Happy Cinco de Mayo! Here’s a recipe for churros. (Sorry, I recycled this recipe last year too. Hmm, this blog needs more Mexican desserts.)
Oh yeah, there’s also chocolate-chile almonds. It comes from a Puerto Rican chef, but the flavors are Mexican.
This shortbread has such a short ingredient list that you might be tempted to overlook it. There’s no chocolate or vanilla. Not even eggs or baking powder/soda. There’s just flour, sugar, butter, and salt (and a secret flavoring agent).
Despite its simple nature, there’s an amazing number of things that can go wrong with shortbread: it comes out too plain, hard, dry, doughy, greasy, or stale-tasting. But you can’t mess up shortbread if you make olive cookies (scourtins) from the reputable French chef, Susan Loomis. The dough is crisp yet delicate. Every bite melts in your mouth. The olives don’t overpower the cookies, either. Whether you can taste it or not, every dessert has a pinch of salt to round out the flavors. In this case, the salt predominantly comes from the olives. (For more olive oil desserts, try making chocolate mousse, truffles, or gelato.)
The first time I made these cookies, they were supposed to be a birthday gift. Then I ate 10 in one sitting, and I eventually had to re-bake an entire batch. They were so addictive that I made about six more batches after that (as gifts, of course). They’re the most repeated dessert I’ve made all year.
Since the genius of these cookies is their unusual source of salt, I thought of another savory substitute: seaweed. I know vegetables don’t sound appetizing in cookies, but just think of seaweed as the complex version of sea salt.
When I thumbed through my pantry last night, I saw furikake (a mix of soy-glazed bonito flakes, sesame seeds, and nori) and thought, “Hey, why not? Fish come from the sea, too.” So I made two batches of cookies (which you should always do with this recipe, because you will run out!).
While the furikake tasted great in the raw dough (I loved the sweet-salty combo of the fish and the soy sauce), the fish flakes didn’t keep their crunchy texture, and the flavor became too distracting. It was still tasty, but I preferred the seaweed version.
PS-I conceptualized these cookies a long time ago, but that darn David Lebovitz scooped me. But my adaptation is different, as there’s a lot more seaweed but no egg. For another sweet-savory twist, I bet bacon would be good, and you could substitute some rendered bacon fat for the butter.
Seaweed Shortbread Cookies
This recipe doubles easily (trust me, you will need to double it), so you can munch on the cookies and still have some left for gifting. They stay delicious for weeks and hold up well in the mail.
Adapted from Susan Herrmann Loomis and The Traveler’s Lunchbox
Yield: about 34 cookies
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted or 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, whizzed in a food processor until fine
1 Tablespoon roasted sesame oil (recommended brand: Kadoya)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup crushed wakame flakes
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.
In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter until it is soft and pale yellow. Mix in the sugar until blended, then drizzle in the sesame oil and mix until combined. Add the flour and the salt, and mix gently but thoroughly until the dough is smooth, then add the wakame flakes and mix until they are thoroughly incorporated into the dough.
With your hands, press the dough into the pan until it is 1/4-inch thick. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, and up to 24 hours. Score the dough into rectangles with a knife.
Bake until the cookies are golden, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately cut the cookies while they are still hot. Cool on wire racks.
If you find that the middle pieces are still doughy, re-bake them in a preheated 300° F oven for about 10 minutes.
Variation: Substitute 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons bonito-flavored furikake for the arame seaweed. (Furikake is like rice confetti. It’s also a delicious seasoning for cold silken tofu, eggs, noodles, popcorn, and salad. If you want to make your own, Gourmet and Egullet have recipes.)
Photo: Willpowder.net
If making your own chocolate-hazelnut spread weren’t enough, check out Gourmet.com for some molecular magic. Chef Will Goldfarb demonstrates how tapioca maltodextrin turns this creamy spread into “soil.” He also provides a recipe for a Nutella knock-off, but I like mine better. My version is healthier and uses more common ingredients.
Prunes are nature’s most unhip fruits. Perceived as dry and wrinkly, they elicit snickers and jokes about old people and regularity. But cast the bad reputation aside, and you’ll see that they’re unsung jewels. Sweet as candy, they’re also packed with fiber and vitamin A. They’re not leathery either; prunes are some of the moistest, softest dried fruits around.
Stewed fruits are such common low-fat desserts that I forget how good they are. In this week’s L.A. Times, David Lebovitz provided a recipe for tea-poached prunes with citrus. It’s deceptively simple (just boil prunes in sugar-water for 10 minutes), but the flavors are complex: the rich, plump prunes are brightened up with just-tart enough oranges.
You can eat these by themselves, but they’re a wonderful backdrop for creamed cottage cheese ice cream; plain frozen yogurt; homemade ricotta cheese; or fresh, puréed tofu, above. (If you have a soy milk machine, making tofu is simple. You don’t need to buy a tofu mold or any mysterious chemicals. While the milk is still hot, just stir in a small amount of Epsom salt [which you can get in a drug store] or lemon juice, and drain in a cheesecloth-lined strainer. Epsom salt produces a softer tofu, and lemon juice a tangier one, but they’re more accessible than magnesium chloride, the best coagulant.)
Tea-Poached Prunes with Fresh Orange Segments
Adapted from David Lebovitz’s recipe in the L.A. Times
Active time: 15 min
Start to finish: 40 minutes
Servings: 4
2-3 tablespoons sugar (depending on your sweet tooth)
2 bags of Earl Grey or any black tea, tags removed
20 to 25 prunes
1 strip of lemon or orange zest, about 1/2 -inch-wide and 2 to 3 inches long
Accompaniments: Fresh orange segments; creamed cottage cheese ice cream, plain frozen yogurt, homemade ricotta cheese, or puréed tofu
Combine the sugar with the zest and 1 cup of water in a small saucepan, add the tea bags and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring so the sugar dissolves. Add the prunes and continue to gently simmer for about 10 minutes until the prunes are tender. If your prunes are large or quite dry, they make take longer. If necessary, add a bit more water to keep them covered.
Once the prunes are tender, remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. Remove the tea bags and gently squeeze them to extract additional flavor before discarding them.
Serve with oranges and the snowy white “cream” of your choice.
I recently inherited a gallon of organic milk and wanted to finish it before it went bad. Drinking it was out of the question. I dislike the taste of plain milk so much that I eat my cereal dry. And why would anyone want to ruin a perfectly good cookie by dunking it in milk?
Not one to waste anything (not even bread cubes), I turned this milk into “ricotta cheese.” Real ricotta isn’t made from milk per se. It’s actually a by-product of other cheeses. Whenever you make cheese, you have the solids (curds) and leftover liquid (whey). The liquid is usually thrown out, but if you re-heat it, you have ricotta. Hence its name, which is Italian for “re-cooked.” You can make a good approximation at home though by heating milk with an acidic ingredient. And poof, that gallon of milk reduces down to a sizable four cups.
Fresh ricotta makes the supermarket tubs seem like spackle in comparison. It’s refreshingly tart, like sour cream. Rather than having a uniform grittiness, fresh ricotta has giant, billowy curds that you can eat while still warm.
Of course I had to make this cheese into dessert, so I used Lidia Bastianich’s torta di ricotta recipe and added some mix-ins. For a dessert, this cheesecake has relatively little sugar and fat but lots of protein. It’s even Passover-friendly, if you use nuts for the “crust” and matzo meal for the flour. The texture is light and fluffy if you like that sort of thing, but I like my cheesecake creamy and dense. If I were to make this again, I would add the eggs whole, instead of whipping the whites separately.
Fresh Ricotta Cheesecake
This cheesecake is light and fresh, with its soufflé-like texture and bright, citrus-accented flavor. If you like your cheesecake dense, try blending whole eggs with the sugar.
Adapted from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Bastianich and The 1997 Joy of Cooking
Start to finish: 3 days (includes making the cheese and chilling the cheesecake)
Active time: 2 hours
Ingredients:
Softened butter and fine dry bread crumbs (wheat germ, crushed cereal, or finely ground nuts can be substituted) for the pan
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (chopped almonds are a good substitute)
1 Tbsp diced candied lemon peel
1 Tbsp diced candied orange peel
2 Tbsp coarsely chopped dark chocolate
1 Tbsp flour
3 cups firm, homemade whole-milk ricotta cheese, recipe follows (If using store-bought cheese, place 3 1/2 cups ricotta in a cheesecloth-lined sieve and place the sieve over a bowl. Cover the ricotta with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours or up to one day.)
5 large cage-free eggs, separated
1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt (a heaping 1/4 tsp if using unsalted ricotta cheese)
Grated zest of 1 large lemon
Grated zest of 1 large orange
1/2 cup heavy cream or whole milk
Special equipment: food processor
Brush an 8-inch spring form pan with enough softened butter to coat lightly. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the butter to coat generously. Shake out the excess crumbs. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a small bowl, combine the nuts, lemon peel, orange peel, chocolate and flour. Set aside.
In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, blend the egg yolks, sugar and salt until pale yellow. Add the drained ricotta, lemon and orange zest and process until smooth. Combine the cream or milk.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and vinegar or lemon juice with a hand mixer until they form firm peaks when a beater is lifted from them.
Add the chocolate-nut mixture to the ricotta mixture and pulse in the food processor once or twice, just until combined.
Add about one fourth of the egg whites to the ricotta mixture and gently stir with a large rubber spatula. Pour the ricotta mixture over the rest of the egg whites (you’re really supposed to add the egg whites to the top of the ricotta, but who wants to dirty another bowl for mixing?) and gently fold the mixture, using a large rubber spatula to scrape from the bottom of the bowl up and over the top. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan and bake until the cake is golden brown on top and the edges are set but the center jiggles slightly when the pan is tapped, about 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Cool the cake completely before removing the sides of the pan. Serve the cake at room temperature or chilled for at least 6 hours.
Adapted from Michael Chiarello and Italian Food Forever
Start to finish: 1 hr and 10 minutes
Makes 4 cups
Ingredients:
1 gallon whole milk
1/3 cup vinegar (I like the taste of cider vinegar)
Special equipment: cheesecloth, thermometer
Heat the milk in a large, heavy, non-reactive pot until it reaches 185 degrees F, or until the milk makes popping sounds and barely simmers. Be sure to stir the milk frequently with a rubber spatula and cover the whole pan bottom to prevent scorching. (Warning: the heating process can take 40 minutes if you start with cold milk from the fridge.) While the milk is heating, rinse a large piece of cheesecloth or muslin with cold water, then fold it so that it is 6 or more layers, and arrange it in the sieve or colander placed in the sink.
Remove from the milk heat and add the vinegar. Stir gently just to mix. The curds and whey will begin to form immediately. The whey looks like cloudy water underneath a mass of thick white curds on the surface.
Working from the side of the pot, gently ladle the whey into the prepared sieve. Go slowly so as not to break up the curds. Finally, ladle the curds into the sieve. Lift the sides of the cloth to help the liquid drain. Resist the temptation to press on the curds. When the draining slows, gather the edges of the cloth, tie them into a bag, and hang the bag from the faucet. Continue to drain until the dripping stops, about 15 minutes. If using the ricotta for cheesecake, drain until it is firm and crumbly, about 30 minutes. Store the ricotta in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
