HOME BAKED HOLIDAY GIFTS

Home Baked Holiday Gifts

            Our Thanksgiving feasts are but an overstuffed memory, Black Friday and Small Business Saturday are past and now the Holiday season is truly upon us.  The nebulous thoughts of gifts for family and friends suddenly require a new focus.

            I will confess of jumping the season the day before Thanksgiving and doing advance shopping for a grandson at the Damariscotta Book store in order to tap the juvenile book expertise of the staff.  His yearly shifts in interest from knights to pirates to the Revolutionary war have left me inadequately prepared to find the right book for the occasion, but thankfully, the staff there always seem to come up with the appropriate selection.

            Fortunately some of his other tastes, like those for cookies, do not change from year to year.  It seems that all the grandchildren (and children for that matter) look forward to the cookie Holiday offerings from our house. Which means that after Thanksgiving I have to go to work and start baking. And although each year I try for another variety, there are the traditional and beloved varieties that raise the mournful cry of :”but you did not make,,my favorite this year”, if they do not appear in the mailed Christmas boxes. Strangely enough, one of the favorites is my chocolate chip cookies, which really have no special season.  Then there are the festive looking apricot-pecan-buttons, but the loudest protests come if I skip making my mother’s Latvian butter cookies in different seasonal shapes.  They are rich, addictively delicious, fragile, hard to ship, time consuming to make and worth every bit of the effort.

                                    Mother’s Latvian Butter Cookies

            Beat 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature with 1 cup sugar with an electric mixer until light. Beat in 4 egg yolks, one at a time until blended, then stir in 1 tsp. vanilla. Reserve egg whites for another use (see below). Then using a wooden spoon stir in 3 scant cups of flour, sifted together with 2/3 tsp. baking powder until well mixed. Chill dough for at least 2 hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. On a floured board roll out portions of the dough to less than ¼ inch in thickness.  Cut out desired shapes and arrange on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Separate out 2 more egg yolks, reserving the whites with the rest. Beat the egg yolks together with 1 Tblsp. water with a fork and use this glaze to brush the tops of cookies. Bake 12 to 14 min. until the tops are golden. Cool the cookies on the pan for a couple of minutes and finish cooling on a rack. Store in a tightly covered container.

            This leaves you with 6 egg whites, which will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days and can be used by the thrifty cook as a basis for either an angel food cake or at least two other varieties of delicious cookies: Coconut Macaroons or Meringue Kisses, both absolutely fat free and delicious.  Unlike the butter cookies, these are easy to make and while Meringues are gluten free, the Macaroons can easily be made gluten free.

                                    Meringue Kisses

            Preheat oven to 250 degrees and prepare baking pans by spreading them with brown paper (a cut open grocery bag works fine). Do NOT grease the paper. Turn 3 room temperature egg whites in a 2 quart mixing bowl and beat until stiff peaks with curved tips appear. Beat in 1 cup of sugar in 6 portions, beating until each is blended. Now beat in 2 tsp. lemon juice and continue beating until peaks are stiff.  Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls on the prepared pans about 1 inch apart. Bake 25 to 30 min. until pale cream color. Turn off the oven and leave oven door open with the pans inside for another 15-20 minutes. Remove from paper with spatula and cool on a wire rack.

                                    Coconut Macaroons

            Stir together in a large bowl 2 ¼ cups shredded sweetened coconut, 3 heaping Tblsp. flour (use rice flour for gluten free), ½ tsp. salt, 2/3 cup sugar.  Thoroughly mix with 3 slightly beaten egg whites and ½ tsp almond extract.  Drop teaspoonfuls on parchment lined cookie pans and bake at 325 degrees for about 20 minutes until edges of cookies turn light brown.  Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container. These cookies are best when fresh with their soft chewy texture.

            Now all I need is a rainy (or snowy) week to get my Holiday Gift baking accomplished.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)

The Three B's Collards

The 3 B’s Collards

            Classical music lovers are going to be disappointed with this column, for the unlikely title does not imply that I have somehow discovered an obscure association between Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and collards. The three B’s refers to the much less august company of beer, bourbon and bacon as important in the culinary sphere as the revered composers are to classical music. 

            This all started as many of my kitchen adventures with what the garden has produced in season.  This year it was an abundant crop of collards, which I had not grown previously and now that the fall had taken care of the rest of the garden, this beautiful crop of lovely dark green leaves, still standing proudly in one of my raised beds, was challenging me to find an equally delicious way to cook them.

            Well, collards are a member of the cabbage family, laced with vitamins and all kinds of other healthy compounds, but unlike cabbage, broccoli and kale, collards seemed less approachable in ease of cooking. Of course, there is a long tradition of collards being one of the staples of southern cooking with smoked ham hocks and hours of simmering on the back of the stove.

            This led me to consult Southern Living magazine, that my North Carolina daughter in law thoughtfully subscribes for me every Christmas to make sure that my foodie horizons do not get too narrow here in Maine. Sure enough, periodically they publish a variety of collard recipes and some have even suggested that the cooking time does not have to be as extensive as one presumed it to be. One recipe did catch my attention, since it required not only bacon, but also beer and bourbon as typical Southern ingredients. To make a long story short, some experimentation and modification of the recipe produced a truly outstanding green vegetable side that would go well with Thanksgiving turkey, steaks, chops and even chicken.

                         Bacon, Beer and Bourbon Collards

            Wash, stem and trim 2 bunches of collards, then rolling up batches of leaves, slice them in ¼ inch threads and set aside. Cut 4 thick slices of bacon in half inch pieces and sauté in a Dutch oven until crisp. Remove and drain on paper towels. Pour off all but 1 Tblsp. of the bacon fat and sauté 1 large coarsely chopped onion for 5 minutes, stir in one minced garlic clove. Stir in 1 (12 oz) can of beer, 1/3 cup bourbon, ¼ cup sugar, 3 cloves, 1/3 tsp. crushed red pepper (or less if you want it less spicy), bring to boil and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. With the pot on medium high heat, start adding the collards in batches, stirring until all leaves are wilted. Stir in reserved bacon and 1 cup of chicken broth or more to cover. Cover tightly and cook on low heat for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning with salt, stir in ½ cup cider vinegar and simmer for a few more minutes.

            This dish keeps well in the refrigerator for several meals, is easily reheated and could even be served for lunch with a fried egg on top.

            For a cooked, green vegetable dish, the three B’s collards even garnered what passes as high praise from my husband. “Not bad” was his Midwestern type assessment, even though he thought that the bourbon might have tasted better in a glass with some ice.

(I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)