h o m e * e c o n o m i c s

Middle of the Night Molasses Cookies

In the past few years I have decided that one of the major advantages of adulthood is freedom to bake. Maybe you don’t have long, lazy summer vacations any more, and maybe you miss slumber parties, but you can make cookies any time you please, and you can sneak as much raw dough as you like.

(Some of you may have had baking freedom as children, but no one in my family was overly friendly with the oven. In fact, my sister and I once adventurously made a batch of cookies while my parents were out, and the reward for our intrepidness was an oven floor covered with dough that was literally blazing, having spilled off the baking sheet. We turned off the oven and let the fire burn itself out, but the lesson we learned about the dangers of following your sweet tooth was not so quick to die.)

Baking cookies makes me feel as carefree and mischievous as a child and as powerful and self-determined as a woman. They’re so easy: crave a cookie at 9pm on a lazy Sunday and you can have a freshly-baked specimen in your hand by 10. Maybe they’re too easy: when I bake a really good batch, I feel obliged (in a life-is-short kind of way) to give in and eat as many as I want. But somehow the mediocre batches seem to disappear pretty quickly, too, and it isn’t all Andrew’s doing.

I have a secret, actually: I’ve started eating cookies in the middle of the night. This is New York, and my kitchen is one wall of the living room, which is also the only room. Essentially we live in a kitchen from which a bed is separated by French doors. When I wake up in the middle of the night and stumble across the apartment to the bathroom, I cannot avoid passing the cookie jar. Sleepily scarfing one down before falling back into bed somehow seems less crazy in the dreamy dark, however sheepish I feel in the morning. I wish I could blame this on Ambien or some other drug, but it’s just acute cookie madness. And let me tell you, my tummy is not looking so acute any more. I’m going to give you a wonderful cookie recipe, but please exercise your right to bake responsibly. Bakers with little willpower, beware!

Mary Jones from Cleveland’s Molasses Cookies
from Sunday Suppers at Lucques

Makes about 20 big cookies

These are big, flat, soft, and spicy, just like the Archway molasses cookies I loved as a child and gave up in my 20s because they were full of transfats and other nasty things. I was first thrilled to find the recipe in Suzanne Goin’s reliably wonderful cookbook and then shocked to see that it calls for shortening, which I just don’t use. I had learned from America’s Test Kitchen that creaming sugar with melted and cooled butter (instead of merely softened, room-temperature butter) yields a cookie that is chewy instead of crisp, and so I substituted melted butter for the shortening. The results are outstanding.

-Preheat oven to 325. Melt a stick of butter (1/2 cup) and allow it to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
-Sift together:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground ginger

And then stir in ½ tsp salt.
-Cream together ¼ cup molasses, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 extra large egg, and the melted butter. (Suzanne Goin recommends 3 minutes on medium in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk, but my stand mixer is too inconveniently stored to haul out for something as easy as cookies. I use the handheld mixer and beat for 3 minutes on high.) Mix in half the dry ingredients on low speed; scrape down the sides; and mix in the rest of the dry ingredients.
-Chill the dough for 15 minutes. Suzanne Goin rolls the dough out to 1/8 inch thickness and uses a cookie cutter, because her cookies are destined for ice cream sandwiches. I can’t be bothered with this and instead deposit 1.5 tablespoon lumps of dough on two parchment paper lined baking sheets, then flatten them to about ¼ inch with the bottom of a glass dipped in water. Sprinkle with turbinado or granulated sugar and bake 12 or 13 minutes, depending on how crispy you like your cookies.

Chipotle Black Beans and Rice and Sweet Potatoes

I felt a little off today...I'm trying to start running again, but I still feel really weak and lacking in willpower. (Did I mention that instead of the freshman 15 Andrew and I have both gained the newlywed 5? Is it the end-of-workday beer? The fact that we're both 30 now? The passion for baking? Curse you, no-knead bread!) Thank goodness I had already defrosted four cups of beans to use for dinner. I love cooking beans myself instead of using cans. It makes me feel ultra-frugal, it leaves me with lots of easy dinners, and it doesn't actually take much time at all.

This meal was colorful and felt healthy-but-not-punishing. The beans are adapted from a Deborah Madison recipe. Of course, the logical complement of Negra Modelo renders it somewhat less healthy...as does my breakfast of tarte tatin! But with the way the ALCS is going, it's a good thing I have the beer for Andrew.

Today I learned that gypsies cook pheasant by packing it in soft clay and then roasting the whole thing, so that a sealed clay pot bakes all around the bird. That is all.

-Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Start a pot of brown rice (1 cup rice, 1.75 cups water, dash of olive oil, dash of salt). Wash and peel 4 sweet potatoes. Chop into roughly 1 inch dice. Toss with 1 or 2 tbs olive oil, salt, and pepper and bake for 30 minutes.
-Prepare chopped cilantro and crumbled or grated feta (I used ricotta salata) for garnish. Finely chop a small onion and a fat clove of garlic. Chop half a 28 oz can of tomatoes (or less...I used what I had left over, which was half a can). Chop a chipotle chile packed in adobo.
-15 minutes before the sweet potatoes are finished, saute the chopped onion in 1 tbs neutral oil in a pot large enough to hold the beans and tomatoes. Saute until soft, about 5 minutes; add the chopped garlic clove and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, chipotle chile, 4 sprigs of cilantro, and 4 cups of black beans with some of their cooking liquid (or 2 cans of black beans, rinsed). Season with 1.25 tsp salt, bring to a simmer, and simmer 15 or 20 minutes.
-Everything should finish at about the same time. Serve the black beans on top of brown rice, garnished with cheese and cilantro. Serve the sweet potatoes on the side. This made enough for our dinner plus 1 large or 2 small lunches tomorrow...if I had doubled the rice it would be enough for two lunches.

Tarte Tatin

Wow, so, it's been an awfully long time. When Andrew and I got engaged, I dropped blogging to make room in the schedule for wedding planning. I didn't drop cooking, though; and in fact, when I cooked especially delicious things, I felt kind of anxious about the fact that I wouldn't be able to take their picture and write them up. I was afraid I would forget. Now that we're an old married couple, I'll start again, I think, and I'll do it tonight instead of waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.

I was moved to action in part by The Art of Simple Food, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday. It is so lovely, to look at and to read, that I had to cook from it immediately. Last night was braised chicken legs; tonight, tarte tatin, something I have never eaten before but have always, always wanted to make--caramel! apples! crust!

I had enough dough for an 11 inch buttery crust in the freezer--Ina Garten's crostata dough, which I thought would do--and last weekend at the Greenmarket Andrew had thoughtfully bought twice as many apples as he was supposed to. Because I'm a slow worker, it took me 35 minutes just to peel and core the apples. The finished product was lovely to look at (um...in a rustic sort of way; my camera battery is dead and the charger is nowhere to be found, so lucky for me I will not have to substantiate this claim with a photo). It tasted straightforward and not supersweet; I liked it (and Andrew did, too, to my surprise...I didn't think it would be his kind of thing), but I guess I was expecting the caramel to be thick and sticky. Instead, it seemed to have gone liquid, softening the apples and suffusing them with flavor. Next time I would try to get the caramel a little closer to burnt, I think, or add a more generous pinch of salt; mine was very dark but could have used more flavor. I would also use firmer apples, as suggested.

Still...I am very excited about this book, which is the book I've been waiting for: everyday food from Alice Waters.

-Roll out sweet tart crust into an 11 inch round. Refrigerate until ready to use.
-Peel, core, and quarter 3.5 pounds apples. I used Macoun and Cortland instead of the recommended Granny Smith. Don't worry if they start to brown...the caramel will turn them completely brown in the end anyway. Preheat the oven to 400.
-In a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, combine 2 tbs butter and 6 tbs sugar. (Recipe called for a 9 inch skillet, but I used my 12 inch because that's what I have. It seemed to work fine, and in fact, I was not able to fit 3.25 pounds of apples into my 12 inch skillet.) Swirl and stir the butter and sugar until you have a bubbly, dark brown caramel. You want it to get as dark as it can without burning. When it has reached that point, remove it to a rack to cool while you further slice the apples. I gave my caramel a very very scant sprinkle of fleur de sel at this point and would use a little more next time.
-While the caramel cools, halve the apple quarters lengthwise. Arrange them, round side down and wedge pointing up, in two concentric circles in the caramel skillet. Then fill in the spaces between the apples with apple wedges pointing down.
-Lay the dough on top of the apples, tucking it between them and the skillet. Make 5 little slits in the dough with a knife, so steam can escape. Bake 35-40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.
-Let rest 5 minutes on a rack, then invert onto a plate. We did not have whipped cream, but I wish we had, or maybe some cinnamon ice cream.