Kitchen Travels

Wordless Wednesday - Valentine's Day Party

Foraging and Roasting Fresh Chestnuts

This is the third in a series of "catchup" posts. xo

Chestnuts! For me, like many Americans, they are woven into the fabric of fall and winter holidays. In a way, we all grew up with chestnuts, or at least the idea of them. Each year when the weather turns cold, we know we'll hear Nat King Cole famously crooning about chestnuts roasting on an open fire. We'll be singing the songs we love to sing, at the fireplace as we watch the chestnuts pop. Pop! Pop! Pop! If we find ourselves in one of New York's five boroughs (or any number of European cities) around the holidays, we might be lucky enough to snag a cone of freshly roasted chestnuts, hot from the corner vendor. 

And if we're fans of those gorgeous holiday magazines - aren't we all? - we'll be reading about chestnuts and dreaming of ways to cook with them. I'd bet money that every single November issue of the now-defunct Gourmet magazine included at least one chestnut recipe. It's a tradition that I sorely miss.

Sparkling Sugared Cranberries - Happy New Year!

This is the first in a series of "catch up" posts. xo

Hey there, world. Did everyone have a nice holiday season? Having a happy new year so far? Ready for some new posts? I hope so, because we've got a lot of catching up to do. (Well, I guess in this blogger/reader relationship, I'm really the only one who needs to catch up. But I would love for you all to come along for the ride.)

You see, I've got a lot of photos and recipes stacking up in my computer that I've never posted here. I've  wanted to, I really have! But I have been pretty distracted the last couple months, and something had to give. I almost let all those would-be posts slide, seeing as how some of them aren't exactly timely any more. Hello... cranberries? In January? 

Sugar Cookies

My childhood memories are, for the most part, happy ones. Skating on a freezing cold pond in Minnesota, then warming up with hot chocolate from a Thermos. Dancing with my mom and siblings around our living room, while The Beatles and Three Dog Night records played on our Hi-Fi and we laughed and laughed. I remember camping in the Arizona mountains, where my dad taught me how to shoot tin cans with a rifle, and where - after ditching our family tent in favor of sleeping on a boulder under the stars - I once awoke at dawn to find a squirrel sitting on my chest, eating a pine cone.

Of course, I have a couple of not-so-happy memories, too. One in particular stuck with me over the years. I was about 6 or 7 years old, I think, and my parents had taken us out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. It was busy. As we waited for our turn, I remember trying to get a peek through the crowd at the big tubs of ice cream, then feeling a little overwhelmed by the grownups blocking my view. Without looking, I instinctively leaned against my dad, hooking my arm around his leg. A voice said, "Oh, hi there," and I looked up to find that I was hugging not my dad, but a strange man, who was smiling kindly down at me. I backed away, panicking for a second, then heard my dad laugh as he realized my mistake and gently pulled me close to him. Dad held my hand, and a few minutes later I was happily eating my single scoop on a sugar cone. Thinking back, it wasn't really anything so terrible. It was just a mix up, a fleeting moment. I was never in any danger. But in that exact moment, I learned what it was to feel fear.

Homemade Marshmallows

Now that the holiday season is officially over, I think I can safely tell you about these homemade marshmallows. "Safely" because the impetus for making these was a completely unexpected case of the holiday blues, and I didn't want to bring anyone down with my tales of woe. Because Christmas is supposed to be such a happy time. Right? It's the most wonderful time of the year. Right? Mistletoe-ing, hearts aglow-ing, snow a-blowing! Right?! It's the happiest season of all, and I had every reason to be happy. Only... it wasn't, and I wasn't. 

Instead, I was feeling more than a bit bah-humbug-ish. And the more I felt that way, the more I didn't want to feel that way, and the more guilty I felt about feeling that way, which made me feel even more bah-humbug-ish. A vicious little holiday circle, it was. So I tried to find my way out of it. I made a concerted effort to focus on the positive things in my life - my family, my friends, my health, my work. I took notice of all the wonderful people making a difference in this crazy world of ours - like Gregg Breinberg ("Mr. B") of the PS22 Chorus. How could anyone remain in a bad mood after listening to those beautiful voices singing a song like this, and seeing Mr. B's infectious enthusiasm? Lastly, I made a tried-and-true recipe that was sure to banish my blues: homemade marshmallows.

Sweet and Savory Spiced Nuts

It's the holiday season, and you know what that means. Cookies! When I was little, Christmas often meant that it was time for my Italian grandmother to whip up batches of her favorite old-world treats with her daughter in-law, my mom. Sometimes, there were pizelle - literally, "little pizzas" in Italian. Grandma would pour anise-scented batter onto a hot pizelle iron, which when pressed together around the sizzling mixture would result in lacy, round discs that were so crispy and light, they fairly shattered in your mouth.

My brother's favorites, as I recall, were an Italian riff on jam thumb-prints: rounds of cake-like dough flavored with almond, with a dollop of sticky red jam in the center. I favored Grandma's spice cookies, which bore no resemblance to the ginger-and-molasses variety most of us are used to seeing. The Italian version is soft and dark, baked from a dough of allspice, cinnamon, raisins and chocolate, the little mounds iced with a white, powdered-sugar glaze. Dad's choice? I remember him liking them all, but he often reached for the Sicilian cookies called "cuccidati," pockets of butter-colored cookie dough filled with a mixture of dried figs, dates, nuts and spices. As for my mom and my sister, always "struffoli" - Grandma's honey cakes. Always. Truth be told, we all loved those little fried footballs of citrusey cake soaked in honey. I don't know how she did it, but when Grandma made struffoli, she was able to find a perfect balance of sticky, crispy, and pillowy in each one-inch bite.

So with Christmas in the air, my mind naturally wanders back to my mom's kitchen, and the image of my tiny (4' 10") Grandma churning out dozens and dozens of sweets. Yep, it's that time of year. Time to bake cookies!

Thanksgiving Recap & Learning to be Thankful

In the weeks before Thanksgiving, I was just pulling together this new blog, and contemplating my first recipe post. What to share? With the holidays fast approaching, the web was already awash with fantastic suggestions for turkey, stuffing, pie, and all things Thanksgiving. So much so, that for a brief moment, I considered breaking away from my traditional repertoire and revamping our menu entirely. "Wouldn't it be fun," I thought, "to kick off this blogging adventure with a few fresh new recipes? Surely I can find the time to choose, make, photograph, and draft some posts about - oh, say, a half dozen new dishes - before the holiday." And in theory, it would have been fun.

So I contemplated adding my voice to the (very loud) internet Thanksgiving chorus. I perused November issues of Gourmet from years past. I envisioned creative and beautiful table decorations, against which this imagined feast would be photographed. But seriously? Let's not kid ourselves. With a crazy work week ahead of me, and still recovering from the recent lack of (ahem - kids) sleep at our house, it would be all I could manage just to get the turkey on the table.