Sugar Cookies Shape Our Tomorrows

We are our parents’ legacies.  They didn’t fill in all the gaps and soften the jagged edges of our future, but they fashioned the way we view the world, directly and indirectly.

Sugar cookies lit up my childhood.  They were one of my mother’s favorites.  I didn’t even have to step through the front door to smell the deliciousness.  If I were outside playing, I stopped what I was doing and came running.

The experts say smell is one of our most indelible memories.  I believe it.  I’d go further and say the smells wafting out of our mother’s or grandmother’s kitchens left an imprint that follows us the rest of our lives, and often shapes our tastes.  Maybe it goes beyond smells.  Bowls, utensils, the sight of a glass-measuring cup filled to the brim with fluffy, white flour.  The concentration on my mother’s face, and the swish of her starched apron.  The delicate scent of vanilla and the sandpaper sound of sugar being mixed with butter.

She would carefully explain each step of a recipe, as if she were teaching an adult to cook.  When the cookies went in the oven,  she would let me lick the bowl.  I used a wooden spoon, but the term stuck and I asked my own kids, if they would like to lick the bowl.  A time-honored tradition.  Even though my sons are grown, I still would never think of washing the bowl without asking.

My mother, whom everyone called Peach, or Peachie (NEVER Peaches!), worked from an endless supply of recipes.  Some out of a book, some passed down, some cut out of the morning’s newspaper.  I don't know the derivation of this sugar cookie recipe. I only know my momma used it and it’s the most delicious sugar cookie recipe I know.

Other people agree.  I have to put aside a stash for my family, or risk a riot.  Check this recipe and know that these cookies are not for the faint of heart.  It’s takes fortitude and endurance to stand up to this kind of caloric concentration.  Call it an integral part of the “I’ll Diet Tomorrow Diet.”

Peachie’s Sugar Cookies

I use a food processor for these cookies and just keep adding ingredients from start to finish.

Cream 1 Cup each of butter, sugar, and powdered sugar.  See below for making your own powered sugar. *

Add 2 eggs and beat again.  Now stir in one cup of salad oil, and1 teaspoon of pure vanilla.

Combine 4 ½ cups of flour with 1 teaspoon each of baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Add the flour to the egg/butter mixtures to make a dough.

Chill the dough for at least an hour.

*Don’t have powdered sugar?  No prob.  Put one cup of regular granulated sugar in a blender, add a teaspoon of cornstarch and blend until you have a fine powder.  I use my coffee grinder instead of a blender.  Faster.  Finer.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and form the dough into small balls.  Place the balls on a cookie sheet (you’ll need at least a couple).  Faintly moisten the bottom of a drinking glass, dip it in granulated sugar, and use it to lightly press each dough ball.  You’ll have to keep re-dipping the glass in sugar.  Add a chocolate piece or a nut on top, or (my favorite) just leave the cookies plain.

Cook in a preheated, 350ºF oven for 12-15 minutes.  When the cookies spread and turn golden, they’re done.  Do not wait for them to brown.  You want them to be more or less the color of butter.  They will be soft when you first take them out, but will firm up as they cool.  After about five minutes, use a spatula to remove the cookies from the cookie sheet and put them on a cooling rack or the kitchen counter to fully cool.

Serve hot or room temp, with coffee, tea, or cold milk.

Don’t forget to hide some before your guests arrive.

Chicken Pot Pie - Inspired by True Events!

For me, chicken pot pie is a warm memory of my mother’s kitchen.  She always made it from scratch, but that was a different era, when almost everything, including socks and baseballs, was made from scratch.  I loved her version. Later, some evil person, cursed be his name, introduced me to the perversion of clotty, tasteless muck you find in the frozen food section. For years I wandered in culinary purgatory.

Then, one happy day, I was in a London pub and a friend ordered the pub’s version of chicken pot pie.  I silently mourned his unfortunate choice.

He took a forkful, licked his lips and smiled.  Unexpected.  I had already cleared a path for him to make a galloping exit toward the Gents.

He offered me a bite.  Years of disgust faded like the memory of the time I discovered the difference between super glue and lubricant.   This was a heavenly blend of creamy flavors, dotted with herbs and sealed in a joyously flaky crust.  At that moment I made a vow to bring joy to the world with a startling reintroduction of chicken pot pie, as it should be.  Light. Delicious. Amazingly satisfying.  Needing only a soft white wine to bring comfort to the masses.  My gift to the world.

For the crust:

2 ½ Cups all-purpose flour

½ Tablespoon Salt

½ Cup (1 Stick) of chilled butter

½ Cup shortening

4 Tablespoons ice water

Mix the flour and salt.  Using forks or a pastry cutter, cut the shortening and butter into the flour.  Sprinkle on the ice water.  (I normally do a bit of this and that, but the ice water should be measured, or the dough will be too soggy.)

After cutting in the flour and shortening

After adding the ice water

Note:  Do not use a food processor to make pie dough.  The butter and shortening will be cut in too finely and the crust will not be as flaky.

Press the dough out into a rough circle, cover it front and back with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

For the Filling:

4 large chicken breasts  (1 ¾ pounds) cut into bite sized chunks

2 Cups chicken broth, plus another heaping tablespoon of granulated chicken broth, or one of the small cups of concentrated, jellied chicken broth, to intensify the flavor

1 Cup dry white wine

4 Cups sliced mushrooms

1 large onion, cut in quarters and sliced thinly

1 ½ Cups celery, chopped, including the leaves

1 large carrot, split and chopped

3 Tablespoons of chopped fennel leaves or tarragon, or another fresh herb

6 ounces of soft white cheese (I used a neutral cheese.  Brie or       Camembert will work, but will give a different flavor.)

1 Tablespoon butter

1 Tablespoon olive oil

Celery leaves add a lot of flavor

A very soft, neutral cheese

Heat the oven to 375ºF

In a large skillet (I used a 12 inch), add the butter, olive oil, wine, and one cup of chicken stock.  Next add a half-cup of celery and onion, plus the chicken.  Stir over medium heat.  (You want the chicken juice to remain, so do not use high heat.)  After 2-3 minutes, when the chicken has lost its pink color, add the remainder of the chicken stock, as well as the granulated chicken stock.  Stir and bring to a boil. 

As the mixture comes to a boil, add the mushrooms and remaining vegetables.  Sprinkle the fennel over the mixture and continue to cook and stir. Don’t worry if the skillet is full.  Vegetables cook down nicely.

When the chicken is cooked, stir in bits of the soft, white cheese.  When that is blended, remove the mixture from the heat, while you roll out the piecrust.

Put the chicken mixture in an oven proof baking dish and lay the rolled piecrust over the top.  With any excess dough, make crust decorations as desired, or as your wife insists. Remember to poke holes in the crust to allow steam to escape while it bakes.

Slide the chicken pot pie into the pre-heated oven and bake until the pie crust is golden.  About 35 minutes.

Serves 8 to 9 hungry folks.

I prefer hot chicken pot pie, but it is also good at room temperature.

Homburg Farmers’ Market – Like Having Your Own Fields and Dairies

Strawberry season

Lots of mushrooms

Spitzkohl or pointed cabbage

Let your imagination run

Love those daisies

I love farmers’ markets.  Fresh.  Honest.  For the most part, at least in Germany, you’re buying local, from the folks who picked the berries, dug the potatoes, planted the flowers, and cultured the milk to make the cheese.   There’s no fragrance like a fresh fragrance and no taste like a fresh taste.

I admit I’m a cook.  Not a chef.  Chefs are cooks who know what the hell they’re doing. I fill plates with food; they create dishes that delight the eye, and linger on the taste buds and in the memory.  I make gravy.  They make delicate, silky sauces.  I can’t hang with that crowd and the folks from Michelin are never going to nail a star on my door.  But, that doesn’t mean I can’t shop where the chefs shop and use ingredients that carry the fragrances and tastes of the fields.

I grew up in Michigan and still remember sneaking into a farmer’s plot of corn to pull off an ear of Silver Queen and gobble it down, the sweet juices running off my chin.  No cooking.  No butter, or salt, or pepper.  Nothing else is needed when the vegetables are that fresh.

For the most part, I like my green vegetables at that perfect stage, past raw, but barely cooked, what the chefs call crisply tender.  Salads should be mixed field greens, blends of color, with a very light dressing that hides none of the fresh flavor.  See an earlier blog for basic vinaigrette and never buy salad dressing again!

My bottom line is:  Why eat when you can dine, often for the same cost, or much less.  Farmers’ markets offer that choice and Homburg’s is no exception.  On Tuesdays and Fridays, from 9 until noon, I like to wander and dream and chat with the growers and sellers.  “What should I use these mushrooms for?” and “What’s the difference between this cabbage and that?”  Matter of fact, the pointed cabbage in the photo (Spitzkohl) is tasty and easy to fix.  In my next blog I’ll give you a recipe.

Not to be missed is the tasting.  Never seen a cheese maker that didn’t offer a thin slice, or an olive merchant that wouldn’t let you savor the distinct flavor differences between oil and brine cured.

Germany is known for its salt and smoke cured meats.  Hams, sausages, each with a different name and taste, and all so delicious they’ll make you forget Hormel forever.  Your body will thank you for leaving the nitrates and other chemical shortcuts behind.

Culinary adventures are the perfect time to expand your repertoire and astonish your family.  Maybe I shouldn’t use the word ‘astonish.’ How about lead your taste-bud-retarded kin slowly and carefully into new and pleasant pastures? 

Eating healthy, vitamin laced, fresh meals are neither difficult, nor time consuming.  Average cooking time for greens such as broccoli is twelve minutes.  Carrots and green beans are the same.  Stir-fried cabbage and onions are even less.  Put hams or roasts in a pan with flavored broth, cover and stick them in the oven at 225ºF (110ºC) and let them simmer all day, while you do other things.  Want to spice things up? Add a sausage or two to the pot.

 There are other benefits to good cooking.

At a recent dinner party, one of my guests admonished two young men to learn how to cook.  “A man who cooks well is a chick magnet,” she said.  Golly, I never thought of that!

Shopping is hard work.  Time for a break.

Mastering the Ubiquitous Biscuit

This recipe was handed down by my illustrious ancestor, William the Baker, who in addition to his culinary skills, mastered several foreign languages simply by walking into bars and pinching foreign women’s breasts.  It’s how he learned such useful phrases as ‘cheeky bastard’ in Dutch, and ‘a rolling pin to your poolroom’ in Norwegian.  His name was later shortened to Stubby after pinching the breast of an Irish butcher’s wife.

            But, no matter his shortcomings, he was a hell of a baker and his specialty was biscuits.  This was more than a hundred years before Alfred Bisqslow made his first attempt at formulating Bisquick.  Back then, biscuits were reserved for special occasions such as weddings, divorces, and food fights.

            No longer merely for self-defense, the ubiquitous biscuit has come to mean the warmth and good fellowship of Granny’s kitchen, and a way to keep rambunctious young ‘ums out of the stone jar of lightnin’. So, gather ‘round chillins and let’s make some nice little resting places for creamy butter and fresh fruit jam.

Basic Biscuit Recipe – first take a slow pull outta da jug to activate the brain muffin

Then:  put 2 cups of flour, three tablespoons of baking powder, and a teaspoon of salt in a bowl.  Scramble all them things t-gether.  Next, finely cut in 6 tablespoons of butter.   (If your homestead has lectricity, cheat and use a food processor.)  Add a cup of milk to the flour mixture and stir until you have medium soft dough, not dripping, but not stiff.  Too wet?  Add a little more flour.  Drop the dough onto a floured surface and pat it out to thickness of about half an inch.  Cut into squares or rounds.  Place on an un-greased baking sheet and bake in a pre-heated, 450 degree F oven, unless you’re one of them crafty foreigners, then set your oven at 232 degrees C.  About 12 minutes later, you should be receiving compliments, or if you’re lucky, being called a cheeky bastard