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Savory Olive Oil and Walnut Sables

27 Feb

My friend Corinna once confessed to me that when her child was a mere toddler, she developed the habit of calling all crackers “ccokies.”  It’s not like her toddler knew the difference between a cookie and a cracker at that point, having never been served a cookie at that point in his life, so I, of course, thought her plan was pure, platinum genius.

When you really think about what makes a cookie a cookie, I suppose there is not a lot, besides sugar, that really separates a cookie from a cracker.  There is a similar correlation, I feel, between what makes a muffin a muffin and not a tiny little cake (because, really, in most cases there is very little that separates a muffin from a cake, save for serving size and variations in toppings and/or frosting).  Both crackers and cookies begin with some sort of flour, followed by some sort of fat to provide texture and flavor.  After those two building blocks come flavorings and leavening agents, both of which will then veer you off in the direction of either cookie or cracker.

But what happens when you start thinking of how to join the two elements?  Is it possible to make a cookie that is more like a cracker, or a cracker that is suspiciously like a cookie?  Perhaps more importantly, why would someone want to accomplish such a thing?

The answer to all those questions, I give you this:

Melt-in-your-mouth sables that have the delicate, shattering texture of a cookie, but are speckled with fine bits of walnuts and a sprinkling of savory spices.  This is why you merge a cookie and a cracker.  Because there is nothing finer to nibble while having a glass of wine at the end of the day.  Because sometimes when you want a bit of a snack, you don’t really want any sugar to go along with it.  Because these, my friends, may be the most delicious experiment I have ever dreamed up on a whim, and I think you’d be missing out terribly if you didn’t try them out for yourself.

Savory Olive Oil and Walnut Sables

¼ cup walnut pieces

1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 egg yolk

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons water

Optional toppings: caraway seeds, truffle salt, poppy seeds

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse walnut pieces 5 or 6 times until they are ground medium-fine, with a few small chunks of walnut remaining.  Add flour and salt to walnuts and pulse to combine.  Add the egg yolk and pulse 2 or 3 more times to combine.

With the food processor running, pour in the olive oil in a slow stream, allowing the mixture to become uniformly combined.  With the food processor still running, drizzle in the water, then allow the dough to just start to clump together.

Shape the dough into a disc, then wrap in plastic and allow to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Turn the rested dough out onto a well-floured work surface.  Roll out the dough until it is very thin, somewhere between ¼” and 1/8”.  The dough will be a bit crumbly, so roll with care.  Using a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter or cookie cutter, cut out rounds of dough and place on parchment lined baking sheet.  Reshape and reroll the dough as needed.  Using a fork or the tip of a small, sharp knife, poke several holes on top of each cracker.  If adding toppings, sprinkle each cracker with just a pinch of whatever toppings you choose.

Bake the crackers on the center rack of the oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are golden and the tops just beginning to develop color.  Cool on the sheet pan for 1 minute, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.  Crackers will be extremely delicate when hot, so transfer them with care.

Makes roughly 2 dozen sables.

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Crisp and Hearty Homemade Granola Bars

13 Feb

There are some things people just do not expect you to make at home.  No one gives you funny looks when you bake a cake from scratch or make pizza at home, or even when you admit one day that you’ve taken to smoking your own salmon.  Tell people that you’ve developed a keen interest in making your own granola bars, however, and all of a sudden you’re regarded as some sort of competitive cooking snob, someone who has crossed the line of cooking for pleasure and entered into the territory of cooking in order to prove something.

It’s tough to explain to people who do not regard cooking as a pastime, a hobby, or even a treat, that when I want to make something new—no matter how silly it might seem to make it at home—it is because I like the time it allows me to spend in the kitchen.

My husband and I are both really, really into skateboarding (one of the many reasons we are married—because there were no other rational, responsible adults around to tolerate our interests), and we often talk about the time, sweat, and agony it sometimes used to take to learn a new skate trick (I speak in the past tense here because, though we are still into skating, neither of us is in any sort of position in life to be spending hours a day on a skateboard trying to will our bodies to complete a new trick that some kid less than half our age just thought up).  The focus you develop when you’ve just spent two solid days trying to land a fakie 360 flip (a trick that babies can now somehow learn straight from the womb, but back in the early ‘90s THAT TRICK WAS HARD) becomes almost maniacal, and two days start to seem like nothing if it begins to appear as though it might take another two days to finally land the trick without injuring yourself.

And this relates to making homemade granola bars how?  Because it’s the same dedication, the same enjoyment, that makes me want to get something right in the kitchen.  It may seem delusional to spend three days perfecting a granola bar recipe, but I swear to you, take one taste of these granola bars and you’ll immediately reverse that opinion.  Big bursts of dried fruit play against the hearty crunch of crisp nuts and lightly sweetened oats, while the subtle spices tie everything together with a pleasant mellowness.

These are no store bought granola bars, overly sweetened and packed with mystery additives.  These are a healthy, nutritious treat that belie the virtuousness of their ingredients by being utterly, fantastically delicious.  Because of their belly-filling goodness, these granola bars would make a great fortifying snack to take along on a hike, or perhaps a long ride on your bike (because apparently I am now channeling Dr. Seuss—you can eat them as a snack, just pop one into your backpack).  Right now, as I type this, I am eating one of these granola bars for lunch.  When I am done with lunch and typing, I will probably take a tiny little break to watch this, because now that the granola bars have been conquered, I have a bit of time left to devote to my other interests.

Crisp and Hearty Homemade Granola Bars

1 3/4 cups rolled oats

¼ cup dark brown sugar

¼ cup graham flour (graham flour has a great nutty taste, but you could also use whole wheat pastry flour or another mild whole grain flour, e.g. not rye flour)

½ cup wheat germ

½ teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup dried fruit, chopped into a uniform size if pieces are large (apricots, apples, etc.)—I used dried cherries, dried cranberries, and raisins, so no chopping was required

1 cup coarsely chopped nuts (I used almonds, walnuts, and pecans)

¼ cup vegetable oil

3 tablespoons unfiltered apple cider

2 tablespoons honey, agave, or maple syrup

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup unsweetened almond butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line an 8”x8” baking pan with a parchment paper sling (this can be accomplished by trimming your parchment paper into a long rectangle that will line neatly against the bottom of the pan and drape over the sides.  In the pictures above, my parchment paper sling is not nearly wide enough, on account of the fact that I inconveniently ran out of parchment paper and was using the last 4 inches of the roll), then lightly grease both the pan and the parchment paper with vegetable oil or nonstick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, brown sugar, flour, wheat germ, sea salt, cinnamon, dried fruit, and nuts.  Toss to combine.  In a small bowl, combine the oil, apple cider, honey, vanilla, and almond butter.  Whisk to combine.  Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients.  Using your hands or a fork (but hands work best), thoroughly stir the ingredients together until it is uniformly wet and it wants to clump together.

Pour the granola mixture into the prepared pan.  Using your hands, firmly press the mixture into the pan, flattening the top, the edges, and the corners (it helps to have slightly wet hands when doing this, as the mixture is quite sticky).

Bake on the center rack of the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the edges are brown and the middle is golden.

Cool for at least 1 hour before attempting to cut.  Remove granola bars from the pan by lifting them up using the parchment paper sling.  A serrated knife works best to cut these, and I have found that popping the granola into the freezer for 15 minutes to slightly harden them before cutting makes the process even easier.

Makes 16 2-inch granola bars.

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Hazelnut Orange Pesto

5 Jan

For fifteen years now, I have been subscribing to the New Yorker.  During that span of time, there have been maybe three instances—four, tops—in which I have not greeted the arrival of yet another issue of the magazine by plopping the new week’s issue upon a vast pile of previous weeks’ issues.  A very good friend of mine, who, at the time, was also a longtime subscriber to the New Yorker, and also, incidentally, unable to keep up with the barrage of unstoppable arrivals flooding his mailbox, once began to refer to every new issue of the New Yorker as “the dead rat,” due to its unassailable, somewhat onerous presence in his mailbox.  Plang!  The flap of the mailbox just slammed shut.  What’s new?  Oh, yes.  The dead rat has arrived.  Add it to the pile.

Other people I know who subscribe to the New Yorker are perfectly fine with the sight of piles of unread magazines littered about their home.  Perhaps it speaks of a more developed sense of ease on their part when it comes to matters of reading materials that those people can accumulate back issues of the New Yorker and never blink an eye.  I get more than three weeks behind and I start to develop cold sweats.  Maybe because of that fellow I read about who was something like a year and a half behind on the New York Times, a newspaper he read every single day, though not in its entirety every single day, which meant that when it took him a couple of days to make his way through a copy of the Times, he’d be a couple of days behind, well, the Times, when he finished.  Take too long to read the paper over a long enough period of time and, look, there you are, reading an issue of the New York Times from 2007 as you ride the subway to work in 2009.  Sometimes it feels like a slippery slope between getting a couple of weeks behind on the New Yorker and becoming that man and his archive of New York Times reading matter, perpetually living in the past just so he can leisurely work his way towards the future.  (Also, it bears mentioning that the story about the man and the New York Times?  Yeah, I read about it in the New Yorker.)

The main culprit in my chronic struggle to maintain a current reading schedule with the New Yorker is the fact that I insist on reading every single thing in the magazine, cover to cover.  I read the listings for what bands are playing at what clubs, what new building by what new architect is currently being built to house what new condo complex, and what new restaurants are opening.  You may think I am insane to take on such a seemingly worthless endeavor, but let me tell you something.  Had I not insisted on reading a review of a new restaurant that opened up in the West Village, I would have never read about that restaurant’s offering of a small, delicious plate of crusty bread topped with hazelnut orange pesto.  Not helping my reading situation at all, as soon as I read about the combination, I put down my magazine to make it.

Not surprisingly, the pairing of the two elements is absolutely fantastic.  The robust flavor of the toasted hazelnuts gets a nice brightness from the orange zest, and when whirled together with a generous glug of olive oil and a large handful of Italian parsley, the pesto comes together as a well-rounded, satisfying sauce for pasta, topping for crostini, or even a nice embellishment to a pile of sautéed greens rested upon a bed of thick, belly-warming polenta.  I savored each bite of this warm, filling meal, and I am not the least bit ashamed to admit that while eating it, I cracked open an old back issue of the Atlantic.  From September 2010.  Don’t worry.  I’ve let that subscription lapse.

Hazelnut Orange Pesto

If you are going to make this pesto as a sauce for pasta, reserve about ½ a cup of the pasta’s cooking water to add into the pesto when you toss it with the pasta.  This will help the pesto loosen up a bit and maintain more of a sauce-like consistency.

1 cup hazelnuts

1 cup loosely packed Italian parsley leaves

1 large clove of peeled garlic

2 tablespoons grated orange zest

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼-1/3 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Place hazelnuts on a baking sheet, and toast for 15 minutes, until the nuts are golden brown and the skins are beginning to peel free.  Remove the toasted nuts to a clean dishtowel.  Fold the dishtowel over the hazelnuts, and vigorously rub the towel around to slough the skins off of the nuts.  If you don’t remove all of the skins, don’t worry.  You just want to remove enough of the skins to ensure that your nuts won’t taste too bitter.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the nuts, parsley, garlic, orange zest, Parmesan cheese, and ¼ cup of olive oil.  Pulse the mixture for about 20 seconds, until the ingredients are chopped and the nuts still have a good amount of texture (if you process the mixture too long, the hazelnuts run the risk of turning into a paste).  If the mixture looks a bit too sturdy, add in the remaining olive oil, one tablespoon at a time, pulsing briefly after each addition until the pesto reaches your desired consistency.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Use as a topping for crostini, a sauce for pasta, a dressing for greens, etc.  I’ll bet this would taste great dolloped on top of a nice firm piece of white fish.

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