Cranberry Coconut Cookies
February 3rd, 2012by Caroline
Apparently some folks out there have strong feelings about coconut. I have even heard the H-word bandied about. Not in my family, though. We put it in granola, in cake, in amazing no-bake brownies and ice cream, quick macaroons and muffins. And while mostly we bake with it (and I admit it was fun sifting through the archives to find all our coconut recipes) we also put it in savory dishes like curries and kale.
So of course I was going to try this cookie recipe from Sunset Magazine, which incorporates three of our favorite winter flavors: orange, cranberry, and coconut. If you’re a coconut fan, you’ll want to give them a try.
1 1/2 cups (3/4 lb.) butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked dried coconut
Preheat the oven to 350.
In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, orange peel, and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the butter mixture, then mix until dough comes together, about 5 minutes. Mix in cranberries and coconut.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place about 2 inches apart on buttered 12- by 15-inch baking sheets.
Bake until cookie edges just begin to brown, 8 to 11 minutes (shorter baking time will yield a chewier cookie; longer baking time will yield a crispier cookie). Let cookies cool on sheets for 5 minutes, then use a wide spatula to transfer to racks to cool completely.
Something Slow, Something New
February 1st, 2012I’ve come to learn the hard way that it’s not a good idea to introduce new food on a weeknight, especially not after a long afternoon on the soccer field. When the kids sit down to eat at 6:40 (if we’re lucky) on Monday nights, it’s cold, it’s dark, they’re covered in turf dirt, and all they want is something warm and familiar. You can’t really them. It takes energy to try new things, and an hour before bedtime is not a good time to ask them to rally.
So this week, I made the new (to them) soup in the slow cooker on Sunday. This way, if there were tears, at least it would be early in the night, bedtime wouldn’t be jeopardized, I could mitigate the damage. As a precaution, I served the soup with the pannini they love. They could decide what to eat.
We all pitched in with the final prep. The soup, which is about as far as I’ve ever gotten in Julia Child’s classic cookbook (in case you don’t know, it’s the first recipe…), was delicious. And even though they were reluctant to stop eating the warm bread and various kinds of pork on offer (Finley has taken to repeating, “Ham? Yes! HAM!!” and bouncing in ecstasy whenever said meat is offered to him), both kids admitted they liked the soup and drank their cups without complaint. Small victories. More: the leftovers have kept Kory and I fed these past few cold nights.
pannini prep: ham & swiss, salami & swiss, just swiss
Dad’s kidtinis
Finn tests the immersion blender…
no kids harmed…
Ella’s table
Potato and Leek Soup
- 3 large baking potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2 inch pieces
- 2 large leeks, cleaned and sliced into rounds, including white & tender green leaves
- 2 quarts water
- 1 tablespoon salt, more to taste
- 3-4 tablespoons butter
- Place all ingredients in large pot or slow cooker, cover, and bring to simmer.
- Simmer soup 1-2 hours, until leeks and potatoes are tender.
- Using an immersion blender, blend until smooth. Add butter and blend until mixed. Taste and adjust seasoning.
- Serve immediately.
Roast Squash and Kale Salad with Cheddar and Almonds
January 30th, 2012by Caroline

I spotted this salad on the terrific Food52 blog and had to try it. I am not yet tired of kale salad in all its variations, and this one wisely adds cheese. I’ve linked to the original recipe so that you can see some specific amounts, but this is how I did it:
For 4-6 servings
one small kabocha squash
one bunch of kale
2-3 handfuls of chopped almonds
4-6 ounces of sharp cheddar (I used a caramelized onion cheddar I find at Trader Joe’s)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Fresh lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 425.
Peel and seed the squash, cut it into bite-sized cubes, and toss with some olive oil. Roast for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender and brown around the edges.
While the squash is roasting, strip the kale from its stems and slice the leaves into very thin ribbons. It’s easiest to do this by stacking up a pile of leaves, rolling them into a cylinder, and then cutting across the rolled-up leaves. Toss the leaves into a large bowl and squeeze the lemon juice over the leaves; I used a whole lemon.
When the squash is done, add that to the bowl of kale, and toss with the almonds, cheese, and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
If you’re pressed for time, you can heap a couple spoonfuls of salad onto a slice of bread, smashing the squash and cheese, and make a fine bruschetta to take on the road:
Full Stop: Slow Cooker Red Sauce
January 25th, 2012One of my resolutions this year is to do only One Thing At A Time. This is very, very hard for me. Somedays, when I have 12 things on my to-do list, including writing, teaching, errands, chores–it’s physically painful not to do that one extra thing. The commitment has meant, among other things, that I am trying hard not to Get Dinner Ready While Helping With Homework. Or not to Section The Cauliflower While Doing Laundry. Or not to Peel Carrots In Ten Minutes Before School Pickup. I’m trying hard to avoid Eating Dinner In The Car On My Way To Work. It means other things, too, like not asking my kids to Get Ready For Soccer And Eat Your Snack. Or Clean Your Room and Get Ready for Bed. You can extrapolate.
You can call it my Oxford comma moment.
However, I am still trying to cook with fresh food.
Leaving the fast food to Finn
Doing One Thing At A Time means I have to plan more than ever. It means I have to start early. It means I have been thinking hard about what I can do to minimize my cooking time between the hours of 3 and 6.
In my quest, my new appliance has been life changing. Technically, my slow cooker is not a traditional slow cooker. It also roasts, sautees, browns, and simmers. I am still learning the best ways to use it: how the high/low settings work; how long to parboil pastas; best cooking times for different sizes of baked potatoes; how much extra liquid to add to simmer-all-day soups. But it has been on my countertop nearly every other day since I got I it, and it has helped me slow down and simplify in countless ways. To date, I’ve made delicious Swedish Meatballs and Beef Stew. But also: macaroni and cheese, red sauce, baked ziti (with leftover red sauce), split pea soup, baked potatoes. Not all the recipes are perfect. Yet. (Except the pea soup. And the hint to rub the potatoes lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with salt before baking.) But it has made my life exponentially less stressful. And that, as some of you know, makes everyone less stressed-out. Funny how that works. Funnier that it has taken me so long to learn the lesson.
So along comes last Sunday, when our local football team played my childhood football team for a spot in the Superbowl. I have fond memories of dark winter afternoons, a house full of the smells of my mother’s red sauce, or spaghetti and meatballs, or lasagna, endless football games, tv trays, warm garlic bread. And so even though I didn’t need to use it, I pulled out my slow cooker, sauteed the meat, added the tomatoes, herbs, and wine, and set it to Simmer for the next, oh, 4 or 5 hours.
Right before game time I cooked the pasta. Ella made kidtinis. We watched the game. We ate. We put in all the stops.
Ella’s 49er Kidtini. It involved club soda, Meyer lemons, grenadine, and a whole lot of cherries. Also red sugar.
Slow Cooker Red Sauce
- 1/2 lb ground beef
- 1/2 lb ground pork
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 cans Italian tomatoes
- 4 sprigs thyme
- 1/4-1/2 cup red wine
- With slow cooker on Sautee/brown, sautee meats with a pinch of salt until cooked through.
- Add onion, garlic, and bay leaf, and cook, stirring constantly, until onion begins to soften.
- Add tomatoes, thyme, wine.
- Simmer for 4-5 hours.
This easily makes enough to dress 2 lbs of pasta. Save 1/2 for a batch of quick baked ziti during the week.
Pide = Soft Bread Happiness
January 23rd, 2012by Caroline
I’m continuing to use bread recipes as my gateway into Turkish cooking, because I love to knead bread and my family loves to eat it. This delicious loaf is called pide, a flatbread which is sold with toppings like minced lamb, egg, vegetables and or cheese, although for our first encounter with it, we kept it plain. It’s a much easier dough to work with than last week’s simit, and produces such a soft, chewy loaf, we are just looking for soupy stewy things to dunk it into.
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
4-6 oz lukewarm water
1 lb flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons oil or melted butter
beaten egg for egg glaze
1 tablespoon nigella seeds (I’m calling these optional because I didn’t have them)
Sprinkle the yeast and sugar into the water and stir; set aside to let it bubble and foam.
Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture, oil and yogurt, stir well, and then dump out onto a lightly floured surface to knead until the dough becomes fairly smooth and elastic. This can take five or ten minutes, mostly depending on your interest in making it your upper body workout.
Let the dough sit while you wash out the dough bowl, then drizzle a bit of oil or wipe a pat of butter in the bowl. Put the dough into the bowl and give it a couple turns so it’s nicely coated with oil. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and let the dough rise till doubled, about 90 minutes.
Toward the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 450.
Punch the dough down and divide it in half. Knead each piece well, then flatten each into a disc.
Let the dough rest a moment while you prepare a large baking sheet with parchment or a bit of olive oil and put it in the oven to preheat. Now finish shaping the dough, stretching each disc out into a large round. Indent the dough with your finger tips.
Place the discs on the hot baking sheet, brush with a bit of beaten egg and sprinkle with nigella seeds (if you have them) or salt. Some sesame seeds or rosemary would be nice, too, depending on what you’re making to accompany the pide.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden and the crust is crisp. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, though wrap the discs in a dry towel while warm to maintain their soft texture. If your family doesn’t devour the pide instantly, you can resuscitate it the next day, by sprinkling it with a bit of water and putting it in a hot oven for a few minutes.
More Adventures in Slow Cooking: Swedish Meatballs
January 19th, 2012Tuesday night I have a plan: Swedish Meatballs. I take the pork and beef out of the freezer just fine.
Wednesday morning: I realize I have no onion, no potatoes. Kids say they will boycott Swedish meatballs if mashed potatoes aren’t involved. I have no plan B. Resolve to go to store.
Later Wednesday morning: Put off trip to store for onions and potatoes.
Wednesday afternoon: Forget to go to store entirely.
Late Wednesday after, 20 minutes before school pick-up. Rush to store. Buy pre-chopped onion and pre-made mashed potatoes for the first time in my life.
School pickup time: T-1o. Soak bread in milk, dump in egg, meats, salt, nutmeg. No time to sautee onions, dump them in raw. What’s the worst that can happen? Mix ingredients. Cover bowl. Wash hands.
Pick up kids. On time! Drive straight home.
35 minutes before first run to soccer field. Begin making 20-something meatballs. Ten minutes later, our sitter arrives. Turn on slow cooker to “brown/sautee” for the first time. Butter melts. Meatballs brown evenly and quickly in less than 15 minutes. I begin to breathe again.
With help from sitter, kids have found themselves a snack, filled water bottles. Soccer uniforms are on. No one is yelling.
I melt another tablespoon of butter, stir flour, cook for two minutes, then whisk in chicken broth. Gravy comes to a simmer. Meatballs go back in. Slow cooker gets turned to “HIGH” and programmed for 30 minutes, after which time, I hope it kicks back to “warm” setting. I stare at it for a minute, willing it not to let me down.
Leave for soccer with child #1. Child #2 stays home with sitter to do homework and make scarves for her Scandanavian doll, who is largely responsible for the Swedish meatball phase. We are on time for soccer. No one is crying.
It’s my turn to stay at the field, so an hour later, sitter arrives with child #2, takes home child #1. By all reports the cooker is doing what it is supposed to . My sitter has heated up the potatoes and cooked the broccoli romanesco (she really is amazing).
An hour and half later, it is very dark and very cold. I am shivering and can barely feel my extremities. We drive home. The house is bright. And warm. It smells like Sweden, or at least the pleasant afterglow of a long, successful trip to IKEA, before you’ve begun to assemble anything. My son has eaten something like ten meatballs. My daughter tries to match him, meatball for meatball. I salvage a few for the grownups.
Slow Cooker Swedish Meatballs
- 2 slices white bread
- heavy cream/milk (enough to moisten white bread)
- small onion, diced
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1/2 lb ground pork
- 1 tsp salt
- dash nutmeg, cardamom, white pepper
- 2 T butter
- 1 T flour
- 1 cup chicken broth
- In a medium sized bowl, pour enough cream or milk over the bread to completely moisten both slices.
- Dice onion and add to bowl along with meats, egg, salt, and spices. Mix gently until all ingredients are evenly distributed.
- Shape mixture into small balls.
- With slow cooker on Brown/Sautee setting, fry meatballs in 2T butter until brown on all sides. Remove using a slotted spoon and set aside.
- Whisk flour into pan drippings. If need be, add another 1-2 tablespoons butter.
- Whisk in broth and simmer until gravy is thick.
- Turn slow cooker to “HIGH” and return meatballs to gravy. Cook on for 30 minutes, or until meatballs are cooked through.
Jam Today cookies
January 18th, 2012by Caroline
One of the contributors to this anthology is a freelance writer I met when I first moved to San Francisco. Liz hired me for an administrative job at a translation agency, despite the fact that I failed the math test she gave me to see if I could accurately calculate bids on jobs. Luckily for me, filling the office with congenial people mattered to her – and, the office had a proper calculator.
Work at the translation agency didn’t last long, but our friendship – built on our shared interests in writing, food, and raising our kids – has. She is the source of our go-to chocolate birthday cake, and recently gave me her recipe for jam bars. I made them with half raspberry jam (to please Eli) and half orange marmalade (to please Ben). Eli, who doesn’t like much of anything right now except apples, carrots, rice and tofu, didn’t like the cookies, but his loss. I think they’re great and offer the recipe just as Liz wrote it up:
Jam Today cookies
“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
I created these cookies as a way to utilize the jars and jars of marmalade given to me by a friend, but it has become my most versatile, crowd-pleasing cookie. You can make it with dried fruit, with store-bought jam of any kind, or with the homemade jam of your choice. Bitter marmalade is especially tasty, but apricot is a close second, followed by a never-to-be repeated combination of the tail ends of three jars of jam: peach, apricot, and cherry. As an added bonus, this recipe is ridiculously easy to make, and ridiculously easy to double if you happen to be feeding a crowd (or running a bake sale). The results are especially delicious served for tea, but we have been known to eat these cookies for breakfast, too. You got a problem with that?
Preheat the oven to 350° degrees. Locate your 9×9-inch baking pan (glass or metal) and lightly grease the bottom and side.
For the filling:
Use a half-pint jar (1 cup) of your favorite jam
Or
Make a filling by combining 1 cup dried chopped apricots and some water to barely cover (add more if it seems dry while cooking) in a saucepan; simmer till soft.
For the dough:
In a large mixing bowl, cream:
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (at room temperature)
Add:
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar (dark or light, it matters not)
and beat until fluffy. Then add:
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup oatmeal (regular oats, not instant)
½ tsp. salt
and mix well. The resulting dough will be crumbly but moist.
Press a little more than half of the dough into the baking pan. Spread the filling evenly over this bottom layer, then crumble the remaining dough over the top.
Bake for about 30-40 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the whole surface is bubbly and the edges get a little dark. Allow to cool in the pan for at least twenty minutes before slicing.
Makes sixteen cookie squares. I highly recommend sharing them with friends and neighbors or you will end up eating them all yourselves.
Simit, or Sesame Bread Rings
January 16th, 2012by Caroline

As part of our culinary preparation for a trip to Turkey this summer, Tony gave me Ghillie Basan’s Classic Turkish Cooking for Christmas. I’ve been paging through it, making lists of things I want to try (Hosmerim, which translates to “Something Nice for the Husband”) and things I don’t (I will skip Bulgar Juice, thank you very much).
But the first thing I tried was the recipe for Simit, or Sesame Bread Rings, which we will apparently find sold everywhere on the streets of Istanbul. They are easy (though kneading the dough is a tougher work out than any other dough I’ve ever encountered) and tasty — rather like bagels, but less chewy. Now all I need is to brew up some Turkish coffee and we’re almost there!
a package yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
150 ml lukewarm water
450 g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
1 beaten egg
sesame seeds
Dissolve the yeast and half teaspoon of sugar in the lukewarm water and let it bubble up.
Mix the flour, salt, and tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl. Make a well in the center and pour in the yeast-water mixture, then add the tablespoon of oil. Stir well, then turn the mixture out on to a lightly-floured counter to knead. Add more water as necessary and knead well until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Let the dough rest a moment while you wash out the mixing bowl, dry it off, and drizzle a bit of oil into it. Put the dough into the bowl and turn it to coat with oil. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and leave to rise until doubled, about two hours.
Sprinkle a shallow bowl with sesame seeds.
Punch the dough down and divide into 6-8 pieces. Knead each piece and shape into a ring. Brush the rings with the beaten egg and dip into the bowl of sesame seeds. Place the rings on a parchment-lined or greased baking sheet and let them rest, covered with the damp towel, for 15-20 minutes.
While the rings are resting, preheat the oven to 400.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until they’re golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
Slow Cooker for a Fast Life
January 13th, 20128:15 AM. Put 2 lbs beef, marinated overnight in onion, garlic, red wine vinegar, fresh thyme sprigs, 2 bay leaves, salt in slow cooker. Add carrots, one can plum tomatoes, 1 cup reconstituted dried mushrooms & their soaking water; enough good red wine to cover. Set cooker to “HIGH” for one hour. Shower.
9:15 AM. Reset cooker to “LOW”. Pray the new gadget does what it’s supposed to. Read novel I will be tutoring from later. Stew looks, well, sort of raw. Worry that i will have a pile of tough, uncooked meat at 7 PM tonight, two starving kids, and no dinner options besides cold cereal…I can hear the screaming already.
10:00 AM-12:30 PM Work: catch up on month old emails; write 2 letters of recommendations, schedule interview, prep novel for meeting later. The cooker makes slow, whooshing noises. It must be doing something, right?
1:00 PM Minimum day school pickup. Stew is actually simmering. Meat appears to be changing color.
1:15 PM Home. Change school uniforms for sports uniforms. Macaroni and cheese, milk, kiwis for lunch. Ella does some homework. “What’s that?” “A slow-cooker.” “What does it do?” “Cook dinner when I’m not home.” They shrug. They are mostly unimpressed. “What are we having?” “Dinner.”
1:50 PM Drive Ella to basketball practice. Finn comes along for the ride.
2:00 PM Back home. House is filled with actual good-cooking smells. Garlic, onions, stewed tomatoes. Homework for Finn. Boil potatoes to mash later. Help Finn with homework. Set counter for dinner.
2:50 PM Stew is looking cooked. Dinner is appearing in the range of possibility. Basketball pickup.
3:10 PM Back home. Ella changes basketball uniform for soccer gear. Finishes homework. The kitchen is full of sun. The cooker is full of something looking surprisingly like dinner.
3:45PM Drive Finn to soccer practice.Ella comes along for the ride. Decides to hang at field with her friends before practice. We stay at field.
4:30 PM Ella is hungry. We buy her a quesadilla from Elisabeth’s Taco truck. It’s delicious.
5:00 PM Ella’s practice begins.
5:00 PM Finn’s practice ends. He eats the other half of the quesadilla. I assume the cooker is still working.
5:15 PM Bring Finn to friend’s house where I am coaching his older brother for Academic Decathalon in literature. I hear sirens. I hope the house has not burned down?
6:15 PMFinish tutoring.
6:30 PM Pick up Ella from field.
6:40 PM Home. Stew is done. Add milk and butter to the potatoes, mash over medium heat. I serve the kids. I am too happily surprised to do anything but pour myself a glass of wine and belly up to the kitchen counter bar. In fact, there is no mess, nothing, to clean up . Just one big pot of warm, aromatic stew sitting on my counter like a nice butler, just waiting to help me. We chat while the kids eat.
7:15 PM Bath.
7:45 PM Bed.
8:15 PM Kory and I eat in peace. Wine, warm stew.
Food to Make You Famous
January 11th, 2012by Caroline

As anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook is aware, I have started 2012 not in the kitchen, but in my garage. Like any family, we store plenty of things that we won’t need ever again but can’t quite bear to part with (my wedding dress; the boys’ knit hats from the hospitals in which they were born). We also store things that we only need a couple of times a year (ski clothes; camping equipment); emergency kits; and sports equipment. All of that, I have to say, is fairly well organized in labelled boxes.
Like many families, too, we store things we’ve inherited. My late father-in-law’s paintings and sketch books; catalogues from his shows; artwork by his friends. Also, bottles and bottles of the wine he made. Tony built racks for the paintings and periodically culls the wine, and this part of the garage doesn’t make me too anxious. It’s my late mother-in-law’s things, her address books and photo albums and stock notes and newspaper clippings and jewelry and correspondence, that are, frankly, a mess. She saved everything (I wrote a whole essay once about the abundant supplies in her kitchen) and organized nothing. My own grandmother was known for “filling a desk” and then sending it up to the attic for her descendants to deal with, and Nancy operated somewhat similarly. Anything special was saved in a pile, and then eventually scooped into a box, which ultimately went into her garage. When she died, we were too shocked and sad to do anything but move all her crazy boxes into our garage until we could cope.
Every year or so, I dive in and unearth treasures: one box might hold a string of pearls, a menu from Harry’s Bar (circa 1962), newspaper clippings about artist friends’ shows, a few postcards (some blank, some addressed to Nancy), a baby rattle, a pile of Italian stamps. But the way her garage became inserted in mine, it’s like excavating layers of an ancient city. I can only do so much before I need to retreat and gear up for another dig.
This dig, like earlier expeditions, has also unearthed cookbooks. Nancy was a fabulous cook, known for her dinner parties, and among all the letters I’ve found, I’m starting to make a separate file for the “thank you for the wonderful meal” notes. The cookbooks — Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking (1952), The Perfect Hostess Cook Book (1950), The Brown Derby Cookbook (1949), “Master Chef” Louis P. De Gouy’s Gold Cookbook — with an introduction credited simply to “Oscar of the Waldorf-Astoria” — (1947) — these get to come upstairs. I may never cook from them, but they are fabulous reading, a sweet glimpse back at a different time in American cooking and an insight into another generation.
The cookbook I’m currently loving the most, just for its title, is Mary Hill and Irene Radcliffe’s Food to Make You Famous. I’ve just never thought about food this way. Food to fuel you through the day, sure; food to make your family happy, food to use up leftovers or the new vegetables in your CSA share, but food to make you famous? Maybe I should be thinking about food this way! I’ve paged through to see if I can tell what Nancy cooked from this book. Many recipes have check marks, like Clam Chowder, Hungarian Goulash, Glazed Carrots, Oatmeal Bread (Oatmeal Bread can make you famous?), Chicken Marco Polo and most of the beef recipes (except, thankfully, Epicurean Baked Beef Tongue Stuffed with Sweetbreads, Olives and Mushrooms) and the page with Maitre d’Hotel Butter (COLD) and Maitre d’Hotel Sauce (HOT) is splattered with some of that sauce. Aside from that one bread recipe, there’s not a single mark in any of the baking sections, but as this book leads me from the garage back to the kitchen, that’s where I think I’ll start, and I’ll report back. English Yeast Crumpets? Sweetheart Rolls? Maybe the food will make me famous.












