For all the turkeys that came before

Thanksgiving is one of those days that is chock full of memories. Everyone has a story of foods they ate as a child, or the time some kitchen disaster befell the meal, or the legend of something a family member once did. Memories — from the nostalgic to the dysfunctional — haunt days like today.

To be honest, I don't really remember what I ate on Thanksgiving when I was growing up. Oh, sure, there was turkey, but I think that my mom was in charge of the meal — and being that she is a native of the Philippines, the traditional bird was accompanied by rice and Filipino dishes. I do remember that at some point in my early grade school career, we were served a Thanksgiving lunch in the cafeteria (which was a Big Deal since we all had to bring our own lunches every day). It featured more expected fare, like mashed potatoes and boiled carrots. After which, I returned home to ask why we didn't eat those things when we had Thanksgiving — and so they began to appear at our Thanksgiving meals. We never did eat green bean casserole or cranberry jelly or things like that. I often wonder if this was because my father, having been born and raised in the Midwest and having escaped to San Francisco as a young man, was trying to get as far as he could from the cuisine of Minnesota by pretending it didn't exist. (He is a gourmand of sorts, who likes to avoid the convenience foods of his upbringing and who, I think, inspires the way I cook today.) Anyway, my parents being who they are resulted in less than memorable Thanksgivings for me, to say the least.

Even now, I have to admit that I'm not that excited about my family's Thanksgiving meal. In recent years, the turkey has been featured with my mother's mashed potatoes, my aunt's molded iceberg salad, grocery store pies, rice (of course), and a variety of Filipino dishes. It's those other dishes, the ones my mom's side of the family are best at making, that demand my attention at Thanksgiving lunch. Bring on the palabok, I say! I love that so many people, no matter what country they might hail from, seem to enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving (well, how could you not want to celebrate an entire day dedicated to eating?) and that I hear so many cultural variations on the meal — which include lechon, hot pot, or Korean barbecue. But leave the turkey out then. "Tradition" isn't worth it if the meat's dried out.

For many years, I've made up for the lack of those American traditions I never had by making my own separate Thanksgiving meal. Sometimes it was just prepared for me and the Anthropologist, but more recently, I've been having friends over to share in potluck-style Thanksgiving gluttony. I make roast chicken and pie, while they bring sides dishes and more pie. We eat the foods we love now as adults and make new memories together. And isn't that what Thanksgiving is truly all about?

Ode to the chocolate chip cookie

I love cookies. If it's got chocolate or is from Bakesale Betty, it's destined for my mouth. Lately, I've been on a crazy cookie-baking kick. I make cookies at least once, if not twice, a week. I come home from work, and I want a cookie. After dinner, I want a cookie. While watching a movie, I start getting cravings for — yep, that's right: cookies. I'd probably eat cookies for breakfast if I didn't have this crazy notion that normal people simply do not eat cookies first thing in the morning.

Chocolate chip cookies are my go-to cookie when I want to bake. They were the very first thing I ever learned to cook all by myself, at the tender age of ten or eleven. At our school's book fair, I'd bought a book called The Best Cookie Book Ever, in which a parade of anthropomorphic teddy bears in late 80's garb instructed me on how to make a variety of cookies. The recipe for "Teddy's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies" is splattered with bits of batter that had gone flying off the electric hand mixer nearly every time I baked.

Back then, I used margarine in my cookies because... well, didn't everyone? Many years later, throwing together a batch of chocolate chip cookies while vacationing in Austin, TX, I found only butter in the fridge. I was hesitant to use it. Butter had always seemed too decadent for the average cookie, and besides, it was expensive. Those cookies turned out to be the best I'd ever made — and so I only ever used butter from then on. (I now think spending the money on organic butter is totally worth it, as you can probably guess.)

 I used to have a problem with my cookies being too cakey, and they would practically retain their shape after being scooped out of the mixing bowl, instead of spreading in the oven. I haven't quite figured out the science of cookie baking, though I do know that a slight reduction in the amount of flour and a larger brown to white sugar ratio (á la the recipe on the bag of Trader Joe's chocolate chips) has helped create cookies that are still soft but more traditionally cookie-shaped.

They're damn good, if I do say so myself. The Anthropologist agrees.

All this talk of cookies is making me want one. I think it's time to whip up another batch.

The only chocolate chip cookie recipe you'll ever need
(courtesy of me)

2 1/4 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 c firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
1 c softened butter
1 tsp good-quality vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips
optional: chopped nuts, dried fruit, or whatever floats your boat (I put cranberries in the ones above)

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl, and set it aside. Using an electric hand mixer, cream together the sugars, butter, and vanilla. Add eggs and beat. Add dry ingredients and continue to mix. (At this point, my ancient mixer — the one I found abandoned at the back of the cupboard when I was moving out of my freshman year apartment — can no longer handle the work, and I switch to a wooden spoon.) Stir in chocolate chips and any additional add-ins.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a non-greased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until golden. Transfer to a wire rack and cool.

As Teddy likes to say, "Did you turn off the oven?"

Makes about 2 dozen.

The Cook's Cannon (TCC) #1: apple pie

The first recipe every cook needs to know to make is something I've actually made and posted about briefly before. I don't think I've made an apple pie since then, although I have made "pocket" pies — which also was a while ago.

I'm not going to make one as part of this challenge, as I'm fairly happy with my pie-baking skills. I'm definitely far overdue, however, in whipping up an apple pie, so I will definitely plan on making one in the near future — perhaps the next time I can get to the farmers' market for heirloom apples.

I wouldn't be following Raymond Sokolov's recipe to the letter anyway. His pie crust calls for lard, which not only is a pork product (which I don't eat) but it renders the pie no longer vegetarian. I prefer the all-butter crust. I also like the apple filling to be seasoned with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, or other spices, whereas the book's recipe calls for only sugar.

I think that's part of learning to cook something: understanding that a single recipe may not be the one and final way to make a dish. Even Cook's Illustrated's "master" recipes are not necessarily my master recipes – as evidenced by the fact that their pie crust includes Crisco shortening, which I would never use. As I've said before, one of my favorite methods of cooking something new is to lay out several recipes for that one dish, then pick and choose ingredients and cooking methods that are agreeable to me.

Stay tuned for #2...

Avoiding disaster

This week is going to be a long week. One of my co-teachers is out on vacation part of the week, and my other co-teacher has a knee injury and can't move around too much in the classroom. Yay. To lift my spirits, I decided to do a little baking in the form of a loaf of chocolate banana bread.

It was inspired by a recipe in the latest issue of Sunset magazine. But instead of a classic banana bread recipe with cocoa added to it, it substituted prune puree for the butter and included such things as walnuts and chocolate chips. Which I didn't have. I did have, however, two frozen bananas and a brand-new container of Green and Black's Organic baking cocoa.

A small aside here: A lot of chocolate is produced in not-so-friendly ways. In fact, much of the chocolate in the more commonly known brands is from plantations where they pay extremely low wages and employ child slave labor. I highly recommend buying chocolate from companies that support fair trade and organc growing practices, which would include Green and Black's, Dagoba, and Endangered Species. Sure, it costs more — but isn't it worth it to know your chocolate wasn't harvested by child labor?

To make the bread, I used my usual banana bread recipe and simply added the 1/2 cup baking cocoa from the Sunset recipe. Into a large bowl went the dry ingredients, and into a blender went the wet ones. It wasn't until I began to mix the two together that it occurred to me that perhaps I had misread the amount of flour — and as I stirred and saw that the dry ingredients were not fully incorporating into the wet ones, I already knew what my mistake had been. Two mistakes, actually. The first was that I used 1-3/4 cup flour instead of the 1-1/4 in the recipe. The second was that by adding 1/2 cup cocoa, I should have reduced the amount of flour. So there was far too much flour in the bowl than necessary.

I panicked slightly. Considering how much my fancy organic cocoa cost, even on sale, there was no way I could just throw out the batter. Although I had used melted butter as the lubricant in the recipe, I decided that canola oil would do the trick to moisten the mixture enough. I poured in some, then a little more, until the batter was dense but combined. If I'd had another banana, I would have thrown that in, too. But I didn't.

I put it in the oven to bake, crossing my fingers that it would all come out okay. Halfway through baking, the apartment smelled wonderful, and I figured there was still hope that the bread would be fine.

It took a little longer to bake than as directed in the recipe, so while the middle was still not completely baked through, the sides were drying out and nearly beginning to burn. The resulting bread wasn't perfect, but it was quite tasty, especially with a smear of cream cheese on top.

I've already told my co-teacher J that I plan to make a blueberry cream cheese coffee cake next week. Let's just hope I can manage to do it without any mishaps!



Chocolate banana bread
(adapted from Clueless in the Kitchen by Evelyn Raab)

1 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c sugar (feel free to use less, particularly if your bananas are especially overripe)
1/2 c baking cocoa, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 c melted butter or oil (I used butter this time)
2 bananas
2 eggs


Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a large mixing bowl, stir dry ingredients together. In a blender, add all the wet ingredients and blend until fully combined. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry.

Pour the batter into a well-greased loaf pan and bake for an hour. Test the bread with a toothpick or wooden skewer; when it comes out with only a few crumbs clinging on, it's done. Turn out onto a wire rack and let cool.

Serve with cream cheese, if you so desire.

Potluck cupcakes

We had a family classroom potluck last night. For the longest time, I debated what I was going to bring. We're the Screwbean Mesquite room (all the rooms are named after trees), so I joked that I was going to bring "screw beef" — beef shaped into a spiral. Aware that that was merely a pipe dream, I decided that I needed to settle on something people would actually eat. Cupcakes are always a safe bet, so cupcakes it was.

But what kind of cupcake? Chocolate? Black bottom? Lemon-frosted? It didn't help that the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living has an article featuring many varieties of cupcakes — making the decision process even more difficult.

Then, over at Vanilla Garlic, help arrived. It came in the form of a recipe for a carrot, cardamom, cashew, and bourbon cupcake. It's a mouthful to say — and a tasty mouthful at that. The cakes are moist, and the addition of bourbon and cardamom works really well here. The frosting was a little too sweet, but I think that's true in general of cream cheese frosting.

I made a few adjustments, first by making them into cupcakes "bites," using mini cupcake tin. This reduces the baking time to ten minutes per batch. I also cut the recipe in half, making three dozen mini cupcakes. Also, I omitted the cashews, as I work at a site that is nut-free.

They definitely were a hit. Next time, Petit Pois Muffins.