Category Archives: food and cooking

Neapolitans–the cookie

Christmas, food and cooking, ,

I’ve made these exotic Italian cookies the last two Christmases before this one. Not this year. But they are so pretty, I’m going to post the photos for your enjoyment–and the recipe, too. I got the recipe from a library book ages ago and don’t know where to give credit.

I looked at scads of other Neapolitan recipes on the Internet–I forget why–and they were all dreadfully inferior. This one uses two different doughs, each with many tasty ingredients, whereas the others I saw used just one fairly simple dough that just had different food colorings added. This one also has no food coloring other than what is in the candied fruits.

Neapolitans

These Italian cookies present an interesting way of making icebox cookies. They are dramatic and unusual. You will make two entirely separate recipes for the dough—and it must chill overnight.

DARK DOUGH

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. powdered cloves
½ tsp. cinnamon
6 oz. (1 cup) semisweet chocolate morsels
½ pound (2 sticks) butter
2 tsp. finely-ground coffee beans
1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
5 oz. (1 cup) green pistachio nuts

You will need an 11x5x3” loaf pan, or any other loaf pan with 8-9 cups capacity (or use two smaller pans of equal capacity—two medium loaf pans worked for me). To prepare the pan: Cut two strips of aluminum foil or two strips of wax paper (see Notes), one for the length and one for the width; they should be long enough so that they can be folded over the top of the pan when it is filled and should cover the whole surface. Place them in the pan and set aside.

Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon and set aside. Grind the chocolate morsels in an electric blender (or they may be finely chopped, but they must be fine or it will be difficult to slice the cookies), and set aside. In the large bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter. Add the coffee and brown sugar and beat well. Add the eggs and beat to mix. Beat in the ground chocolate. On low speed gradually add the sifted dry ingredients, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula and beating only until blended. Beat in the nuts.

Transfer the dough to another bowl, unless you have another large bowl for the electric mixer. Set the dough aside at room temperature and prepare the following light dough.

LIGHT DOUGH

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ pound (1 stick) butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. almond extract
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 egg
3 ½ oz. (3/4 cup) currants, unchopped, or raisins, coarsely chopped
Finely grated rind of 1 large lemon
6 candied red cherries or maraschino cherries, cut into quarters
6 candied green cherries, cut into quarters

Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside. In a clean large bowl of the electric mixer, with clean beaters, cream the butter. Add the vanilla and almond extracts, the sugar and water, and beat well. Add the egg and beat to mix. On low speed gradually add the sifted dry ingredients, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula and beating only until blended. Mix in the currants, lemon rind, and both kinds of cherries.

To layer the doughs in the prepared pan: Use half (about 2 ¾ cups) of the dark dough and place it by spoonfuls over the bottom of the pan. Pack the dough firmly into the corners of the pan and spread it as level as possible. With another spoon spread all of the light dough in a layer over the dark dough—again, as level as possible. Form an even top layer with the remaining dark dough. Cover the top with the foil or wax paper and with your fingers press down firmly to make a smooth, compact loaf.

Chill the dough overnight in its pan(s) in the freezer or refrigerator.

To bake the cookies: Adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat to 400°. The cookies may be baked on unbuttered cookie sheets or on sheets lined with foil–or parchment paper, as I used. Have the sheets ready.

To remove the dough from the pan: Use a small, narrow metal spatula or table knife to release the dough from the corners of the pan. Fold back the foil or wax paper from the top of the loaf of dough, invert the pan onto a cutting board, and remove the pan and the foil or paper.

With a long, heavy sharp knife cut the dough in half the long way. Wrap one half and return it to the freezer or refrigerator while working with the other half.

With a very sharp knife cut the dough into slices about ¼” thick. Place the slices 1 to 1 ½ inches apart on the cookie sheets. (It’s best to use insulated sheets to prevent burning.) The second half of the dough may be sliced and baked now or it may be frozen for future use.

Bake for about 10 minutes, reversing the cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back as necessary during baking to insure even browning. Bake until the light dough is lightly colored, but watch them carefully—the dark dough has a tendency to burn.

With a wide metal spatula transfer the cookies to racks to cool.

NOTES: The original recipe said that if the dough crumbles when you slice it, it hasn’t chilled enough. But as mine had been in the freezer overnight, I didn’t have this problem.

If you use wax paper instead of foil, each piece should be folded so that it is two or three thicknesses. Wax paper is weaker than foil and a single layer would tear.

I loved these cookies, but both times I made them the house was full of about ten other kinds of cookies with more gooey and rich ingredients, so these didn’t get the appreciation they deserve–that is, until I gave some to the choir director at church, who has Italian heritage, but no source for such cookies. He was so thrilled, I ended up giving him a few dozen.

 

Bird Food Improved Upon

animals, food and cooking, garden, history
I am inspired by a blog on Brussels sprouts and peanuts here to prepare the recipe posted. Also to tell you my own story of birds and sprouts. Missing from my story are the peanuts.

This is what the vegetable should look like before it is harvested, but my own try at growing these impressive stalks didn’t work out as planned. At the time when little buds should be growing into big sprouts, there was nothing but  big, bare stems. Could the flocks of quail who frequented our back yard have anything to do with this? I knew they ate the leaves on top….

Eventually I took the time to examine those stems up close, and there were indeed little sprouts on them, the size of pinheads, and never able to grow larger. My plants had been so starved by the constant bird pruning that they had nothing to put toward production of fruit.

I love to cook Brussels sprouts, and even B. has overcome his off-putting childhood initiation so that now he happily eats them. Cooked, mind you. Once as a little boy he was accompanying a farmer friend of the family on a walk through the vegetable garden when the man plucked a sprout off the stalk and handed it to young B. saying, “Here, try it, it’s a Brussels sprout.” B. obediently chewed the raw sprout and found it the most horrible thing he’d eaten in his short life.

It took many years for him to get over that first taste. Sprouts are so darling and yummy, though, that simple steaming has been enough preparation to suit us most of the time. After I got married I learned to cut a deep X into the base of each sprout before dropping it into the steamer basket. That lets the inside leaves cook along with the outside, so you aren’t left with a choice between mushy outsides or crunchy centers.

Now I’m off to the market and will certainly bring home some Brussels sprouts. I’ll let the birds eat the raw, and will serve mine cooked.

Psalter and Soup

books, church, food and cooking, , , , , ,

This Advent season I’m participating with other women, organized by Sylvia, in reading the Psalter every day for the 40 days. Our Psalter is divided into 20 groupings each of which is called a kathisma, and every woman will read one per day.

There are more than 40 of us participating so that the whole book of Psalms will be read twice a day. Everyone who perseveres will end up having read the Psalter through twice before Christmas, as well! What a joy it has already been.

I’m also trying to read The Winter Pascha by Fr Thomas Hopko, which has 40 readings about this period in the church year that has similarities to Lent and Pascha. I read two days’ entries and now can’t find the book, so we’ll see how that goes….

We just got a good rain and everything is washed clean, the sky is blue, and the snowball bush is showing its glory.

It’s the season for soup! It’s easy to make a lenten meal in the soup kettle, and today I am putting in three kinds of beans and some winter vegetables.

I don’t often buy parsnips or turnips. When I used to read Down, Down the Mountain by Ellis Credle to my children, the vegetables the characters are so fond of must have seemed as exotic as boys and girls riding barefoot for lack of shoes to wear.

In the story, the mountain children carry a bagful of turnips down to the town, turnips they themselves planted and tended lovingly, in hopes of selling them for enough money to buy shoes. But everyone they meet along the way is hungering and thirsting for just such a delicacy, and when they arrive in town they discover that only one turnip is left in the bag.
 I’m afraid that after my first 15 years of family cooking, with its centerpieces of lentil soup and bread, I might have inadvertently started cultivating a taste in my family for fancier food. Fast periods are a good opportunity to repent and reform.
 But this plain food tastes pretty fancy after all.

Pear Pie of the Year?

food and cooking, pie,
“Pie of the Week” was the inspiring category of postings at Gigi’s Firefly Cottage blog…

I wish I could bake a pie once a week. I also wish I could have a whole day of prayer and contemplation every week, and a day of gardening, and a loaf of bread baked every seven days or so. But at the rate I’m going, I should set my sights lower– perhaps one pie every six months or so? (If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and eat more pie.)

My latest pie is Pear. It’s the first pear pie I’ve ever eaten or baked. The thought of eating this subtle fruit any way besides fresh or dried never appealed, until I read a recipe on one of my favorite blogs recently, a recipe that made me think pear pie would be worth a try. I was prepared in mind, then, for the display of pale green Bartletts at a fruit stand where I stopped for a snack on Monday.

The price was right, but you had to buy a big bag of them, more than Mr. Glad and I could possibly eat. I thought, “This is my chance to bake a pear pie,” and I brought them home, and there was my deadline in front of me: within two days they would be pale yellow, and the pie would have to be baked.

Here is my new white pie dish waiting for its pears. The hearts on the cloth that is under the clear vinyl were my solution to shoe polish stains about 15 year ago.

But where was the recipe? Nowhere to be found. Had I imagined it, or just lost it? The pie had to be baked, so I researched ideas on Epicurious.com for quite a while, settling on a this recipe that featured lemon, maple, and ginger to add complexity.

 

 

I made a couple of changes: doubled the ginger and forgot to put in the sugar. I’m so glad about that last omission, because the maple syrup made the pie just sweet enough for my taste. All the various flavors blended nicely and nothing overpowered the pears. I found it to be quite lovely. It was hard to know just what the added flavors were.

 

This pie was thickened with instant tapioca granules. I discovered I didn’t have instant, so I ground some small pearls in the blender and then sifted out the bigger pieces. The finished product was a bit soupy, maybe only because it was still warm.

But my husband often doesn’t like new taste sensations, especially the first time. After having a slice of this one, he said it had nothing that made him want to keep eating it. I should have that feeling; after eating more than necessary, I quickly wrapped the rest of the pie, dish and all, in heavy foil and stuck it in the freezer.

 

Maybe my pear pie will be the Pie of the Century!