Welcome to 2010. Whenever I get another holiday behind me, I take a minute to think about what I did and didn't do. I try to make note of which recipes I used, which cookies turned out really well, which version of collards I persuaded my collard-hating husband to eat.
So, since there is only 11 months until we face the holidays again, I'd like to know:
1. Which cookie did you get or make that turned out particularly well? Did you add something new to your repertoire?
2. Did you wish The Observer had given you directions for cooking collards for New Years? We skipped the lucky foods this year in favor of rounding up great recipes froim 2009. But there's always next year, so let me know if that's something we need to add.
Posts
6 comments:
My favorite 'new' cookie/sweet addition was a recipe I saw in the online Bon Appetit sweet competition between food bloggers--I'm sorry I can't give credit, because I don't remember who it belonged to--will research--but it was regular chocolate bark, made on pan lined with saltine crackers. Believe me, it doesn't even begin to sound as good as it is. I made it with the 60% cacao pieces and toasted pecans. I"m searching for a new reason to make it again.
Next was the Pumpkin Cake with Orange-Cream Cheese Frosting from Bon Appetit Nov. issue.
Finally, bourbon ham--will be on my every 'cooking for a crowd' menu.
And, no--surely we know how to cook collards by now!
So which version of collards did your husband eat?
To answer your questions:
1. Sorry, I don't bake :-)
2. Chances are, anyone who eats peas and collards already knows how to cook them...but you should run it anyway for people who are curious.
Stephen, for this year's collards, I sweated a diced onion and red pepper flakes in some olive oil, added chopped collards a handful at a time, stirring them to coat them with the oil, and then added turkey stock I froze after Thanksgiving and cooked them for about 90 minutes.
Usually, though, my go-to trick for collard haters is to cook collards and cabbage separately, then chop them and combine them. The sweetness of the cabbage tones the collardy-ness and even non-green people like them.
We've only been living in the Carolinas for three years so we're not ready to cook collards yet. However, the black-eyed peas for "Good Luck in the New Year" is a great idea especially teamed with stewed tomatoes.
From my friend, baker extraordinaire Betty Lee:
My (and the family's) new favorite cookie is an adapted recipe from Paula Deen's Monster cookies. It contains oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chips, M&M's, craisins or dried cherries, and a touch of flour (her recipe didn't have flour). This was the best chewiest cookies I've made (I've only achieved truly chewy chocolate chip cookies on a hit or miss basis over the last 25 years). These cookies are amazing; relatively healthy and stayed fresh and chewy for 5 days. I made over 200 and brought them down to the local crisis ministry over Christmas and subsequently made 3 more batches for us. They are addictive.
My favorite relatively new cookie recipe is Triple Ginger Cookies, which I found online a year or so ago. My husband is not a cake eater but loves ginger, so these cookies (with Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Buns ice cream) have become his birthday dessert. If you like ginger, they are fabulous! I served them to supper guests a few nights ago, though, and you could tell that a couple of people were NOT ginger fans. Their loss!
Annelle, I make chocolate toffee with a base of saltines -- wonder if my recipe is similar to yours. It has a layer of butter/brown sugar toffee over the saltines and under the chocolate (I agree that bittersweet chocolate is wonderful in this) and pecans. So yummy.
Nobody in my family likes collards, so we've decided that any "greens" will do for New Year's Day dinner. Spinach salad is good with hoppin' john!
Post a Comment