come afterwards. Couldn’t I just eat leftover turkey and mashed potatoes for every meal for the next couple of weeks? No, it turns out! I couldn’t. It, sadly, didn’t last nearly that long. The Thanksgiving feast also left me feeling a bit like I shouldn’t be required to cook anything (apart from making stock from the turkey bones to make into soup) for still another few days (on a side note, Thanksgiving was an adventurous day that I’m sure I’ll describe at some point in the future, and which turned out quite deliciously in the end with very few catastrophes and only one semi-serious injury, caused by an oyster shucker (picture squirting blood from the palm of the hand being staunched with a maxi pad – hopefully you’ll laugh and get the general idea!).

Anyways, with almost nothing in my refrigerator, I turned to the pantry. These are the days when I’m very glad I keep around canned fish, especially canned salmon! We’re all supposed to be eating more fish anyway – omega 3 fats and some of the other fishy components are good for the heart and brain, and give you a nice glossy coat (er, if you’re a dog or cat). I love fresh fish, but it can be hard to cook as often as I would like because it can be so darn expensive, and frequently the stuff they have at the fish counter is farm raised (not as healthy!) and looks as though it hasn’t seen the sea in so many weeks it has started to think it’s a pack of camels. For a while I got fish through something called a community supported fishery, which involved picking up a delivery of freshly caught fish once a week. The problem was, the fish were MASSIVE and needed to be filleted and gutted immediately. And who has time to do that at 3 on a Tuesday afternoon?!

Pork chops with cranberry-fig chutney (special bonus track: cranberry pear sauce)

I Love holidays!  Love with a capital L (as you can see).  I’m like a little kid, I get completely overexcited about holidays, especially the winter holidays that bring friends and family together around festive tables to combat the potential dreary winter blues.  And, I’m an absolute sucker for traditions.  I’m one of those people who likes to do the exact same thing every year for each holiday and heaven help you if you try to get me to change because it’ll be an uphill battle (though I’m always ready to adopt new traditions to have in addition to those I was raised with)!  I firmly believe that having the rhythm and dependability of strong traditions in our families and on our holidays roots us in a way that allows us to then be more creative and accepting of differences in the rest of life.

Given this, you can probably guess about how much variation there is from year to year in what I think should be cooked and served for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.  That’s right.  Zippo!  Same thing, every year, and it’s good every time!  On the other hand, I feel completely free to experiment with the principle ingredients of holiday dishes the rest of time.  Right now I’ve been playing with cranberries, for example.  I got, shall we say, a little enthusiastic when I was buying cranberries in preparation for Thanksgiving.  So, I’ve been using cranberries in other ways, besides as a side dish for the bird.  One of the first places they showed up was in several loaves of pumpkin bread.  I also tried drying some – that was a total fiasco.  Now I’ve moved on to pairing them with savory dishes.  Turkey isn’t the only meat that goes well with a bit of something sweet-tart on the side.  Pork and chicken, basically the other white meats, are good with cranberries as well (and though I’ve never tried it, I would imagine that salmon, baked with mustard on it (don’t ask why but I imagine cranberry sauce being good with mustard, maybe I had it on a sandwich once) would be good with cranberries too – I may try it and get back to you).

Root Vegetables Au Gratin

(The picture does not do justice to the deliciousness)

You’d think at this point in my life, having gone through a number of years, I’d be used to the way the seasons change. But somehow it surprises and delights me every year to see the leaves change and watch the first snow fall. I’m also shocked every single autumn by how short the days suddenly become. It gets dark so early now! Holy-moly! Nowadays, even though it’s easy to buy any food you want at any time of the year, I think it’s important and pleasurable to mark the shift in the seasons by changing cooking styles and ingredients. As the nights get darker and colder, I feel like it becomes imperative to make heartier, creamier dishes (I justify this (as if it needs justification) because I still bike commute everywhere in the cold and sleet!), which you don’t really feel like eating on warm summer evenings. In chatting about the quintessentially fall foods we eat on Thanksgiving, a friend told me that his mother had recently started making a gratin of mixed sweet and regular potatoes that was amazing. Now, I don’t think I’m going to add this to my Thanksgiving meal this year because I’m just too fond of having my sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes separately. But, I thought, it sounded too good not to try at least something of the sort for a regular supper.

I had never actually made a gratin before. But, having eaten them, I felt I had a pretty good guess as to what the necessary components are. That being: vegetables, a white sauce, and cheese. And given how the dish turned out, I’m inclined to believe that my guess was correct. Anyone who thinks it requires anything more is making it more complicated than necessary (sure this may take it to the next level, but I was quite happy with the level I achieved). So, the key to making a gratin is knowing how to make a white sauce. Once you can do that you can au gratin-ate just about anything you please (as long as you also know how to grate cheese, which doesn’t usually take any advanced training, unless you want to be able to grate without scraping your knuckles, which I think might be virtually impossible).

Why I will never be on the Food Network – or, if I can cook, anyone can

Okay, so that’s a pretty silly title for this blog post, considering that there are about half a kajillion reasons why I won’t be on the Food Network. But, in this case, I’m thinking about something specific. Television shows and magazine articles make cooking look like it is a production, a carnival of ingredients where everything has to laboriously be chopped precisely into uniform pieces or flavored with a foam of expensive seafood and some spice you’ve never heard of, and if you don’t create something perfect you’re sent home packing with your knives. But the truth of cooking is that it is much more approachable. You can make an extremely respectable, downright delectable meal with only ingredients and cooking techniques that a food snob might consider boring, but that a truly good cook would just consider practical. One of the very greatest things about cooking is how much wiggle room there is to fix mistakes or make something work. There is very rarely a disaster in the kitchen so serious that it can’t be salvaged. And if you really create a disgusting Franken-dish, you can always fry a couple of eggs and serve them on toast with a slice of tomato and dinner is saved!

When I first began cooking for myself and others, I used to be in a nervous fluster the entire time. I would whirl around the kitchen worrying that I wouldn’t add ingredients at the proper moment, or that I would stir at a rate of 1.7 rotations per second instead of 1.5, or that my vegetable cubes weren’t geometrically exact. Okay, maybe not quite that ridiculous, but my hands would literally be shaking while I tried to cook, and I would end up dropping pots or pulling a Jackson Pollock with the sauce I was making. Bit by bit, I discovered that all my fretting didn’t help anything. That as long as I followed the general spirit of the guidelines set forth in recipes I was reading for inspiration, things would generally be okay. Now, I’ve gotten so that much of the time I don’t measure or time things or follow recipes; instead I eyeball, and guestimate, and imagine what things might taste like if I put them together. And miraculously it works!

Pumpkin, 2 ways

When I think of things that could potentially jeopardize a relationship, pumpkin is not the first thing that springs to mind. In fact, it doesn’t spring to mind at all. When I think of pumpkin, I think of a pumpkin perched decoratively on a porch along with some dried corn, maybe with a goofy face carved into it. Or I think of one being turned into a carriage for Cinderella to take to the ball. Or I think of pumpkin pie, mmmm. And that’s where the problem arose. You see, my boyfriend has many wonderful qualities but it turns out he has horribly bad taste. He doesn’t like pumpkin pie! (Feel free to gasp in horror along with me!) Not even really good ones, according to his reports! I, on the other hand, think pumpkin pie is proof that the Universe is fundamentally an okay place. Pumpkin pie is a generous gift, brought by the little angels of the-best-kind-of-pie-ever each year on Thanksgiving to make us happy.

We discovered that we were at odds regarding this jolly orange squash because I happened to have one around, sitting in the pantry, just waiting to be roasted and put to good use. Luckily for my ability to compromise, I prefer to save pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving anyway, to keep it extra special. Plus, (beware, startling admission to follow) I actually think canned pumpkin (plain with nothing added – the ingredients list should just say pumpkin) works better for pie than fresh pumpkin! All this is to say, I decided not to use my pumpkin for pie. Luckily, there are all sorts of things you can do with pumpkin. Pumpkin (and really all the rest of the winter squashes) is a nice semi-sweet, silky flavor that goes nicely in either savory or sweet dishes. Pumpkin, or pumpkin-like squash, is traditionally used in Latin American, Middle-Eastern, and Asian, (especially Thai, think pumpkin coconut curry!) cooking, so you can add any of those spice combos to it (see the spice combos on my page on basics). I’ve heard you can even stir fry pumpkin, if you peel it and chop it into chunks. On this occasion, I had winter salads on my brain, so I decided to roast the pumpkin and add chunks of it, still warm, to a salad. Thinking about how Mexican cooking uses a lot of pumpkin seeds (aka pepitas), I decided to make a Mexican-inspired vinaigrette to tie the flavors together.