Dec. 14th, 2002 08:40 pm
Bit by the baking bug!
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muckefuckWhen Monshu's laid up with a cold, he sleeps more than a cat. We woke up within minutes of each other this morning, even though I turned in hours after he did. He sent me out for chicken broth so he could extend the remaining turkey stock into another tasty--though less hearty--soup.
He also asked for some dessert. I bought some truffles as a fallback and thought about what I could make for a change. Last weekend, I noticed that the big bag of Korean pinenuts was still in his cabinet and tried to think of some way to use it up. The first one that comes to mind, of course, is cookies. Fortunately, his Italian cookbook had an easy recipe for fave dei morti. I'd tried making a Catalan version of these for All Souls last year, but I couldn't get the almonds finely ground enough to soak up the binders in the batter. (And the cookbook didn't emphasise properly that this was important. Thanks so much, Andrew Colman!) I had to keep adding flour to my sticky mess just so I could shape cookies, and these ended up too tough and tasteless. Very, very disappointing.
Marcella Hazan requires the nuts to be chopped, not ground, so I kept my sanity. Using only pinenuts, rather than mixing them with almonds, seemed like a good idea, but it ended up being overkill. They're nummy, I'm happy with them, but they're a little too one-note.
Despite what I said in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rollick's journal about Christmas nougats, it's cookies that make the holiday for me. I think it would still arrive if my sister didn't make sugar cookies in whimsical shapes decorated with coloured sugar, but I've no desire to test that. I think my sister-in-law feels the same way about her family's polvorones. Much as I do love Pfeffernüsse, Lebkuchen, Anislaibchen, Spekulatius, gingerbread, bourbon balls, etc., they're not in the same league.
What's different is the process. The way polvoronifacture has been described to me, it takes two people. As for the sugar cookies, you could do them all by yourself, but it'd be odd. There'd be no give-and-take, no consensus on which reindeer cookie should be the one to get the red-hot nose instead of a chocolate chip and how many angels are needed.
He also asked for some dessert. I bought some truffles as a fallback and thought about what I could make for a change. Last weekend, I noticed that the big bag of Korean pinenuts was still in his cabinet and tried to think of some way to use it up. The first one that comes to mind, of course, is cookies. Fortunately, his Italian cookbook had an easy recipe for fave dei morti. I'd tried making a Catalan version of these for All Souls last year, but I couldn't get the almonds finely ground enough to soak up the binders in the batter. (And the cookbook didn't emphasise properly that this was important. Thanks so much, Andrew Colman!) I had to keep adding flour to my sticky mess just so I could shape cookies, and these ended up too tough and tasteless. Very, very disappointing.
Marcella Hazan requires the nuts to be chopped, not ground, so I kept my sanity. Using only pinenuts, rather than mixing them with almonds, seemed like a good idea, but it ended up being overkill. They're nummy, I'm happy with them, but they're a little too one-note.
Despite what I said in
rollick's journal about Christmas nougats, it's cookies that make the holiday for me. I think it would still arrive if my sister didn't make sugar cookies in whimsical shapes decorated with coloured sugar, but I've no desire to test that. I think my sister-in-law feels the same way about her family's polvorones. Much as I do love Pfeffernüsse, Lebkuchen, Anislaibchen, Spekulatius, gingerbread, bourbon balls, etc., they're not in the same league.What's different is the process. The way polvoronifacture has been described to me, it takes two people. As for the sugar cookies, you could do them all by yourself, but it'd be odd. There'd be no give-and-take, no consensus on which reindeer cookie should be the one to get the red-hot nose instead of a chocolate chip and how many angels are needed.
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