cookrookery

Having a surplus of apples in my kitchen, I decided the first recipe out of my new Maida Heatter cookbook would figure them in as a primary ingredient, so the Apple Kuchen was a natural choice. Kuchen (pronounced koo-kən; think “kooky”) is the German word for “cake,” and there are many variations on it, even some with more pie-like properties. I’m a firm believer in coffee cake, and this is a delectable dessert or breakfast that’s made for coffee or tea, an old world comfort food that’s best eaten the day it’s made. And don’t be swayed by the number of ingredients and steps…it’s really quite simple to make.

Maida Heatter’s Apple Kuchen (8-10 portions)

Cake

1/3 c. currants (or raisins)

1 1/4 c. sifted flour

1 1/2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/4 c. sugar

1/4 c. butter

1 egg

1/4 c. milk

1 t. vanilla

3/4 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400 and butter and 9 x 13 pan.

Place the currants or raisins in a small strainer over a saucepan of shallow boiling water. Cover and let steam for 3-5 min. Remove from heat and set aside.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

In a small bowl, stir the egg just to mix and stir in the milk. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla to the flour mixture, stirring with a fork just until the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened.

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan–it will be a thin layer. Sprinkle with the currants and nuts and set aside.

Filling

4 medium-large apples (MH suggests Rome Beauties or Delicious. I used Granny Smith.)

1/4 c. butter

1/4 c. sugar

1 1/2 t. cinnamon

Peel, quarter, and core apples. Cut each quarter into about 6 very thin wedges. Place them, overlapping, in three rows down the length of the cake. If there is space in-between rows, fill with additional apples.

Melt the butter and brush over the apples. Mix sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over the butter. Cover loosely with a cookie sheet or aluminum foil.

Bake for 35 minutes, removing cookie sheet or foil for the last 5 minutes. Prepare glaze.

Glaze

1/2 c. apricot preserves

2 T. sugar

In a small saucepan over moderate heat, stir together preserves and sugar and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil, stirring, for 3 minutes. Immediately brush over apples. Serve while warm or room temp.

From Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts, published 1965.

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I made this kuchen for a road trip to Conway, a little town just south of Mt. Vernon, about an hour north of Seattle. I rode up with Liv, Kim, and Mary, and we stopped at Pam’s place before heading up to Bellingham’s Whatcom Art Museum, which was showcasing a favorite artist of ours, John Grade. Click on the first link to read about his lastest installation work, The Elephant Bed. Even if you can’t go see it, the concept is quite mind-bending. If you can go see it, do.

Enjoying kuchen with lovely Pam

After viewing the excellent exhibits, we headed back to Conway. All of us met a couple years ago in an art class, and we’ve been friends and mentors for each other ever since. Pam made Jasmine tea and we cut into the kuchen, and for a moment time was still within a moment shared, telling stories, giving advice, smacking our lips on the cake*…great friends and artists looking ahead to a new decade, and I, pleased that my first excursion with the great Maida Heatter, was a delicious success.

Great friends: Mary, Kim, Liv

*with apologies to Kim, for having to abstain from the kuchen, because of my forgetting that ol’ nut allergy. I’m always embarrassed when I forget such things, so in the interest of resolutions for a new decade, I aspire to be a more conscious preparer.

I hate breakfast

Let me lay it on the line: I hate breakfast. Not the idea of it, I love the idea of breakfast: thick slabs of sizzling bacon, poached eggs with hollandaise sauce, toasted crumpets running with butter and honey, freshly blended smoothies… it’s just that by some quirk of metabolism I am unable to approach food early in the day with anything other than nausea. I suppose, given the high-stress go-getter lifestyle now fashionable, this is a perk of a kind, but it leaves me miserable. This isn’t to say I haven’t cooked some pretty amazing breakfasts – my poached eggs with blackened butter and wasabi caviar comes to mind – just that I haven’t cooked any before about 11am.

It came to me a while ago that perhaps I was just eating the wrong kind of breakfast. Breakfast, like time and space, is relative. Breakfast in Nigeria is corn porridge and ground bean paste wrapped in leaves and steamed. In Kerala it might be puttu (steamed powdered rice) with kadala (black curry) and bananas. In Malaysia it’s nasi lemak, an elaborate combination of coconut rice, dried anchovies, cucumber, peanuts, egg, and spicy sauce. In Nicaragua we ate gallo pinto (beans and rice) with hard cheese, sour cream, and tortillas. All of the above sound more palate tempting than pancakes and links to me.

Perhaps it’s been the notion of specific breakfast foods that has been putting me off. Why do I have to eat certain items at certain times of day? I don’t understand why chocolate cake is inappropriate for breakfast but fine after dinner, which is one of the few times I ever desire cornflakes. And so on.

And then I had it. I asked a Japanese friend of mine what a normal breakfast was at home. “Rice, miso, fish, pickles… pretty much the same thing as every other meal,” she replied. That sounded perfect to me, in particular the miso. Sweet, salty, spiky miso soup, easy to down and digest, the perfect appetite stimulant.

Day 1

Refrigerator Miso

Excited by my idea, which I had late at night, I prepared my first bowl of breakfast miso without having had time to shop for any ingredients. The only things I had in my refrigerator which were at all appropriate were:

“Marukome Boy” brand miso paste, “Koji” style. Koji is a yeast mold which is added to ground soy beans to ferment them into miso.

Instant dashi. Dashi is the fundamental stock of Japan and the beginning for pretty much all meals. It is traditionally made by simmering kombu kelp and fresh shavings of dried skipjack tuna together. Interestingly, both kelp and tuna have very high levels of glutamic acid, of which msg is the salt, which provides the taste sensation of umami. And if you’re interested, “umami” was named by Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo University, who isolated glutamic acid from kelp. I don’t have a block of dried bonito, nor the expertise to use it, so I do what nearly all Japanese do and make my dashi with instant granules.

Some dried shiitake mushrooms

Some baby cut carrots

Togarashi pepper blend

I made the stock by adding half a teaspoon of instant dashi to 1 ½ cups water, about double the traditional serving (I am, after all, a big Westerner, and not accompanying this meal with rice). I tossed in the shiitake mushrooms and sliced carrots.

While the stock was heating, I put two tablespoons of miso paste in a bowl and added a few spoons of warm stock. I then whisked this with a fork until it was smooth, and ladled it back into the stock. This step is necessary or the miso will not hang properly in suspension in the soup (or so Shizuo Tsuji, author of Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, informs me).

Just before the boil, I poured the soup into a bowl and garnished it with a few shakes of togarashi. Miso is never brought to the boil, though interestingly the reasons for this differ. In Japan it is believed boiling changes the flavour of the miso, whereas in the
West we believe boiling destroys the biological activity of the yeasts.

I learned a few things immediately. Soaking for a few minutes in warming stock is not a long enough time to fully rehydrate a shiitake mushroom, nor fully cook a carrot. I had used perhaps a touch too much dashi, which is potent stuff, and perhaps even a touch too much miso. In other words, it was too salty. And I won’t say it was the most aesthetically pleasing soup to look at. But I did drink it down to the last drop, so I’m counting that as a pyrrhic victory.

Day 2

Winter Miso

With a little more time to prepare, this time I laid in a stock of tofu, green onions, wakame seaweed, and a different miso from my local co-op. This time I used red miso, akamiso, which someone once told me is eaten in winter. I had high hopes for this batch.

I followed the same procedure, though with less dashi: 1 ½ cups of water with ¼ tsp of instant dashi. I also used two slightly smaller tablespoons of miso. The red miso was thicker and chunkier and harder to whisk smooth. While I was doing that, I broke up a little seaweed and cut up some tofu and put it in the stock. Added the smooth miso and reheated, not quite to the boil. I garnished with a sliced green onion.

It did not quite resemble the beautiful little bowls of restaurant miso I had drunk, with their cubes of tofu clustered at the bottom like tiny jewels, and green threads of seaweed winding around, but it was closer (once the tofu had become waterlogged). There was also a faint tang of bitterness, which I think might have come from the tofu. Try as I might, I find it hard to like tofu. And I might have overdone it with the green onion, first thing in the morning. But I was getting closer. And I had eaten breakfast two days running, which is probably a record.

Day 3

Restaurant Miso

Success! Using white miso (shiromiso), wakame seaweed, the green part of a green onion, and a little dashi, I created a bowl of miso soup worthy of Koibito, the second-best sushi restaurant in Olympia. I didn’t take a picture of it, but it was light, tasty, free of bitterness and uncooked lumps, and just downright satisfying.

The secret was a long slow simmering of the stock with the seaweed in it. Unfortunately, long slow simmering is not very practical for breakfast, especially if you work for a living. I think what I will do in future is rise, put on 1 ½ cups of water with a quarter teaspoon of dashi and some broken up wakame, and then go shower. Hopefully by the time I get back the seaweed will be softened and ready and I can go through the process of mixing up the miso paste.

Day 4

Redux

Since day 3’s miso was so good, I made it again, but this time I took a picture:

Day 5

Intermission

Having mastered the art of miso and successfully eaten breakfast four days running, I rewarded myself with a short break from my new routine and made udon noodles instead. I made a basic broth out of water, dashi, light soy sauce, mirin, and about half a teaspoon of sugar. I used packaged udon noodles from the supermarket, and garnished with a green onion. It was good, but would have made a better light lunch or snack. I miss my miso.

Day 6

Chinese cabbage

Called napa cabbage in the US and hakusai in Japan, Chinese cabbage is of a much more delicate flavor than a standard green cabbage. It is, in fact, creamy and sweet. This morning I sliced a few rounds off one and simmered it a long time in dashi, before adding the whisked up miso and a sprinkling of togarashi pepper mix. Very nice. Chinese cabbage is, incidentally, the basis for Korean kimchi.

Day 7

Repeat…

As I post it is actually still day 6, but I have decided to truncate this experiment because it is pretty clear to me that it is a success, and I already know what I am going to make for breakfast tomorrow (miso). I am very pleased with this discovery. I think eating breakfast has boosted my metabolism so that I am now more hungry in general, which is a good thing when you are a beanpole like me. I’ve been more alert through the mornings and feeling more energetic. All praise miso, the wonder food!

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But just because it quacks like a duck, is priced like a duck, and is labeled ‘duck,’ doesn’t mean it is an aquatic bird. Oils are not created equal in our lovely industrial age. And since you only need to mutter the word ‘fats’ to create a riot in a mall, it is important to understand what is in that bottle you picked up for $8.95 at Safeway.

Olive oil is not always made from olives. Ah, they got you there, didn’t they? Olive oil has to contain oil from olives, in the same way scotch has to contain grain alcohol refined in Scotland. But we forget that the point of using olive oil – as distinct from, for example, industrial grade lamp oil – is because olive oil tastes like olives.

It TASTES LIKE OLIVES.

Go into your kitchen. You have olive oil there. Open the bottle and take a sniff. Does it smell like olives?

This is olive oil made in Lebanon. I admit that it cost me over thirty dollars. But notice that it is full of cloudy sediment. That happens when you juice an olive. Smell it. It smells like olives. Not in a harsh, salty, overpowering way – more of an essential oil kind of way. It smells like an olive grove on Santorini in summer. It tastes even better. Smell this oil and you will actually want to go out and buy French bread or make a salad.

Oh, and I wasn’t kidding about the industrial grade lamp oil. I was a little horrified to learn that’s what some common olive oils are diluted with.

Coming up next: seven days of miso!

I remember a line from an old Bill Cosby routine that went “I had gone to great lengths to prove to Junior Barnes that I was his greatest friend. Let him drink out of my soda bottle without even wiping it off.” This gesture of friendship is the same concept behind Japanese nabemono, or one-pot cookery. In the words of Shizuo Tsuji, author of the somewhat mis-named Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, sharing nabemono is a way of saying to someone “I like you enough to dip my chopsticks into the same pot you just dipped yours in.” Sukiyaki and shabu-shabu (see Chris’s post on that subject) are examples of nabemono. The basic idea is that a big heavy pot of something is brought to the table and everyone eats from it, with dipping sauces on the side. Sometimes, as with shabu-shabu, the food is cooked at the table itself. (I generally take issue with Tsuji’s idea that Japanese cooking is simple. I suppose it is also simple to carve an elephant: just take a piece of wood and remove all the parts that don’t look like an elephant. In this case, however, the word is appropriate. Not only was nabemono one of the simplest things I have ever made, it was the tastiest.)

I recently chanced upon another book by Masaru Doi, the 1960s television chef I mentioned in my last post. This entire book was dedicated to nabemono, and despite the fact that it was modeled around a weight-watchers-esque picture card format, was refreshingly authentic in feel. How often have you seen a recipe that requires you to have a helmet-shaped ‘Ghenghis Khan griddle’? For nabemono is all about the pot, its shape, its materials, its aethetics. ‘Nabemono’ means ‘pot things.’

I don’t have a Ghenghis Khan griddle, but I have a few beautiful cast iron deep frypans which suit me just as well. Here is my adaptation of Masaru Doi’s ‘Negima-nabe,’ which is based around tuna and leeks. The quick and easy preparation is deceptive: this is an amazingly good way to serve fresh fish.

Tuna and Leek Nabe

Serves two.

2/3 lb tuna, cut into 1½ x 1 x ½” pieces. I used ahi.

2 skinny leeks, sliced into 1 1/2″ lengths

2 eggs, for dipping

3 Tb sake

¼ cup soy sauce

2 Tb sugar

togarashi, a hot spice mix combining chili pepper, orange peel, black sesame seeds, sansho (Sichuan pepper), ginger, and nori (seaweed). You could just use pepper, I suppose, but togarashi is not that hard to find.

Beat the eggs in small separate bowls and sprinkle with togarashi. Each diner gets a bowl as a dipping sauce.

Boil a cup of water with the sake, soy sauce and sugar in a cast iron skillet. Lower the heat and add the tuna and leeks. When the tuna changes colour, turn it over and cook for one or two more minutes. Bring the skillet hot to the table. Eat with chopsticks, dipping each morsel of food briefly into the beaten egg before eating. You can see now why the skillet should be cast iron, which retains heat to keep the food hot enough to cook the egg dip.

A word or two on raw eggs.

What tends to pop into most people’s mind when raw eggs are mentioned is salmonella poisoning. I’m not sure how this association came about, but I suspect it was a kind of runaway fear campaign of the type that put so many bakeries out of business when the New York Times ran an article on how awesome it would be if people stopped eating carbohydrates. A 2002 study by the US Department of Agriculture (Risk Analysis April 2002 22(2):203-18) found that only 0.003% of all eggs are infected, which is to say 1 in 30,000. When you add to that the fact contaminated eggs only come from sick chickens, by buying healthy free-range organic eggs you can practically eliminate the risk. And in any case, the food from the skillet should be hot enough to cook the egg on contact.

Anyway, raw eggs dip may seem a little weird, but it is quite delightful. It adds a succulent depth and silkiness to the meaty tuna.

I’m finishing off my Trader Joe’s Wintry Blend in my new favorite coffee cup, a tall, wide brim cream mug with a drawing of a monkey scratching its head on the side and one arm reaching out to create the handle, a ceramic monkey paw grasping the edge (a gift from Cathy in western SD). I can’t recall the last time I purchased canister coffee, but the flavorings of cinnamon, cloves, and red and green peppercorns sounded intriguing. The resulting flavor was surprisingly pleasant, and I think I’d like to make it myself with darker blend, perhaps Sumatra or a dark Guatemalan, and put more pepper in, along with a generous couple dashes of cardamom, one of my favorite spices.

It’s day two of the new year, and my mind’s a swirl with what a good ending I experienced to a year many in my circles found difficult economically and personally, many passings of good pets and people, relationships shifting in ways nobody predicted or expected. I myself lost my job in January but was fortunate to find another in April, and I’m freelancing there still. I remember coming home from my new job, disoriented with trying to become acquainted with what amounted to an entirely new social group, with all its quirky souls, recluses, and creative energy. The therapy and nourishment I gave myself was always cooking.

When the holidays arrive, it’s less about therapy and more about a process wrapped up in thinking of the people who will enjoy the treats I prepare. This year I made Brown Sugar Walnut Shortbread, Coconut Sables, Apple Jellies, Candied Orange Peel, and a candy bar that I’d invented about 6 months prior after reading Steve Almond’s candy-worshipping diatribe, Candyfreak.  The apple jellies failed, a quivering paste of Granny Smith glop that had to be discarded. The sables were okay, but the cookie standout was definitely the shortbread, a texture a little like combining sugar stones from the brown sugar jar with a cookie. The orange peel is something I’ve made every holiday since my freshman year in college, and is not optional but expected from friends and family. This is the recipe I’ve tweaked and perfected for over a decade.

Matt’s Bittersweet Candied Orange Peel

3-4 large oranges, or 5-6 medium-sized

3/4 c. water

2 T. rice syrup

2 cups granulated white sugar

Remember that this is going to become an elegant candy, so give careful attention to selecting oranges that are as free of marks as possible. Cut each orange into quarters and scoop out the fruit; juice or eat. Place peels in a large saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to boil and cook, covered, for 15 minutes. Drain.

When cool, take each peel and press flat against your cutting board. Using a paring knife, slip the edge between the peel and the white pith, and slice down the length, removing the top layer of white pith. Discard all the pith and then using a cooking shears, snip all the peels into 1/4” to 1/8” strips.

Boil water, sugar, and syrup until all is dissolved. (I removed corn syrup from the original recipe when I began meeting people with allergies to corn; I found that the rice syrup actually contributed to a more tender result. I have since removed corn syrup from all of my candy recipes). Add peels and bring to a simmer, cook for 45-55 minutes, stirring occasionally, and watching to be sure the syrup doesn’t reduce so much that the peels burn. The peels should be translucent and tender.

Remove with tongs or a slotted spoon and transfer to parchment to cool for 5 minutes. Separate them as much as you can and let dry for an hour until they’re tacky.

Put superfine sugar (through all the trial makings I’ve come to like this sugar [sometimes called baker’s sugar] the best, but feel free to experiment) in a bowl and drop small handfuls of the peels in, swirling around until they become unstuck from each other and coated. Lie out on a clean sheet of parchment to dry 5-6 hours or overnight.

If your peels are still feeling wet, toss them in a bit more sugar. Store in an airtight container and nibble from it frequently and share most of it.

My most layered experiment was of course, the candy bar I’d dreamt up. Toasted almond buttercrunch beneath a silky layer of coffee-flavored marshmallow creme and dipped in Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet chocolate. This was a four day process, with a result of being heckled to market it, along with suggestion for designing a foil wrapper. My initial name for it is the Whipplescrumptious, after the candy bar that reveals the golden ticket in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Whipplescrumptious Fudgemallow Bar. I remember dying at age 10 or so to know what a candy with a name like that would taste like. Does everything we do in adulthood hearken back to such early imaginings?

The holiday doesn’t become Christmas for me until I’ve begun the baking and candy-making. This is my mother’s good doing, since her ritual was always to make ten thousand cookies and candies, and overload plates for me and my sisters to distribute to neighbors. There were eccentric touches, like the fruit loop stacks dipped in almond bark, but then there were always traditionals: tiny snowball pecan sandies that powdered to delicious cookie dust upon entering the mouth, miniature peanut butter cookies with a giant chocolate kiss surrounded by granulated sugar crystals, walnut-studded fudge, microwave peanut brittle (still one of the best microwave recipes I’ve ever encountered), and on rare occasions rosettes, batter dipped on a decorative iron and fried to a paper thin crisp before being dusted with a 1/4 inch of powdered sugar. And rarer, my Grandma Gilkison’s favorite, Divinity, a white candy that always seemed to me the texture of dried up and sugar-loaded toothpaste.

But best of all were Grandma G’s filled cookies, the best cookie I’ve ever tasted. A dark brown sugary syrup filled with plump raisins and coarse bits of walnuts, nestled between two of her original recipe sugar cookies. The pale and bumpy tops are coated with a thin snow covering of sugar. When my mother’s holiday box arrived from South Dakota, I nervously pulled out packages, my eyes darting for the most hoped for…and there it was: a festive snowman on a green box containing 7 cookies, each double wrapped in paper towels. The hardest cookie in the world not to hoard. I’ve eaten 5 of them, each bite savored, and 2 are in the freezer for the near future. Someday I will make these cookies.

More culinary treats: a box from Vermillion containing the fruits of Rebecca’s growing and canning: a deliriously large jar of cherries, a jar of grape jelly, a jar of tangy chutney, dried leeks, dried red pear tomatoes, dried chilis. All the ingredients describe her perfectly.

I went to Milwaukee (just south of Portland) for Christmas with my dear friends Cody and Kent’s extended family. When we arrived we all enjoyed his mother Marijane’s french onion soup…a dark, rich broth with onions caramelized as perfectly as they should be, poured over toasts and topped with white cheese. The next day, Christmas Eve, Marcia, wife of Kent’s brother Kevin, made an incredible winter roots-based meal:

• parchment packages with leeks, sage, and red garnet yams

• turnip gratins (turnips, gruyere, cream)

• roasted parsnips and garlic

• roasted fennel and red onions

• stuffed mushrooms

• butternut squash and goat cheese gratin

• salad with romaine, anjou pears, and caramelized walnuts

• Portuguese sweet bread

Clockwise from left front: butternut squash with goat cheese, roasted fennel and red onions plus parsnips, turnip gratin, and stuffed mushrooms

Christmas Eve dinner. From left: Shawn, Vicki, Kevin, Marcia, (me), Pat

A meal so tasty that it superseded Marcia’s almond apricot bars and toffee bars. And that’s saying something.

concentrating on indulgence: Sam, Cody, Shawn

me looking on as Kevin and Cody make waffles

Christmas morning was homemade blueberry waffles, eggs, and good, strong coffee.

Christmas dinner: pork loin roast with rhubarb sauce, rice, peas, curried carrots and steelhead.

Christmas night we had grilled steelhead salmon (Kevin and his sister Shawn huddled in the cold chill and hovered over the barbecue to get it just right) along with Janey’s pork loin and a complex mole that a family friend brought to share.

The night before Cody, Kent, and I returned to Seattle, Vicki read her poems and Kevin played his guitar and sang songs, and then we all sat down together to nibble on Shawn & Vicki’s goodies: crushed candy cane studded soft chocolate cookies and brittle, along with a small dish of what remained of my orange peel (finished off by its biggest fans, Janey and Marcia) and watched a gift of a movie, Julie and Julia, with Meryl Streep delivering an astonishing performance. The holiday was a generous breaking of bread with friends who’ve become my family.

Janey and John

Kevin, Kent, John, and me

Maddie and Pat

The week began again with New Year’s Eve to bookmark its end.  On Monday I went to Ed and Chris’s new apartment and there was Dom, visiting from Detroit. A man who grew up a few blocks from me (but a decade earlier) whom I met in college. The first out gay man I ever knew, who became a big brother for me, someone who had the shared traits of being gay, growing up Catholic, and living in South Dakota. Dom knew Ed, and introduced us, and Ed and I had met and become friends in Seattle, after I moved here in 2001. Chris, Ed’s boyfriend served us prime rib, a fig risotto a neighbor had brought, and some amazingly tender brussels sprouts. Dom and I left the party briefly to visit my apartment so I could show him my latest resin artwork, and stop by the local QFC for a pint each of Haagen Dasz Vanilla Bean, Lemon Sorbet, Mango Sorbet, and White Chocolate Raspberry (for Ed). Dom and I talked about our families and the meanings of families, particularly since he’s met his birth mother and was visiting the area to meet his grandmother, aunts, cousins in Olympia. A couple days later he spoke of the experience over chicken pizza at Palermo’s, relating stories of his 90-something grandmother fixing him breakfast, and of several slices of pie, and an enormously positive reunion. Before he left to head back to Detroit, he gave me a couple of sweet rolls from a platter his cousin Delores had sent with him from Olympia; I warmed them in the morning and enjoyed the sugary white icing next to a cup of black coffee.

From left: Me, Ed, Dom, and Chris

On Wednesday Pascha came into my office, a woman I brainstorm ideas and work with often, and who I’ve come to learn loves baking as much as I do. We’d exchanged Christmas tins of our holiday baking, and I’d been privy to her dense and sticky lemon bars studded with dates and her elf-shaped gingerbread, decorated with red and green sugar, a delicately soft crumb, with an intriguing tang to the aftertaste (“I brush them with lemon juice after they’re done baking. Three times.”) Yum.

She handed a well-worn and thick paperback with dark-aged but surprisingly resilient pages. “This is the book I bought in college and taught myself to bake from.”  The creased yellow cover was entitled, Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts. It seems impossible now that I’ve read articles on her that I’ve never encountered this book. Page after page of jaw-dropping and mouth-watering later, I’ve surfaced, and eyeing two bowls in my kitchen filled with Granny Smith and Braeburn apples, I’m torn between trying something simple and basic, like her version of applesauce 415 pages in, or to whip up the Apple Kuchen at the much earlier mark of 138. Most delightful of all, right before the index, is a recipe for Candied Grapefruit Rind (the peels are blanched 4 times before encountering the sugar).

And just like that, planning for the next holiday begins.

Best wishes for a prosperous and delicious new year.

Matt