Holiday Hangover

Perhaps it wasn't a great idea to start this blog right before the holidays. My poor kitchen has been put through its paces over the past two months. The cabinets are starting to pull away from the walls and their doors are almost worn off the hinges, but we both just managed to survive another holiday season.

I've taken on several ambitious culinary projects recently, but none crazier than my annual Christmas cookie tins. It started innocently enough three years ago. It was my first Christmas with Jason, and we had been together long enough that I had started to worry about impressing his family. So I decided to bake up a few dozen cookies because that's what I do - I win people's affection with baked goods. I mixed and baked for an afternoon, packed everything up in some Tupperware containers, and sent them off to Jason's parents, grandmothers, my mother, and a few close friends. The response from Jason's Grandma H was so overwhelmingly positive, I knew I had started a tradition.

The madness began to set in the second year, when I decided to get a little fancy. I ordered these attractive-looking silver tins, complete with pads and appropriately-sized shipping boxes. I am not great at visualizing measurements, and the tins ended up being much, much bigger than I anticipated. I had seven tins to fill, and I knew I was going to have to make a lot of cookies to fill them. I ended up making multiple batches of five different types of cookies - glazed butter, spritz, lace, chocolate swirly, and rum balls. It took a lot of upper body strength (I only had a hand mixer then) and three days of back-breaking work. Jason pulled out some random art supplies and spent an entire day lining and packing the tins. The result was way fancier than I could have imagined:

The cookies went over well, to say the least. I was so exhausted I didn't even want to think about doing it again, but I knew I had created a tradition I couldn't stop. And surely enough, I started to get inquiries about my cookie plans from a few cookie recipients shortly after Halloween. Now that I'm bona fide, I felt some pressure to top last year's tins. I decided to do five varieties again this year because I like the way they look together, but I swapped out the chocolate swirly cookies for molasses spice because they're much tastier. And I decided to roll the lace cookies into cigarettes and dip them in chocolate because I couldn't send out tins completely bereft of chocolate. I knew I had my work cut out for me because the cookie list had grown to a whopping 13. But I figured with my new, super duper, 14 cups of flour power mixer, it wouldn't be as difficult as last year.

I was so, so wrong. Aretha performed like a champ. She churned through quadruple batches of dough without straining. The problem is that once I made all of this dough, I had to do something with it. I may have the world's best standing mixer, but alas, I still only have two hands, one poorly calibrated oven, and two baking sheets. To give you a better idea of my insanity, here are some numbers:

105 rum balls
114 spritz cookies
113 molasses cookies
185 glazed, decorated butter cookies
175 rolled, chocolate-dipped lace cookies

That's 692 (53 dozen) cookies for those of you still counting. Or 10 lbs each of butter, sugar, and flour.

Jason, to his great credit, not only maintained his good humor and his affection for me through all of the madness, he also spent an entire day making the packaging look extra professional. He even photographed each of my cookies to make a little cookie guide with my logo on it.

At some point Jason casually said, "Maybe we don't do the cookies every year." And it's true that nothing was easy about the cookie tins this year, from the grocery shopping (No delivery! No cabs!) to the making and baking to carrying the tins a very icy 1/2 a mile to the post office. But I am awfully proud of the result and have been basking in praise ever since they were delivered. I'm not quite sure if I'm going to be recovered in time to do it all over again in 11 months, so for now I'm just trying to reclaim my appetite for cookies.

Winter Pizza

The size of our apartment (600 sf), the reach of our air conditioner (200 sf), and the heat insulation of our oven (so bad it actually warps the cabinets) make pizza from scratch a winter-only meal for me. When the outside temperature dipped into the 40s, dropping our indoor temperature into the low 60s, I decided it was time to turn the oven up high and start tinkering with my favorite pizza crust recipe. I typically use America’s Test Kitchen’s basic pizza dough recipe, which is done in a food processor and kneaded briefly by hand. It makes a thick, chewy crust that would make my Italian instructors from culinary school ashamed of me. I love thin-crust, neopolitan-style pizza as much as the next girl, but I also grew up on Pizza Hut.

I’ve been weaning myself off of white all-purpose flour lately and have fallen hard for white whole wheat flour. It’s got the nutritional profile of whole wheat flour with a much milder flavor. I decided to try out Heidi’s white whole wheat pizza dough recipe, which she adapted from Peter Reinhart, king of the bread heads. I didn’t love it – if I’m going to eat thin-crust pizza, it’s got to be crispy. My crust ended up thin and chewy, almost pita-like. A hotter oven might have helped (I took Heidi’s suggestion for 450).

I tried a few different toppings – Farmer Chris has been getting ethereal white chanterelle mushrooms from a mysterious fungus hunter in western Massachusetts. I cut them into big chunks, sautéed them with butter and shallots and put them on a pizza with fontina and sage. It was earthy, delicious, and expensive so I only made one. There’s a potato pizza at Cambridge One that Jason loves, so I re-created it by sautéing some Yukon Gold potatoes until they were tender, and topping them with a scattering of minced rosemary and grated gruyère cheese. It was the definition of comfort pizza. I also did a pepperoni pizza with some lovely Fiore di Nonno mozzarella. Pizza sauce is a cinch to make and it elevates everything it touches, especially if you use real San Marzano tomatoes. Try it next to a jarred sauce and you’ll never look back.

Easy Pizza Sauce

28 oz can San Marzano* tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Pulse the tomatoes in a food processor until finely chopped, with a few chunks left (you don’t want a purée). Alternately, you can chop the tomatoes by hand in the can with a pair of kitchen shears.

Heat the oil and garlic in a small saucepan over medium heat until sizzling, but not browned. Add the tomatoes and simmer gently for 20 minutes or until slightly thickened. A splatter screen comes in handy here because this sauce likes to travel. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Makes enough sauce for 3 or 4 medium-sized pizzas.

*Real San Marzano tomatoes can only come from Italy – look for “DOP” somewhere on the can. You can find them in any Italian or specialty market, and some higher-end grocery stores. If you can’t find them, Muir Glen crushed tomatoes are the next best thing.