Saffron Cookies

I enjoy the medicinal, iodine-like quality of saffron. Neal used some last week to flavor his delicious home-made version of that famous boxed rice and vermicelli side dish, slick with butter and full of tender onion bits. (I could eat buckets of that stuff!) And one of my favorite perfumes is L'Artisan Parfumeur's Safran Troublant, a concoction of saffron, rose, and vanilla that is just glorious.

The very talented Jennifer Tallapeneni of Pieknits recently posted about her new recipe for saffron cookies, and I just had to try it. I followed the recipe exactly as written, apart from using a teaspoon to form the cookies rather than a tablespoon (they were quite comfortably large, and I got 3 1/2 dozen instead of just 2). The first batch went in for exactly 12 minutes and formed light golden cookies with a bit of chew. In fact, they were almost the texture that I'm searching for in a homemade snickerdoodle. The second batch was left in for 14 minutes and produced much darker cookies that were very crisp. The flavor was different as well between the two batches, as the lighter-colored cookies were more saffron-y. I topped some of the second batch with sesame seeds, but not really enough to make much impact on the flavor.

While I like this recipe a great deal and will definitely use the base of it again, I think that the homestyle-chewy texture and high sweetness level robs the saffron from being all it can be. I'm thinking that a crumbly shortbread-style cookie might be better suited. I also think that a more over-the-top approach could be taken by creating saffron thumbprints filled with rose petal jam and topped with a sprinkling of crushed pistachios might be nice, too. Don't get me wrong, saffron does make a tasty addition to a quick drop cookie, too.

Here's Jennifer's original recipe. If you make them, be sure to tell her how they turned out!

Pieknits' Saffron Cookies

2 tablespoons milk, slightly warmed
Scant 1/4 teaspoon (a pinch) saffron strands, slightly crushed
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 cup white chocolate chips or slivered almonds or chopped cashews (optional)

In a little bowl warm the milk and add the saffron strands, slightly crushing them. Set aside and let steep, the longer the better. This can be done several hours before-hand. The saffron will turn the milk a lovely sunny yellow like this.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift or whisk flour, baking soda and salt together; set aside.

Beat butter until softened. Slowly add sugars and beat well until mixture slightly increases in volume.

In a small bowl mix together saffron mixture, egg and vanilla. Add egg mixture to butter mixture and beat, scraping down bowl as needed.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture gradually, stirring until flour is incorporated. Stir in optional mix-ins if using. Chill for at least an hour to overnight (or be lazy and stick in the freezer for 15 min. like me).

Drop by mounded tablespoonfuls onto baking sheet and bake 12-14 minutes. Let rest on baking sheet for a couple of minutes then transfer to wire racks to cool. Makes 2 dozen.

Top Chef Chicago Episode Four

This episode went by fast and furious for me. Maybe because I was drinking.

It started out, as always, showing the chefs at home, puttering about the kitchen, etc. Spike is ready for one of the Lesbos to hit the road.

Seconds later, we see Padma and the cheftestants in the Top Chef kitchen with Daniel Boulud. The Quickfire Challenge this episode is to create a beautiful vegetable plate using three techniques that might impress Chef Boulud.

The chefs commence to julienne-ing, tourné-ing, brunoise-ing, and generally making salad. After tasting, Daniel puts Manuel, Lisa, and Nikki on the bottom. He's a pretty harsh critic. Zoi, Dale, and Richard get cited as the best, with Dale taking top honors and immunity from elimination in the next challenge. Which is...

...to create a dinner with each course inspired by a favorite movie. Movie critic Richard Roeper and actress/comedienne Aisha Tyler (last seen being crushed to death when a plane lands on her car in the NBC series Boob Ghost Whisperer) would be among the diners, the former because he's a movie critic, and the latter because.... Errr...I'll have to get back to you on that.

The chefs draw knives to see who would be paired with whom, and Dale got to choose which dynamic duo he wanted to work with. The groups then went off to discuss movies and menus.

Ryan, not sure if Mark is from New Zealand or New England because of course they are so similar and right next door to each other, has a hard time communicating with his partner. They have no movies in common. Rather, Mark reels (ha!) off a list of Aussie and Kiwi movies including one called Bad Boy Bubby. A quick look at the IMDB entry for that film reveals keywords of "Animal Abuse, Disturbing, Dead Cat, Surreal, Vulgarity," so I can see why Mark might choose that one as an inspiration for food, especially if he's training to be a serial killer or something. Another odd choice is Bravo's to subtitle Mark for part of this scene. New Englanders Zealanders do speak English as a first language....

Finally, Ryan comes up with A Christmas Story (well, he comes up with part of the plot, he can't remember the title), particularly the scene where the family turkey is ruined and they are forced to eat Peking duck for supper. Mark has never seen the movie, but he's a sport and goes along with it.

Andrew is working with Richard and Dale on food inspired by Willy Wonka. He is convinced that their food will make the judges "culinarily crap in their pants."

He also thinks that they should present the food as Oompa Loompas. He even runs the idea past Spike.

The next day, we see the cheftestants hard at work in the kitchen. I am very impressed at how well they all work together. There doesn't seem to be any huge ego problems, as there were in past seasons. In the team of Richard, Andrew, and Dale, Richard was allowed to take the lead without question. And when his mini smoker gadget crapped out on them, the team rallied to smoke their salmon over a chunk of burning wood, rather than to bitch at each other and point fingers. Andrew, who in the first episode led me to believe that he had Tourette's, was surprisingly respectful and even said, "yes, Chef!" to Richard at one point.

The first course was theirs, a salmon dish with "faux caviar" and a white chocolate wasabi sauce. The judges were very impressed, despite Andrew's performance. And the fact that he used tapioca as a stand-in for caviar for the second time now.

Second course was Manuel and Spike's spring rolls with sea bass, inspired by Good Morning Vietnam. The black vermicelli they used was obviously a reference to Robin William's copious body hair.

Third course was Nikki and Jennifer's Il Postino-inspired tortellini, which Richard Roeper really loved even if the other judges weren't all that excited about it.

Did we ever figure out why she was there?

The fourth course was Ryan and Mark's Quail breast with carrot puree and a spring roll. Although they strayed from A Christmas Story's Peking duck, the judges were impressed with both their choice of bird and the story. The fact that Ryan didn't have to flap his arms and gesticulate wildly to get his point across helped a lot too.

Then came Antonia and Zoi's fifth course, inspired by the Almodovar movie Talk to Her, full of vivid colors and strong women. So they serve two skinny lamb chops with a cream-colored cauliflower puree. The only vivid thing on the plate was the rareness of the lamb, and that wasn't all that bright. While the flavors were good, the food didn't quite match the movie.

What I thought was a bizarre choice of movie, Top Secret's cow scene yielded a NY strip with short rib won ton and a caramel sauce by Lisa and Stephanie. The judges swooned over this one and for a minute there I thought Stephanie had a third victory in the bag.

However, the first course of chocolate and salmon proved to be the top choice and Richard was credited with the win.

The cheftestants sequestered in the storage room bitched that there was no way chocolate and celery root could taste good, and Zoi whined if that was what the judges wanted "then seeya later." She, like many other chefs who have competed on the show, doesn't seem to realize that it takes more than the ability to poach an egg or make pasta from scratch to be a Top Chef. Innovation and a strong understanding of how flavors work together--unusual and otherwise--are huge parts of being successful in a professional kitchen. Otherwise, Zoi, you may just be a cook.

Then it was time to pick a loser. Ordinarily, the team leader is the one punished or rewarded in these challenges, so Spike should have been blamed for the failure of the sea bass spring roll (as it was his idea). Instead, Manual gets the boot because he was a pussy and didn't assert himself by pushing Latino flavors over Asian. And he chose to pickle some Swiss chard. Oh yeah, that's a big sin in my book too.

Plus the dish was ugly.

Good Pizza

...is a rare thing these days, what with the proliferation of mediocre chains like Papa John's, Pizza Hut, and Dominos. Pizza crusts are now uniformly doughy and flavorless (or crackery and flavorless) and are topped with dull sauces and overly-salty cheese. Eating some super-salty pizza last week got me to reminiscing about Pizzas I Have Known. (The salt bomb was from Pizzeria Speranza, in Charles Center. They do a pretty good NY-style pizza, better than most, but I don't recommend the variety coated in sliced green olives. I was parched for the rest of the day, and my lips were pink, swollen, and horribly chapped for two days afterwards.)

When I was a little kid, the pizza of choice in my family came from Pappy's, a local chain. They've been gone a very long time, and although I can still taste their pizza on my mind's tongue, I don't really remember it that well. What I do remember vividly is the birch beer, a drink I was only able to get with a slice of cheese at Pappy's.

Another pizza we ate a lot of came from a joint called George's, on Broadway in Fells Point. When my Uncle Frank wanted pizza (we lived in the same house as he and my Grandma), he wanted George's. Unfortunately, it was fairly often, and I soon got sick of their doughy crust. Not to mention their soggy fries and totally disgusting fried mushrooms. I got sick of a lot of take-out food that way, when Uncle Frank got in one of his ruts. We ate a lot of fried chicken and Western fries from the chicken stand in the Broadway Market too, but I digress....

Every rare once in a while, when we were in Highlandtown, we'd get a pie from the venerable Matthew's Pizzaria. People still rhapsodize about their pizza, but honestly, I don't get it. I always thought it was flavorless. A recent trip to DeSantis, where they proudly serve Matthew's Pizza, only reinforced that notion.

When my family moved out of Fells Point, Armand's Chicago Pizzaria became our local pizza joint. They served a pie that was delicious from top to bottom, particularly the Italian Sausage version, which used slices of sausage rather than crumbles. The edges would curl up fetchingly and get crisp, as pepperoni does. It was a sad day in our house when they closed their doors. They reopened as PizzAPeel, which was pretty dismal and disappointed us terribly with the one pie we tried there.

As an adult, I lament the availability of really good pizza in my area. Mr Minx and I live fairly close to the Egyptian Pizza in Belvedere Square, and while I like their fancy fixin's very much (particularly the India and the Fells Point), it's not real pizza. For that, we have to make a field trip to Dundalk to eat at Squires. We had our share of pizza there when I was a kid, but I didn't appreciate it then as much as I do now. The sauce at Squire's has a particular piquancy that tastes a bit like celery seed to me, and which I really enjoy. We usually get the "everything," (sausage, meat sauce, pepperoni, mushrooms, green pepper) sans the green pepper, which comes with such a heavy blanket of toppings, half fall off before the slice reaches the mouth...yet the crust doesn't get soggy. Yum! (We're eating there later in the week and I can't wait!)

Finally, when we're too lazy to cook and don't feel like Chinese, we call Yeti on York Road. They're a Nepalese carry-out that specializes in Indian cuisine, but they also have pretty decent pizza. Their deluxe pizza has ham, the once-favorite food of our cat Pete (now it's roast lamb), so everyone is happy. It's not Pappy's, or Armand's, but it's pretty good.

Apart from the trendy Joe Squared which we haven't yet tried, has anyone found really good pizza in the Baltimore area?

Bizarre Foodie Dream

I had a dream early this morning that I was in the kitchen in my family's house in Guilford. I was preparing an elaborate feast borrowing elements from several Asian cuisines and I was looking for someone to feed. I thought my brother would be a likely candidate. (Although he is just shy of 5 years younger than me in reality, he was about 15 years younger in the dream.) When I went off to find him (it was a big house) my mother got tired of the mess in the kitchen and put everything away in the fridge. When I returned from my search, fruitless, everything was already cold. Upset, I started pulling things back out of the fridge - several salads, garnishes, various exotic leaves I was using as plates(!), meat - to reheat.

My brother suddenly showed up, as did several strangers, all clamoring for food. Before I know it, the kitchen has more than doubled in size, I have about twenty dishes that I am in the middle of preparing, and there are dozens of people waiting to eat. I am starting to grab strangers and assign them tasks.

"Please reheat this and place about a tablespoon's worth on each plate," I said as I put a casserole filled with the ginger-scented leaves of about 100 brussels sprouts into the hands of a strange woman.

"And you, top each spoonful of that with a little sauce," as I handed a bowl of sauce to another woman.

I wanted to plate everything, all umpty-three dishes, and then serve, but I notice that people were starting to serve themselves buffet-style, one of which was Martha Stewart. She was acting all imperious like it was her kitchen. I informed her that it was not a buffet, and she looked miffed. I then shouted above the din to make an announcement to all assembled: "People, this is not a buffet. If you've already filled your plate, please take it into the dining room and eat. Everyone else who's not here to help me please leave and you'll get plates eventually!" or something like that.

And then I woke up, annoyed. What the hell was that all about?