Christmas Cookies I: Snowballs

My mom started making these cookies when I was a little girl.  If memory serves, it came from a Women's Club cookbook...you know the kind of thing that everyone contributes a few recipes to, and they bind it with a plastic spiral binding that always falls apart.  Which makes it at least 60 years old, probably one of my oldest recipes.  And I still make it basically the same way.

This cookie seems to show up in many different countries, in different variations, e.g. Mexican or Russian tea cakes.  They're all butter cookies with nuts, rolled into a ball and baked in a slow oven until they're brown, then rolled in confectioner's sugar.  I think this one is really one of the simplest cookies to make, because it has so few ingredients.

SNOWBALLS

8 oz. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup chopped, toasted walnuts
2 1/2 cups AP flour, sifted
Confectioner's sugar

 Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Cream butter and sugar in mixing bowl, using the paddle attachment, or cream together by hand.

Add vanilla and sea salt and walnuts to blend.  Gradually add flour, mixing at low speed.  At the end you may have to mix it by hand because of the dryness of the mixture.

Pinch off small pieces of dough; roll in hands and pat slightly.

These cookies will not spread or rise much, so they can be placed fairly close together on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake about 30 minutes or until lightly browned.

While the cookies are baking, sift confectioner's sugar onto a piece of waxed paper, creating about a 1/4-inch layer.  This is the part that has taken me a while to get the way I want it.  You have to get the confectioner's sugar to stick to the cookies to form a sort of frosting layer, which means handling them right out of the oven when they're hot so the butter can mingle with the sugar.

So right when cookies come out of the oven, immediately transfer them to the sugar,

and sift more sugar over the tops,

and then roll them around a bit.

They should look like this:

When the cookies have cooled a bit, sift a little more powdered over the cookies to look like snow.

Makes 60 cookies.  And by the way, if they aren't all eaten quickly, just pop them into the freezer in a freezer bag.

Granola

As many of you know, Steve has been traveling to Sweden to collaborate with colleagues since 1989.  He particularly enjoys the Swedish breakfasts, which consist of muesli, nuts, seeds, fruit, and yogurt, along with cold meats and cheese.  So he has adopted the habit of having granola, yogurt and fruit every day at home (unless I bake something he can't resist).  For years we bought different brands of commercial granola, but about 4 or 5 years ago, I started making my own.  I started with a simple recipe that I saw Tyler Florence make on television, then gradually added more nuts...there are probably twice as many nuts now compared to when I began.  So it's a nice, crunchy granola.  I like it with milk and bananas or peaches (in season), but it's also good to just snack on.  And simple to make.

GRANOLA

4 cups Old Fashioned Oats
1 1/2 cups raw almonds
1 1/2 cups raw pecans (I like the pecan halves)
1/2 cup organic flax seeds (for the Omega 3s)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (Steve likes the Vietnamese)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 290 degrees F.

Spray a rimmed baking sheet with nonstick spray, otherwise you'll never be able to chisel it out at the end.

In a large mixing bowl, combine oats

almonds,

pecans,

flax seeds,

brown sugar

salt,

and cinnamon,

then stir well to distribute the ingredients.

Next, heat canola oil and honey in a small saucepan until you see small bubbles.

Remove from the heat and whisk in vanilla.

Pour hot oil/honey/vanilla mixture over the oats and nuts, and stir until it is evenly distributed.  You should be able to see a coating on the nuts.

Spread the granola in the prepared pan,

and put it in the preheated oven for 40 minutes.  Stir once after 20 minutes, making sure that all of the granola is uniform in color.  See how nice and toasty brown it is now?

Let it cool completely (45-60 minutes), then use a spatula to transfer it to a container like the plastic one we use with a scoop inside it.  It keeps forever, or at least it has never lasted long enough at our house to get stale.

Crispy Roasted Potatoes

This recipe is adapted from Nigel Slater's Real Food, a book I picked up at Tom & Jessica's that Angela (Jessica's sister) had discovered while she was studying in the UK, where's he's a well-known celebrity chef.  The photos in the book are gorgeous close-ups (even closer than this one) that are absolutely seductive.  The recipe, which I will mostly quote with some explanations, is delightful for it's British syntax.  Once you've tried it, you won't really want potatoes any other way.

You will note that this recipe has the absolutely fewest ingredients of anything you will cook.  Basically it's potatoes, salt and olive oil.  Actually, two kinds of salt, one for salting the water you cook the potatoes in and a larger grained finishing salt at the end.  With so few ingredients, it pays to use the very best you can afford.  I like to use my Olio Santo, a California extra virgin olive oil

and Fleur de sel, a sea salt harvested at the Ile de Re in France,

both available at Williams Sonoma.  Last Christmas, Mom gave me this beautiful olive wood salt container with a magnetic lid that I keep handy for finishing salt.

I'm going to quote Nigel Slater, because that's part of the fun of this recipe.  You'll see.

ROAST POTATOES

"The difference between a good roast potato and a sublime roast potato depends on your willingness to put in a little bit of effort.  The best roast spuds--by which I mean the crispest, gooiest, stickiest roast spuds--are those you take the trouble to give a quick boil in salted water before you roast them.  After boiling and a gentle rough and tumble, the potatoes will soften just enough to fray and crush a little along the edges.  When roasted in the hot fat, they will sport the rustling, crusty edges and melting interior that distance the sublime roast potato from the merely good one."

[I just love the use of language.  It's illustrative and playful at the same time.]

"Serves 4

900g (about 5) large, floury potatoes, such as King Edward [Russets will do just fine]
fat from the roast or lard or dripping [Here I use the very best olive oil I have]

[Preheat oven with the baking sheet you will be using to 400 degrees F...he says 200 degrees C which converts to 390 degrees, but I think 400 is a little better]

Peel the potatoes and cut them into pieces large enough for you to have to take two bites at.

Any smaller and they will be all crust and no spud.  Put them in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil.

Add salt, a teaspoon or so, and turn down to a frisky boil.  Leave them cooking for five minutes, then drain them.

Take the pan in both hands and give it a couple of good shakes.  The idea is to fluff the edges of the spuds up so that they become crisp and frilly as they roast.

Tip them into the roasting tin in which you are roasting the joint.  (If you are not roasting a joint, use a shallow metal tin in which you have heated enough lard, dripping or even olive oil to form a thin layer on the bottom.)  [I use my best olive oil]

Roll the spuds in the fat,

then roast...until thoroughly golden and crisp.  A good forty-five minutes, maybe longer [I like 50 minutes].  Move them only once or twice during cooking, otherwise the edges will not crisp and brown.
[This photo is at the half-way point when I turned them over, and the bottoms were already nice and brown]

Tip off any extra fat, crumble sea salt over them and send them back to the oven for a few minutes till they are deep, golden brown."

 

I think my favorite phrases are "a frisky boil," "roasting the joint," and "tip them into the roasting tin."  We really don't eat large hunks of roast meat (the joint), but you will lose nothing in flavor roasting them in olive oil.

So.  This is probably the easiest recipe I'll ever post.  No excuses.  Try it.

Spicy Baked Shrimp

This recipe was in Bon Appetit maybe twenty years ago.  It's incredibly simple, quick and easy to make, and very tasty.  I made it the day after the company dinner so that we'd have room for the leftover Pecan Chocolate Tart.  Yummy.

SPICY BAKED SHRIMP

1/2 cup olive oil (again, mid-range quality)

2 Tablespoons Cajum or Creole seasoning (Cajun is hotter, Creole milder)

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 Tablespoon honey

1 Tablespoon soy sauce

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1 pound uncooked large shrimp, shelled, deveined

Sourdough French bread

NOTES:  Of course it would be better, and definitely cheffier to only use fresh lemons and parsley.  But let's be realistic.  Sometimes I just don't happen to have lemons laying around.  And it seems wasteful to buy a whole bunch of parsley for 2 Tablespoons for a recipe, and then the rest of it languishes in the refrigerator getting all slimy and unappealing.  So, I keep ReaLemon juice, and Gourmet Garden tubes of parsley, cilantro, and basil in the refrigerator.  The amazing thing is that one little tube of parsley is made from three bunches of parsley!  So it's very concentrated.  If I'm using it in this recipe, I put in about 1 1/2 teaspoons.

Also, I like Lee Kum Kee brand soy sauce.  It's not as salty as Kikkoman and has a nicer flavor.

Now for the recipe:

Combine first 7 ingredients in a 9x13-inch baking dish.  Add shrimp and toss to coat.

Cover with plastic and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.  Bake, uncovered, until shrimp are cooked though, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.

Serve with warmed French bread.  Serves 3 or 4.  You can easily double the recipe.

Chicken Scarpariello

I finally started my Christmas shopping this week, so haven't had so much time to cook.  Steve and I shopped in downtown State College last week (Animal Kingdom and the Growing Tree), and then I hit the internet.  In our family, we're big believers in the Amazon Wish List.  Michael got us started because it suited his sense of practicality...you knew that people actually wanted what you were giving them.  Some of us are better at populating our lists than others, but it does make the shopping part more efficient.  One of the challenges of internet shopping is that in a world of (nearly) infinite possibilities, you feel that you have to check all of the options to be sure you got the best price on the exact item you want...and ideally free shipping.  So it does take some time, and it's easy for hours to slip away.  Hence, I'm going to post some quick and easy dinners that are ideal for weeknights or days when you don't want to spend much time in the kitchen.

This is a super easy, super fast kid-friendly main dish.  I started making this for my kids probably 25 years ago.  The recipe came from a women's magazine of some sort, and the original recipe was supposed to be "lite," which means I had to coax it into not only tasting good, but physically working.  You can't really coat 1 1/4 lb of chicken with 2 Tablespoons of flour.  And if you use 1 Tablespoon of butter and 1 Tablespoon of canola oil, your chicken will reliably stick to the bottom of the pan, requiring you to scrape it free and creating opportunities for charred remnants to be in your sauce.  So you'll notice I've increased the amounts of both flour and fat.  It works well with any type of pasta, and I've made it with gemelli, farfalle (bow ties), and when it was available, fresh cut egg spaghetti.  All are good, so feel free to be creative.  You can also vary the herbs.  Here I used oregano and parsley, but you could use rosemary or tarragon if you like.

CHICKEN SCARPARIELLO

1 lb. cooked pasta of your choice
1 1/4 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1x3-inch strips
1/2 cup AP flour, more if needed
salt and pepper
4 Tablespoons each butter and canola oil, divided
4 Tablespoons minced shallots
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth (I use Wegman's Chicken Culinary Stock)
1 teaspoon oregano
1 Tablespoon parsley

*How you handle proteins (chicken, beef, pork, fish, shrimp, etc.) is important.  Do not wash it.  After years of recommending washing, scientists now say that you risk spreading any bacteria on it to kitchen surfaces, which is more dangerous than simply cooking it.  However, since most of us buy our meat and chicken in plastic wrapping, it always develops a certain amount of slimy moisture on the surface, so do dry it with paper towels, otherwise it will not sear or caramelize when that moisture joins with the butter or oil in the pan.  The point of searing is to seal in moisture by quickly heating the surface of the protein, creating a tasty crust.  Now, if you are so fortunate to buy your proteins from a butcher who wraps them in paper, the surfaces will remain dry, but it must be used up within a day.

Cook pasta al dente (the minimum time on the package) because you will be finishing it in the sauce and it will cook a little more.  While the pasta is cooking, place flour, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl, and dredge the chicken in it.

In a large skillet (I use my favorite All-Clad Esssential 6 qt pan because it has high sides, so when I add the pasta at the end I can mix it together without unattractive spill-over), combine 2 Tablespoons butter and 2 Tablespoons oil and heat over medium-high heat until butter is bubbly and hot; add half of the chicken

and cook, turning occasionally, until lightly browned on all sides, 3 or 4 minutes.  Remove to a bowl with tongs.

Add the remaining butter and oil to the pan, and saute the other half of the chicken.  Move it to the bowl with the rest of the chicken.

To the same skillet, add shallots and garlic and saute until softened, 1 minute;

add wine, letting it burn off slightly,

then add the chicken stock and seasonings, and stir well.

Cook stirring frequently, until liquid is reduced by half, 4 or 5 minutes longer.  Return chicken to skillet, and cook until sauce is thick and chicken is heated through, 1 to 2 minutes.  

Mix pasta in with chicken and stir until sauce is thoroughly incorporated with pasta and there is little liquid left in the bottom of the pan.

This method, mixing the pasta in with the sauce and heating them together, works well with most pasta dishes.  It really infuses the pasta with flavor in a way that is not possible if you just pour the sauce over it.

Serves 4.

P.S.  If you have leftovers, reheat them in a nonstick frying pan and crisp the noodles a little.