Masher
Photo credit: My son, Max, one badass photographer
One Badass Cookie is proud to present its first Reader’s Recipe of the New Year! Congratulations to my friend, Michele Kishita of Philadelphia, Pa. for sending in her mother’s Raisin Cookies. Michele told me that her mother baked these cookies during Michele’s childhood and that they were so delicious she craved them all her life. Though her mother left her the recipe, Michele rarely bakes and hadn’t had the cookies in years. When I mentioned this to my own mother, she gasped in surprise. “Do you know?” she told me, “Those are one of my favorite childhood cookies too and I lost the recipe. I’ve been looking for it for thirty years.” So Michele dug out her mother’s original recipe, pictured below, and I started baking. I was thrilled to send a big container of the finished cookies to both Michele and my mom. A taste that lasts a lifetime — now that’s One Badass Cookie! I also found this link to a sister cookie that sounds fabulous too for those who like a bit of spice and zest with their raisins. Read on for the updated version of Michele’s recipe, more photos and the Badass Cookie Tip of the Week. Does it work? You bet your badass it does!
I like to use an old jelly jar to cut out round cookies.
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One Badass Cookie Tip of the Week:Brush cookies with egg white before baking for a shiny, professional looking finish. Sprinkle the egg white with sugar to add sweetness and crunch if desired.
Raisin Filled Cookies
Makes approximately three dozen 2 to 3 inch diameter cookies depending on size.
Note: Allow time to cook and cool filling mixture ahead of time.
For filling:
2 1/2 cups raisins
1 1/2 cups sugar or to taste
2 cups water
6 T. flour
For dough:
1 cup shortening (you may substitute butter but the original texture and taste of the cookie will be changed.)
2 cups white granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
1 t. baking soda
4 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
Egg yolk for sealing dough before baking, and egg white for brushing top of cookies if desired.
7 cups all purpose flour (or 6 cups for making drop cookies without filling if desired.)
1. Combine all filling ingredients in a heavy bottomed saucepan and cook until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture thickens. Allow to cool.
2. Beat shortening and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or by hand with a wooden spoon, until creamy and fully incorporated. Add eggs slowly a little at a time, mixing well between additions.
3. Combine vanilla extract and milk and set aside. Combine dry ingredients and set aside. Using lowest speed on mixer or gently by hand, add dries to shortening mixture in three additions alternating with liquid, beginning and ending with flour (1/3 of flour, then 1/2 of milk, then 1/3 of flour, then the rest of the milk, then the last 1/3 of flour.) Do not overbeat.
4. Divide dough into three disks, cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled enough to roll out.
5. When dough and filling are ready, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper, nonstick pads, or grease sheets and set aside.
6. Roll out dough 1/4 inch thick and use a round 2 or 3 inch cutter to cut dough. On 1/2 of the cookie rounds, place a large dollop of filling. Brush egg yolk or water around edge of cookie dough to help seal it, then place a plain cookie round on top and press to seal. Cut a slit in the top dough to allow steam to escape and brush cookie with egg white if desired. Continue until all the dough has been rolled, filled and seal. Place cookies on prepared sheet pans and bake for approximately 15 minutes or more until golden top and bottom. If you double your sheetpans under the cookies and rotate pans during baking top to bottom and back to front it will help ensure even baking. Cool on wire racks and store in an airtight container.
Leave a little margin of cookie dough around the filling so that the top dough can have enough room to seal properly.
Cutting a thin slit like this in the top of filled cookies helps steam escape but keeps the filling from burning or drying out.
Oh baby.
Got a cookie recipe badass enough for One Badass Cookie? Send it to us and we’ll test it. If it’s badass enough we’ll post it as a reader’s recipe and you’ll win a prize of Nancy’s book.
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Masher
Toys in the Kitchen
Stuffed guys on the kitchen counter again,
furry ones, just below those
spoons dangling on the hook
and ready, for measuring
coffee.
Graphic novel --little boxes of outrageous behavior-- and
plastic wrestler dudes entangled.
Dried up garlic bits,
origami lotus flower,
transformer in vehicular form.
I am old to this game, thirteen years now,
and the little one nearly 8.
Tonight, a Lego warrior came
so close to the frying pan.
I knew it would come to this someday.
When I was done, I just threw him and let
his pair of ragged claws scuttle across the crumbs.
Not to be Forgotten
Champagne Cocktail.
(Pint bottle of wine for three goblets.)
(Per glass.)
Take 1 lump of sugar.
1 or 2 dashes Angostura bitters.
1 small lump of ice.
Fill the goblet with wine, stir up with a spoon, and serve with a thin piece of twisted lemon peel. A quart bottle of wine will make six cocktails.
--Jerry Thomas
Bar-Tender’s Guide or How to Mix Drinks, 1862
What Is it About Bubbles?
Nancy called me all excited about her bubbly recipes--bubbly as in the champagne granite and champagne truffles she found from her wild young days as a pastry chef in NYC.
“Laura can you do a “Not to Be Forgotten Recipe” for champagne? And can you write a few lines and be a little deep, okay?
Sheesh. I’m still recovering from ravioli.
This recipe for champagne cocktail comes from the 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide, book, which many experts say is the very first cocktail book ever published. It will come as no surprise to most of you that Americans first gave the world the invention (if you can call it such) of the cocktail. You can’t imagine the French adding sugar and ice and bitters to their beloved sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France, now can you? That said, this sure does seem very simple and fun, and I’m curious, just so long as the bubbles are still there.
Which brings me back to the champagne itself and its most important element: those bubbles, which get created after the wine is already made and then bottled. The trick is that a little yeast gets added to each bottle creating a second fermentation process. The yeast gets to work, eating up sugars and creating alcohol and gas--trapped inside the bottles. After a short time, the yeast dies away, but the fizz remains. Voila. Bubbles.
“What is it about bubbles?” I asked Nancy. “Why do we like them so much? And why on New Year’s Eve?”
“Because, bubbles are ephemeral,” she replied. “They represent that we are only beautiful and young once. Then it all pops . . . like a bubble.”
And then she sent me to this beautiful painting by Clara Peeters, a 17th century Flemish still life painter, who, using a convention of the era, painted an actual bubble into the air about her head in her self portrait. Take a look.
The bubble is to the right of her face against the back wall. The gold and coins scattered on the table are symbols of material wealth--not to be compared with spiritual wealth. She holds a watch to remind us that time is passing. And the flowers also suggest fleeting beauty.
“Check it out,” said Nancy. “Her strong forearms a and ruddy hands give her away. She’s an artist, not a pretty doll. The expression is serious. This is an artist posing herself and allowing us to gaze at her as an object in order to make her point. Very brave.”
So I say here’s wishing you some fun though ephemeral bubbles for New Years Eve, and more enduring happiness for 2009. And here’s to Clara too, brave painter.
Happy New Year. Now go get the champagne. Be ready. The fun has already started.
see also: Bubbly Recipes
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Masher
Laura told me this morning as we were chatting on the phone that the Victorians loved to use pigs as a symbol of good luck and prosperity on their New Year’s cards and decorations (yes, this is really what we talk about which gives you an idea how jellypress was conceived . . .) Anyway, it makes sense, doesn’t it? If you had a pig, you had something to eat. These photos are just in from my brother, Bruce, an attorney and photographer, fresh from a recent trip to Madrid. These people are serious about their pigs.
This photo is a scan Bruce did of the restaurant Botin’s post card. Seems they made the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world’s oldest restaurant. Got a suckling pig anecdote? We’d love to hear from you. Happy New Year.
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Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Photo credit: Bruce Ring
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Masher
Champagne Granite (Sweet Champagne Ice)
Makes 8 cups (serves 12 - 15)
1 cup plus 2 T. water
1 cup plus 2 T. granulated white sugar
1 bottle Champagne
3 oranges, juiced
1 lemon, juiced
1. Make simple syrup: Place water and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil until the sugar is dissolved. Set syrup aside to cool.
2. Combine champagne, orange and lemon juices. Add cooled simple syrup. Stir well to combine. Pour mixture into an 8 x 16 inch, shallow, nonreactive pan and place in freezer for several hours or overnight. For best results, periodically stir the partly frozen granite during the freezing process. Stir gently to keep from breaking up the thin sheets of ice. To serve, scrape granite with a fork and layer in a champagne glass with fruit such as fresh raspberries or poached pears.
We love Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’s Soap Bubble painting and our easy bubbly New Year’s recipes. Let us know if you try them.
Champagne truffles, rolled in cocoa and ready for their close-up.
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Champagne Truffles
Makes about 60 truffles
1 pound bittersweet chocolate
3/4 cup heavy cream or creme fraiche
1/2 cup champagne
6 T. unsalted sweet butter, softened
For dipping:
1 pound semisweet chocolate
2 cups unsweetened cocoa
1. Cut 1 pound chocolate into small pieces and place in a small bowl. Melt chocolate over simmering water or in a microwave oven. Set aside until ready to use.
2. Scald the cream and champagne and pour over the chocolate. Whisk until smooth.
3. Mix in the soft butter and pour the mixture onto a sheetpan covered with parchment paper or a nonstick pad. Refrigerate until you can form balls with the mixture.
4. Roll small balls of chocolate. Keep them cold.
5. Melt the other pound of chocolate. Temper the chocolate (don’t know how? Let David Lebovitz show you.) When all the balls are rolled, put some of the melted chocolate into the palm of your hand. Roll a truffle in your palm, letting it roll off your finger tips back onto the sheetpan. Continue until all balls are coated with chocolate. Chill. When chilled and dry to touch, roll in cocoa powder. Keep stored in cocoa powder in the freezer or refrigerator.
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Masher
Well, it’s ravioli time, isn’t it. Christmas is next week. And we working women of the modern era, well, we like to have ours done about now and stocked away in the freezer.
I made mine this past Sunday with my sister Andrea, who came over eager to help.
So now while I’m in the ravioli spirit is a good time to tell you all that The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family has recently come out in paperback.
I really like this cover and—and hope the book will continue to reach people, as that’s what every author wishes for. In this new edition, there is a reader’s guide at the end of the book, and I will be making myself available in 2009 for book group invitations, mainly by phone but also the occasional in person visit. You can find out more, including my contact info, at www.lostravioli.com.
Back to ravioli….
This year, there was not a lot of torture over raw or cooked meat, as you can see in these photos of braising beef, veal, and pork.
There were all sorts of aromatics involved and the house smelled beautiful for two days.
I did NOT get all worried about the cream cheese, either. I added a package of it. Since my book came out a year ago, I can’t tell you how many Genoese descendants have told me they use cream cheese. In light of everything and I publicly apologize for my former snobbery
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and ask forgiveness.
As to rolling pin versus pasta machine? I used a machine this year simply because my board is now officially sagging and the pin is not meeting the surface. Very unpleasant. Until I get a new board, I’m using the machine. Well, actually, this is Andrea using the machine.
It might sound like all is resolved and peaceful. But some things never change. Of course I had to make a last minute run to Lou’s house for some extra 00 flour. What can I say?
Since The Lost Ravioli Recipes first came out in hardcover a year ago, a lot of things have happened.
For one thing, hundreds of Italian Americans have written to me or come to my author events to tell me about their families and their recipes, and their yearnings—whether for family or Italy, or some other form connection and continuity they can’t quite explain. I have been so honored and humbled to hear of the things people do for love and ravioli.
Some of my favorites: Bob (Schenone) Cole and his family in Philadelphia whose recipe matched mine just about exactly and told me his mother knew my great grandmother Adalgiza. A musician named Georgeanne who began with “I was a generation closer,” to describe her own Italian American twilight and shared an incredible tale about her own life. Then there was the NJ woman who wrote, “I don’t know where to begin,” and sent me a photo of herself sitting on a bench with a bunch of old Italian women in her ancestors town. She didn’t understand it—why was she always drawn back there?
I also made some videos of pasta rolling which have gotten a lot of response, such as this one on youtube, which over 4,000 people have watched. I feel very shy about this, video because I’m not exactly Rachel Ray here. But I am really touched by all the comments. So here’s the link. .
Writing a book about your own life changes your life. I guess that was my intention but I could never have expected some of the things, such as how over the last year, I slowly felt a burden lifted from my shoulders. Something I can’t explain. But I discovered I no longer feel as needful of my own past. Strange and oddly liberating. I’m far less often pummeled by memories. I am more in the present.
Finally, since the book came out, a number of readers have asked me how my sister is doing. They ask about her health and tell me they worry about her. For those who don’t know, the book included details about our strained relationship and her illness. Well, she is doing just fine. She has found that a radical diet of eating very non-inflammatory foods is helpful and reduces pain. But we still hope for the medical community to come up with some solutions for this condition she has, which is called adhesive disease, and millions of people suffer from it.
My relationship with Andrea continues to be good two years after writing my closing chapter. there have been no blow ups, no problems. We are friends, or maybe just sisters, as sisters should be. I don’t know if this would have ever happened if I didn’t write the book. When she read it she told me “I never thought you understood. Now I know you did.” I’d say that this was the best thing that ever came out of all my writing years.
Andrea even leans on my shoulder once in the while, as a younger sister might. Her husband took this picture on Sunday, and honestly it just breaks me up.
Here’s the filling we made. We will eat these on Christmas. I owe a debt to many many people for this recipe. I say grazie mille and buone feste
Ravioli Christmas 2008
For the Dough
6 cups flour, preferably 3 cups being 00 Italian style flour and half , about 3 cups being a higher gluten all purpose flour such as King Arthur’s.
3 eggs plus one yolk
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
enough water to make the dough elastic
For the filling:
1 bunch of borage (about 2/3 pound) or substitute spinach and/or escarole, boiled until tender, squeezed dry
½ cup olive oil
2/3 pound veal shoulder, or veal stew meat
1 pound beef, the type you would use for pot roast, such as chuck, trimmed of extra fat, or bottom round, or top round roasts, which are leaner but still braise well.
2 cloves garlic
1 stem of fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
2 bay leaves
1 cup dry white table wine
1 carrot, minced extremely fine
1 rib of celery, minced extremely fine
1 onion, sliced thinly
3 or 4 pieces of dried porcini, rinsed and reconstituted in warm water 30 minutes (reserve the water)
6 cups marinara sauce already made
1 tablespoon butter
½ pound pork, shoulder cut, trimmed of extra fat
2 teaspoons pignoli
1 4 oz package of Filadelfia cream cheese in silver foil
1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 large piece (about three-inches from an Italian loaf) of stale white bread, soaked in warm milk
salt
pepper
nutmeg to taste
1 teaspoon of marjoram, minced
2 egg, plus 2 yolks
1. Make the dough and set aside covered in plastic. I’m assuming you know how to do this.
2. Boil the borage (or whichever greens you are using) five minutes in salted water. Let cool.
3. Heat the olive oil in a terracotta casserole or large heavy stainless steel pot. Add the veal and beef along with 1 clove garlic, rosemary, and 1 bay leaf. Brown the meat.
4. Add ½ cup of the white wine. When the wine evaporates, add carrot, celery, onion and mushroom. Cook with pot uncovered until vegetables are softened. Add a little hot water as necessary, to keep vegetables from scorching.
5. Put a cover on the pot, lower the flame to a very slow heat. Check the veal in 20 to 30 minutes. When cooked tender, remove the veal and put aside. The time will depend greatly on the size and cut of your meat.
6. Add six cups of tomato sauce to the pot with the beef in it. Continue to cook the beef on a slow heat until falling apart and tender. This can easily take two and a half more hours , depending on the size and quality of your meat. It will be tough for a long while. When it is finally fork tender remove meat. Save this sauce, which is one method for making tocco, Genoese for sugo or gravy. You will use it to dress your ravioli on Christmas Day.
7. Put the butter in a separate smaller pot. Add the pork, salt, pinoli, a bay leaf, a clove of garlic. Add one two or three tablespoons of white wine and put a cover on the pot. Turn heat down to low. Cook until tender and soft. This may take an hour or more, depending on your meat and how high your heat is.
8. When all the meat is cool, set up your meat grinder and fit it with a fine mandrill. Set a big bowl underneath.
9. Trim the fat off the meat and put it through the grinder. Add the reserved pignoli and a little of the flavorful fat and wine from the bottom of the pork pot.
10. Put your greens through the food grinder, followed by the soaked bread.
11. Okay now, go and whip up that that room-temperature cream cheese (with a mixer) and add it into your bowl of filling.
12. Put the parmigiano, marjoram, nutmeg, pepper, and salt directly into the bowl and stir with a wooden spoon so that all is VERY well mixed.
13. Taste. Correct seasoning. Do you need more salt, pepper, cheese? If your mixture tastes dry you may wish to add some of your reserved porcini broth or marinara.
14. Add egg. Mix everything. Your filling is now ready.
15. If you are using a machine, roll out dough with your machine to the second to last setting. Spread filling on a half a sheet of dough. Do this thinly and evenly. Put the other half on top like a lid, then run over this with a checkered ravioli rolling pin. Finally, use a ravioli cutter to cut across the squares.
16. Let the ravioli dry a half hour on cookie sheets dusted with flour or cornmeal. Turn the over and let the other sides dry. (Yes, I’m serious.) Or put the tray directly in the freezer. Now go ahead and do the other 200. When the ravioli in the freezer are frozen solid, transfer to plaster bags and seal shut.
17. When ready to serve, put the ravioli in fiercely boiling salted water. Cook 3 minutes if your ravioli is fresh and 5 or 6 minutes if it is frozen. Taste to be sure.
18. Gently scoop out the ravioli with a large slotted ravioli lifter--or pour carefully into a colander, so the ravioli don’t break. Serve in a large bowl with the tucco—the red Genoese sauce you made earlier. Or use whatever tomato sauce you prefer. Sprinkle with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
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Masher
Too bad an empty box does not have the same allure as it did when we were two years old. I guess I’ll have to fill them with cookies before I mail them out! Read on for One Badass Cookie’s inexpensive yet beautiful way to package baked goods for gifts (and with some recycling too!) These boxes cost about 89 cents each, or, you can do what I did, which was ask my local CVS manager if I could just have the one on the right after they had unpacked and left it in a pile on the floor of the store. Lucky find! And free . . . That’s one badass way to snag a deal.
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Lined boxes are not that much fun either without the cookies, but I like to line mine with waxed paper first to keep the buttery cookies from staining the boxes.
For mailing I wrap the individual kinds of cookies in inexpensive clear cellophane bags (acid free and archival ones double for me as wrappings for my handmade art cards too) and tie with curling ribbons, available at most discount stores for about a buck a package. Individual bags like this helps keep the cookies fresh enroute. If you’re not mailing them, you can just stack them in pretty rows inside the waxed paper lined boxes. I sometimes stick gifts in with the cookies, like pix of my son or in the one on the right, a Zagat guide. Here are the boxes loaded up ready for their outer wrapping.
Don’t these look great? A dramatic and beautiful presentation from recycled boxes, inexpensive waxed paper, ordinary curling ribbon, stickers, and clear cellophane wrapping paper, and on the box on the right, a recycled greeting card for a tag (just cut off the front of greeting cards you get and punch a hole in the top - it’s as easy as that to save money and the planet.)
Got a badass cookie recipe or baking tip for Laura and Nancy? Send it to us, we’ll test it out and if it’s badass enough, we’ll post it as a reader’s recipe or tip and you’ll win a prize of Nancy’s book.
see also: One Badass Cookie - Ginger Molasses Cookie
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Masher
I have an article in this month’s SAVEUR magazine. It’s all about pandolce, the holiday feast bread from Liguria--and the bread my great grandmother made long ago. I hope you all go out and get it because Saveur is a wonderful magazine. And the photos--such as the one above by Penny De Los Santos--are beautiful. In the meantime, since they don’t have the article available online, I’ll tell you a little about it. It’s the story of how last year at Christmas time, I went to a little town called Savignone north of Genoa to learn how to make a very very special pandolce with a 6th generation baker named Adriano and his wife Harriet. This is Savignone.
Adriano and his father built a little cabin with wood burning oven inside it, and this is where Adriano gave the lesson. Here we are in their little 12 x 12 cabin. This is Harriet and Adriano. And these are all the ingredients they had ready on the table when we arrived: flour, sugar, butter, raisins, candied orange peel, and pignoli.
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But the most important ingredient of all was this stuff called lieveto madre, or “mother leaven"--sometimes also called wild yeast. This is basically a form of sour dough that has been continually “kept going” for more than 100 years in Adriano’s family. It is a naturally fermented product--of the sort that people once used before there was instant dry active yeast. It’s more work to care for and feed it, but serious bakers love the stuff as it produces a far better tasting bread with a webby crumb.
(After I returned home, I started my own leaven at home so I could make my own bread. All you need is flour, water, and a little pinneapple juice--plus all the natural and wild bacteria in the air of your house. )
Here’s Adriano kneading all the ingredients--very hard work by hand.
And these are the pandolce all formed and ready to rest overnight.
The next day, Adriano made a fire in this oven and then, when it subsided, swept out the coals and put the pandolce inside. Then he shut the door.
This is what came out. It was a beautiful thing.
Adriano and Harriet will soon be opening a place in the mountains where they will bake bread and eventually offer bed and breakfast stays, perhaps some baking lessons too. I will keep you posted on this wonderful couple
Now here are the recipes. What I ABSOLUTELY MUST TELL YOU (and this is all explained in the article) is that there are two kinds of pandolce: “basso,” which means low and is crumbly like a scone, and “alto” which means high and is the yeasted bread.
Adriano’s basso recipe is extremely easy and you can put it together basically in an hour. His alto recipe is another matter and requires a bit of natural leaven. I’ve put it here for the gamers and true bakers. It’s worth the effort. Meanwhile, for those with less time to spare, the kitchen editors at Saveur magazine created an adaptation of pandolce alto using dry active yeast. Warning: Adriano’s recipes are still in “Italian,” meaning: you must use a kitchen scale and weigh everything in grams. Good luck!
Adriano’s Pandolce Basso
Easy to make and delicious, produces three large breads.
500 gr cake flour
500 gr bread flour
38 gr baking powder
8 gr salt
400 gr soft butter
340 gr sugar
1 egg
1 yolk
330 gr warm milk
2T orange blossom water
3 T fennel seeds that have been soaked twenty minutes in hot water and drained
700 gr best raisins you can find,
200 gr candied orange peel, best quality
100 gr candied citron, best quality
110 gr pinoli
*******************************************************************
1. Heat the oven to between 325 and 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients.
2 Using a mixer, thoroughly beat the butter and sugar together. Add the egg, yolk, milk, orange blossom water, and fennel seeds. The mixture will be very wet. That’s okay.
3. Mix in the flour slowly until you have a sticky dough.
4. Work the fruit into the dough in batches using your hands either in the bowl or on a flat work surface. First add the raisins, then the candied fruit, then the nuts. Make sure all are distributed evenly.
5. Cut into three or four equal pieces, depending on whether you want large or small pandolce. Form into flat spheres like a dome, no more than 2 inches tall. Using a razor blade or a very sharp non-serrated knife, slash a cross on the top, not very deep. Lay on parchment paper on double cookie sheets. Bake 40 to 45 minutes in the center of the oven or until a stick comes out clean. Check the pandolce midway. If it is getting too dark, cover with foil to prevent burning.
Saveur Magazine’s Interpretation of for Adriano’s Pandolce Alto
Adriano’s Pandolce Alto
Made With Natural Leaven
Ingredients
180 gr water
150 gr sugar
500 gr bread flour
120 gr natural leaven* (taken from the recipe below)
190 gr butter
380 gr high quality raisins
190 gr candied orange peel
50 gr pignoli
1. Refresh your leaven three times over the course of ten to eleven hours. You can use Adriano’s schedule as follows:
At 8:30 am: take 120 grams of leaven and add 80 grams flour and 40 water. Knead until mixed. Cover and let sit.
At 12:30, repeat the refreshment. You will now have 240 grams of leaven. Add 160 flour and 80 water. Knead. Cover and let sit.
At 4:30 repeat again. You will now have 480 grams of leaven. Refresh with 320 grams flour and 160 grams of water. Knead, cover, and let sit.
2. At 7 pm, or whenever the third refreshment is complete and leaven has doubled for the third time, mix sugar into water until it is dissolved. If you are using a heavy-duty stand up mixer with a dough hook, put flour in the mixer bowl. If you are doing this by hand, spread out your flour in a circle on a clean work surface. Gradually pour the sugared water in the center and use your other hand to slowly work it in until you have a pasty dough.
3. Measure out 570 grams of leaven. Reserve the rest. Knead leaven into dough until thorough incorporated.
4. Add butter. If you are using a mixer do this on low speed and be patient. It will take a while for the butter to mix in. Knead on a low speed for 20 minutes. If you are working by hand, flatten out your dough into a rectangle. Put butter in center, and fold over. Begin kneading until butter is incorporated. Knead for a total of 40 minutes or until the dough is silky. It may take up to an hour.
5. Add raisins, then fruit and nuts. Do this by hand as a mixer will break the raisins. Lay out your dough on a work surface and flatten it into a rectangle about 1 ½ inches thick. Lay your raisins in the center and wrap the dough around them. Begin kneading. It will take time to incorporate all of this. As raisins fall out, just put them back in.
6. Let rest for five minutes. Then flatten out the dough again and cut into three equal pieces—use a scale to be sure. Each bread will weigh about 700 grams. Now, form each pandolce into a small ball about four inches tall. Place on parchment paper and let rise, uncovered, in a warm place (ideally 20 degrees) overnight, or until the breads rise by 35 to 40 percent in size. This will take least 12 hours—but as many as 16 hours or even more. A skin will form.
7. Just before baking, use a razor blade or the point of a very sharp non-serrated knife, to make a triangle in top center. Inspect your breads. Tuck in any raisins that are hanging too far out to avoid burning. Put breads in a preheated oven for 45 minutes at 170 centigrade (between 325 and 350 fahrenheit), on double cookie sheets in the center of the oven. Check halfway. If it is beginning to get too dark, cover lightly with tin foil.
8. Do not even think of cutting this for four hours.
When well wrapped in plastic, both pandolce alto and basso last for three months.
Making Your Own Natural Leaven
You may not have access to Adriano’s hundred-year-old yeast, but you can begin one on your own. It will take a couple of weeks to get ready along, along with a good amount of patience for the process fermentation, which is inexact and varies from kitchen to kitchen. A digital kitchen scale is a must have.
My first efforts resulted in moldy leaven. Luckily, I found a coach. Peter Reinhart, master baker, leaven expert, and author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads “>The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads was willing. (If you are any kind of serious baker you must have these books.)Peter tweaked my leaven recipe and coached me on. When I got my it to rise cheered me on. “You go girl,” he wrote. “Now make the bread”
Natural Leaven
100 grams organic pineapple juice (the acids work well to prevent mold)
200 grams high gluten flour or bread flour
70 grams water
1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with a spoon, your hands, or with a stand up mixer. Cover and let ferment at a temperature of 25 degrees. This process could take anywhere from 5 to 10 days depending on your environment. It is very important that you stir the mixture once or twice a day, especially during the first three days.
2. Wait. Nothing much will happen the first few days. But then you will see your leaven bubble as natural fermentation occurs and yeasts build. When it doubles or when it has sat for 8 days (whichever comes first), you have the beginnings of your own mother yeast. It is fragile and must be fed.
3. Feed your yeast every day until it is strong enough to use. After that, you will need to do this only once a week. Here’s the method:
Weigh your dough. Add two thirds of its weight in flour (use bread flour or high gluten flour) and one-third of its weight in water. This is Adriano’s hydration formula. For example:
For every 150 grams of leaven
add
100 grams flour
50 grams water
Knead. If it is too sticky to handle, add a little more flour. Cover and leave out and wait. When it doubles in size, put it in the refrigerator covered tightly until the next day when you feed it again. As the yeast grows stronger, the rising time will accelerate. When your dough is able to double in about three hours, then it is strong enough to for use in pandolce or other breads. When you are not using it, keep it in your refrigerator.
Note: feel free to adjust the feeding formula if your dough is too sticky or too dry. It should be moist and springy. It will get better and develop more flavor and character over time.
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Not to be Forgotten
To make little morsels, that is “mostaccioli” in the Milan style
Take fifteen fresh eggs and beat them in a casserole and pass through the sieve with two and a half pounds of sugar fine and powdered, and half an ounce of raw aniseed or partly crushed (aniseed) and a grain or two of fine musk, and put with this two pounds and a half of flour and beat everything for three quarters of an hour, so that it becomes like the pasta for fritters and let it rest for a quarter hour and rebeat it another time. Then one takes a sheet of paper put into a “lucerne” and greased, or a ‘tortiere’ with wafers beneath that have not been bathed in such a way (not greased) and then put this paste into the ‘lucerne’ or ‘tortiere’ (specific pan types) until it is not higher than the thickness of a finger and immediately powder with sugar and put it into the oven that is hot, or the tart pan, and cook it like a tart and when this pasta is cooked (not wet) and will in all lose the humidity and it will be enough cooked, that is like a tender focaccia, pull out the ‘lucerne’ or ‘tortiere’ and immediately cut with a large thin knife, cut in slices as large as two fingers, and as long as one pleases, and put them in the oven with pieces of paper beneath the biscuits, turn them enough, ensure that the oven is not as hot as the one above (second baking is at a lower temp than first), and when they are well dried, pull them out and save them because they are always better the second day than the first and they will keep for a month in their perfection.
--Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570
The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro Cuoco (The Art and Craft of a Master Cook)
Translation, 2003 by Lady Helewyse de Birkestad, CW.
Ever since Nancy posted her gorgeous biscotti recipe last week in her badass column, I have been thinking about the history of biscotti and cookies in general. It’s really only during the last 150 or so years, after the arrival of the stove, that cookie baking became so common place among regular people. Before then, baking was more complicated because you had to do it in your brick or stone (or mud/adobe) oven. Not to mention that sugar was expensive, so sweets were reserved for special occassions unless, of course you were rich.
I am posting this beautiful photo so you folks can see what what I mean.
This image comes from the Tacuinum Sanitatas, an Arab medical manual from the 11th century. On baking day, you would build your fire inside the oven, building heat into the walls and floor. Then you’d sweep put all the coals and ashes and put your bread inside and quickly shut the door to seal in the heat. Not long after, the oven temperature would start falling.
Now… back to biscotti. The name really refers to a technique, not any recipe. It means “twice cooked”. You bake a loaf. Then you take it out of the oven and slice it into pieces (or “morsels” as Scappi says), then bake these a second time at a lower temperature until they become hard and dry. Now you can see that the invention of biscotti clearly has everything to do with this falling heat of the brick oven. And by the way....why would you bake these things to death? Preservation for sure. With all the moisture gone, they’d last long. Important before the age of zip lock plastic bags. I think of biscotti as belonging to the same family of hardtack and many other dried foods that could go on long journeys at sea.
The old recipe above comes from the extraordinary Bartolomeo Scappi (c. 1500-1577) a great chef of the Italian Renaissance who was a personal cook to two popes. He may call his biscotti “little morsels” but by whatever name, these are the real deal--twice cooked. And while we’re with Bartolomeo, here’s an
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engraving from his book showing a kitchen of the era. Pretty cool, huh? I am not sure--but wonder if that’s the baking oven is on the way back left wall. Note all the various cooking tools about and the hearth in the back.
The term went to France as biscuit--and then to England. Over time biscotti took many directions in many countries and were enhanced variously with sugar and egg and butter.
As to the delicious biscotti we know and love today...if you go nosing around for “authentic” Italian recipes you’ll quickly come across the very famous biscotti de Prato, which come from the city in Tuscany of the same name. They are intended to be dunked in wine or coffee and look like this . These are a wonderful every day sort of luxury, while Nancy’s version are more rich and intensely flavored, a perfect choice Christmas. These are the ones I’m making.
Finally, to get you thinking about baking the old way, here’s a photo of a wood burning oven that belongs to a baker friend in Liguria. Gorgeous, isn’t it? More on this soon.
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Antique Recipe Road Show
Is citron grown and sold in the u.s? I’ve candied orange,lemon, grapefruit,and tangerine for panetone and lebkuchen,because store bought is so full of garbage. I’d also like to do citron but have not found any.
--Valerie Tassa
Valerie, I share your feeling about candied fruit here in the U.S. being really awful—sort of like sugary wax. And while maybe with a lot of money and shipping from a gourmet company you CAN find good quality candied orange or lemon peel, it is especially difficult to locate citron, which is so little appreciated in the U.S.
For those not familiar...citron is of course the citrus fruit. Its candied peel goes into various fruit cakes for the holiday. You can see it pictured above with some candied orange peel. This photo is from last winter when I bought these in the Mercato Orientale in Genoa, where the fruit goes by the name of cedro. You can see just by looking at it this this has nothing to do with the hideous chunks of food colored stuff at the supermarket. Nancy, wouldn’t you love to paint this?
Here are some more photos of candied fruits—many varieties—in the beloved Pietro Romanengo shop in Genoa. They were in a huge basket on the counter, a feature of the Christmas Season.
For more on citron, here’s a nice blog post by Susie Wyshak’s blog called artisanfooddiscoveries. She does a great job on the citron and even includes a youtube video of John Kirkpatrick’s Lindcove Farm, which I believe is the only one in America that grows citron. nuttyfig.com
Unfortunately, Americans think of fruit cakes as kind of a joke--though in recent years, there has been some efforts to revive them. Not sure how that’s going when there’s so much chocolate around. I think that there are just lots of people who don’t like candied fruit peel. That’s cool. But I wonder if those people have just never tasted any of decent quality. When it’s good, candied fruit peel is delicate and tastes intensely of the fruit . . . not wax. It is primo “not to be forgotten” territory, a technique invented so as not to waste even a fruit rind--a precious source of flavor, and really quite a brilliant use of sugar.
Candied fruit has deep roots in ancient Jewish, Arab, and Christian tradition. Persians and Arabs were known for their advanced technique with sugar and candying not just fruit but flowers. This technique was introduced to Europe around the Middle Ages. Jews use citron --etrog-- for their fall holiday Sukkot. And then, many of the famous Christmas breads--from Tuscany’s panforte to English fruit cake and German stolen--come from the east-west trade of the Middle Ages.
Okay, Valerie, now to your question. I don’t know where you live, but you can find fresh citron in the markets in California this time of year. Here’s a market that sells citron. Maybe you can call and ask them to ship some to you. http://www.berkeleybowl.com
I also put in a phone call to John Kirkpatrick, the citron farmer. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
If you can’t get some fresh citron, perhaps these markets will probably ship you something of higher quality in the already-candied product: Both Kalustyans and Corti Brothers are known for their imports of high quality, and both sell citron.
http://www.kalustyans.com and www.cortibros.biz/. Note that Corti doesn’t have citron listed in their online catalog, but they have it on their shelves, so call.
Please let us know how you make out. And send us pictures! We’ll post them!
Next week, I’m going to post a story of my own holiday candied-fruit bread called pandolce.
Stay tuned.
Masher
Dining table near and far . . .
Here is another photo in the series I started to challenge the conventions I use over and over in my painting. This is the hand-me-down table in my dining room where we’ll be spending a lot of time soon for the holidays. A quiet moment pictured here before the guests and platters arrive.
see also: Ways of Seeing
Masher
My niece, Molly, with the Badass Biscotti she made from my recipe. Thanks Molly!
Photo credit: My brother, Bruce Ring, one more badass photographer. Thanks Bruce! To see more of his photos, click here.
One Badass Cookie is up and running for the holidays. We’ve got lots of recipes for you in the next few weeks so check back often. So what’s a badass cookie? Click here to see the first badass cookie post for the answer. This week’s cookie is Badass Biscotti made with almonds, pistachios, cornmeal and anise. It’s a buttery, crunchy, intensely flavored recipe I learned when I was a pastry chef, and one of the reasons I like it so much is because it’s made in a big quantity and can fill lots and lots of gift baskets. It keeps beautifully too which makes it perfect for mailing or baking ahead for parties. They’re also great for dunking! When Molly made it recently, her dad (my brother, Bruce) told me that he was enjoying a cup of coffee when the first batch was done. Molly, too impatient to wait to make her own cup of coffee for dunking, reached across the table and dunked her biscotti into his cup, splashing a trail of coffee drips and crumbs across him and the table before he could protest. Too delicious to wait for a cup of joe to brew! That’s one badass cookie. Read on for the recipe, and for the Badass Cookie Tip of the Week. Does it work? You bet your badass it does.
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Badass Cookie Tip of the Week: When measuring dry ingredients for cookie dough or any baking recipe, measure by lifting the ingredient with a spoon or with hands and dropping it gently into the cup measure rather than scooping it and shaking the cup measure to level it. Scooping and shaking compresses the dry ingredient and more of it will end up in the cup than you need, resulting in heavy or overly sweet dough. To level dry ingredients in a measuring cup, use a knife or your finger rather than shaking the cup.
Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Badass Biscotti
Note: This 3 pounds 1 1/2 T. flour recipe may be doubled and even doubled again for a maximum of 12 pounds, 6 ounces of flour, yielding 500 cookies. Directions are given in the recipe for handling the large quantity of dough. It is well worth the time and trouble if you need a lot of cookies for gifts or an event. It’s best to have a kitchen scale for this recipe as the flour is weighed, not measured with cups, and the dough itself must be weighed out into chunks to bake off.
Yields 125 cookies, depending on thickness
3 pounds plus 1 1/2 T. of all-purpose unbleached flour
5 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 T. anise seed
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 T. baking powder
2 t. salt
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, room temperature
8 eggs
1/2 cup annisette liqueur or other anise flavored liqueur
2 cups whole roasted, blanched almonds
1 cup chopped roasted blanched almonds
1 cup whole pistachios
1. Measure all dry ingredients except nuts into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or in a large mixing bowl to mix by hand. Crack eggs, stir to combine and set aside. Measure the annisette and set aside. Roast and measure the nuts and set aside.
2. With the mixer on low speed, or gently by hand, add pieces of softened butter little by little to dry ingredients without pausing between additions, and then drizzle in annisette. The minute the dough begins to hold together, add nuts in the same manner. Stop the machine the second all the nuts are in the dough. Do not over mix. Most stand mixers will accommodate a dough containing up to four cups of flour easily. If making a large quantity of dough, use a large (at least 20 cup capacity) mixing bowl to make the dough, or make in 4-cups-flour batches, dividing up the other ingredients proportionately. Then mix all the dough together at the end.
3. Transfer the dough to a sheetpan and refrigerate it wrapped in plastic wrap overnight or for several hours.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove dough from the refrigerator and weigh out in 1 1/2 pound chunks for 1/2 size 11” x 17” sheet pans (3 pound chunks for full size sheet pans.) Allow dough to stand at room temperature until it is kneadable, not too soft. Roll chunks into logs, about an inch short of the length of the sheetpans. Place on parchment paper covered pans, nonstick pad coated pans, or greased pans. Put two logs on each 1/2 sheet pan, or 3 logs per full sheet pan, evenly spaced. Double sheetpans under the logs to prevent burning.
5. Bake logs approximately 30 minutes or until the dough is set and the top of the log is medium golden brown, not light. Cool on a rack completely before moving on to the next step. Note: For convection ovens, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then turn and rotate the sheetpans in the oven front to back and top to bottom. Then set oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake 10 minutes more until done.
6. When logs are cool, slice with a serrated knife with a sawing motion as thinly as possible without breakage. Place them again on doubled sheetpans covered with parchment, nonstick pads or greased, lying flat and end to end. Rebake them at 325 degrees about 10 - 15 minutes until even light golden brown and cookies feel firm and dry to the touch. Cool on racks, store in airtight containers. Will keep several weeks. Do not refrigerate.
Photo credit: Bruce Ring
Mmmmm, I like my biscotti buttery but I have seen recipes for biscotti with olive oil instead. This one looks good for those olive oil fans out there.
Do you have a Badass Cookie recipe for Nancy and Laura? Send it to us using the comments link above and we’ll test it. If it’s badass enough, we’ll post it as a Reader’s Recipe in future One Badass Cookie posts and you’ll win a copy of Nancy’s book.
see also: One Badass Cookie - Ginger Molasses Cookie
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Antique Recipe Road Show
Q: Hi Laura and Nancy, Thanks for the lovely blog. Do you have a recipe for French Creams? For a short while we could get real French creams imported from Britain here (Toronto, Canada). Now the candies are more like corn candy shaped like French Creams. Thanks Pat
Dear Pat,
You’re in luck, as Laura did turn up a recipe for French creams, and I found a bit of candy history that includes a nod to the French for their superior candy making skills. Did you know that India was amongst the first cultures to refine sugar-cane to sugar around 3000 B.C? The Persians and Arabs also excelled at candy making. During the Middle ages when trade between Europe and the Arab world intensified, sugar and candy found their way to the ports of Europe.
Columbus planted sugar cane in the Caribbean. But of course the story of sugar and candy is deeply connected to slavery, and trade. It’s a complex one. Sugar is also very much a story of class. Sweetened and refined foods were once considered marks of civilization. Sugar was scarce and candy scarcer for the Medieval rich who paid dearly for it and in fact, sugar remained a luxury until very recently as I’m sure you know. Here’s a recipe for French creams from the White House Cook Book, 1887. Please let us know if you try it.
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i>FRENCH CREAM CANDY. Put four cupfuls of white sugar and one cupful of water into a bright tin pan on the range and let it boil without stirring for ten minutes. If it looks somewhat thick, test it by letting some drop from the spoon, and if it threads, remove the pan to the table. Take out a small spoonful, and rub it against the side of a cake bowl; if it becomes creamy, and will roll into a ball between the fingers, pour the whole into the bowl. When cool enough to bear your finger in it, take it in your lap, stir or beat it with a large spoon, or pudding-stick. It will soon begin to look like cream, and then grow stiffer until you find it necessary to take your hands and work it like bread dough. If it is not boiled enough to cream, set it back upon the range and let it remain one or two minutes, or as long as is necessary, taking care not to cook it too much. Add the flavoring as soon as it begins to cool. This is the foundation of all French creams. It can be made into rolls, and sliced off, or packed in plates and cut into small cubes, or made into any shape imitating French candies. A pretty form is made by coloring some of the cream pink, taking a piece about as large as a hazel nut, and crowding an almond meat half way into one side, till it looks like a bursting kernel. In working, should the cream get too cold, warm it. To be successful in making this cream, several points are to be remembered; when the boiled sugar is cool enough to beat, if it looks rough and has turned to sugar, it is because it has been boiled too much, or has been stirred. If, after it is beaten, it does not look like lard or thick cream, and is sandy or sugary instead, it is because you did not let it get cool enough before beating. It is not boiled enough if it does not harden so as to work like dough, and should not stick to the hands; in this case put it back into the pan with an ounce of hot water, and cook over just enough, by testing in water as above. After it is turned into the bowl to cool, it should look clear as jelly. Practice and patience will make perfect.
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Masher
Photo Credit: my son, Max, one badass photographer
Time for another post for One Badass Cookie. This week, since the holidays are in full swing, I thought you’d like to see how to present your badass cookies for a crowd. As I noted in the first One Badass Cookie post, these cookies can stand in for any fancier dessert and make a great gift and an impression. So read on for this week’s practical advice on how to present cookies for a crowd, and the Badass Cookie Tip of the Week. Does it work? You bet your badass it does.
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Here’s my favorite way to bring cookies for a crowd to any party or holiday dinner. Trust me, you walk in with this, and it will elicit as many oohs and ahs as any fancy cake or pie, and maybe more, from children and adults alike. And one of the nicest things about it is that everybody pretty much gets their favorite, as there is a variety to choose from. It may look like a lot of work, but if you make lots of dough for each recipe in the weeks prior to your event, you can freeze the doughs in logs and then just slice them off and bake them on the day or day before you need them. Look for directions for freezing logs of dough, or for any portion of the recipes here that can be made ahead in all One Badass Cookie recipes.
Here’s my Badass Oatmeal Raisin Cookie recipe in a log that I froze last week. (To get this recipe, check back in the coming weeks when I’ll be posting more badass cookie recipes or scroll down to find the previous weeks’ recipes, Badass Chocolate Chip Cookies, Badass Ginger Molasses Cookies, and Badass Lemon Bar Cookies.) To freeze dough logs, simply take the dough from the mixing bowl once it is finished, and lay it onto a long sheet of plastic wrap. If the dough is soft, you may want to refrigerate it first to get it firm enough to shape. Alternatively, you can also use wet hands to shape logs, shape logs once they are wrapped up in the plastic, or loosely wrap a soft log, freeze it for thirty minutes or so and then take it out of the freezer to further shape it. Whatever you do, you will end up with a log like this, perfect for slicing into thick slices and baking off when you need it.
This is a shot of my favorite cookie basket. I got mine at Zabar’s. I like to line it with a nice cloth napkin in a coordinating color, but you can also use a sheet of waxed paper. Watch for another One Badass Cookie post coming soon that will show you lots of great ways to package cookies for gifts too.
Badass Cookie Tip of the Week: Double your sheetpans to ensure that the bottoms of the cookies don’t burn before the tops are done.
Got a Badass cookie recipe for Nancy and Laura? Send it to us and we’ll test it. If it’s badass enough, we’ll post it as a reader’s recipe and you’ll win a prize of Nancy’s book.
see also: One Badass Cookie - Ginger Molasses Cookie
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Masher
Been baking all morning and last night. Dessert for 18 people at my cousins’. Final tally: one black mission fig and lemon apple pie, one caramel banana bread pudding, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal dried cranberry and raisin cookies, ginger molasses cookies, and a coconut custard pie. I’m DONE! All I have left to do is bake off the ginger cookies, make whipped cream and toast coconut for the pie and finish slicing the lemon bars. Oh, did I mention the lemon bars?? Okay back to real life on Friday . . .
To find out about Laura's search for a long lost family recipe, click [
A James Beard Award winning book that tells a history of American women through food, recipes, and remembrances. Recipes and illustrations from prehistory to the present day.
Laura's memoir about a search for a recipe, happiness, and mythic Italy--with many unexpected adventures along the way.
In this culinary memoir, Nancy Ring combines funny and poignant stories of love and work with warm remembrances of a family that celebrates food with gusto and cherishes memories with passion...