The Funky Kitchen

There is some part of me that is resolute in its belief that I am, in fact, an emotional ninja; that unless I want someone to know how I feel, they won’t be able to tell. Like a ninja, my feelings won’t be apparent until I allow them to be.

All too often, though, I realize that this isn’t quite right. Yes, I apparently am an emotional ninja, just not at all in the way I believe myself to be. Instead of having how I feel stealthily camouflaged, people generally have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I was discussing this with a friend of mine, and she told me I was an emotional ninja in that my heart is on my sleeve, and it’s more of a case of “Hi-yah! Karate chop of glee!” or “Pow! Flying kick of something’s bothering me! “ 

Mr agreed with her, but reminded me that it isn’t a terrible thing to have people know how you’re feeling. It’s strange how the way you see yourself can be so different from how other people experience you.

Hi, my name is Dana. And I am an emotional ninja.

Shortbread

(a recipe from Merle, Mr’s maternal grandmother)

1 pound butter

3/4 Cups brown sugar

1/4 Cup icing sugar

1 Cup corn starch

3 Cups flour

Directions

Cream together the butter and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining three ingredients. Incorporate the bowl of dry ingredients into the butter mixture. When the cookie dough comes together, roll it out to a 1/2 inch thickness.

Cut out cookies in whatever shapes your heart desires. Arrange the cookies on a baking sheet, they do not need much space between because they only expand minimally. Bake in a 325° oven until golden around the edges, around ten minutes. Let the cookies cool, and then enjoy!

These tasty little gems are especially good with preserves! We used raspberry jam. Shortbread generally appears around Christmas, but just between you and me, they’re a good cookie for all year round.

The inclusion of brown sugar in the shortbread suggests the recipe is of Scottish origin, and I really do suggest you give it a try if you haven’t had shortbread with brown sugar in it before. It makes a world of difference to the flavor of the cookie.

Mr doesn’t say anything because he’s getting some sent with him while he’s away army-ing for the next couple of days. Shh! Don’t tell him!

**UPDATE: Mr says he loves these shortbread cookies. Just like Grandma used to make!**

This time last year: Pear Upside Down Brownies

I often wonder about my dad when I’m in the kitchen if it’s quiet and nobody is there keeping me company.

You see, he really enjoyed cooking and hated doing dishes afterward, just like me. I’m told he regarded written recipes mostly as a framework to be expanded upon, just like me. Still, he is a man I can barely remember, and certainly never knew as an adult, so I ask myself many questions in the quiet as I stir, knead or roll.

He probably didn’t bake like I do, but what was he good at making? What were his favorite things to make? Would he think it’s interesting that I share his inclination for spending time in the kitchen, like I do? Would he like the person who I turned out to be?

My dad was a hunter, would it have driven him nuts that I was a vegan for a few years in high school? I’m apparently going to learn how to shoot this summer, how long ago would I have learned about guns had he been alive when I was growing up? Would he like Mister?

Would we have gotten along together well? I’m told he was on the quiet side most of the time, especially with people he didn’t know well. I’m much the same way.

Mostly, I just wonder who he was as a person. You can’t really and truly know someone by what other people tell you. And sometimes, in the quiet of my kitchen, a kitchen he’s never been in and never will be, I roll out balls of cookie dough and wonder what it would have been like to know him.

Salted Double Chocolate Cookies

(adapted from Whipped)

1/2 Cup butter

4 oz dark chocolate, finely chopped

1 Cup flour

1/2 Cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 1/2 Cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

4 oz dark chocolate, chunked

~1/2 tsp kosher salt, for sprinkling

• Brown the butter in a small saucepan, decrease the heat to low, and add the finely chopped chocolate, stirring to melt.
• In a medium sized bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and first measure of salt.
• In a large bowl, combine the sugar, eggs and vanilla, stirring until bubbly.
• Add the chocolate and browned butter mixture to the mixture in the large bowl, stirring to combine.
• Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. The dough should be pretty tough, and not very sticky.
• Scoop tablespoon sized balls out of the dough, and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. If you want a flatter cookie, like mine, squish the balls down slightly; the balls do not flatten as much as you would expect upon baking.
• When you have a full cookie sheet, your hands will be slightly tacky from the butter, and you can use this extra stickiness to add a few grains of salt to the top of each cookie. Just tap your fingertips into the remaining measure of salt to pick up a few grains, and then apply them to the cookies.
• Bake the cookies in a 325° oven for 10-12 minutes and allow to cool before eating.

These cookies are truly decadent, chocolate-y and brown buttery to a heavenly degree, but where they may have been a little rich without the salt, the hint of it that tops each cookie cuts through and keeps your palate from being overwhelmed. What a great result!

Mister’s rating: “These cookies have all the goodness of a brownie crammed into a cookie. The salt is a delicious counterbalance to the richness of the chocolate, but you experience it to a fuller effect if you eat your cookies upside down.”

These are an interesting batch of cookies to make. They are savory like crackers, crunchy like crackers but are too texturally like a cookie to be a cracker. Spanish cheese cookies are very interesting indeed.

I got this recipe out my pile of magazine clippings, which brings me to the query of the day: what do I do when I make an adapted recipe, i.e. not one of my own, but do not have a source for it? What is the best thing to do? This particular snipped out recipe has the name of the magazine on part of the clipping, and by the magic of Google, I know which edition of the magazine it came from. Proper citation will therefore be presented with the recipe. What about the cut outs that don’t have the information left on the borders of them? I can assure you, dear Reader, that I will always give you all of the information available. Still, what is the standard procedure for using a recipe that is not yours, but that you do not have a reliable source for?

Anyway, I’m sure I’m boring you with the inanity of a worrier. These cookies were quite tasty and a fun thing to make on my birthday. It’s a good recipe because you can change it up depending on the cheese you have and what other delectable savory things you have in the pantry. My cookies had a mixture of sun dried tomato and kalamata olives, but I’m sure either one, or maybe roasted red peppers would make for a good cheese cookie too.  The variety I made, the ones in the recipe, would have gone really well with hummus or baba ganouj for dipping, or even for making savory cookie sandwiches. Baba ganouj cheese cookie sandwich anybody?

If your goal is to have uniform, more perfectly round cookies, roll the dough into logs and then chill them. The chilled logs of dough can then be sliced into uniform rounds, called to be around a quarter of an inch thick in the original recipe, and baked for the same amount of time. Having rolled the dough logs too thin when we made them, we formed our cookies by hand. They are less uniform, but just as good. A word of advice thougeither preparation you use, make the cookies rather flat and the size you would like them to turn out; the dough does not flatten significantly, nor does it spread.

Spanish Cheese Cookies

(Adapted from Winebar Kensington’s Spanish Cheese Cookies, Flavour Magazine, Fall 2009.)

1 cup flour

1 cup grated cheese (I used ¾ Cheddar and ¼ Parmesan)

½ cup butter

1 tsp thyme

¾ tsp smoked paprika

¼ tsp kosher salt, plus some for sprinkling over top

Dash cayenne

1 sun dried tomato, minced

5 Kalamata olives, pitted and minced

• Mix all of the ingredients, except for the tomato and olives, and form into a soft dough.
• Knead in the tomato and olives.
• Chill the dough until it firms up, around half an hour in the fridge or ten minutes in the freezer.
• Form the dough into flat cookies, about a quarter of an inch thick and an inch and a half round. If you please, you can poke holes and designs into them with a toothpick or fork.
• Arrange the cookies on a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake 10-15 minutes until golden.
• If choosing to do so, sprinkle with just a little bit of kosher salt immediately after removing the cookies from the oven.
• Let cool and enjoy!

My good friend and kitchen helper for the day, Sam, liked the Spanish Cheese Cookies and hopefully so will you!