Zucchini Blossom Fritters

Zucchini blossoms are one of my favorite sights in the garden. Mouth-watering memories of the amazing zucchini flower fritters at Betty's restaurant on Lesbos (see my Greece retroblog post) got me wanting to fry some up for dinner.

It's really easy—wash the blossoms and cut out the pistils; whisk an egg and add milk and flour to make a batter (pancake batter consistency, I'd say); add salt, pepper, and a little something extra (I used cumin); fill the skillet with olive oil and fry 'em up. They have a lovely subtle-sweet flavor, and taste great dipped in tomato sauce.

Snickerdoodles

I meant to post my aunt's snickerdoodle recipe before Christmas, but I had trouble recreating the fabulously chewy and flavorful cookies she produces seemingly without effort. (This is heavily tweaked from a recipe out of a magazine, I can't recall which one.)

4 cups flour
2½ cups dark brown sugar
1½ cups unsalted butter, softened
3 large eggs
3 teaspoons cream of tartar
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons baking soda
6 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive)
6 tablespoons cinnamon

(The more cinnamon you use, the better—dump it in! My aunt Kathy's snickerdoodles are like a cinnamon explosion in your mouth.)

Preheat to 400º. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for ten minutes. Yields about four dozen medium-sized cookies.

Pumpkin Pie Tartlets

When baking a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, I found I had some dough and filling left over. I took out a muffin tin and baked a few miniature pies, which turned out really well, so I made them again for our Christmas Eve shindig.

I used the pumpkin pie recipe from Domestic Sluttery (plus a dash of a few extra spices—cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves), and my favorite pie crust (from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis). The crust is very simple: 2 cups flour, 2 sticks butter, one egg beaten with enough ice water to make 3/4 cup, 1/2 teaspoon salt, refrigerate for one hour.

And just for convenience (the Domestic Sluttery recipe uses metric measurements), here's the list of filling ingredients for us Americans:

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of ginger, nutmeg, and cardamom, plus a dash of cloves
2 eggs
1.5 cups pumpkin puree
one 14-oz. tin of evaporated milk

With the oven preheating at 425º, I used a rolling pin and then cut out the tiny crusts with the lip of a drinking glass. (They'll pop out easily, so no need to grease the muffin tin.) They bake at 425º for the first 15 minutes, then at 350º for another 35-40 minutes. Yields about two dozen pumpkin pie tartlets.

These would make a fantastic dessert for a seasonal cocktail party. Also, hardly anybody ate the pie at Thanksgiving, so it sat in the fridge for several days before we finished it—this might sound weird, but I think portion-sized pies are more hygienic.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Pizzelles!

My aunt, grandparents and I baked a ton of cookies last Friday: chocolate chip, anisette toast (same thing as biscotti), almond cookies filled with raspberry jam, snickerdoodles (recipe forthcoming)...and the prettiest cookies of all, pizzelles. You can buy them in a plastic tub at the grocery store, but as with everything else in life, the homemade kind is infinitely better. Here are a few shots of my grandfather baking pizzelles using a waffle iron that's at least sixty years old.

'Fante's, 1006 E. 9th St., Phila. PA'

He melts some butter on the iron, drops a gob of dough on, closes it, and leaves it on the open flame for twenty seconds or so, flipping the iron midway through and cooking for another twenty seconds.

It takes up to ten minutes for the iron to get good and hot, so the first half dozen cookies weren't golden brown like they ideally would be.

Here's my grandparents' recipe, should you like to try your hand with an electric iron like this one (or look for an old-school iron on eBay, knock yourself out):

6 eggs
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. vanilla or anise
1/2 lb. butter or margarine
half orange rind and juice

Whisk eggs and add sugar gradually, beating until smooth. Add cooled butter and flavoring. Sift flour and baking powder together and add to egg mixture. Dough should be sticky enough to drop by spoonful.

My crazy 84-year-old grandfather doubled this recipe and stood at the stove for four and a half hours without a break, baking these pizzelles one at a time, blithely ignoring our pleas for him to sit down and rest. Crazy, I tell you.

They taste great with eggnog.

Onion Pie, mmm mmm!

My sister and I are doing some of the cooking for Thanksgiving this year, and today I baked this simple-but-delicious savory pie for the first time. My grandmother used to make it for family dinners.

3 cups sliced cubed onions
3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 pastry shell

My favorite pastry recipe is from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs, which yields two crusts and is equally great for sweet and savory:

2 cups flour
2 sticks of butter (cut into thin slices)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten, and enough cold water to make 1/2 cup

Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the egg and water. It'll be a little sloppy, so you'll need to throw in a bit of extra flour to make the whole thing come together. This dough needs refrigerating for an hour.

Anyway, back to the filling instructions:

Sauté onions in butter until tender. Pour in pastry shell. Beat eggs slightly then add milk, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Some notes:
--This recipe makes a 9" pie.
--I added some cumin and fresh basil to the basic recipe.
--I used both yellow and red onions.
--The two pies were in the oven for just about half an hour.

(I'd rather not use disposable pie pans, but I am making six.)

Depression Cake recipe

(There was supposed to be a Get Psyched for Halloween, part 3, but then I ran out of time. And as Kate points out, it's not like I need an excuse to share my favorite ghost stories.)

Anyway, here is my grandmother's Depression cake recipe—"a poor man's cake," says my grandfather—which I mentioned in my essay for Cast On over the summer. I'm transcribing the recipe as-is, with the ingredients listed as you need them.

One 16-ounce box seedless raisins. Boil slowly for 20 minutes in 2 cups water. Add:

2 cups sugar
1/4 lb. oleo (or butter)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. powdered cloves
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup cold water

Let cool.

Sift 4 cups flower and 1 tbsp. baking soda. Add flour and baking soda to mixture and mix well until smooth. Beat 1 egg lightly and add last to above. Grease tube pan and cook 1 hour 15 minutes at 375º.

(You can use any sort of pan—loaf, square, bundt, whatever. One of these days I'll get around to baking one, and I'll post a picture. Also, you might want to make a middle-class-man's version with some cream cheese frosting...as I recall, this isn't the moistest cake in the world. It is very good comfort food though!)

Open-Faced Tacos (Meat-Free!)

Here's a recipe for the ultimate comfort food. (What is it about refried beans that makes me want to eat them straight from the can?) This was inspired by an open taco salad I had at Tonic while we were visiting Kate in Washington, D.C.

four medium potatoes
one large onion
two bell peppers
one or two red/green chilis
one can refried beans
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp. cumin
salt and pepper
a few tablespoons olive oil
soft burrito shells (wheat or corn)
one jar spicy enchilada sauce
sour cream
grated cheddar cheese
one package of soy mince or braised tofu (optional—or those of you who are omnivores could, of course, use the real thing)

Dice potatoes, onion, peppers, and chilis. Saute potatoes on medium-high heat for ten minutes or so, then add remaining vegetables and cook until soft. Stir in diced garlic and spices, then add mince/tofu if using. Preheat oven to 400º. Add refried beans and mix thoroughly, lowering heat.

Glaze burrito shells with olive oil on both sides, and bake in oven until golden and crispy (10 minutes or so). Spoon filling onto shell, top with sauce, sour cream, and grated cheddar, and mash it all in so the cheese melts. (I've tried putting the finished taco back in the oven before serving, but if you do that the shell won't be crispy anymore.)

Makes four tacos (serves two). NYOM NYOM NYOM!

Cardamom gingersnaps

Merry Day After Christmas! I meant to post this beforehand, but you know how it is. This is my absolute favorite cookie recipe, spicy and festive but delicious at any time of year. (I baked a couple of batches for my launch party in July '07 and they went over very well.)

Slightly modified from a recipe in Sara Perry's Great Gingerbread:

1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
½ cup vegetable shortening
¾ cup white or brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup molasses
½ cup raw sugar

Sift the flour, baking soda, 3 teaspoons cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat butter, shortening, and white/brown sugar (using an electric mixer if available), until mixture is creamy. Beat in vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients alternately with the molasses until fully blended.

Lay out two pieces of plastic wrap, spoon half the dough onto each piece, roll into logs, and refrigerate for two hours. Pour raw sugar and last teaspoon of cardamom onto a plate and mix evenly. With oven preheated to 350ºF, pull off spoonfuls of chilled dough, form into slightly flattened balls, and roll edge along sugar/cardamom mixture on the plate. Place balls 1½" apart on greased cookie trays and bake for 12 minutes.

Yields approximately four dozen cookies.

a recipe for Chai tea

Rural Cavan seems like the last place you'd expect to find a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, doesn't it? Jampa Ling is located in a Georgian mansion outside the village of Bawnboy, not too far from the Northern border, and my two days there were a highlight of my spring '06 research trip for Moon Ireland. Some folks pay for room and board and others volunteer their time (and some work and make a donation), and there are regular prayer-times and some of the most delicious homecooked vegetarian food I've ever had. I met a lovely guy named David who made chai for us all, and was kind enough to provide me with the recipe. Once you've made chai from scratch you'll never want to go back to teabags.

Ideally you'd have a mortar and pestle to crush the ginger and cardamom seeds, as well as a strainer. Quantities of most ingredients are to taste.

Cleansing Chai Tea

3 sticks of cinnamon
3 whole cloves
ginger, crushed
cardamom seeds, broken open
fennel
honey
milk (optional)

Add spices to water in a saucepan and slow-boil for twenty minutes or more. If you're going to add milk afterwards, let the tea come to a boil two or three times before straining so that the flavor holds up against the milk. Pour mixture through strainer into teacups and add honey to sweeten.

Irish Cardamom Cake

Here is my new favorite cake recipe, a version of the Syrian Nutmeg Cake I found here. I have no idea why it’s called Syrian, so I figured I could call my version Irish simply because I first made it for a dinner party here in Galway (and for some reason it’s come out better here than at home). It’s very easy and it’s MMM-MMM GOOD! It got loads of compliments over the holidays.

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups flour
½ cup butter
1 egg
1 tsp. each of ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom (or any combo of cake spices you fancy; the more the merrier)
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. baking soda (a.k.a. “bread soda”)
½ cup finely chopped walnuts (food-processed is even better than the pre-chopped bags in the bakery aisle)
½ cup chocolate chips (optional)
crème fraîche for topping

Mix the sugar and flour, melt the butter and cut into the dry ingredients until finely crumbed. Lightly sprinkle half the mixture into a greased loaf pan, 9” square pan, or pie plate--DO NOT PAT! (This is very important if you don’t want your guests struggling to chew a rock of baked sugar. Even when sprinkled as lightly as possible, this graham cracker crust comes out a little bit harder than I would like.) Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the graham cracker mixture, and there will be a lovely layer of gooey chocolate between hard crust and moist cake.

Mix the baking soda and sour cream into the remaining mixture, then add beaten egg and spices. Pour over graham cracker crust and sprinkle walnuts on top. Bake at 350º F/175º C for 45 minutes to an hour.

Now here is the easy-on-the-teeth version (perfect for the grandparents), with no graham cracker crust or walnuts:

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups flour
½ cup butter
2 eggs
2 tsp. each of ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom
2 cups sour cream
2 tsp. baking soda

And follow above directions; cake will be much softer so the additional ingredients won’t necessitate a second baking pan.