Almond Lace Cookies

 Almond Lace Cookies filled with chocolate mousse.      

      My mother never used a belt on us when we misbehaved, nor a wooden spoon, nor a switch as she was no witch, but something of an angelic mother.  But she did use the broomstick alright – to delight us!  This unusual un-dough looking batter, when baked and still warm was draped over a broom stick and allowed to harden into a lacey cup. 

       The almond studded crisp that resulted was a subject of wonderment – “how did she make them do that?”  In my own kitchen, they don’t always do that.  Sometimes they lay flat, at times are crumbled as a praline-type topping or pressed gently while warm into a muffin cup, or when a chocolate mousse filling is available, hung on a broomstick to create the obliging cup.  (See an easy mousse recipe below.)  My son’s favorite cookie, I mailed them to him as a treat when he was away – the received product was a lacy crumble.  From mother to son, this jeweled cookie I call Almond Lace, in any form would taste as divine!

                         Drop batter by teaspoonsful on buttered and floured cookie sheet-

                  Remove cookies from oven when they have spread and are golden around edges-

                                  Allow cookies to cool flat or draped over 1-2 inch dowel-

                               
Almond Lace Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tab. cream
1/4 cup flour
2/3 cup coarsely chopped almonds

-Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a small saucepan, mash and stir the butter with the sugar and cream over moderate heat until butter has melted.  Remove from heat and beat in the flour, then the almonds.  Drop by full teaspoons, spaced 4 inches apart, on lightly buttered and floured baking sheets, 4 - 6 to a sheet.  Bake one sheet at a time in middle level of preheated oven for about 5 minutes, until cookies have spread and begin to brown lightly around the edges.  (Watch them closely as they burn quickly.)

-Remove from oven and cool just a minute, until they are just   firm enough to be removed with a flexible metal spatula, but are soft enough to droop.  Then rapidly lift off, one by one and lay over a broom handle or wooden spoon handle, 1 - 2 inches in diameter (balanced between 2 chairs) to crisp into a curved shape - takes a few minutes.

-Alternately, place warm cookies on a cooling rack and allow to cool.  Serve as flat round discs or dip half the cooled cookies in melted chocolate and allow the chocolate to harden on a cookie rack before serving.  Makes about 16 cookies.

 Almond Lace Cookies filled with chocolate mousse.

PERSNICKETY  NOTES:
**If using just one cookie sheet, be sure to wash it off between each batch and 
    re-butter and re-flour sheet.

**When you try to remove the cookies from the sheet, gently try with a thin, 
    metal spatula....there is a specific time when the cookies are ready to leave
    the pan....if they jumble into a mess, wait another minute and try again.
    However, if you wait too long, they don't want to leave the pan at all and will
    be difficult to remove.  Waiting 5 minutes from the time you remove them
    from the oven is usually just right!

    Chocolate Mousse:

                ½ cup butter, softened               6 oz. semisweet chocolate

                3 egg yolks                                       1 oz. unsweetened chocolate

                3 egg whites                                    2/3 cup heavy cream

                ½ cup sugar                                    1 tab. vanilla extract

    -Melt chocolate in small saucepan. Stir in butter until melted. Let cool 10

          minutes.

    -Beat chocolate mixture and egg yolks in small bowl on high speed for 5

          minutes. Refrigerate, covered for 10 minutes.

    -In separate mixing bowl, beat 3 egg whites until soft peaks form. Beat in

          ½ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time until stiff and glossy.

    -Fold egg white mixture carefully into chocolate mixture.

    -Allow mixture to set for 15 minutes in the refrigerator. 

    -Whip cream and add vanilla.  Stir gently into chocolate mixture.  Chill

          until set.

Boeuf En Daube

My husband is a champion of anything French, having lived there for two years immersed in French verb conjugations, mo-ped acrobatics and patisseries, especially those that baked chaussons de pommes and palmiers.  As a young wife, eager to please, after having mastered crepes, I learned to make this rich beef stew, a younger sibling to the more mature and developed Beef Bourguignon.  But this entree is more colorful – thank you red peppers – and nestled on a bed of rice, nothing short of sophisticated, soul-soothing elegance.  Worthy of being the centerpiece, the piece de resistance of any buffet!

Bouef En Daube

3 pounds round of beef or chuck roast, trimmed of fat

¼ cup flour

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. salt

6 strips bacon

2 cloves garlic, minced

12 mushrooms, sliced

1 can beef consomme

2 cups red wine

12 pearl onions, sliced

12 small carrots, sliced

red bell pepper, skinned and sliced

6 peppercorns, slightly bruised

4 whole cloves

2 tab. fresh parsley, chopped

1 bay leaf, crumbled

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. dried marjoram

¼ tsp. dried thyme

-Cut beef into 1 ½ inch cubes.  Mix flour, pepper and 1 tsp. salt in plastic bag.  Add beef cubes and shake to coat the meat. 

-Fry bacon until brown in dutch oven.  Remove bacon from pot leaving fat.  Crumble into 1 inch pieces.  Set aside. 

-Add beef to pot and brown well on all sides keeping beef pieces from touching one another.  Add oil to pot as needed to facilitate browning.  Remove beef cubes from skillet as they are browned and add others. 

-Pour 1 cup wine into skillet and cook to remove bits from pan bottom (deglaze).  Place meat on top of bacon in the dutch oven.

-Brown mushrooms in skillet and layer over meat.  Pour consomme over ingredients in the pot.  Add onions, garlic, carrots, pepper, cloves, red pepper, parsley, bay leaf, 1 tsp. salt, marjoram and thyme.  Pour in remaining cup of wine.  Cover and bake at 300 degrees for 3 – 4 hours, stirring occasionally.  Serve over rice, garnished with additional chopped parsley.  Serves 8

Holiday Salad

I am indebted for this recipe to an unknown guest at an unknown party, with an unnamed salad....and yet she definitely knew her flavor and texture combinations! The sweet with the salty, the crisp with the crunchy, the red with the green.... a delightful salad, worthy of it's name! When asked the name of her inspired salad, the creator replied, "I don't know...let's call it Holiday Salad". The original recipe called for golden Sultana raisins...I use dried cranberries in a salute to the season which gives the combo more of a festive twist.

Holiday Salad

• 3 cups shredded Napa cabbage (or savoy cabbage)
• 3 cups baby spinach leaves
• 1 large red bell pepper, large dice
• 1 small red onion, peeled and slivered
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
• 1 cups crumbled feta cheese
• 1 bottle Briana brand poppyseed dressing
• 1 small can sliced water chestnuts

-Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Chill salad. Before serving, toss with dressing. Serves 8 - 12.

Caramel Popcorn

I suppose I should feel guilty but I didn't intentionally lure one of my closest friends by way of caramel sauce to a deadly sin. My particular dalliance with this intoxicating taste sensation started in my childhood at the feet of my mother, near the largest Tupperware bowl filled with caramel popcorn every Christmas...laughing at the new white fuzz ball of a puppy pulling a popcorn bowl across the floor....with buttered hands shaping the warm, velvety confection into balls. Doing as my mother had done, I tutored my own children in the craft. They took the experience to new literary heights with the creation of a simple rhyme to help them remember the ingredients of the basic recipe, the words to which went: "1/2 Cup, Cup, Cup, Can, Squirt ...I believe there was even a dance that went with it to a Latin Calypso beat. 

This recipe not only creates the caramel for popcorn, but is the basis for a sauce for ice cream and cake, and for caramel toffee or pecan turtles. But back to my friend; she recognized in it other, more deadly possibilities. Featured as the sauce for a moist gingerbread cake for refreshments for a theatrical production she took home a pitcher of leftover sauce. Then in a frenzy of creativity, boredom or desperation (perhaps we will never know exactly what drove her to this) she found that the caramel sauce served equally well as a beverage, which did indeed eliminate the nuisance of utensils or cake and ice cream as a conduit. To Trina, I apologize. I should have applied a warning label, "May be injurious to your health if consumed in large quantities." But oh, what a way to go! Whether served as loose unformed clumps or as balls the popcorn purrs to this soft, creamy and intoxicating caramel...as did Trina.

Ruthie's Caramel Sauce:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white karo syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
(for salted caramel, add 1/2 tsp. coarse salt or fleur de sel)
10 cups popped corn

-In a heavy bottomed, large saucepan, melt butter.  Stir in karo syrup, brown sugar and sweetened condensed milk.  Over medium-high heat, stir ingredients until sugar is melted and mixture is smooth.  Continue stirring constantly until mixture comes to a boil.  Lower heat slightly to medium and continue cooking and stirring until sauce reaches 232 degrees on a candy thermometer, just shy of soft-ball stage (it will take 10 - 12 minutes at a boil to reach this stage.).  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and salt if used.

-Pour caramel sauce over the popped corn in a large bowl.  Stir until the sauce is well distributed.  Let the caramel corn sit for 5 minutes then pour out onto a sheet of waxed paper.  Break clumps apart or with buttered hands, take a baseball size portion of caramel corn and press into a firm, solid ball.  Set on paper and allow to cool completely, about 1 hour.  Place each popcorn ball in a sandwich bag or wrap each in a square of waxed paper.  Tie packaged balls with ribbon.

-Makes about 20 popcorn balls.

***For sauce for ice cream or for fondue, cook sauce until
      slightly thickened, about 5 minutes.
***For caramel candies, cook sauce to 246 degrees, firm
      ball stage.  Stir in nuts and pour into buttered 9x13 inch
      pan.  Allow to set at least 8 hours.  Cut into 1 inch squares
      and wrap each in square of waxed paper.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

        Halloween was a challenge in the Middle East.  First of all, no random trick-or-treating allowed for fear of startling the neighbors.  Instead, we had to arrange a round-robin sort of progressive trick-or-treating with Halloween savvy Americans.  Secondly, costumes were eyed suspiciously- one of our Hungarian guests at a Halloween party saw me working in the kitchen in my Palestinian costume and assumed I was a village woman we had hired to make dinner. Consorting with witches, goblins and ghosts just seemed weird to them - it does to us at times!  The biggest challenge was finding the pumpkin for the Jack-O-Lantern.  

      One year I had to use various melons which we found don't carve well.  But being determined to have a jack-o-lantern for our poor culturally deprived children, we eventually found a pumpkin. Yes, they had them but they were large, the wrong color and grown exclusively for their meaty flesh to be used in stews and ragouts.  Tunisians used them like we use a hubbard squash and hadn't visualized them as lanterns with scowling, grinning features.  At least the vegetable merchant didn't get it and we had to repeat several times that yes, we wanted the whole thing. which necessitated a jaunt to the meat market where the scale was big enough to weigh "the whole thing."  ("Crazy Americans!").  

        This, the smallest of the pumpkins, 2 feet in diameter, weighed in at 50 pounds. One of my favorite images is that of my husband hauling it to the car, with Tunisians watching curiously after him.  But there was carving fun for all and it held several pillar candles.  Another perk - I cooked down the 4 inch flesh the next day to use as pumpkin pie filling - something else we couldn't find there, so it took care of two holiday traditions!  The soft, cakey cookies that follow are my husband's favorite: the combination of pumpkin with all the right spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice- bespeak autumn holidays. And then consorting with chocolate chips and walnuts... no tricks involved, just plenty of treats!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
3/4 cup vegetable shortening
3/4 cup softened butter
1 1/2  cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
3 eggs
3 1/2 cups solid pack pumpkin
5 cups flour
1 tab. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. soda
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 - 1 cup chopped walnuts
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
crumbled toffee bits

-Mix butter and shortening in mixer with both sugars, until creamed together.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.  Stir in pumpkin.

-Add flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt, soda and vanilla extract to pumpkin mixture and gently stir together until smooth on low speed of mixer.  Add chocolate chips and walnuts and stir.  Chill dough for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

-Place dough by heaping tablespoons on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake in 350 degree preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until just starting to golden around edges.  Remove and let cool.

-Melt bittersweet chocolate in microwave oven for about 1 minute.  Stir and allow to cool about 5 minutes.  Drizzle chocolate over tops of cooled cookies from a spoon or place in a plastic bag with a small hole cut in the corner and squeeze chocolate ribbons over cookies.  Sprinkle tops of cookies with toffee bits.  Makes about 50 cookies.

Place cookie dough on parchment paper of silpad.

Drizzle cookies with melted chocolate and sprinkle 

with toffee bits or turbinado sugar. 

Banana Cinnamon Cake with Warm Caramel Sauce

         Bananas and I have a long and complicated relationship, one of unrequited affection on my part. This wasn't due to the heartlessness of the banana itself, but more particularly to circumstance, not so much the wrong time as the wrong place. Tunisia for starters....bananas did not exist in this North African clime, but we had already dallied with the banana enough to know what Tunisians were missing. And apparently, we weren't the only residents to have had experience lingering enraptured over a banana split, for when the banana boat came in, maybe twice a year, bananas were hawked from every city corner to avid customers who consumed their yearly requirement of potassium in a matter of a few days! And for a short time, we dined in banana heaven with banana milkshakes, banana pudding, banana cream pie and eventually banana bread which we froze to dole out in the banana-less months to follow.

         Our only respite being when visitors came from Europe - at our request they would bring bananas and avocados as the gift I wanted most from home. From Tunisia, we moved to Jordan, where the banana existed, their water gorging trees quenched by the waters of the Jordan River, but alas, they were short, stubby, things often green and reluctant to ripen; no Chiquita worthy specimens these. But the flavor was right and after all, that is what we fell in love with in the first place. In the following recipe, I step aside to let caramel sauce take my place in this love affair with the banana. I can not imagine a more perfectly suited couple....and the cinnamon topping dresses the dish up for a night on the dessert table!

Banana Cake with Cinnamon Topping:
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 ripe medium bananas
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup plus 1 tab. buttermilk
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
4 tab. butter, melted
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tab. flour
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt

-Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease and flour an 8 x 8 inch square or 10 inch round baking pan.

-Combine 1 3/4 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar, bananas, eggs, vegetable oil, buttermilk, baking soda, salt and vanilla extract in mixing bowl and mix well, until batter is smooth - 3 - 4 minutes.  Stir in walnuts if used.  Pour batter into prepared pan. 

-Combine melted butter, brown sugar,  2 tab. flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and 1/2 tsp. salt.  Sprinkle on top of batter in pan.  Bake in preheated oven until top is golden brown and splits slightly, about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Test with knife to insure doneness. 

-Cut cake into squares and serve warm or at room temperature with caramel sauce.

(Optional Cream topping:  Place 1/2 cup whipping cream in mixing bowl and beat until stiff peaks form.  In another bowl combine 4 ounces of softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla extract until smooth.  Fold cream cheese mixture by hand into whipped cream.  Top squares of banana cake with spoonfuls of cream mixture and then drizzle with caramel sauce.)


The Caramel Sauce  (here's another love story....)
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1 cup white corn syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tab. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. coarse salt (for salted caramel)

-In a heavy medium saucepan, melt butter over 

   medium heat. Stir in corn syrup, brown sugar,

  and sweetened condensed milk. Slowly bring to

  a boil, over medium heat stirring frequently

  (constantly if you have the patience...if stirring

  constantly, you can edge the heat up a bit.) Once

  mixture begins to bubble, continue cooking over

  medium heat, stirring constantly for another 5 

  minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla

  extract and salt. Let cool.  Serve warm or at room 

  temperature.

Adas - Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

        "A Mess of Potage" is what my husband calls it and yes, sometimes it looks like a mess, or at least my kitchen utensils do after preparing it! My husband maintains that this earthy, humble lentil soup from Jordan (the land of the Bible) must have been similar to what the Biblical Esau sold his birthright for, to his brother Jacob. Even hungry modern-day nomads, after a day of unfruitful hunting and surviving the wilds of suburbia might be inclined to do the same for this satisfying bowl of sustenance. If Jacob's version included the fried bread croutons and lemon juice of this recipe, he might have had his pick of birthrights from those lined up outside his tent drooling for a "mess" from the "potage" pot!

Adas - Lentil Soup:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
2 carrots, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 1/2 cups brown lentils
1 tab. ground cumin
1 lemon, cut in wedges
3 pita loaves, cut into 1 inch squares
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tab. ground sumac
salt and pepper to taste
finely minced fresh parsley

-Rinse lentils then soak in large bowl of cold water
for 1 hour.  Drain and set aside.

-In large saucepan, heat 1/4 cup olive oil.  Add
the chopped onion and cook over medium heat
until onions are soft and golden, stirring
frequently (about 20 minutes.)

-Add carrots and garlic and sauté 2-3 minutes
longer.

-Add lentils, cumin and 4 cups water to the pot.
Cover and cook over medium-high heat until
contents come to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low
simmer and cook for about 30 minutes or until
lentils are very tender, stirring occasionally.

-Meanwhile, heat 1/2 cup olive oil in medium sauté
pan.  Add bread squares and cook over medium-high
heat until browned and crispy, stirring frequently.
Remove bread squares from oil and drain.  Salt
lightly while warm.

-Remove from heat and allow to sit for 10 - 15
minutes.  Place soup in blender and blend until
smooth (or if you prefer to keep some of the lentils
whole, for a coarser soup, puree just half of the
lentils.)  Return soup to pot.  Season to taste with
generous salt and pepper and ground sumac.

-Ladle into soup bowls.  On top of each serving,
sprinkle bread squares, a squirt of lemon juice,
minced parsley and additional sumac. 
Serve with lemon wedges.

**(for a richer broth, add chicken bouillon paste to
     liquid when cooking lentils)

-Serves 6 - 8