On Your Newsstand Now

Just a tiny, ahem, personal promotion: the December issue of Ladies' Home Journal carries a reprint of my essay on my obsession with sprinkles, which originally appeared in The New York Times in October 2008. (Note that the photo here is of the November 2009 LHJ -- I couldn't find one of the December cover, which features Nicole Kidman.) The LHJ piece is titled "Sugar on Top," but the NYT version is "For This Baker, the Cookie Is a Canvas." I'll put a link in the column to the right here, or you can pick up the magazine to see it.

The First Thanksgiving

This year, my son and daughter-in-law -to-be are hosting their first Thanks-giving. Her family will be joining them, but we’ll be in Texas, so I’m not there to help, which pains me, as I count group cooking as one of the most fun activities. Desperate to contribute, I sent cookies.

What cook doesn’t remember that maiden voyage? My first attempt was fraught with anxiety over the bird in particular, so more than anything that year, I was thankful for the turkeys with those little pop-up thermometers that tell you when the meat is done. And in that vein, I recommend to my DILTB (and to any other anxious cooks) the excellent op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times, “Thanksgiving Recipe: Just Chill,” which more elegantly elaborates on something I’ve told many of my friends over the years: Most people – especially those who cook regularly – are just happy to have a meal that someone else prepared. And as for doing it all yourself, you need to keep in mind that the people on Top Chef and its ilk have not only years of training but – and this is important – ASSISTANTS. Moreover, someone else went out and bought the ingredients. Think of Giada and Martha and Rachel and Mario (who I really feel I know on a first-name basis), and just imagine how many choppers and slicers and dicers they’ve got making ready in the studio. Now, don’t you feel better?

For me, one of the best parts of Thanksgiving – aside from the fact that you’re with friends or family or both – is the re-living over the years of the funny/stupid/amazing stories. The year our family cat got at the bird before we sat down, and the time many years later when the dog ate a tray of my friend Ellen’s dinner rolls as they were rising. Or the time I made my mom’s pecan pie in a tin pie plate and inadvertently poked holes in it as I was prebaking the crust, so that the filling ended up on the oven floor. And at the earliest Thanksgiving in my memory, I sat in my Uncle Frank’s lap and gave him the chicken pox.

When I was growing up, our family shared every major holiday with my mother’s sister’s family and my maternal grandmother. The kitchen was always a whirlwind of activity, with the three women fussing over the gravy or the potatoes, while my dad and my uncle would alternate with the carving and the blessing. It was better when my dad did the carving – not because he was a more skilled carver, but if he said the blessing... Let’s just say it wasn’t short. Dad took the blessing as an opportunity to update God as to our family’s various comings and goings, the things we were happy about and what we were still working on. Eventually, my uncle would come to the rescue, and interrupt with a sonorous “Amen,” and we’d dig into the food before my dad had the chance to object.

The most famous dish from my family’s holiday meals is my Aunt Marcy’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. It’s got all that wonderful pumpkin taste without the heaviness of the standard variety. And for the pie crust phobes among you, the ginger snap crust is, well, a snap to make, and adds real spice to the taste.

Aunt Marcy’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

The Crust: Mix together 1/3 c. melted butter with 1 1/2 c. ginger snap crumbs. [Kitchen Goddess note: If you use the large Nabisco ginger snaps – recommended – I find that 24 will make the right amount of crumbs. I used to take a rolling pin to the cookies to make the crumbs, but now use a food processor. Much easier.] Press into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie pan (pyrex is best) and bake 10 min. at 325°. Allow to cool completely before pouring in the filling.

The Filling: Dissolve 1 Tbl gelatin in 1/4 c. cold water. Set aside.

In a saucepan, mix together:

3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
1 1/3 c mashed pumpkin (canned is fine)
3 large egg yolks
1/2 c milk

Cook on low heat until boiling, stirring occasionally. Boil 1 minute (stirring), then remove from heat. Stir in the dissolved gelatin mixture, and cool until it mounds slightly (partially set). Beat with a wisk until smooth.

Beat together 3 large egg whites, 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar, and 6 Tbl. sugar, until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in the pumpkin mixture, and pour into a 9-in crumb crust. Chill a couple of hours – til set. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of chopped candied ginger.

This pie can easily be made the day before and kept (lightly covered) in the refrigerator. Also, the ginger snap crust is really better than a pastry crust for this recipe, though my Aunt Marcy was known to use a store-bought pastry crust in a pinch.

A Bit of Cranberry with Your Pinot

My current favorite cranberry sauce recipe calls for two cups of pinot noir. You can get a buzz just from the fumes as it cooks.

In addition, however, I almost always have to make that classic relish – from cranberries and oranges and sugar – regardless of what else is on the menu. When I was little, probably in elementary school, my Aunt Marcy – long known as the cook in the family – began a tradition of letting me help her make it every year. Those were the days before food processors, so we used a big, clunky meat grinder – the kind that clamp onto the table and then drip juice all over the floor. At least, that was the way it went when I helped. Somehow, I managed to keep my fat little fingers out of the grinder part, which seems like nothing short of a Thanksgiving miracle to me at this point.

It started with a bag of cranberries. You had to hold your hand over the top of the funnel opening, to keep the berries from bouncing out all over the kitchen, and it was something of a challenge to get them all down into the spiral grinder part. Then came the two oranges, cut into quarters, with the juice that was supposed to drip into the bowl. I thought I was really cooking as I slowly turned the crank, then stirred in the sugar to taste.

I got married in June of 1977, and my mother-in-law joined us for our first Thanksgiving. Although food processors were introduced to the US in 1973, I’d been too poor to buy one and too uninformed to ask for one as a wedding present. Nothing seemed more natural than to buy a meat grinder just like my aunt’s to make the relish.

The next year, Marcy told me about an exciting new development: she’d bought a food processor. She exclaimed over how much easier it was to make the relish – hardly any work at all – and she no longer had to drag out the grinder. So I put a Cuisinart at the top of my Christmas wish list that same year. My husband was skeptical – I had warned him of the dangers of giving appliances as Christmas gifts – but compliant, and so began my love affair with the food processor. What an amazing transformation in culinary fun. Someone should give an award to the person who invented it.

But through moves from apartment to apartment in Manhattan, and out to New Jersey, and now down to Texas, I’ve hung onto my meat grinder. I don’t use it for anything these days, but I can’t seem to get rid of it. Now my 11-year-old nephew is coming for Thanksgiving – maybe he’d like to grind out some cranberry relish.

Cranberry Sauce with Pinot Noir
Bon Appétit, November 1997

Notes from the Kitchen Goddess: I found this on epicurious.com, where some reviewers suggested reducing the sugar. Others left out the crystallized ginger. I make it exactly as written, and love it, but I’ll eat anything with crystallized ginger. My husband is always trying to have me use some junk wine, but I say if you don’t want to drink it, you don’t want to cook with it. So while you don’t have to splurge, go for some medium-priced Pinot. The house will smell amazing. If you finish off the wine as you cook, you can use the bottle in your centerpiece.


1 Tbl vegetable oil
2 rounded cups cranberries (about 8 ounces)
1 Tbl minced fresh ginger
2 c Pinot Noir or other dry red wine
1½ c sugar
3 Tbl chopped crystallized ginger
1 tsp curry powder
Large pinch of Chinese five-spice powder

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add cranberries and fresh ginger; stir about 3 minutes or until cranberries begin to burst,. Add wine and sugar; boil until mixture is reduced to 2½ cups, about 15 minutes. Add crystallized ginger, curry powder and five-spice powder. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 3 days ahead. Cover; chill.) Serve sauce cold or, if desired, re-warm over low heat, stirring often. Makes 2 1/2 cups

Desserts R Us

A friend and I drove down to San Antonio this weekend, to the Culinary Institute’s Texas campus for a one-day seminar on baking desserts. I got less from it than I had hoped – after the fab two-day courses this summer in basics and hors d’oeuvres (see August 28 and September 3 postings), I had some idea that this one would transform the way I think about desserts.

But no, the day was mildly disappointing, like when the cutest guy asks you to the dance, and he turns out not to have much personality after all. The lecture was brief and uninformative, until the Q&A, when the chef fielded a couple of questions on baking philosophy (OK – I confess – I was the one who asked), and actually got into the science of some of it. And then the recipes for the day included a pound cake/coffee cake with chocolate chips in it, which even the chef described as “a great item to take to a church reception because it’s the last thing to get eaten, so it always looks like there’s still food on the table.” Not a glowing recommendation, if you ask me. Also on the list to make were chocolate cake with chocolate icing (for this I need a course?) and candy turtles (boring). The remaining item on our menu was a Rustic Pear Galette, which was easier than it looks and delicious, and forced us to conquer pie dough. Not actually worth the price of the course, but what the heck – it was a fun day.

So – pie crust. Before this course, I approached pie dough with fear and loathing. Dodging and weaving, I covered the landscape in variety and creativity, as I reached for alternatives: from crumb crusts to all kinds of refrigerated or frozen crusts, and finally, to redesigning my menus around no-crust desserts. So I was thrilled to face this challenge in a venue with a real professional watching over me. With only nine students in the class, we had room for each person to manage the full list of recipes, and the chef had time to instruct us individually on our dough-making.

It turns out that dough-making is as simple as, um, pie. Kitchen Goddess tip #1: Butter makes a better flavor, but shortening makes a flakier crust. So in choosing your fat, try a mixture of butter and shortening. (Or, as chef suggested, run your own taste test, making pie crust with all butter, then all shortening, then whatever proportion. If you have that kind of time, which I do not.) So I used a half each. KG tip #2: You also want to leave small bits of butter unincorporated – unlike the creaming process for cakes, where the mixture should be smooth – to produce little pockets of air in your crust, for flakiness. KG tip #3: To keep the dough from sticking (my major problem in disasters past), chill it well (at least 20 mins) before rolling it out, and throw down plenty of flour on the counter. I was always hesitant over the flour, but chef was mighty generous when she demonstrated the technique. And she rotated the dough a quarter turn after each couple of swipes with the rolling pin. Roll with even, steady strokes all across the dough circle until you get it down to a one-eighth inch thickness. KG tip #4: An egg wash (equal parts egg and milk) brushed over the exposed part of the crust will help it brown. An egg/milk mixture is better than egg/water, because of the natural sugar in the milk; and in fact, you can use milk or cream alone to get the effect.

Rustic Pear Galette
Adapted from the Culinary Institute of America.

1 recipe single-crust pie dough (See recipe below. Take heart and jump in. Have a glass of wine, if it helps, which it almost always does.)

2 medium pears (Also works well with apples, apricots, peaches, or sour cherries.)
2 Tbl lemon juice
2 Tbl granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
½ c crumbled ladyfingers (Optional – I forgot to put them in and wasn’t sorry. But I was dealing with pears, and if you had juicier fruit like peaches, you might want them to absorb the juice.)
Egg wash (1 egg whisked with 2 Tbl cold milk)
2 Tbl coarse sugar

Roll the pie dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch and cut into a 10-inch round. Chill.

Preheat the oven to 400º. Core the pears and cut into 1/4-inch slices and toss with the lemon juice, granulated sugar, and spices.

Transfer the dough round to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle the dough with the ladyfinger crumbs, if using, leaving a 2-inch border free of crumbs. Pile the pear slices on top of the crumbs. Fold the dough edges toward the center, pinching and folding to create a pleated border. Brush the pleated border with egg wash and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake until the pastry is golden brown, about 25 mins. Cool the tart on the pan set on a wire rack for at least 20 mins before slicing.

Pie Dough

1⅓ c all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
½ tsp salt
½ c cold unsalted butter or shortening, or a combination
¼ c ice water, or as needed

Sift together the flour and salt, and stir to blend. Cut the fat into the mixture using a food processor, pastry blender or two knives, leaving some bits of fat the size of small peas. Drizzle a few tablespoons of the water over the mixture and rub it into the flour. Continue to add water a tablespoon at a time, just until it holds together when you squeeze a handful of it. Gather and press the dough into a ball, wrap well, and chill 20 mins.