Christmas Cookie Memories

One of my favorite holiday traditions is baking -- and eating! -- cookies. Each year, I glance over the multitudes of cookbooks on my shelves, and scour my library of issues of Bon Apetit from Decembers past, but I usually end up boiling it down to a few tried and true favorites. My top 3 choices for Christmas cookies are rugelach (which is actually an eastern European Jewish cookie), Viennese Crescents (the crumbly, buttery, nutty, powdered sugar coated variety), and my number one hands down choice for yuletide bakery is ......... SUGAR COOKIES. Yup. Kind of Plain-Jane for the likes of me, I admit, but they are without a doubt my favorites.

When I was in 8th grade, I conned my mom into helping me bake these sugar cookies. She usually opted for the kelly-green corn-flake wreaths decorated with red-hots (that made your bowel movements the next morning look a leprechaun's). Making actual cookie dough, with food-colored frosting was a little outside of her comfort zone. But she was willing to humor me!

All day, we rolled out dough and cut them into reindeer, Christmas trees, stars, bells, and Santas. We filled cookie sheet after cookie sheet with cutouts and perseveringly baked each one of them off. We waited patiently while they all cooled, and then .... it was time to decorate.

Up until this point, I felt I had this cookie-baking thing down pat. I had no idea what was in store for me. Over six dozen sugar cookies waited anxiously for me on the counter. I had my bowls of royal icing before me in shades of white, red, green, yellow, and blue. For very nearly 8 hours, I frosted and decorated these godforsaken cookies, one at a time. By the second dozen, my mom reneged her offer to help me. It was fun at first to make each one look prettier than the next, but by the last couple of dozen all the royal icing went into the same bowl to make BLACK frosting. I was no longer amused and no longer felt festive by ANY stretch of the imagination. My 12 year old back was aching and my patience was stretched thinner than a crack whore.

But at last I reached the final cookie -- a black reindeer with a redhot for an eye -- and I asked myself a question: WHO was going to eat all of these cookies?????? The F word may have escaped my lips. I asked my mom, because I was legitimately concerned. "We'll take them to Christmas dinner at your Grandfathers!" GREAT idea!!!! Good one, Mom.

So Christmas Day comes, and we go to my grandfather's house for dinner. There's a good dozen or so people there, and my step-grandmother was VERY happy to see that I brought some cookies to help feed them all.

We have dinner, dessert (Flaming Cherries Jubilee, which Step-Grandma spills on the tablecloth providing a VERY impressive Christmastime pyrotechnic display!) and coffee. People start to leave, and then my mom decides it's time for us to head home, too. We get our coats, and say goodbye to everyone. As we are getting into the car, I literally YELP. MY COOKIES! I rush back inside and grab the tin from the counter. Step-Grandma was mortified. Unbeknownst to me, when you bring cookies to someone's house, you're supposed to LEAVE them there! Was she CRAZY?????? Did she have any idea how many hours it took me to decorate those????? And so the remaining 4.5 dozen cookies came back home with me. :-).

As you can see in the above picture, while I still love my sugar cookies, I am now less inclined to reach for the royal icing. And Williams-Sonoma makes really pretty sprinkles! 

Happy Holidays, everybody.

HOORAY HOORAY FOR TURKEY DAY!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  A day that revolves around food?  What more could one hope for?!  It's Christmas, without the presents.  The GIFTS are on your dinner plate.  Every year, I put great time and effort into orchestrating a meal that balances my childhood memories of tastes and smells with my refined cooking skills and creativity.  It is a process that literally takes WEEKS.  My first step is scouring my Thanksgiving recipe collection, then I narrow it down to what courses I need.  Once that's figured out, I compile a shopping list that is organized into 6 categories:  fresh produce, dairy, meat, baking goods, miscellaneous dry goods, & liquor.  Then I make a timeline.  The bulk of the work starts on Monday or Tuesday, then Wednesday the real fun begins.  At 6AM, Operation Turkey Dinner will ensue in earnest.  My timeline for Thursday has everything nailed down to the minute, with 3PM - SERVICE at the end of the schedule.  My nickname in culinary school was "Timeline Girl".  And that is my secret to ANY successful dinner party.  You can never be too organized, be it down the the second or down to the ounce.  And always clean as you go!

However, there is more to this day than the food.  Americans see it as an opportunity to sit back and reflect on all you have to be thankful for.  What I am most thankful for is living in a society that is so diverse and rich in history & culture.  This would be such a boring world if we were all the same.  At my table this year alone, my meal will be shared with those of German, Swiss, Italian, Thai, Muong, and Ukrainian backgrounds.  What do we have in common?  Besides the fact that we all love food, we are all American. 

Which leads me to the month of September in the year 1620.  A little boat called The Mayflower left England carrying 102 passengers who were mostly religious seperatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith.  Crossing the Atlantic was a journey that lasted a little longer than 2 months.  That first winter, most passengers stayed aboard.  Many suffered from exposure, scurvy and other contagious diseases.  Only half survived to welcome spring.

In March of 1621, the "pilgrims" moved ashore to what is now Plymouth, MA, where they recieved a greeting in English from an Abenaki Indian.  He returned a few days later with Squanto, who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery.  Squanto had escaped to London and returned to his homeland on an exploratory expedition.  The pilgrims had brought their own seeds with them from Europe, but they were unsuccessful in cultivating them.  Squanto taught the pilgrims how to grow corn, extract the syrup from maple trees, catch fish in rivers, and to avoid poisonous plants.

After a successful corn harvest in November 1621, William Bradford, the governor, organized a feast and invited their new Native friends.  The celebration lasted the better part of 3 days.  Sadly, this is one of the ONLY examples of harmony between the Native Americans and the Europeans.

Most of the items on your traditional Thanksgiving menu are foods native to North America and were staples in the Native American diet.  Everything from the turkey to the sweet potatoes; from the cranberries to all the varieties of squash. As you load up your plate this year, take a second to appreciate the diversity not only at your dinner table, but in the world around you, and then be thankful for the freedom you have to do so.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The Joy of Eating

 

There are few things we do in life that simultaneously satisfy all 5 senses at the same time the way eating does.  I, for one, eat with my eyes first.  From something as basic as an unblemished, perfectly ripe, ruby red strawberry to a colorfully artistic, meticulously balanced, spotlessly clean plate presentation, if something looks good I am going to want to eat it.  And the better it looks, the MORE I am going to want to eat it! 

 

The most obvious thing we experience when we eat is taste.  There are 5 different categories that you can boil "taste" down to:  salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami (which is basically savory -- it's nutty; earthy; buttery -- think truffles, parmesan cheese, and crabmeat).  One of these flavor profiles in an of itself in its purest form does not necessarily taste good.  When was the last time you had a spoonful of salt?  Or had a shot of straight lemon juice?  Or ate frosting all by itself?  But when you combine 1 of those flavor profiles with another one -- like a salty piece of prosciutto wrapped around a sweet, juicy piece of canteloupe -- your tastebuds explode and your eyes roll back in your head! 

The next sense we experience when we eat that we don't usually associate with food is "touch".  Believe it or not, temperature actually contributes to the taste of a dish. For example, when you make ice cream, the base you start with -- whether it's a sorbet base or the egg-cream-sugar base known as creme anglaise -- will taste WAY sweeter at room temperature than when you freeze it. If you taste that base unfrozen, partially frozen (fresh out of the ice-cream maker) and completely frozen (after spending a few hours in the freezer), you will have 3 very different degrees of sweetness.  Likewise, if you have a cold soup, such as gazpacho, you will need to season it more liberally than if you are serving it warm.

Also, food obviously has different textures.  When I bite into that freshly-picked, stop-sign-red strawberry, it is soft and succulent.  It is moist and ripe; tittilating.  And if it is still warm from the sun, it makes it taste even more sweet.  Its juices trickle down my lips toward my chin as I bite into this perfect piece of fruit, and again, MY EYES ROLL BACK IN MY HEAD!   Somethings, nature needs no help in.

 

In the textural scheme of things, there are sensations our mouths recognize:  crunchy, creamy, chewy to name a few.  The more of these textures you put on a plate, the more interesting it becomes.  Think of a pasta salad.  You combime the chewiness of the al dente pasta, with the crispiness of some raw vegetables (bell pepper, onion, celery), and some creamy mayonnaise, maybe some nice fresh herbs.  You add to that equation some "sour" in the form of vinegar or lemon juice, some saltiness like bacon or maybe some canned tuna, your bell pepper will provide some sweetness .... Your dish starts to become complex and more interesting not only to your tastebuds, but you also have a more diverse mouthfeel which directly contributes to how a dish "tastes".  Not to mention, you have a few different colors on your plate, so it becomes interesting to the eye as well.

This leads me to the sense of "sound".  Totally unrelated to taste, right?  Quite the contrary.  How does an apple sound when you take a bite out of it?  What do you hear as you slurp at a spoonful of soup?  As you greedily gulp it down?  What would eating be like if we could not hear these sounds?  It is part of the pleasure.  Not to mention an important part of cooking.  The sound a piece of meat makes as it hits the hot surface of a pan.  Most of the time when I make pasta, I know my water is ready because I can hear it boiling.  I also know that when I can't hear that meat sizzling anymore, it's probably time to flip it over.

The next stop -- which more accurately would be our first stop, even before sight -- on our sensual journey of eating, is SMELL.  I left this one for last, because it is the most important when it comes to food, and it is the most directly related to our sense of taste.  Some of my favorite smells are directly related to food.  After moving to California, late one spring I was sitting at a stoplight in rush-hour traffic.  I had all my windows down and a warm San Diego breeze swept through my car.  I experienced for the first time the smell of orange blossoms.  It caught me off guard, actually.  I didn't realize what it was at first, only that the SWEET smell was intoxicating and I couldn't inhale ENOUGH.  I looked to my left and saw an orange grove, and then suddenly it made sense.  You could ALMOST TASTE the sweetness. 

Although far inferior to other species, smell is our stongest sense.  Since our olfactory nerves are located at the top of our nasal cavity, there are actually 2 ways we are able to smell things:  orthonasally (or through the nostrils) and retronasally (through the mouth).  So, as we taste things, we are able to smell them at the same time.  Ever notice when you have a cold, food just doesn't taste good?  This is exactly why.  Our sense of smell -- therefore our sense of taste -- is inhibited.

Interestingly enough, the olfactory nerve is located near to the amygdela -- which is the area of the brain that is connected to memory and emotion.  Personally, there are many food smells that evoke both memory and emotion for me.  One is the smell of yams roasting in the oven.  Every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mom would make her "sweet potato" casserole.  She would roast the yams the night before the dinner and our entire house would be permeated with the warm, sweet smell of them.  To me, that smell is the essence of the holiday season.  It evokes comfort and excitement.

And isn't eating, by nature, COMFORTING?  After eating a nice meal, when your belly is full of food that tastes good, you feel relaxed; secure.  When you go to someone's house for dinner, you ring the bell, and as the door opens the smell of food hits you.  It could be fresh bread, cookies, sizzling meat, roasting veggies ... all of the above!  Correct me if I'm wrong, but the smell of food puts a smile on your face. 

We associate the SMELL of food with the emotions of comfort and of fullness.  Food FEELS good; it TASTES good; it SOUNDS good; it LOOKS good.  As we rush through our meals so we can make it to work on time, get to that meeting, get the kids fed so everyone can go to bed and start the cycle all over again, I think we forget that eating is a sensual act.  It literally encompasses all of our senses.  I think it is important to take the time to enjoy food.  Whatever it is you are eating -- be it an animal or a vegetable or a fruit -- remember that that creature gave up its life for you so you could have nourishment for your body.  Enjoy it! 

 

 

Barbeque's Galore Cooking Experience

As I wind down my time as Chef Sal's Bitchin' Assistant at Barbeque's Galore, I find it only fitting to pay homage to the time I spent manning the grill, and to the subsequent gallons of sweat I lost in doing so.  The knowledge I gained working there I will keep in my back pocket for a long time to come.  I learned volumes about meat cookery and public speaking, and I gained a lot of self confidence preparing and presenting food to an audience of 12 every evening.  Also, taking a recipe that was meant for the oven, and asking myself the question "How can I make this work on the grill???" was always an enjoyable challenge for me.

I cannot properly pay tribute to this brief stop on my journey without telling you about the foccacia bread I made everyday -- on the grill of course.  Baking bread on a daily basis, you can't help but learn about the science behind playing with yeast dough.  Here is the recipe:

 Foccacia Bread on the Grill
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/2 tablespoon sugar
3-1/4 cups warm water (105-115 degrees)
2 pounds 12 ounces of all purpose flour (or half AP & half bread flour)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons prepared or store bought rub of choice
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Additional extra virgin olive oil, as needed for oiling bowl, pan & drizzing on finished loaf
Kosher salt, as needed for seasoning after baking

The most important step in bread baking is properly blooming the yeast.  If you have ever ended up with a dead, rock-like, lifeless loaf, this is probably where you screwed up.  I put the yeast in the work-bowl of my standmixer with a little bit of sugar.  To that, you need to add WARM water.  It HAS to be between 105-115 degrees.  Yeast is a living organism -- a single-celled fungus, actually.  When it's in the little packet or jar, it is sleeping.  If your water is not warm enough, it's going to stay sleeping; if it's too hot, you are going to kill it.  Either way, your yeast will not bloom and your bread will not rise.  Once you add the water, you want to whisk it so the yeast and sugar dissolve.  The warm water will activate the yeast, and when it wakes up, it's HUNGRY.  What happens is that it starts to eat the carbohydrates in the sugar.  As it takes in those carbs, it exhales carbon dioxide.  That's what makes the top of your water bubbly (not to mention your beer!), and that's what will eventually give your dough its lift. 

After about 5 minutes, you will start to see a lot of those bubbles on top of the water.  That's when you know it's time to incorporate the dry ingredients, and the olive oil. 

You want to knead the dough on your standmixer with the dough-hook attachment on low speed until it comes together and begins to pull away from the sides of the the work bowl.  It will actually start to climb up the sides of the dough-hook -- this is when  you know  it wants OUT.  It's OK if it still looks a little raggedy. 

Next, continue to knead it by hand until it is smooth and elastic, like a baby's bottom.  At that point, you put it into a bowl that is lightly greased with olive oil.  Cover it with a damp towel, or with a sheet of plastic wrap then set it in a warm, draft-free corner in your kitchen.  When I am at home, I like to put it in my oven with the oven light turned on.  This makes it a little warmer than room temperature, and the warmer it is, the faster those yeast cells will react.

After 1-1/2 - 2 hours, your dough will double in size.  If you have used plastic wrap, you can see the biproduct of those hungry yeast cells!  It traps the carbon dioxide in, and you end up with a big bubble.



If you bloomed your yeast properly, you should have a nicely risen ball of dough now.  Next, you want to gently press the air out of it with your fingertips.  By doing this, you are achieving a couple of things.  First, you are relaxing the gluten strands.  Those strands trap the carbon dioxide in the dough, giving you the "bubbles" in the bread when you bake it.  Second, you are redistributing nutrients in the dough to the yeast cells. You are also equalizing the temperature of the dough.  It's cooler on the outside than on the inside.  These things reset the feeding frenzy for the yeast.

I let the dough rest like this for 5 or 10 minutes while I oil up an 18"X13" cookie sheet with 1" sides.  Ever so gently, remove the dough from the bowl, and press it out into the pan. 

Let the dough rise a second time until it doubles in size again.  This step is called "proofing", and should only take about an hour.  While you are waiting for that to rise, go ahead and preheat your outdoor grill to high.  Once your dough has finished proofing and your grill is as hot as it can get,  you are ready to bake it.

Turn the burners of your grill off on one side.  Set the pan containing the bread over the indirect heat, and close the hood of your grill.  Your are essentially turning your barbeque into a convection oven, and the hot air will circulate around your dough.  Let it bake for about 6-7 minutes, until one side of the loaf is nice and toasty brown.  Rotate the pan 180-degrees, close the hood and continue to cook another 6-7 minutes.  The surface of the bread should be well crusted and an even, nutty color.

Remove the bread from the grill and brush it with a little extra virgin olive oil.  Sprinkle it with a little salt and you are ready to dig in! 


To all of my friends at Barbeque's Galore, and without a doubt to my Chef ....... Thank you so much for everything:  for the laughter, for the confidence in my ability, for the freedom to be creative and occasionally share the spotlight in the kitchen ...... I will miss you all very much.  It was an honor and a pleasure.  Respectfully yours, Beth.

The Journey Begins ....

Born and raised in suburban Michigan, my love of food started at a very young age.  My earliest food memories are of farm-fresh corn on the cob and luscious peak-of-the-season tomatoes my mother would purchase from roadside produce stands in the late months of summer.  My grandparents had 10 acres of property, on which wild raspberries grew in abundance.  I remember going on walks with my grandmother with a little copper bucket so we could pick them to have for dessert.  My grandfather was a hunter, so we would often go to my grandparents’ home in late fall to have that season’s duck, which was more often than not served with wild rice from the Great Lakes area.  From a very early age, I learned that fresh, seasonal, local food tastes best. 

As a child, my family and I would take a road trip every summer.  I had a little paperback book about the US that had a chapter devoted to the history and highlights of each state.  There was a map in the beginning of the book and I would use a pencil to color in each state that I’d been to.  By high school, I had 32 states filled in. 

These first travels in my life also taught me about regional food.  For example, my favorite part of visiting Maine was a little restaurant called Abel’s in Bar Harbor.  When I was about 9, I got to go outside to the tank and pick out my very own lobster.  It was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten.  A couple years later, we went to Yellowstone, where I had a burger made with BISON meat!  I was astounded!  During a trip to Georgia, I first encountered a strange item on a breakfast menu called grits.  I had never heard of it before.  I was amazed! 

When I moved to California at the age of 24, I was excited to find that instead of the end-of-the-summer farm stands, there were actual farmer’s MARKETS in addition to YEAR ROUND vegetable stands. 

After I was married, my husband and I traveled to Italy many times to visit his family there.  Having grown up in a household with 2 American parents with German ancestry, my idea of Italian food was pasta and red sauce (which came from a jar) with maybe some garlic bread found in the frozen section of the grocery store if the mood swept you.  And of course peperoni pizza from Dominos.  My first trip to Rome is REALLY what ignited my passion for food.  The Italians took my appreciation for fresh ingredients to a whole new level.  Their ability to take the most simple ingredients and put them together in a way that makes each component sing while perfectly harmonizing the flavors of the dish as a whole …. It really is genius. 

These trips led to side trips to different regions of Italy (on tours led by the Italian relatives), and also to other European countries such as France, Spain, Ireland, and England.  Before I ever opened a book or heated a pan in culinary school, experiencing the regional cuisine of these cultures were to become the foundation of my education.  I began buying cookbooks so I could recreate what I experienced in Europe at home.  And I watched so many hours of The Foodnetwork, that the logo was permanently burned into our TV screen!

After my husband and I divorced, I followed my dream and enrolled in culinary school.  During this time, I also found out my mother had stage 3 esophageal cancer.  Two months into my education, I had to fly home to be with my sister at my mother’s bedside as she underwent an esophagectomy, removing her esophagus and the cancer it contained.  The most difficult and horrifying experience I have ever had was seeing my loving, patient, strong mother in that state.  She was in so much pain and so helpless, and my sister and I couldn’t do anything to make her better.  We could just hold her hand and tell her how much we loved her. 

After 2 weeks, I returned to San Diego and to school.  Because of the time I missed, I had to join another class that was about 6 weeks behind my original one.  I was determined to graduate and to do the best I could possibly do so I could make my mother proud. 

However, she was never able to fully recover from the surgery.  In September of 2011 – 3 months before graduation -- she passed away in her sleep.  Once again, I flew home to Michigan to be with my family and to help my sister plan the funeral.

A week later, I picked up at school where I had left off, joining the same class.  I had to finish, no matter what.  And I did.  During the entire program, I never earned less than an A-.  I graduated at the top of my class, and I was the recipient of The President’s Award for my dedication to the culinary profession and for my commitment to the highest of standards.  That award was for my mother. 

Now that I have graduated, it is my goal to continue my culinary education through both work and play, and to share my passion with others in doing so.