Merry Christmas

And To All A Good Night...

That means you, kids...

To all my cyberspace friends and blogging buddies, have a wonderful time! Enjoy your families and friends and all the delights of the day.

Love, Sue

Microwave Granola To The Rescue...The Fastest Gift From The Kitchen

At 9 am one day last week, I realized that I needed some baked goods... FAST. No time for cookies, banana breads or even muffins. So I turned to my world famous Granola. Regis and Kelly were on in the background and I had 4 batches made before host chat was over. Well, not exactly, but I WAS able to leave the kitchen well before RR came on at 10.

Plan to make multiple batches, because this is so good. Don't scoff because this is a microwave recipe. I'd put it against the finest baked granola. AND there is no extra fat (other than the considerable amount in the nuts and the tiny amount in the wheatgerm).

The microwave part is both good and bad. It's good because it's so fast. The bad part is that it's tricky to cook more than one recipe at a time. So for maximum efficiency, I PREPARE 4 batches at once, but COOK them one right after the other.

To cook 4 batches really quickly, I toast all the nuts together in a 10 inch glass pie dish - about 3ish minutes on high. Meanwhile, I measure out one recipe worth of the other dry ingredients 4 times into 4 separate containers. When the nuts are done, divide them into the 4 containers. You don't have to be exact.

Place the first batch of dry stuff in the 10 inch glass pie dish. Stir in the honey and cook according to the recipe. Pour mixture into a BIG container - a huge mixing bowl or roasting pan. Then place the next batch of dry ingredients into the glass baking dish. Add the honey, stir well and cook. Pour THAT into the first batch of cooked granola. Continue for 2 more batches. Add the raisins and dried cranberries. Stir really well and store in an airtight container until you've eaten or given away every last rolled oat.

The only tricky thing is mixing in the honey, which can be a bit of a sticky enterprise. I'm pretty particular and I like to to make sure that no oat flake goes un-honeyed.

(When I'm making four batches, I use at least 4 types of nuts. Each recipe calls for 2/3 cup of nuts, so I use two-thirds of a cup each of sliced almonds, chopped walnuts, chopped pecans, and chopped cashews.)

For gift-giving, I fill the granola into plain plastic bags, no zippers, strips or fancy stuff (they're not all that easy to find). Turn the bag, so the granola goes into one of the bottom corners. Twist the bag tight and you'll have a cone shape. Close with a twist tie. Tie with a ribbon and you'll have a quick, delightful gift for any deserving friend, colleague or neighbor. Here's the recipe for one batch of granola. (It's never enough.)

Sue's Awesome Granola
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1/3 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
2 cups old fashioned oats
1/3 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup raisins and/or dried
cranberries

Place the nuts in a 10 inch glass pie dish or microwavable bowl. Cook on high for 2 minutes to lightly toast the nuts. (The time may vary with your microwave.) Stir in oats, wheat germ and brown sugar until well mixed. Stir in honey, making sure to coat the mixture well.

Cook on high in microwave for 2 minutes. Stir well. Cook up to 2 minutes longer, stirring and checking the mixture after 1 minute. (Depending on your microwave, it might be done.) Cool slightly. Stir in raisins and/or dried cranberries. Store in airtight container.

I'm Dreaming Of A Sugar Cookie Christmas

This is a lot of fun to do with the kids. Make any good sugar cookie dough. I use the Rich Roll Cookies from The Joy of Cooking. I NEVER refrigerate the dough before I roll it out. I refrigerate it AFTER.

After mixing the dough, roll out a large handful between 2 sheets of plastic wrap. Lay the rolled-out cookie dough on a baking sheet, sheet pan or tray. Continue with rest of dough, layering each sheet with plastic between each layer. Freeze for 10 minutes or refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes. (You can wrap the layers airtight and freeze for up to a month.) Remove sheets of dough from freezer or fridge. Cut out cookies. (It's a breeze when the dough is nice and cold.) Place on foil-lined and Pam-ed baking sheet.

To decorate, I use egg yolk paint. Separate 3 yolks into three separate bowls, saving the whites for something else. (They can be frozen, well-sealed, and thawed and used for meringues. One egg white equals 2 tablespoons or 1 ounce. Four egg whites would be half a cup.)

Add 1 teaspoon of water to each yolk. Leave one bowl as it is, that will be your yellow paint. Add coloring (Wilton paste coloring is good) to the others. I usually color one yolk red and the other green. (Blue is a bit problematical, when you're starting with a yellow yolk.) Using a new paintbrush for each color, paint the UNBAKED cookies with the colored yolk paint. Sprinkle with sugar and or sprinkles. Bake according to recipe, keeping a careful watch.

Now sit back, turn on your speakers and watch someone else do all the work...

Tasty AND Tasteful

A cookie exchange isn't usually the most sophisticated of events. But leave it my friend, M, to throw THAT notion to the wind. Hers was elegance personified...from the beautifully decorated Christmas TREES to excellent champagne (Veuve Clicquot, my favorite) to her toile tablecloth, which went with the éclat and the élan of the afternoon perfectly.



The snacks weren't too shabby either. The Contessa's Onion Dip with purple chips was served. (Don't tell Ina that M cut down on the oil in the dip. You would have too...) There was a gigantic crab dip, yummy cheese (Boursin?) with red pepper jelly and beautiful roast beef with a superb horseradish sauce. EVEN the paper plates upon which to load the cookies were stylish.



You know what they say, either you have or you don't...and if you don't, you can always hope for an invitation to M's house.

Nutmeg Girl

Okay, I know that most people don't spend their time making a slide show of their nutmeg grinder, but I just love mine to pieces. A brought it to me at Thanksgiving, when unbeknownst to her, I was in deep need of one. Truth to tell, my microplaner does a fine job, but there are a few kitchen tasks for which I like dedicated tools and this is one. She does a great job and isn't she purdy?

Get Your Just Desserts At Zakes Cakes and Café...And A Lot More Too

Maybe my glass at Zakes Café wasn't rose-colored, but the warm atmosphere and gracious service certainly made me feel as if it could have been.

Sometimes you just want to go to dinner at a little local place and eat what you want and drink what you want (it's BYOB) and be treated well by the staff. This is just such a place.

H(usband) and I had the good fortune to go to Zakes with some folks who knew the chef. That's always fun. I love talking to knife-wielding crazy people and I do believe that many chefs are partly (sometimes mostly) crazy.

Chef Marlene Zakes is a non-stop bundle of energy. She turned out more dishes that night than I would have thought possible from the small kitchen that I spied from the outside. She wasn't, however, wielding any knives (in the dining room, at least), which was probably a good thing and she didn't appear to be crazy.

Marlene owns and runs the place with her brother. I liked that occasionally it was the chef, herself, who served and even took orders. She has a great staff. We were lucky to be served by Tien, who amiably attends to the service on Saturday nights.

Zakes is off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Ft. Washington, PA, not that far from Phillie. It's in an old charming house with the original HICKORY DICKORY DOCK clock. I'd like to go back in the daylight to properly appreciate it. Marlene started baking (with no training) and got so good that she opened a bakery first, over 20 years ago, and then the café. They still have a big wedding cake business.

The menu has a lot of choices, I thought, for a relatively small place. And the lunch menu is even bigger. Apparently, their regular customers get nutty if a favorite item is removed, so they just keep adding.

I started with a Baby Greens Salad with Chévre and Dried Cranberries. Piled high on the plate, every bite was a delicious taste of goat cheese and toasted pecans. H had Pan Seared Scallops. They were breaded and sitting in a thin drizzle of peanut sauce and served with a Thai Cucumber Salad. The cucumber salad was excellent. Crunchy, sweet and slightly hot, I could have eaten that on its own. Craig had a recipe in his Chinese Cookbook with Virginia Lee that is very similar.

H ordered meaty Duck Breast with a Blackberry Sauce. The polenta was a nice compliment. My pumpkin ravioli were wonderful. I shouldn't have, but I did finish the entire dish. I've had vegetable filled raviolis alot lately, at different restaurants. I've decided that, when not served with a tomato or other deeply hued sauce, the ravioli dough itself should be tinted with either carrot or spinach or even beet purée, which would improve the color of the dish and not really effect the flavor appreciably.

Then the desserts...everything baked on the premises:

The Pumpkin Cheesecake was the best, garnished with pomegranate seeds. If one didn't bake at Thanksgiving, this would be a great choice. The Tiramisu was huge and beautifully put together. Mine is never that tall or as uniform. I can't remember what the individual chocolate dessert was called. Naturally it was good, it was CHOCOLATE. I rarely use a chocolate dessert as a gauge of the chef. If you can't make chocolate taste good, there's a bigger problem than just dessert.

These days my biggest complaint in restaurants is the service. Of course, it helped that we were here with friends of the chef, but every table looked happily engaged and enthusiastically tucking away at the good food in the wonderful atmosphere. If you're in the neighborhood, drop by...but call first for dinner, they're really popular.