don't eat alone

One of the windfalls of our unfortunate isolation is I am cooking a lot more. The combination of having more time and Ginger not having meetings twelve nights a month means we get to eat dinner together. The last week in particular my depression has decided to show up for a return engagement (so much for distancing) and that, too, has driven me to the kitchen–my one depression-free space.

One of the regular meals of the lockdown has been fried chicken, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and then I try to think of something that is not beige to a to the plate. My mother is the one who taught me how to fry chicken, right down to pulling the dough off my fingers to drop in the oil to see if it’s hot enough, which then becomes a tasty snack while you wait for the chicken to cook.

My mother haunts my cooking; I feel closest to her and I miss her the most when I am making a meal. For that I am eternally grateful.

Once Ginger and I moved to New England, my mother was intrigued by ingredients I learned to use that were not a part of her repertoire. I learned how to make fresh pasta. When she came to visit, she was amazed that our supermarkets had aisles of Italian food where she was used to seeing Mexican stuff. The differences fed us both.

Last night, I made Ginger’s birthday dinner with Mom in mind: fried chicken, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, cornbread. This morning, for Mother’s Day, I switched gears to make breakfast for Rachel, my mother-in-law, with whom I share a love of cannolis. Ricotta cheese–one of the ingredients my mother didn’t cook with much–has become a staple in my fridge, so deciding to make cannoli french toast didn’t mean a trip to the store. It did mean I made Rachel really happy.

She took a couple of bites and said, “When can we have this again?”

Most of the recipes for “stuffed” french toast are really talking about a french toast sandwich, which is far easier to do than cutting the bread thick and then trying to create a pocket for the filling. Though the recipe that follows uses a cannoli filling, you could adapt it to do most anything. One of the things I like about using ricotta, besides the taste, is it doesn’t get real melty and so the sandwich holds it shape. I also added limoncello to the egg mixture because I wanted the citrus taste to add another layer. Bailey’s Irish Creme is another good dipping liquid. You get the idea: use this as a platform for your imagination.

And check the internet. This recipe was my jumping off place.

A quick note about the bread. The cool thing about french toast is it’s a sort of fancy thing that you can make with what you have on hand. Since I knew I was going to do this for Rachel, I bought a loaf of brioche at the market because it is soft and would soak up the egg. But use what you have, or what you like.

cannoli french toast

1 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

2 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons limoncello
4 slices bread
1 tablespoon butter

In a small bowl mix the ricotta, powdered sugar, vanilla, and mini chocolate chips. (You could also add a touch of cinnamon or nutmeg.)

Beat the eggs, cream, and limoncello together until smooth and pour into a pie dish.

Put two of the slices of bread on the counter and divide the ricotta mixture between them. Place the other two slices on top.

Heat a skillet on medium to medium high. When the skillet is hot, drop the butter in it. While it is melting, place the sandwiches in the egg mixture. Let them sit for about thirty seconds and then turn them over and wait another thirty. Transfer them to the skillet and let them cook for three or four minutes on each side. You may want to turn down the heat a bit at this point.

Remove them from the skillet, cut them in half, put them on plates, and sprinkle them with powdered sugar, if you so choose. I also topped mine with fresh fruit and served it with maple syrup.

We will have it again.

Peace,
Milton

During the first spring we lived in Guilford, we were surprised to see them set up a big stage in the middle of the town green (the largest in New England and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead), along with rows and rows of folding chairs, for Guilford High School graduation. The seniors line up in the parking lot of the Catholic church and process down the sidewalks lined with parents and friends as the orchestra plays. It’s enough to make you believe we should be the standing set for every Hallmark movie.

And it’s not going to happen this year.

Much like the senior classes in most every high school in America, our seniors are not going to get their day when they are The Big Deal. So the town decided to find other ways to affirm our graduates. One of them is for people to adopt a senior and do fun stuff for them. By the time Ginger and I went to sign up, all of the kids we knew through church were taken, so we adopted Lauren. Our task is to make her feel special. We decided we would start with taking her cookies. Her mom said she loved anything red velvet, so I made these cookies. (The original recipe is here.) We took them to her house this afternoon and left them in her mailbox. Later in the day we got a great picture of her smiling over them.

red velvet cookies

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 ounce red food coloring
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 12 ounce bag white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°,

Cream the butter and brown sugar in a stand mixer until creamy–about five minutes. Add the egg and mix for another minute or two. Add the food coloring and vanilla and mix to combine.

In a separate bowl whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together. Add to the wet mixture and beat on low speed until fully combined. Add the buttermilk and mix again. Then add most of the white chocolate chips and mix one more time. Keep about two ounces of them aside to put on top of the cookies.

Scoop the cookies on to a parchment-lined baking sheet. You can fit four rows of three. Flatten them a bit and then press three or four of the white chocolate chips into the top of each cookie.

Bake for twelve minutes. Makes two dozen cookies. They are a little cakey and have a good chocolate flavor.

Peace,
Milton

Two of the great unexplained shortages of our unfortunate isolation is flour and yeast. For some reason, everyone decided not only that they wanted to bake bread, but that they needed enough yeast to last until early 2025.

Bread is one of those things you don’t just decide to make. I am quick to say I am a cook and not a baker. I have learned how to make cookies, and, yes, I have to bake to do that, but it is a whole different ball game when yeast gets involved.

The only bread I have ever made with confidence are my mother’s Refrigerator Rolls, which are a Thanksgiving and Christmas staple at our house. I am pretty good at those. The problem with the recipe is it makes so much bread. That is less a problem when we have a table full for Thanksgiving Dinner, but a recipe that makes forty really good soft rolls when three of us are confined to quarters is a recipe for a small, though tasty disaster.

When I found this recipe for Hawaiian rolls and realized it only made fifteen of them, I decided to give it a try. My first batch was tasty but doughy–a sort, chewy paperweight. A couple of days later, I tried again, but my lack of patience still got the best of me. The rolls had a little more air in them, but they still had not risen to the occasion. I did some reading about working with yeast and looked at a bunch of bread recipes to see how and when the yeast was incorporated and what other ingredients went with it. I learned a little bit of science and a little bit of art and tried again.

The third time, I mixed the milk and yeast together first and let it sit for a minute. Then I added the pineapple juice and melted butter, then the sugar and salt, and then the eggs. I also let it rise a bit longer. They came out taller and lighter, but not quite there.

On my lunch break today I went for batch number four. Since I had afternoon phone meetings, I knew I would not be as tempted to rush things. I followed the same procedure as the third time and then left the dough alone for the first rise for over two hours. It had doubled. I shaped the rolls and set it aside for the second rise. I wrapped up some work stuff. Ginger and I walked the pups. An hour later, they had risen also. When they came out of the oven, they looked and felt and tasted like I wanted.

A little over a week ago I wrote about Mark’s account of the feeding of the five thousand where Jesus tells the disciples to feed the people and they say they don’t have the money or the bread to do it. Jesus asks what they have and they bring a sack lunch: five loaves and two fishes. Jesus tells everyone to sit down, starts sharing the lunch, and everyone eats–with leftovers.

Later, when the disciples are trying to row into a headwind, Jesus comes walking on the water, scares them half to death, and then gets in the boat. And Mark says they didn’t get what Jesus was up to because they didn’t understand the lesson of the loaves.

The lesson of the loaves for me this week is that bread takes time. Two teaspoons of yeast don’t transform four cups of flour into bread in just a few minutes. Bread takes time. And these days, what I have is time. Well, time and a good appetite for carbs. I have time to wait, time to fail, time to learn, and time to bake for those I love.

hawaiian rolls

1/2 cup warm milk (100 – 110°F)
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast
1/2 cup canned pineapple juice (room temperature)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons fine salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
4 (20 ounces) all purpose flour, divided
1 large egg with 2 teaspoons cold water, beaten

Heat the milk in the microwave for about a minute on high (at least that gets it to the right temperature in mine). Pour the warm milk into the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast over it. Whisk the yeast to dissolve it. Add the pineapple juice, melted butter, eggs, sugar, and salt and whisk until they are combined.

Add two cups of the flour and stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a big sticky mess. Attach the dough hook to the mixer and turn it to medium low. Gradually add the remaining flour until the dough comes together. You may not need all the flour depending on which brand you use. I use King Arthur and I find a cup is about five ounces. Once the flour is added, turn the mixer to medium-high and let it run for about five minutes, until a soft and smooth ball of dough forms.

Put the dough in a clean bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let rise until it has doubled in size. The original recipe I used said that would be about an hour. Maybe it is our old drafty house and our cold New England spring, but it takes closer to two for me. (My point is let it sit until it doubles.)

NOTE: One of the tricks I learned is you can control the temperature a bit by putting the bowl in the oven–while it is turned off–and turn on the inside light.

Grease a 13×9-inch pan. Gently take the dough out of the bowl and put it on a clean surface. Use a bench scraper or knife to divide the dough into fifteen equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and place in the prepared pan. Cover it with plastic wrap and let the dough double again, which may take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375°. In a small bowl combine the egg with 2 tablespoons of water. Once they have risen, brush the tops of the rolls with the egg
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Bake the rolls for twenty minutes or until they are golden brown on top.

One other lesson of the loaves: these are really good warm with a little butter and honey. Leftovers, not so much.

Peace,
Milton

One of the ironies of my life is that I am married to a woman named Ginger who does not, for the most part, like ginger–except when it comes in a good ginger molasses cookie.

When i think of ginger cookies, I think of ginger snaps with the spice and the crunch, but I am married to someone who loves a good soft and chewy cookie. So I set out to create a cookie that would do both and came up with what we called “Milton’s Ginger” when we sold them at the Durham Farmer’s Market because I’m Milton and she’s Ginger . . .

You get the idea.

This is another recipe that can’t be made on the spur of the moment. The dough has to chill for at least a couple of hours. I suppose if you cooked them immediately after making the dough they would flatten out and be crunchier. I have never tried that.

milton’s ginger

1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks), softened
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 cups all purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

sugar for dusting the cookies

In a stand mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, and molasses until light and fluffy–five to seven minutes. Add the eggs and mix until well combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, cocoa powder, and cayenne pepper. Make sure the dry mixture is well-mixed before you add it to the wet mixture. Move the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours.

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Using a 2 oz. scoop, scoop the cookies on to a parchment-lined baking sheet. I scoop ten of them (that’s how many fit on a baking sheet for me in four rows: three, two, three, two). Then I shape each one into sort of a mini hockey puck and dip the top in the sugar. I used to roll the whole cookie, but found that the sugar on the bottom burned, so now i just do the tops.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. (I bake them on the short side so they stay chewy.)

The recipe makes about three dozen two-ounce cookies.

Peace,
Milton