The Depths of Winter

A couple summers ago, my brother gave me a small, potted olive tree for my birthday. It was August. The tree basked in the warm breezes and bright sunshine. Olives appeared. Those gorgeous silvery-green leaves sprouted. Life was good.


Winter arrived and the tree suffered. The leaves fell off. For a plant, it looked unhappy. Instructions that came with the tree directed me to find a “sunny” spot for "Olive". Additional web browsing revealed the tree needed a minimum of six hours, (yikes!! SIX HOURS?) of direct sunshine. Listen here, people! Chicago, in January, simply cannot deliver this. Darkness prevails. An impervious, gray cloud cover stays positioned over the city and days, no weeks, can pass without a single glimpse of sun. Our retired neighbors flee…some to Mexico, some to Florida. Sitting on the bus, surrounded by weary gray people bundled to their ears, makes me feel I’m part of a Hopper painting.

Here’s the thing, though…and you can call me a freak, but, I really believe it’s not so bad. Maybe I have low light-requirement levels, but to me there’s something soothing about our dark winters. Cloudy days encourage things like wandering through the Art Institute, reading, watching an old movie on tv on a Sunday afternoon or puttering in the kitchen and filling the apartment with the wonderful smells of something sweet or savory. There’s something about this kind of weather that engages the mind, and makes it turn inward. (Is it weird to say that I also love the subtle range of winter colors? The pewter of a sky heavy with snow. The purple-y gray of the horizon as the light fades at the end of the day. The beiges and browns of the barren shrubs and trees…sigh. Ok…enough!) The world moves so fast and we all feel so strapped for time…maybe winter is a way to force a little contemplation?

This is not true for everyone, and I feel lucky that the gloom doesn’t feel oppressive to me. (I have the opposite issue: places like LA make me cranky and nervous with all that relentless sun.) Anyway, this all brings me to how much I love cooking in winter. Yes, I love meat! And, yes, I love hearty, rustic foods, but sometimes, I crave something warm and comforting, but not too heavy or rich.

Nigel to the rescue! One of the many reasons I love his cookbook, Kitchen Diaries, is the feeling of camaraderie as I read along through the year. (This is one of those cookbooks which can live on your nightstand!) January in England is similar to January here. So when Nigel talks about it being dark and gray and having only a turnip and a few potatoes in his cupboards, it’s often the same situation in my own kitchen.

One of my favorite recipes is for what he calls, “Succulent little patties”. These tasty meatballs served in hot broth are just the thing for a wintry weeknight. A fat wedge of lemon is crucial here…the spritz of citrus over this dish before serving is like a little burst of sunshine. You can use ground turkey, or ground chicken and the addition of chopped pancetta or prosciutto (I’ve even used regular bacon in a pinch) gives the little guys a beautiful smoky, salty flavor.


I remember being utterly charmed by them the first time, and since then have made a few tweaks of my own. There’s also something about meatballs, as Nigel points out, ”they have a down-to-earth friendliness to them. A meatball never says, ‘Look at me, aren’t I clever?’ It just says, ‘Eat me.’”



Here’s to a happy, and healthy 2008 and the friendly meatball cheering us through the depths of winter.

Chicken Patties with Rosemary and Pancetta
adapted from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries
Serves 4

a medium onion, finely chopped
garlic--2 cloves, finely chopped
a thick slice of butter
4 slices of prosciutto, or a quarter-inch thick chunk of pancetta, or 4 slices of regular American smoked bacon, chopped
rosemary--three bushy sprigs
"minced" (ground) chicken, or turkey--1 lb.
salt/pepper
vegetable oil, for frying
chicken stock--2 cups

Soften the chopped onion and garlic in the butter in a non-stick pan over medium heat, until they are golden. Stir in the chopped prosciutto/pancetta. Strip the rosemary leaves from their stalks, chop them finely, then add them to the onions, letting it all cook for a few minutes until golden.

Let the mixture cool on a large dinner plate.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the ground turkey/chicken and the onion mixture, seasoning with black pepper and the tiniest pinch of salt -- the prosciutto is already salty so you can take it easy here.

Shape the meatballs and slightly flatten them. (Nigel says to make them the size of a "digestive biscuit", which I improvise to mean the size of a round water cracker.)
If you have time, refrigerate for up to 30 minutes. I've done as little as 15 minutes, and it seems to work.

Wipe the onion pan clean and get it hot. Add a little vegetable oil and brown the patties on both sides--a few minutes on each side should do it. Transfer them to an ovenproof dish -- I use a deep, round pie dish. Deglaze those gorgeous brown bits left in the pan with a half-cup or so of the chicken stock and pour that all over the patties. Add the rest of the chicken stock and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. (Adjust baking time to how big your patties are...if you are shaping them on the larger side you may need an additional 5-10 minutes in the oven.)

Serve two to three to a person in a shallow bowl and spoon some broth over. Squeeze a nice wedge of lemon over each serving, or serve with lemon wedges.

Nigel suggests a spinach salad on the side, and I second this, along with a crusty loaf of bread.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

My hands were hurting and I was feeling surly. Not a single present was wrapped, a dozen errands were waiting and I had been rolling out cookie dough for over an hour. Steve and the dog hightailed it out of the apartment, no doubt trying to get out of the way of Angry Baker. What possessed me to make roll-out, decorated cookies?
I have a very complicated relationship with baking,
and these cookies were not helping matters. After much wrestling with a tricky dough, which was unhappy as it warmed up and made me miserable trying to roll it out when properly chilled, I realized the job was not over. There was icing to make and decorating to do. Aaargh…

To make things worse, the results were a major disappointment. The vanilla cookies were bland and hard and the chocolate version not much better. Definitely not worth all that trouble.



That’s the thing about holiday baking. It’s a ton of trouble. And all that trouble comes tangled up with too many other things to do, in a month that has started to feel like one big hangover. With store decorations up in October, and holiday festivities beginning mid-November I am already cranky by the first week of December…with weeks of merrymaking to go.

For the past five or six years my angst over holiday overload has found an outlet through baking. Not only do I end up with wonderful, edible gifts for friends and loved ones, but the process itself, puttering alone late at night in the kitchen, gives me a small oasis of peace and quiet in the midst of all the holiday madness. The key is finding the right thing to bake, and here it is: biscotti. They keep for a long time and can be packed with a half-pound of your favorite coffee for a delicious gift to be enjoyed for weeks.

The outstanding biscotti recipe I have been making for years now (friends and neighbors want nothing else!) originated with my childhood friend, The Uber-Baking Goddess, Michaela. She is like the Tiger Woods of baking – making it all look effortless…with grace and good humor. To stand over one of her freshly baked, homemade stollen, inhaling the intoxicating aroma is to understand that she is a true master.

Years ago, Michaela mentioned that she was making cookies as gifts for her daughter’s teachers at school and that she had an excellent biscotti recipe. (We seem to talk about food a lot...big surprise.) They sounded delicious…packed with dried apricots, white chocolate and toasted almonds. A unique, tasty-sounding combination and something I thought would make me happy if I got it as a gift. Michaela had made some genius tweaks to the original, sent along the recipe and I’ve been making them every year since, to universal acclaim.



The weekend before Christmas is when I begin “biscotti production”, making two batches at a time. The extra trouble with biscotti, of course, is that they are baked twice. First, in long logs and then after being sliced, a second time, to dry them out. The first couple times I made them I couldn’t believe how much work they required. (Angry Baker, yet again…) There’s a whole lot of chopping…sticky apricots and messy chocolate and hard-to-control almonds rolling around the cutting board, then a dry-ish, crumbly dough to be shaped into logs, some baking, then slicing the crumbly logs and then baking a second time, with extra time to turn the cookies so each side toasts.



But do not let this deter you!! Yes, there is all that trouble…but you will be rewarded with something amazing. The texture is chunkier than a store-bought biscotti and the flavor combination is divine. Believe me…people will be genuinely moved by the fact that you’ve taken the time to make them something. And…they will not let you forget how much they love them, hinting…the following November, how they are looking forward to having those incredible biscotti again.

On those biscotti-baking nights…near midnight usually, I’ll look out my kitchen window at the city lights twinkling, marveling at how much work this all is, but then picturing my first cup of coffee in the morning, accompanied by a biscotti from the small stash I’ve saved for myself. Angry Baker, mellows and becomes Satisfied Baker…because they are sooooo worth it.




Almond-Apricot Biscotti
adapted from Bon Appetit
Makes about 40

2 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3 1/2 ounces imported white chocolate, chopped by hand
1 2/3 cups whole almonds, toasted and chopped coarsely, by hand
2 large egs
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon apricot-flavored brandy
2 teaspoons almond extract
6 ounces dried apricots, diced

Line 18 x 12 x 1-inch cookie sheet (or jelly roll pan) with foil. Butter and flour foil.

Combine flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, salt and ground ginger in a food processor. (The bowl of a standard processor will be pretty full, so I insert a layer of plastic wrap between the lid and bowl to keep a tight seal.) Process until a fine meal forms.
Add white chocolate and pulse 4-6 times to combine. Add chopped almonds and pulse again, 4-6 times.

Beat eggs, brandy and extract to blend in a large mixing bowl. Add flour mixture from the food processor and apricots. Using a flexible plastic dough scraper if you have one (it makes combining the dough much easier), stir until a moist dough forms, and you feel your bicep bulging!

Drop dough by spoonfuls in three 12-inch-long strips on the prepared baking sheet, spacing evenly. Moisten fingertips and shape each dough strip into 3 inch logs. Refrigerate until dough is firm (this is important -- don't skip it!) 2-3 hours, or even overnight.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Bake until logs are golden, about 30 minutes. Transfer sheet to rack and cool completely. (If you are making more than one batch, bake the sheets one at a time.)

Reduce heat to 300 degrees F. and once the logs are completely cooled, peel from the foil-lined pan and transfer to a cutting board. (I made the mistake once of putting them on a cutting board used for chopping onions. Big mistake. All the biscotti ended up with a faint, mysterious whiff of onion.)

Using a heavy, sharp knife, cut each log, crosswise into 3/4-inch wide slices. Arrange half of cookies, cut side down on a cookie sheet. Bake 10-15 minutes. Gently turn cookies over and bake 10-15 minutes longer. Transfer cookies to racks to cool. Repeat baking with remaining cookies. Cool cookies completely before packing in airtight containers.
(Large, glass mason jars look charming with the biscotti packed vertically.)