Abra

It's so fun to see Viet Wah, one of my favorite stores, in a blog! Jkonick, you're making so many things I really like that I assume we have a lot of the same taste in food. If you haven't already, I encourage you to have the Szechuan crab at 7 Stars Pepper and the green mango salad with crispy shrimp at Green Leaf. Oh, and the Indian Rojak at Malay Satay. Three of my favorite dishes in the ID.

Those look really good, Kathy! I'd eat the molasses spice first, then the ginger. And Zee, it's interesting how different your cuccidati dough looks. Much firmer, with a cleaner cut, and paler. I read somewhere online that colored discs of sugar are traditionally put on these, that's why I added the sprinkles. I agree the pistachios look more elegant, though, and expands the serving season.

I finally got in the game today by following in Elie's footsteps on the winter keeper cakes. I made the Spongata di Berceta, a honey, fruit, and nut cake. Here's a peek at the filling before the top crust goes on ground toasted almonds, walnuts, and pine nuts, mixed with chopped raisins and some beautifully candied citron. I've always detested citron, but this stuff really tastes good, and very delicate. The filling is spiced with cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, and it's bound together with honey. I used half Tuscan chestnut honey, and half of a lighter domestic honey. This goop has an intoxicating flavor. The dough is a nuisance to work with. It's fragile and fussy and not that fun, so I'm hoping the taste and texture will justify the trouble. Evidently alliteration-inducing, the cake is very rustic-looking Now it's wrapped up until Christmas. It should be great by then, and I can already anticipate how it will age, thanks to my recent adventures with cuccidati, to which it's clearly related. I unexpectedly have some carnivores coming to Christmas dinner, so now I can go mark another 10 or so recipes that were formerly excluded from my consideration. Yay!

When I bought mine, in a Mexican grocery, I asked specifically about seasoning. All the ladies there said nope, just use it. So I did, but I have to say that it does acquire a more closed finish with use, and maybe you could achieve that with seasoning. It's very porous, and so at first bits of nuts and seeds were getting ground into there, liquids were seeping in, and I was sure that everything would taste of garlic. But after a couple of years of infrequent use, it has a pretty tight surface, and flavors don't linger.

Divina, when you cook them ahead, you boil them, then chill, and later bake with a sauce? I'm thinking of these for Christmas Eve, but would rather not be rolling them out at the last minute.

I just have to say one more thing about the cuccidati. As I showed upthread, I made half a dozen tarts with the leftovers, tarts that are about 4 1/2" across. Today I ate part of one, the last thing to remain at our house from our bakefest, and it was perfectly fresh and delicious, one full week after baking! It's been on the counter, covered in plastic wrap, all that time, and the dough is still crisp, the filling still moist. And I think I might even prefer it to the cookies, because there's a much higher filling to crust ratio. This is a really awesome recipe.

Hi Sharon, and welcome to eG! The boxes were only for handing out, as we didn't choose recipes that would necessarily ship well. But the people I'm handing them to are really pleased. Tepee, you raise good questions about the staling issue. I'm totally trusting Chefpeon here, and her word was that kept in a cool place (like my garage) all together in a big box or wrapped, they'd keep well for a week. I'm giving out the last of them tomorrow, so I'm hoping that's true! Nakji, I think you get a prize for unusual baking technique, not to mention unusual beverage accompaniments!

Pontormo, I think those cookies sound great. I was at a party tonighht where a lemon rosemary poundcake was served, and it was delicious. The addition of pine nuts could only be a good thing.

Gosh that's a nice book! I've read it from cover to cover and have about 30 recipes marked as possibilities for the holidays. Now to narrow them down. I made a decidedly un-ER pasta this afternoon to take to a potluck - gemelli with radicchio in a fennel pollen cream sauce with butter-toasted crumbs and pine nuts on top - but I'll reform soon, I swear.

Beautiful, Klary! I'm looking forward to the recipes, since I have quite a bit of speculaas spice mix left, and would love to make something new with it. I'm fascinated by the brilliant orange color of your membrillo, since when I make it it always comes out ruby red. I wonder if our quinces are a bit different from yours.

When I heard that a big storm was coming a couple of days ago, the first thing I did was put a pound of Anasazi beans and a couple of turkey drumsticks into the crockpot. An hour later, the power went out for 24 hours. The saddest thing I ever did involving beans was to have to dump that whole potful out!

Sorry, everyone! As you might know, we've been having major power outages here, with the result that I still don't have email since our ISP is powerless (can you still remember how to use dialup?) and I can't get the recipes that Chefpeon has until we both have email again. And let me start by saying that Chefpeon, for those that don't know her, is an actual pastry chef, and there's no way I would or could have done all that on my own, so more than half the credit goes to her! So, questions one at a time. Barolo, yes, and thank you for the link, those are the hazelnut squares! The boxes were from Nashville Wraps and they really are cool. Well worth getting, for anyone who still needs boxes. Chefpeon designed the labels and printed them at home. The Swedish Thins and the crispy oatmeals are her recipes, and will have to wait until life gets back to normal around here, which will hopefully be real soon. Those were the first macarons for either of us, and were made from the Malgieri recipe, not the Herme one. They were not the most successful cookies of the whole bunch, but hey, macarons are notoriously finicky. The speculaas were faked, in that we used the butter cookie recipe that comes with my Marcato cookie press because it presses out so beautifully, and added a lot of the speculaas spices that Chufi brought with her in September. They tasted very good, but were definitely not authentic. I think that Orangette's toffee, and the cuccidati, were my favorites of all, but it's really hard to choose. And funnily enough, a cookie that you haven't seen, and was just a clean-up sort of cookie, was oddly appealing. We had Meyer lemon dough and frosting left over so Chefpeon sandwiched them together, just for something to do with them. Then we had leftover tempered chocolate, so I suggested half-dipping the sandwiches, as if for Black and Whites. That combination, the soft cookie and filling, the perfume of the Meyer lemons, and the snap of the tempered bittersweet, was a sleeper hit around here. People are sure loving getting those boxes, I can say that for sure. And thanks for all the compliments - it's really nice to get back online and see that our cookies have been enjoying a little run of their own in our absence.

Really, this is one of my all-time favorite blogs. It's packed with things I don't know, and tells your story so engagingly and with beautiful pictures. I got behind reading for a couple of days and can never catch up with my comments, but I do want to say Bravo! I use dried flaked Urfa pepper, as well as Marash pepper. I've only ever seen them as flakes in a bottle, so if you could manage a shot of them in a more natural state, I'd really appreciate it

This is the most baking I've ever done in my life! Chefpeon and I just spent two days baking together in my none-too-large kitchen, and produced 11 different treats for 36 gift boxes. Thus begins and ends my career as a production baker! We had tons of fun for a week or so in advance what with choosing and ordering special boxes, Chefpeon's creating groovy labels for the boxes, and both of us going back and forth on selecting the recipes. Here's what we made, with apologies for the focus on some of the pictures. Each cookie got one shot and best wishes, since we were too busy baking to really do photography. First up, the fabulous cuccidati. Thanks to PMs from Michael, we were able to recover from the 4 oz/4 cup problem. This is a really fun cookie to make! Before you put it together it looks like this and after cutting, baking, and decorating it looks like this Adorable, eh? And with the extra filliing and dough you are bound to have if you triple this recipe (oh, he meant 12 CUPS of flour!) you can make half a dozen of these little cuties We also made Meyer lemon and ricotta cookies Speculaas Chefpeon's famously addictive macaroons Some almost impossible to photograph chocolate peppermint crisps (the toasted espresso almond biscotti were truly impossible) Coffee-Walnut Toffee from Orangette's blog, which is total crack Some crispy oatmeal chocolate sandwiches Orange macarons Hazelnut apricot sandwiches and Swedish Thins sandwiched with buttercream. We spread it out all in the dining room portioned it out into beautiful boxes with hinged lids and clear windows labeled the boxes with our beautifully funky labels designed by Chefpeon, piled them up, and collapsed at their feet.

I love this blog! Thanks so much for including that video; somehow, seeing and hearing it all in moving time adds so much that's hard to imagine from the written word. I've seen the recipe for those walnuts dipped in grape in a Georgian cookbook, but it looks like you have to keep dipping them for days. Tell me, are they so delicious as to be worth the effort to make them here? And being in the Seattle area, let me say that I have never in my life imagined our climate to be close to Turkey's. That alone is a revelation. What instrument do you play, and can we have a little video clip of you playing?

I'm getting Clay Coyote's cassole for Christmas - I'm thrilled!

Arriba!, I did a baguette in my Le Creuset terrine pan and it was very good, so I see no reason your cloche wouldn't work. When I folded the dough I shaped it into a long shape, and although it did get somewhat distorted plopping it into the pan, it was still baguette-like.

I just want to add a little report on making bacon without a smoker. Mine needed to get out of the cure and get cooked while I was down with a horrible cold right in the middle of a snow and ice storm, so I wussed out and decided to try the oven method. I'd used the maple syrup cure with a generous amount of added coarse black pepper. The result is good, in a Canadian bacon sort of way, except that it's a Niman belly instead of a loin. I mention the Niman part because their bellies are about 50% lean. It doesn't "taste like bacon" but it does taste like a nice cured pork. In short, I'd only do it again this way in a smokerless emergency, but as it is it makes nice lardons, and will probably snuggle happily into a cassoulet with the duck confit and pork belly confit I have curing in the fridge. And I think it also has a future in that pot of split pea soup I've been inexplicably craving.

Hurray, my book arrived, and I'm settling in to read it, only interrupted by having to sing in a holiday concert this afternoon. Beautiful gnocchi, Shaya. Is the recipe posted? And Elie, gorgeous charcuterie, as always.

I tried it today with cinnamon extract, and the flavor appeared to be excellent. I didn't get to taste it as marshmallow, per se, but the mess I made was tasty. My bulb thermometer accidently got water inside it yesterday and gave up the ghost, unbeknownst to me, and my syrup got overcooked by the time I realized it. Probably WAY overcooked. As soon as I started pouring it into the mixer, I could see that the viscosity was wrong. But the mixer was on top speed, the hot syrup pour had a momentum of its own, and by the time I could stop pouring and get it turned off, a solid lump of rock-hard molten sugar had formed in the bowl, and there were glass-like spatters everywhere. The wall, the counter top, all over the mixer, on all the fruit in the fruit bowl, molten glass. Did I mention that I had used a little red color with my extract? So just imagine Pepto-Bismol colored glass splatters, and you'll have the picture. I leave the sound track to your imagination. Temperature counts. It was a humbling experience. I've always wanted to try spun sugar, and did in fact get to practice that during the cleanup. I made some cute little spun glass nests that were in no way related to marshmallows. But the flavor was very interesting.

Highchef, will you tell how you did the cinnamon mallows - using an eseence or flavoring, or ground cinnamon?

I whipped for 11 minutes, since nightscotsman suggested 10-12 minutes, but Chefpeon has advised me since I posted that I should have taken the syrup all the way to 238, and whipped more. She pointed out that a sugar syrup cannot be overwhipped, which I hadn't realized, so my next batch will be along those lines, plus a flavor-boosting effort. My dog, who will eat anything, spit out one of these! Too funny.

Marshmallow virgin here, needing help. I made my first marshmallows last night, using nightscotsman's recipe, with cranberry puree. The puree was just frozen cranberries, whizzed in the processor and put through the chinois. I boiled the syrup to 235, and the test ball seemed actually beyond soft ball, quite firm, although I'm not used to soft-balling pure sugar syrup so I'm not sure how it should be. Here are my marshmallows, 12 hours later. As you can see, they're still sticky. The starch, which is tapioca and went through a sieve like water, clumps a little on the sticky surface. In the upper left corner I left a side un-starched, so you can see the texture better. I was having to oil my knife again about every other cut. Did the syrup need to be hotter? Is it the acidity of the cranberries that affected the setting properties of the fluff? The weather is dry, and the house was between 55-67 the whole time. The flavor isn't exciting, and I don't particularly recommend this version, seasonal though it may be. Even the incredibly powerful flavor of cranberry doesn't quite come through, leaving sort of a sweet-tart impression of sticky pinkness. I'm thinking I need to use an extract or spice for flavor, and paste color, although I'd hoped to use the natural color of the fruit. But for me, flavor trumps color every time. Now if I can only get the consistency better. If the doctor is in, the patient is ready to be cured!

I love fiori di Sicilia, although not everyone here agrees. Every person who's eaten something I baked with it has asked some variation of "what is that flavor?" Get some. It's mysteriously good, and you only need a tiny bit. I think I'm on my third bottle after using it for about 6-7 years. There's a long thread on pannetone here somewhere, by the way, from which I took away, basically, "don't bother, you can never make it as good as the boxed Italian stuff."

Klary, can you give directions for your speculaas version? Now that I have the right spices (thank you very much!) I'd like to try these, only I'm not making 150 of them, that's for sure!