Happy New Years Eve! A Round Up Of Stuff To Serve.

   This is going to be the first time in several years that we're going to a party at someone else's house this New Years Eve, so I'm not going to be cooking tonight. However, if you are, or you're having guests tomorrow, you might want to take a look at some recipes for the Gluten Free, such as this Gluten Free Pear Almond Cake.

A quick and easy Indian style slaw from Monica Bhide that is a big favorite at our house. Just use those pre-shredded bags of cabbage found at any supermarket and you can have this on the table in two shakes.

Stick a bit of Homemade Salted Pistachio Brittle on that store-bought ice cream for a fancy touch! This stuff also makes up fast, fast, fast for a last minute treat.

Want a quick gluten free dessert that's also vegan??? Buy some of the persimmons that are on sale everywhere now. Freeze them and toss them in a food processor. Voila!  Fast Non-Dairy Ice Cream. You can also duplicate this recipe with any frozen fruit from the market.

Want something for the buffet? Forget about using nettles. A simple bag of pre-washed spinach will give you these little gluten free Gnudi aka Koftas aka Dumplings in no time.

Cocktail foods? Make your own kale chips, its easier than you think.

For the meat eaters, here's one of the worlds great bar foods, Chicken '65. Fix this and your guests will love you forever.

Gluten free guests coming tonight? Put a plate of these Coconut Ladoo out for them. It's a fast and easy treat to make.

So there you have it. A few quick and easy things that can be made for a crowd. Granted some are quicker and easier than others, but you get the drift.

   I hope everyone has a  safe and sane New Years Eve, and if you can't do that at least find yourself a designated driver. I for one am looking forward to seeing the backside of 2014 in my rear view mirror. Until the New Year, Cheers! Have a Happy One.

Who Needs Ready Made? Make Your Own French Butter Cookies, Just Slice and Bake.

   For somebody who claims not to bake a lot of cookies, I sure have been baking a lot of cookies lately. Why is that? Well, there have been a hell of a lot more parties this season and cookies are an easy last minute bring along. Pop-ins are another. Since we've been in the new house we've learned to expect those. Finally holiday house guests, and nothing says welcome more than a plate of fresh baked cookies, or not so fresh baked as it turns out. More on that later. Either way, I've really been breaking my no cookie rule this Winter and as it turns out, not regretting it one bit.

   Every time I go to the market (and I'm talking nearly every day here) I always notice big rolls of pre-made dough in the refrigerated section. I also start wondering just how hard is it to make your own, slice and bake cookies using minimal fresh ingredients, no preservatives, no additives, just real stuff. Turns out not so hard at all. Professional looking butter cookies take just a few minutes, and you have total control over what goes into them. Nothing wrong with that! For these cookies I used local cage-free eggs, and grass-fed butter which if you're going to eat butter is the butter you'll want to use. Simple, local (as you can get) and clean. Now for the easy part. Making cookies.

French Butter Cookies

Here's What You Need:
3 egg yolks (save the whites for another recipe)
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick of unsalted butter (1/2 cup measure) plus 2 Tbs more
1 1/4 cup of flour
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt

Here's What To Do:
In a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer, cream together the egg yolks...

...and the sugar.

Cream them together until they're nice and thick and pale.

 Add in the softened butter.

Mix it until it's well combined.
Then add the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Mix this together.
When it's blended, take it out and roll the dough into a ball.
Cover it with plastic wrap and set it in the fridge to chill overnight. 

Yes, this recipe takes planning, but once you've made the dough it's on your schedule.
When you're ready to bake your cookies, preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Lightly grease cookie sheets and cover them with parchment paper, or if you don't want to do that use silicone mats.
Take the chilled dough out of the fridge.
Roll the dough out so it's about 1/4 inch thick.

Then take a biscuit cutter and cut out cookies Place them on your baking sheets.

And put them back into the fridge to set for another 30 minutes or until they're nice and firm again.

Take them out and pop them into the oven.

Bake for 15 minutes. While they're baking sit around looking pleased with yourself dude, you just beat the food industrial complex!

Watch the dog take a nap. Did you know dogs sleep on average 14 hours a day?

Look out the kitchen windows and check out the tail on that squirrel!

When the cookies look nice and golden, take them out and cool them on a baking rack.

Arrange them stylishly...

...and serve them up.

   Notice all the cookies? Well, the dough for these was made ahead of time. it can be refrigerated or if properly wrapped in waxed paper, stored in the freezer. Just take them out, slice, and bake. follow these directions and you're all set cookie-wise. Once baked and cooled the cookies can also be put into an air-tight container, think tupperware type, and frozen for later. My friend Jane the Nurse told me that this worked and by god it does!!

   So bake once, slice twice, or three times, you will never ever run out of homemade cookies. Coming up next. Preserving and protecting those fabulous Fuyu Persimmons before they go out of season. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
 

It's Cookie Season, And So It's All About The Make-Ahead, Bake-Ahead Chocolate Pistachio Cookies.

   Forget about what you think you're supposed to/want to/eat. This is cookie season by God, and no matter what Holiday if any you celebrate, NO ONE is  going to let you off their premises without stuffing you full of some sort of baked goods. I'm not talking about the legendary subject of all those jokes, the fruitcake. Anyone can get fruitcake. You want fruitcake? I'll get ya a fruitcake by 3:00 this afternoon (if you're not a Lebowskiite ignore that.) I'm talking hardcore Christmas cookies. The ones shaped like things, covered with neon bright boiled frosting and studded with stuff that doesn't look like it should be edible, but is.

   I grew up in a house where Christmas was always marked by the Italian version of fruitcake... Pannetone.

One had to be careful about those as the cheaper relatives were known to keep these things in the box and just regift it next year.

Unlike fruticake they don't get better with age.

There are a few other "unique" traditions. When other kids were singing about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer we had something else to sing about. Yeah really.

Sooooo.... after all that, it's kind of hard to roll out reindeer Christmas cookies if you get my drift. We're doing a lot of entertaining in the new house house this winter and it struck me that it might be time to get into cookie making. Cookies are notoriously fast, easy and I remember hearing someplace a long time ago that they could be made ahead, stored in the freezer or fridge and just rolled out and baked. Sounded good to me. With all the stuff going on, anything with the word ahead in it, was an absolute must. Remarkably I found a few totally elegant cookie recipes in this book.

The flavors are subtle, they're easy to make, and like I said.....ahead, ahead. ahead!!

Chocolate Pistachio Orange Cookies

 

Here's What You Need:
1 cup of unsalted butter . (I use grass fed pastured butter in my cooking, and especially when making European recipes such as these, I think it helps to get as close to the ingredients that would be used there, here.)
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbs powdered (confectioners) sugar
1 pinch of salt.
1 egg
6 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder. (once again use the best cocoa you can get your mitts on, trust me it 's worth it.)
2 1/4 cups of flour
3/4 cup blanched pistachios
zest of 1 orange


Here's What To Do:
In a large bowl, or a stand mixer mix together the butter...

...sugar...

...and salt.

Zest the orange and set it aside.

Cream the butter, sugar, and salt together until it's light and fluffy then add in the egg.

Mix the egg in well. When it's fully incorporated, sift together the cocoa and flour.

Add in the mixed cocoa and flour...

...and the orange zest.

When it's blended together, fold in the pistachios by hand.

The dough is stiff, so  that's why you want to add the pistachios by hand.
On a lightly floured surface, or a silicone mat, roll the dough into a cylinder about 10 inches long and 2 inches across. I broke this dough into about 3 cylinders. Some for baking now and some for baking later.

Wrap the cylinders in waxed paper and pop them into the fridge to chill.

They can stay refrigerated there for several days before you bake, and I imagine one could also freeze the cylinders as long as they're tightly wrapped since this is basically a butter cookie.
Set your oven rack to the upper and lower middle positions and preheat it to 375 degrees.
Line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper, or silicone mats.
When the oven is up to speed and the dough is nice and firm, unwrap and slice.

Not too thick but just right.
Put the sliced cookie dough on the baking sheet giving them enough room between, (about 1 inch) and pop them into the oven.

Bake them for about 12 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies seem dry.
Take them out of the oven, off the cookie sheet and set them on a rack to cool.
When they're nice and cool serve them up!

   These cookies are amazing, and the orange zest adds just the right note of contrast with the chocolate. Plus they really, really, do keep well in the fridge for later baking. I found this out because I've baked these cookies over several days this week and they turned out great. I haven't tried the freezing trick yet, but I have tried one thing....my friend Jane the nurse told me that she freezes fresh baked cookies after cooling for later eating. So I tried it. I put the cookies in an airtight container in my freezer and I'm planning on testing them when the cousins come for Christmas.

   Just had to take one more picture. Coming up next. I do go off the rails from what I usually do and will be featuring a couple more cookie recipes for holiday entertaining, a trick to try with all the fresh persimmons out there right now. I'm also going to try giving these recipes a gluten free spin and see what happens. Then Idili, I promise. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Coconut Macaroons For Holiday Feasting, Naturally Gluten Free.

 
   I didn't get a lot of cookies growing up. My mother was a believer in fruit and cheese as snack food, not sugary stuff. Of course there was the time that I discovered her Mallomar stash in a high up cupboard.

   "What's this I asked."

   "Oh, that's not good for kids. It's adult, you wouldn't like the taste. Gimme that." It was quickly snatched back and put up even higher.

   Of course by the time I did get my mitts on a Mallomar, I knew she'd been lying to me. But, it's true I never developed a personal taste for really sweet stuff. When my mother did bake, she made "butter" cookies always featuring this stuff...



...and baked to the size and consistency of poker chips. I was the kid no one wanted to swap with at lunch time.
 
   My grandmothers were a different story. Both of them were excellent cooks and bakers, and they knew cookies! Butter cookies, meringues, those ladies knew treats. By far my favorite of all the things either of them made were macaroons. Italian macaroons aka Amaretti. I loved those little cookies that my relatives served with cups of espresso. Until I moved to LA and started hitting the delis, I didn't know about macaroons made with coconut. Italian macaroons are an almond based cookie, so when I first sampled the coconut variety, wow! I was hooked. But as hooked as I was, it had never occurred to me to attempt baking them.

   Most macaroon recipes call for sweetened coconut, which makes them extra rich and gooey. Something that sweet was not something that I was particularly crazy about keeping in the house. Also some macaroons, have a tendency to be sticky and greasy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not what I was looking for. Then I stumbled on a recipe from the oldest continually operating confectionary in Paris, A la mere de Famille This place has been churning out the sweet stuff for the last 250 years. They have to know what they're doing. Their recipe for macaroons looked amazing, and surprisingly did not call for sweetened coconut. I knew I had to give these cookies a try.
 
   So, yesterday I set out to make my first batch of coconut macaroons. It was a lot easier than I  thought it would be. There is a minimum of ingredients here, and just about the only time consuming part is the 2 hours one has to wait for the macaroons to "dry" before putting them into the oven. Aside from that, it's a really easy recipe, and one that's going into my permanent file.

Coconut Macaroons

Here's What You Need:
3 egg whites
1 cup plus 2 Tbs sugar
2 1/2 cups of shredded unsweetened coconut

Here's What To Do:
Put the egg whites in a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer.

Add in the sugar.

Heat a sauce pan filled with one inch water on the stove at medium heat.
Place the bowl or the stand mixer bowl in the water.

Heat the egg whites and the sugar whisking constantly.
Keep an instant read thermometer nearby, as you want to get the mixture you're whisking up to 115 degrees.

Not there yet. Keep whisking.
As soon as the egg whites and sugar reach 115, take your bowl or your stand mixer bowl and using a beater with a whisk attachment at high speed, start whipping the stuff up.

You want to get the mixture fluffy, voluminous and cool to the touch. This takes about 10 minutes, so this is where a stand mixer really comes in handy as I discovered.
When your egg white sugar mixture is ready, add the shredded coconut.

Fold it in gently with a spatula.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
Drop 1 Tbs. size  mounds of batter onto the cookie sheets.

Now the waiting period. Set the macaroons out to "dry" at room temperature for 2 hours.

When you're about ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Bake the macaroons, one tray at a time for 4 minutes.

When they're lightly browned, they're done.

Take them put and set them on a cooling rack and pop the next batch in.

We've been invited to a Chanukah dinner with friends on Tuesday so I was giving these cookies a test run. Needless to say, they made the cut.

This started out being a LOT more macaroons. More like this. Store these macaroons in an airtight container for up to 2 days. But the odds of being able to keep them around for that long.... fuggedaboutit.

   So there it is. Macaroons don't have to be tricky to be good, and these are damn good, otherwise those guys over in Paris wouldn't have been in business for so long. Coming up next, some Christmas cookies, and if it's cold and rainy outside, it's Idilli and sambar time inside! Follow along on Twitter at @kathygori