Cookies

I bought a cookie for two dollars recently at a local tailgate market where farmers and bakers from the region sell their goods. Then I lost the cookie for two weeks but eventually found it in the trunk of my car. It was large, dark golden brown, and looked to be an oatmeal cookie studded with deliciously crisped raisins. I saved it till after lunch. But the first bite was dismaying -- it was indeed an oatmeal cookie, but instead of raisins it had chocolate chips. I guess I'm an oatmeal cookie purist: I think they're best with raisins. I love homemade chocolate chip cookies (Tollhouse cookies) whether warm or cooled, and I love oatmeal cookies, but the two are very different experiences. Next time I spend two dollars on a cookie I'll ask more questions. A perfectly baked oatmeal cookie is slightly browned, even caramelized around the edges. It's both crisp and chewy, with nubbly texture from the oats. The raisins in it become slightly caramelized too and offer a bit of crunchiness. The cookie can have coconut in it; the toasted coconut complements the other ingredients well. A chocolate chip cookie (we're only talking homemade here) is also chewy and a bit crispy but has a different kind of texture, more soft than the oatmeal, and is well-complemented by the creamy chocolate. Chopped nuts may be acceptable here, but nothing else.

Having said that, I must say that my daughter makes wonderful, large cookies, that have EVERYTHING in them, and I like them fine. But they're not pretending to be one or the other. And her variations are great, too, because you're not expecting a particular blend: chocolate cookies with mint chips --mmmmm - cookies with M&Ms AND raisins, good too. But for my dollar, if I'm buying an oatmeal cookie, I want the classic variety.

The picture from the Betty Crocker Cookbook, c1969, shows non-sequential pages, because the book has been so much used that its pages are loose and can be reordered. And the discoloration of the pages attests to their great value and a history of family use. Shown are two cookies that one of my sons used to make: Satellite Cookies and Cream Wafers. If you let your toddlers stand on a chair beside you at the kitchen counter and help cook, they may well learn to love cooking. I'm proud to say that my children could make fried eggs and egg-in-a-hole by the time they were six. I stood nearby, of course, but they did it. I have a friend whose son didn't even pour his own cereal into a bowl until he was 16. But that's another story and involves national cultural differences as well as different family practices.

For another time: Toll House memories

Chicken with Chickpeas

This is a copyrighted recipe, from Selma Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food, 1972, but we've made it so much in my family that it feels like an old family recipe. And I feel as though I should get these down.

Chicken with Chickpeas

a chicken or chicken pieces (roasting chicken is fine)

a few T oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2-4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 t turmeric

1 can chickpeas

salt, black pepper

jiuce of 1 lemon or more

(Opt.: cumin)

Cook onion and garlic in oil, then brown chicken till golden. Add 2 1/2 C water, chickpeas, and lemon, salt, pepper, turmeric, etc., and simmer gently 1 hour or so till chicken is tender. Take chicken off bones and return to sauce.

Serve with rice or crusty bread.

Clam Pie

I realized that what this blog needs to be, in part, is a repository of family recipes. Here is the wonderful, famous, delicious clam pie, as learned from my mother-in-law.

Clam Pie

Ingredients:

Pie crust

3 cans of clams, chopped (save the juice)
1 cup evaporated milk
3 T butter
3 T flour
1/4 chopped onion
white wine, c. 1/2 cup

To make the filling, melt butter in sauce pan, saute the chopped onion till golden. Add the flour and stir roux a couple of minutes. Then add the milk, clam juice and wine and cook, stirring, till thick. Add the clams. Pour into pie shell and cover with top crust.

Bake at 350 about 40 min. or until crust is done.

Great served with salad and crescent rolls.

Fried Egg Omelet

I have elsewhere talked about a wonderful Tunisian egg dish, brik a l'ouef. Now it's time to make a link to another wonderful creation that will warm the cockles of your heart and stomach at breakfast: the fried egg omelet. Zack created this and has described it, so here's a link: http://beerpoweredbicycle.blogspot.com but I can't find the fried egg omelet post. Maybe you'll have better luck. I'll research it and update this entry to living culinary history.

When my new camera arrives I'll make this dish and photograph it.

Roasting Vegetables

If you have some root vegetables, some tubers, or some hard fruit squashes or softer eggplants, anything large and needing roasting, wash them, cut them inhalf or so, lay them in a large shallow roasting pan (you do have one of those, right? usually from a church rummage sale) in which you've heated a little olive oil in the oven. 350 to 4325, depending on how you want to keep watch. Push 'em in, shut the door, and check on them later. If you want surfaces browned, turn vegetable pieces face down in the pan for a while. Butter also adds brownness. Cook till soft. Check them from time to time.

Serving suggestion: Serve with wild rice or a brown rice-wild rice mix while can be cooking on top of the stove while vegetables are roasting. And whatever main dish you feel like, if you need one.

Talking About Food

Lots of people i know talk about food. Not all of them, but lots. So here's a place to talk about food, and no one has to listen! If you like to eat food, and like to fix food sometimes, like to go to the grocery store, like to plan a menu, like to taste as you cook, like to envision how it will look and feel and taste and smell, like to talk about it as you eat it, and like to compare it to other food, and later especially like to remember it -- then you can do so here to your heart's content.

And remember the dishes of your heart, and also the ones you just made up from what was on hand. (Or, even better, the leftovers from what you made up last night.)