Almond/Hazelnut Crescent Cookies

My Break-the-fast plans have changed. One of my friends, the woman who always brings dessert, isn’t able to come this year.

Guess what that means?

Yep. Dessert’s on me. 

Okay, my friend Barbara just offered her daughter-in-law’s services for some chocolate chip cookies. Everybody likes those so I said a quick yes.

I would love some homemade rugelach but don’t think I have time to make those this year, so I’m going to make a couple of plum tortes and also these fabulously rich and tender almond crescents (you can use hazelnuts), which melt in your mouth and are completely freezable (so I can actually do that today! Hurrah.

Almond/Hazelnut Crescents

1/2 pound unsalted butter

1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

2 large egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup finely ground almonds or hazelnuts

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar, approximately

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Beat the butter and 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer set at medium speed for one minute or until fluffy and well blended. Add the egg yolks, salt and vanilla extract and blend them in thoroughly. Add the flour and nuts and blend them in thoroughly. Wrap the dough and refrigerate it for at least one hour or until well chilled. Take off pieces of dough and shape them into 3-inch long cylinders, then into crescents with tapered ends. Place the crescents on ungreased cookie sheets about one-inch apart. Bake for about 25 minutes or until they are lightly browned. Let cool. Press the cookies into the remaining confectioner’s sugar or sift extra confectioner’s sugar on top of the cookies for serving.

Makes about 30 cookies

Egg Salad — My Go-To Staple

Egg Salad — My Go-To Staple

The kids are coming for the holiday weekend, so I’ve just made some egg salad. There’s always egg salad in my fridge. It’s like having salt and pepper in the cabinet, a no-brainer nibble. I make egg salad because everyone eats it. On a sandwich or crackers or cucumber slices or just plain on the plate. For lunch or as a snack or even for breakfast. 

Egg salad is my all-purpose go-to dish.

My son-in-law Jesse teases me about it. He rolls his eyes when he sees the fresh batch in the fridge. But then he takes it out and has some. If there weren’t any egg salad there he’d be upset that something was wrong.

I’ve tasted all sorts of egg salad over the years. My mother made it with onion and sometimes cooked potato. That was delicious. I’ve tasted egg salad with fresh dill. That’s good too. And there have been tastes of egg salad with olive, tuna, salmon, cooked peas and carrots and so on.

All good. But not plain old egg salad. I am an egg salad purist. I like it plain and always make it the same way. People say they like it because it’s dry, not overly loaded with mayonnaise — I use a microplane to crush the hard cooked eggs (you use less mayo that way). The only thing I change is the dish I serve it in. 

Everyone loves my egg salad, which is basically this: 

Egg Salad

• 8 hard cooked eggs
• 2-1/2 to 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard if you must

Crush the eggs using the finest grater possible (microplane is best) into a bowl. Add 2-1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise, season with salt, pepper (and mustard if you like it) and mix with a fork. Add slightly more mayonnaise if the egg crumbles don’t hold together.

Makes 4 servings

Mom's Fried Chicken

I work out twice a week with a trainer whose name is Robbie and usually as I am grunting and sweating and trying to do pushups and mountain climbers and crunches and generally trying to work off the calories, what do we talk about?

Food.

We spend endless amounts of time talking about what we like to eat, what we ate, what we will eat.

We ask about what we’ll be cooking that night. Or on the coming weekend. Or for someone’s birthday or Mother’s Day or what have you.

So the other day we got to talking about Judgement Day. You hear it on some radio stations and there are signs on the highway that Judgement Day is coming on May 21st.

Naturally this seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk about what we would eat if it were our last day on earth.

Wow, getting it down to one thing is too difficult, so we decided it would be a whole meal, plus maybe a cocktail hour with hors d’oeuvre and also dessert. We even talked about what alcoholic beverage we would choose and whether we would close it all out with a cigarette, or something.

The only thing we both picked were franks-in-blankets. Which is good, I have a box of them in my freezer.

But we spent an hour on this topic and I started thinking that if I could have anything, it would be my mother’s fried chicken, made the way she made it. Only she isn’t here to make it, which is maybe why I miss it so much.

What made her fried chicken so special is the simple coating, just seasoned flour, and the cooking fat: vegetable shortening. Yep, that awful stuff that clogs your arteries. But hey, if it’s the last day on earth, what’s the difference? 

One other thing my mother did to make her fried chicken taste so good — after she coated the pieces with flour, she let them air dry for a while. That way the coating sticks and doesn’t fall off in the pan.

The result? Crispy, dark golden brown, juicy, sumptuous chicken.

She made this dish often and I sometimes long for it. I don’t remember when I last cooked it, but it’s time now.

My mother used a whole chicken but I am going to cook only the wings. If it’s Judgement Day why bother with the meat? It’s really the skin and fried outside I like. And there’s that fabulous little bit of meat in that center wing part. My mother always gave that part to me and told me it was the softest, sweetest part of the chicken.

She was right.

Good memories. Good chicken. Here’s the recipe. You can use vegetable oil instead of shortening.

Mom’s Fried Chicken

• 12 chicken wings, cut into pieces
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• shortening or vegetable oil

Rinse the chicken pieces and set them aside. In a large dish, mix the flour with the paprika, salt, garlic powder and black pepper. Coat the chicken pieces with the seasoned flour. Place them on a cake rack to air dry for 25-30 minutes. Heat the shortening or vegetable oil in a deep saute pan over medium-high heat (should be about 1/2-inch) to 365 degrees (a bread crumb will sizzle quickly when you add it to the pan). Add a few chicken pieces at a time (adding too many will make the cooking oil too cool) and cook, turning the pieces occasionally, for 8-10 minutes or until crispy and golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Makes 12

Buttermilk Herb Slaw

I am constantly amazed at how creative people can be with food.

Take cole slaw. As a kid I remember cole slaw as that deli stuff with shredded cabbage and carrots in a thin white liquid that you bought when you were going to eat hot dogs or hamburgers or some sort of deli sandwich, like corned beef on rye.

My grandmother made her own cole slaw, which she referred to as “cull sloy.”

But now, in specialized food stores, supermarkets and bodegas everywhere, you can find a variety of “slaws,” which after all, just means “salad.” My local store offers “Asian Slaw” and “Health Slaw” in addition to plain old Cole Slaw.

But I like to make my own because that way I can get creative too. Like with this recipe — I like the tangy taste of buttermilk and it lets you cut down on the fatty mayonnaise of a standard recipe. The shredded snow peas add a rich, green color and a crispiness. Adding lots of fresh herbs gives it the refreshing taste of summer.

Btw, if you think it’s silly to buy buttermilk because you’re never going to use it for anything else, read this.

Buttermilk Herb Slaw

• 6 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup shredded snow peas
• 1-1/3 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 cup chopped chives or scallion
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (or use a mixture of herbs)
• 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
• pinch or two of cayenne pepper

Place the cabbage and snow peas in a large bowl an toss to distribute them evenly. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, chives, parsley and herb, whisk the ingredients and pour over the vegetables. Toss the ingredients and let rest for at least 15 minutes. Before serving, taste for seasoning and add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Makes 8 servings

Old Fashioned Stuffed Cabbage

For me, Stuffed Cabbage is like hot dogs, blooming onions and caramel corn. Foods I love to eat but don’t, except for once a year because once I take that first bite I over indulge and stuff myself and then feel awful the next day.

Right now is Stuffed Cabbage time.

I never actually tasted stuffed cabbage until after I was married. It was something the women in my husband Ed’s family would cook. My grandmother made Stuffed Grape Leaves, which are similar, but the leaves are tangier and her sauce more sour than the typical one for Stuffed Cabbage.

Over the years I tried to develop a recipe that Ed would like and later, would appeal to my sons-in-law, who like the dish sweeter than I was used to. This year I got it right, according to everyone in the extended family, and that’s saying a lot because we are an opinionated bunch.

Here’s the recipe:

Stuffed Cabbage

• 1 large head of green cabbage
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 medium onion, grated
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup raw white rice
• 2 tablespoons matzo meal or plain bread crumbs
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 12-ounce bottle chili sauce
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bring a large pot half filled with water to a boil. Cut out the hard center cabbage core. Remove the large cabbage leaves. Place the cabbage leaves plus the smaller remaining cabbage in the boiling water. Cook the cabbage leaves for about 3 minutes, or until they wilt. Cook the remaining cabbage core for 3-5 more minutes, or until you can easily remove the leaves. Cut off the hard stem portions from the large leaves so that they can be rolled easily. Set the leaves aside.

ALTERNATELY: if you plan ahead you can freeze the entire head of cabbage for 24 hours (or more). Thaw the cabbage and the leaves will already be wilted and you can avoid cooking them.

In a large bowl, mix the ground beef, grated onion, egg, rice, matzo meal and salt and pepper to taste. Place a mound of this mixture in the center of each leaf (more on the larger leaves of course). Enclose the meat by wrapping the cabbage leaves, envelope style. Place the stuffed cabbage leaves, seam side down, in deep baking dishes. (I separate the large rolls and smaller ones.)

Heat the vegetable oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 4-5 minutes or until softened. Stir in the brown sugar, chili sauce, lemon juice and raisins and cook for 3-4 minutes. Pour the sauce over the cabbage rolls. Cover the pan. Bake for 2 hours (or, to cook ahead, bake for one hour, freeze, thaw and bake for an additional hour).

Makes 18-24