Tahini Shortbread

The other day, when my 9 month old (what? what? how has it been that long?) was doing one of his I have-no-idea-how-long-this-will-be naps, I thought I'd get ahead in the kitchen.  You know those moments, though, when the second you start doing something, bebe wakes up, and those other moments when, it seems, they just conk for two hours and you have yourself some Time. The trouble is, you never know which of them it will be. So you have to be quick and not get yourself in too deep. Making dough for this shortbread is done in ten minutes. Then it sits in the fridge overnight, and gets baked off the next morning. This shortbread is my new favorite. I don't know why this recipe isn't more popular? NYT by way of Soframiz by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick. I love, love sesame seeds and tahini, in baked goods, more and more (they are my new favorite banana bread compliment) and the complex simplicity, if you will, in sandy, tender shortbread, is just fab.

It is waiting for you

I keep three cookbooks on top of my fridge at the moment: Smitten Kitchen Everyday, Small Victories, and Little Foodie, about baby food--which, I have yet to open and "cook" from (couple more months... but I like the reminder). I've been opening the first two more often than I've expected over the past few months. I love to riff, and time and again I don't cook from recipes, but there is something about simplifying the game by picking something printed, leaving it open on the counter, going about your day, and coming back to it when you have a chance. It is waiting for you. I am getting tired of reading recipes on my phone mid-recipe. 😙😙😙 I want to open a book these days.

Deb's Small-Batch Oatmeal Cookies

Well, I've just marked two months into this mothering thing. Sometimes it feels like I blinked and woke up into a different...I wouldn't say life, because a lot is the same, but when you have a baby, you come home with, a baby. And (Jack) is the cutest, healthiest, smartest little nugget. We are...in awe. At the moment he is laying in my lap half sleeping, hiccuping and just flashed me a smile. We also, within the first two weeks of postpartum haze, moved out of our very small former apartment of five years, into the larger apartment next door, and boy is it more comfortable. Between caring for and feeding the baby and managing to attend to ourselves, we schlepped our stuff a couple of feet over the course of a week or so and suddenly on Thanksgiving night, we were eating a turkey breast with cranberry sauce (my husband freaked out at me when he saw me handling a large raw turkey part in the middle of us moving and attending to an infant because it clearly wasn't necessary but was definitely festive and delicious) and later that night we were marathon moved, at the table in our new digs, with Jack apparently insisting on joining us (we are exclusively breastfeeding). Ed took a picture of that but it won't go up here. Thank God for two hands.

Things I'm freezing for postpartum

The media-stereotyped images of frazzled new parents grabbing at trail mix in the middle of the day or night do not give me comfort. We will be new parents, yes but I keep reminding myself that it is just us and we will be together at home. When you're a frequent home-cook, a kitchen production system is already enmeshed into your daily life on some level, and you need that continuity to feel grounded. So whether you're also expecting, or cooking for the future, I thought I'd round up a post about stocking the freezer with food, which I'm doing a bit at a time. I started freezing some baked goods like always, but a bit more. Once a stack of cakes and loaves was in there, I moved on to make some tomato sauce with August's Roma tomatoes and chicken broth with a bag of bones and vegetable scraps, then half of this week's homemade hamburger buns, you know, building a supply (update: will make more buns again this week cuz we ate them; I have loved burgers at home in this pregnancy).

Banana Bread
The no-brainer of freezing. Mini loaves are my friend here, as they allow for rationing and rotating.

I welcome thee

In just 4-5 months, we'll be first-time parents to a lively kicking baby boy. I'm taking a moment to pop on here today and pull away from the Internet comparisons of strollers, cribs, loungers, bouncers (do we need one?), irresistibly cute footed pajamas, how birth works, how we plan for the future, to boast about pie. It's ok with me if it's ok with you. For, the first thing I thought when diving into this whole mom-and-dad-to-be thing is, there's no "right" way. Do we really not know what to do? Or do we simply have a plethora of opportunity to watch what others are doing and second guess if we are or will be doing it well enough?

PBJ

When I plan to make something again and again, it goes on here. Of course, I haven't been sharing everything. There's been more bread. And this coffee cake and muffins to use the last of my frozen summer blueberries (where are you, rhubarb? Come soon?) and I brought Julia Turshen's easy orange cake to Easter and made mini ones for us to enjoy in the days after, too. When I caught a Facebook Live video of Liz Prueitt of San Fransisco's Tartine, casually making these gluten free nut butter bars, that also happen to be one-bowl, gluten-free and a lot more wholesome than your average peanut butter and jelly bar featuring lots of flour, butter and sugar, I was smitten. Liz uses almond butter, I'd use peanut, she used blueberry jam, I used strawberry, and another time, apricot, making them essentially a jazzed up PBJ sandwich in bar form, which means they're a good breakfast option, or afternoon nosh. What's not to love? I've already been back to them twice.

While you wait

Over the Christmas week break, I opened a package of yeast for the first time. To make: Saltie's focaccia, which is the only recipe I will ever need for focaccia. I'm not sure why I waited so long to tackle yeast, but suddenly it feels like the perfect time. We could all use a bit of kneading these days. Or no-kneading, in the case of a lot of recipes in the new wave of bread. Waiting, resting and patience. Magical things take place, while you wait. The purpose of sleep? To forget, researchers have said. There is no better place to see this than with bread.

The gift of time

I've been thinking a lot about time lately. How easy it is to lose track of it, "waste" it, judge how you spend it. And what is worth your time. There are things that take a lot of effort, aka, time, which translates to work which translates to money. This is a cheap meal that takes time. But it doesn't take much effort. The only work lies in the ability to decide to start. 

In this case, my husband suggested a few weeks ago, on a Sunday, we make the slow cooked classic Italian sauce (and my plans for a quick chicken thigh dish were averted). It was 3:30 pm and we had none of the ingredients. As we headed to the store (the specialty one with better meat, I read Marcella Hazan's recipe again and did a double take when I checked on a trusted blogger's rendition. Three hours of cooking time for the final stage, but "up to another 2 hours" for the first two steps. 

Don't be tempted to rush, is a phrase often associated with bolognese. Also, trust Marcella. 

I stopped us in the street. We did not start this early enough, I explained, and I had to be the killjoy. After some huffing, we bought a strip steak instead, sat down for an espresso, and headed home. I gathered the ingredients over the next week (simple, frugal ones, really) and on snowy Saturday, we got to it (with non-specialty store beef). After some fine dicing of a mirepoix and some stirring, the flavors are left to build at a simmer, and build and build. 

A third of the sauce is in my freezer now, along with the rest of the bundle of the fresh pappardelle from a pasta store in our neighborhood, and I plan to pull it out on a night I am strapped for time. Although, now I'm kinda hoping for another snow day to make a second batch.

Marcella Hazan's Bolognese

Adapted barely from NY Times

3 tablespoons butter plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta
½ cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
⅔ cup chopped carrot
¾ pound ground beef chuck 80% (or you can use 1 part pork to 2 parts beef)
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup whole milk
Whole nutmeg
1 cup dry white wine
1 ½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice

Pappardelle pasta and grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese to serve

Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring vegetables to coat them well. Add ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color. Add milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely (45 min). Add a tiny grating -- about 1/8 teaspoon -- of nutmeg, and stir. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated (another 45 min), then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, add 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt. --NYTimes