Doesn’t this coookie sound incongruous? What is thyme doing in a sweet cookie? That’s what I thought! But oh, does it ever work. I actually think these would work well to serve with a cheese course – they’re savory enough to do so. But they are just as good with a cup of coffee or tea, too.

Last year the Los Angeles Times Food Section did a write-up about refrigerator cookies – the kind you roll up in logs, chill and slice. The really, really easy kind. There were several recipes and I printed out all but one of them. Tried several, but this one I just hadn’t done. Until today.

As I write this it’s 8:00 am and I’m getting ready this morning for a marathon cookie baking day. My friend Cherrie is coming to my house and we’re going to bake and bake and bake. She is having oodles of family coming to her house for Christmas, so she needs many, many types and lots of quantity. My job was to make up the dough for this one yesterday, so we’d be ready to bake it today. I got up this morning – early – and turned on the Christmas music, turned on the furnace (even though it’s supposed to get up to 80 here today, but right now it’s in the low 50’s outside), took out 2 pounds of butter to soften, made myself a latte, baked the first tray of these and now I’m ready to go. Cherrie will arrive shortly.

Making up the cookie dough was really simple – these cookies aren’t all that different as far as ingredients. Although, this one called for powdered sugar, not regular sugar, pine nuts (not very traditional in cookies), and the finely chopped dried apricots. But then there’s the thyme. Now, the recipe said 1 1/2 tablespoons of chopped thyme. It didn’t say fresh or dried. I assumed dried, but I really don’t know. I chopped it up with my big chef’s knife and even rolled a couple of the dough logs in the residue on the chopping board. I really l-o-v-e the thyme in these. They add a really different depth of taste to them. These are not overly sweet (that’s probably why the thyme works). You could eliminate it, but you’d be missing something fun if you do.
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Won’t you come join Cherrie and me for a latte and some cookies? I’ll probably post pictures of all the cookies we baked. Tomorrow.

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Did you know:
In 1856 Alabama was the first state in the United States to
declare Christmas a legal holiday.
In 1907 Oklahoma became the last U.S. state to declare Christmas
a legal holiday.
— from Merry Christmas: Inspiring Quotes,
Poems, and Stories to Celebrate the Season

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My investment club was having a Christmas party (which includes current and former members). We asked all the former members to bring a salad and the current members brought everything else. I signed up for dessert. Someone else brought brownies and lemon bars, so I veered sideways and made rice pudding.

But, this is no ordinary rice pudding, let me assure you. Made with whole milk (no cream), a bit of butter, short-grain rice (I used arborio, the kind mostly reserved for risotto), but it also simmers with a cinnamon stick and a vanilla bean and later an egg yolk too. And lastly, plumped raisins are added. I served them in tall shot glasses with demitasse spoons stuck in each one, to make for easy eating. And not a large portion, either. You may think that, when making it, it’s not going to firm up. Once it cooled down, it was still very soupy, but the chilling did the trick. I liked that this was made with milk and not cream. I’ve had rice pudding made with cream, and it almost took away from the simplicity – the comfort part – of good, old-fashioned rice pudding.

The recipe was an ancient clipping I had from the Los Angeles Times Magazine from – yes, 1988. Rose Dosti (at the time she was a staff writer, later to become Food Editor) responded to what she called a “grapevine dispatch,” (this being, obviously, before email), so that must have meant by word of mouth (gosh, who does that anymore? just kidding!) indicating The Grill, a Beverly Hills restaurant (now it’s the The Grill on the Alley), had just stupendous rice pudding. And they still have rice pudding on the menu, 24 years since they opened. Chef John Sola originated the dish. And that’s the extent of what I know, other than if you enjoy rice pudding, there’s no question you’ll like this very much.
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A couple of days ago I was reading Coffee and Cornbread’s blog. You should go look at Sue’s photos of fresh Swiss chard – beautiful. She wrote up a post about making Swiss chard with dried cranberries as part of her Thanksgiving dinner. I’d have never – ever – thought of putting cranberries with chard. And yet, something about it intrigued me. Nothing for it except to try it out.

To say it’s delicious is giving it short shrift. We l-0-v-e-d it. I had to keep my DH out of the pan on the stove – he kept scooping spoons of it into his mouth before we sat down to dinner and I had to swiftly put them away afterwards, before he stood over the pan eating the remainder I wanted to serve for another dinner. (I will say, however, my DH really, really likes chard, or almost any greens.)

The recipe came from Rachel Ray at the Food Network. I made just a couple of changes to it – I used fewer cranberries and added a lot less chicken stock. I think this kind of briefly stewed vegetable is very forgiving, whatever you do with it. Try to have everything all ready to go when you start cooking as it takes no time at all to go from start to finish. That means washing and chopping all the chard (removing the ribs), etc. And slicing the onion, and the garlic. But make it you should. If you even remotely like greens, this one’s a real keeper. If you want the original, just click over to Rachel’s recipe. Sue at Coffee & Cornbread made a few changes to her version too. Here’s mine.
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The Christmas tree originated in Germany in the 16th century. It was common for the German people to decorate fir trees, both inside and out, with roses, apples, and colored paper.

It is believed that Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, was the first to light a Christmas tree with candles. While coming home one dark winter’s night near Christmas, Luther was struck with the beauty of the starlight shining through the branches of a small fir tree outside his home. He duplicated the starlight by using candles attached to the branches of his indoor Christmas tree.

— from Merry Christmas – Inspiring Quotes, Poems and Stories to Celebrate the Season

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Now then, when I tell you something is quick and easy, you believe me, right? This was in a 2007 issue of Bon Appetit. The recipe is credited to Sarah Tenaglia’s mom. Sarah is a senior editor at the magazine. If you want to throw together an absolutely delicious, chocolatety mousse in about 3 minutes flat (recipe says 10 minutes – but using a microwave to heat the water you can cut down the time to about 3), this is your recipe. It does require some chilling (about 2 hours), but you could do this early in the day – even before you went to work, for instance. It makes a fairly soft pudding-like mousse. I could not BELIEVE how quick it was. Into a blender go chocolate chips. You heat up water, espresso powder and sugar until boiling, pour over the chips. Whiz. Add 3 egg whites and whiz for a minute. Pour into bowls – something small, pretty, cute. Done. Cover and chill. Make a small amount of whipped cream to which you add some lemon juice, lemon peel and sugar. Serve. How easy is that?
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You’ve all seen the big, tall cylindrical boxes of panettone available around holiday time, right? I think our Costco even carries them. And until a few years ago I’d never tried it – because I reasoned – how could any bread be good when it’s made in Italy, shipped across the ocean and kept for likely several months before I buy it. I mean – bread I bake here at home is stale within a day or two, so how could this be any good? Then we were given one as a gift, and I let it sit for a few more months before I finally said, okay, gotta open this thing up, so I can tell the gifter “thank you.” I wanted to be able to say I’d at least tried it. Well, I was quite amazed. It was actually very good. A drier kind of crumb, but still it was quite tasty. It wasn’t stale (how do they DO that, I wonder?), just a bit on the dry side. Then we went to Italy a few years ago and lo and behold I had it there, and it was delicious. And not all that much different than the one I’d had that was shipped across the ocean.

But, I’d never considered making it. Although there are recipes out there, I just wasn’t convinced I’d be successful. Besides, I didn’t have an appropriate pan anyway (I thought). Then, earlier this week I was readiing Baker’s Banter. Detour here to explain. Those of you who are bakers will likely know all about King Arthur Flour. I’m a big fan of their products. I do buy the flour sometimes at my local markets, and I order things from their catalog now and then too. They have superior products, both food and non-food items. They test things. They have a test kitchen. And the bakers who work there in the test kitchen maintain this wonderful blog. There are a couple of people (maybe three?) who provide posts for the blog. They include copious photos. Lots of instructions. And usually very fun stories about what they do. If you are a baker, you definitely should read their blog, updated every day or two.

Okay, so I was reading the blog and they did a long, detailed explanation all about panettone bread. How they’d devised the recipe, what works and why. It was a very interesting read, just by itself. Then and there, I decided to try making this – in my old, dented, but trusty tube pan. The King Arthur recipe was for what they called American-Style Panettone (with the fruitcake kinds of fruit). If any of you have been long-time readers of my blog, you already know I detest usual fruitcake. Can’t abide it. I have yet to make my Bishop’s Bread this year (the one that contains walnuts, maraschino cherries and chocolate chips rather than that icky glaceed fruit stuff). Bought the cardboard pans the other day, but haven’t made the bread itself. I will in coming days. But in the write-up about this panettone, they mentioned another recipe they’d worked on for apricot and crystallized ginger panettone. Wow, that sounded good, I thought. The first recipe calls for an ingredient most people won’t have – Fiori de Sicilia. It’s a vanilla-like essence (means flowers of Sicily). I bought a small bottle of it from King Arthur some years ago to make a sugar cookie (that I’ve not blogged about, but I should). If you don’t have it, don’t not make this because of that. Just add a bit more vanilla instead.

If you click to the Bakers Banter printable recipe for either one, you’ll have a choice of volume or weight (choose weight if you have a kitchen scale). I used the recipe from the American-Style Panettone, but the fruit ideas from the ginger and apricot one. The two recipes are different – in both the sponge and the bread recipe itself, so you choose. I went with the first one, but I added more fruit (golden raisins, some chocolate chips, chopped walnuts, the ginger . . . and I soaked the dried apricots in dark rum). I hoped for a nice bread to make our morning toast.

The recipe is not difficult, but it’s certainly more verbiage than a normal recipe. So I’m not going to write it up in total – I’ll just point you (above) on the way to find King Arthur’s recipe. I followed it to the letter – including choosing the version “by weight,” meaning that I measured every ingredient by weight on my kitchen scale, rather than volume. And really, I repeat, it is NOT difficult to make. You start with a biga (a sponge) the night before which I left below my cabinet lighting for the full 12 hours. Then you combine it with other bread ingredients, mix up using your bread machine or stand mixer with dough hook. It is a very sticky dough – nothing like a traditional loaf. Except for sprinkling just a bit of flour on my granite countertop to mold it into the form that will fit in the tube pan, I stuck with the recipe exactly (well, except for the fruit additions). Then it was allowed to rise. That takes awhile, what with all the fruit in it. You’ll want to do this on a day when you’re going to be around home since you can’t just go off and leave it all day. A few hours in strategic places, yes. All day, no. It does take the better part of 24 hours, but well worth it.

The verdict? What do you think by looking at the photo? This reminds me some of Stollen (which I used to make every year when I baked bread for extra money back years and years ago when my daughter was a baby). Probably Stollen is the German version of Panettone, or vice versa. They’re very similar in texture, but very different in shape. I’m sure there must be a story about that – probably something to do with the Pope’s hat, or something. You think? No, after searching at wikipedia, it’s nothing like that. There are several legends about the bread, but one specific baker decided to make the shape we know, rather than a loaf style. Soaking the fruit in wine is not the custom (oh well, I did anyway, in rum). The traditional panettone is filled with just lemon zest and citron. The perfume in my kitchen was just lovely from the rum.

Here’s the fruit I added to the dough:

• 2 ounces crystallized ginger, minced in tiny pieces
• ½ cup chocolate chips
• ½ cup walnuts, chopped
• 2/3 cup dried apricots, minced with scissors then soaked in about ¼ cup rum (drained after soaking 30 minutes) and tossed with about 2 T. of flour

If none of this interests you, be sure to buy a ready-made Italian panettone loaf this year and try it. Last year I bought one that contained a few bits of chocolate. It was good; that’s why I added chocolate to the panettone I made yesterday. Since making this was so easy (but I’m not intimidated by yeast breads, either) I’ll likely do it again.

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Normally I don’t repeat recipes here on the blog – I’m not certain I ever have. However, this recipe bears a reprise, it’s just so absolutely fabulous. My friend Joan told me recently that she was searching around on my blog one day and came upon this recipe, which she made for her husband. Tom, who usually doesn’t comment much about anything she cooks, raved about this one. It got me to thinking about it, and so I decided I needed to make it again.

The original recipe comes from Cooking Light – the result of a reader’s recipe contest – and this was the winner. Hands down winner. I’ve only made it once, and I blogged about it immediately thereafter. You can read my original blog post, or you can read it here, with last night’s modifications. The winning cook/chef, Karen Tedesco from Webster Grove, Missouri, contacted me after I posted the write-up about it last February– she thanked me. Well, I thank HER for inventing this wonderful combination of shrimp, couscous and orangy dressing/sauce. But I’ll have to apologize to her – I improvised a little bit – I hope she won’t mind. It’s still her recipe! I ended up not making more sauce as I’d suggested in the previous recipe. It actually seemed sufficient this time – maybe because the orange juice concentrate gave it more punch.

How I changed it started with me not finding watercress at the grocery store. As I stood in the produce section scanning the rows, I spotted mint. I thought “Why not?” And since I don’t normally stock orange juice at home, I thought “how about concentrate instead?” That step cut down on the cooking time by about 10 minutes. So here are my improvised steps:

• I used a boxed mix of Near East brand couscous (which contained pine nuts, so I eliminated the almonds)
• In the sauce I substituted ¼ cup of defrosted orange juice concentrate for the reduced fresh orange juice
• I didn’t do the toasting of the couscous, but did add orange juice concentrate to the water
• I substituted fresh mint for the watercress

The revised recipe is below – almost as good as Karen Tedesco’s original – perhaps just a little shorter and easier to make. I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the flavors rolling around in your mouth with each bite – it’s the orange/ginger sauce that makes it, so don’t skimp on that part if you’re tempted. Joan said she used low-fat mayo – which would be fine – it’s the orange flavor you taste. And even though there are four elements to this dish (shrimp, sauce, mint and couscous) it’s very easy to make. It took me about 25 minutes start to finish. So please, do yourselves a favor and MAKE THIS SOON! I don’t rave this much about all the recipes you’ll find here on my blog, but this one deserved the blue ribbon!

Also, in case you’re interested in such things . . . here’s a photo of the leftovers (I made it to serve 4, so now I have enough for another dinner). Anyway, this is a Tupperware combination – it’s a stack of 3 low, flat containers that hook to themselves and there’s one lid (that works on any of the 3 sections). Bottom: couscous; middle: mint; top: shrimp; cup on top: orange/ginger sauce. I don’t use this container very often, but when it’s right, it’s RIGHT. This was one of those times.
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I’m tired of cooking. No, don’t worry, it won’t last long. I’m tired of turkey. And I don’t want anything with cranberry relish. Nor any pumpkin pie, either. (I could probably eat another serving of dressing, but there weren’t many leftovers of that.) We have one more dinner meal with the white turkey chili I blogged about the other day, which is just as good if not better after it’s been refrigerated for a couple of days. When that’s gone, I’m gonna be DONE with turkey for awhile. Last night I had plans to make a shrimp thing, but the closer it got to dinner time I didn’t want to cook. We went out instead. So, since I don’t have any recipes to blog about today, thought I’d share with you a photo I took over Thanksgiving weekend at our house in the desert. I couldn’t sleep, got up way before dawn, sat working at my laptop at the bar that overlooks the golf course (it’s below in the dark part you can’t see). I glanced out the window and saw THIS. Gorgeous, huh? That was December 1st and it was 87 that day.

TO MY SUBSCRIBERS: I’ve found out that when my blog was moved to a new host (server) about a week ago, the feed link stopped working (some bad code). So, those of you who subscribe through a feed service or by email subscription, you probably missed 3 or 4 posts I did in the last week. Just go to the blog itself and you can catch up. Sorry about that, and I hope it’s fixed now or will be shortly.

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If you did a search on the internet for banana bread you’d likely come up with hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities. And mine isn’t anything that unusual. But it is different in one proportion (more bananas than any recipe I’ve ever read). I devised the recipe myself one year about 20 or so ago, when I had a huge bunch of bananas that were about to expire. I consulted several cookbooks for recipes, and finally decided to improvise. This was the result, and I’ve been making it this way ever since. This version is very light in texture – not dense like banana breads can be. If you happen to make it in a cake pan you can call it cake and serve it with a side of vanilla ice cream, or some whipped cream. You can substitute light sour cream. You can use a bit less sugar. You can add nuts (walnuts or pecans) if you’d like. You can also toss in some chocolate chips too. You can increase the ingredients just a little bit and make this in a bundt pan and also call it a cake (and serve it with a drizzle of heavy cream as I did with the leftovers pictured above). Or make it in a large bread pan plus a small one and just call it banana bread. And if you happened to be out of vanilla like we were the other night, substitute almond extract with no problem. Just be sure to use overly ripe bananas. And did you know that you can put whole bananas in the freezer and they’ll keep for a few weeks. Just defrost slightly (not fully) and cut them open. The resulting flesh will be very soft, but it will still taste just fine in this baked bread/cake. Just don’t wait months to use them as eventually they’ll degrade and the flesh will be almost liquid.
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