Recipe: Snickerdoodles

Email from Dad, 1/10/07:

Hi Jean,

I used your mothers recipe from Betty Crocker.
I cut the recipe in half for one cookie sheet full.
You can Google "snickerdoodle recipe" for the real recipe.

JOANS SNICKERDOODLES 08-02-92 1/2 BATCH

BUTTER 1/2 stick
SUGAR 1/2cup
MEDIUM EGG 1
CREAM of TARTER 3/4 TSP
FLOUR 1cup
SODA 1/3 tsp
SALT dash

Roll them in:
SUGAR 2tsp               
CINNAMON 1tsp

Bake 350° for 10 min.

Have a Party, Snickerdoodle. Love Dad 

The Honey Hole

This place is easily in my top 5 Seattle restaurants.

It's a small place that I might never have bothered to try, had it not been for the recommendation of every single local that I know. This is the place where I run into my peeps, because everyone is always there.

Last night we went at dinner time, and the only space was at the bar, where we got excellent service. I ordered the El Guapo, Michael had the Buford T. Justice, and we both ate half of each sammich. The Guapo has delicious roma tomatoes, red onions and green bell peppers, with melty smoked gouda and Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, with ranch sauce on a fresh French roll. I usually get this, or a BLT that has magical bacon. The Guapo is also one of Michael's favorites, next to the Buford and its bbq pulled pork deliciousness. I'm also a fan of the Luke Duke, a tasty meatball sub.

They have an excellent selection of draft beers, and a small but fully-stocked bar. Service is always excellent. Their web site is http://www.thehoneyhole.com/. Beware impostor web sites that might make you giggle and blush.

The Honey Hole's fries are the best in Seattle. Enough said.

Fondue / Bush's Last Day Countdown

Bravo to Emilie for her inspired idea and brilliant execution of a Bush's Last Day Eve celebration involving liquid cheese and liquid chocolate.

We loosely followed Martha's cheese fondue recipe, leaving out the gruyere and adding in some italian truffled cheese. We dipped asparagus, green peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes. And bread, of course! The second course of super simple chocolate chips, melty and delicious, was served with rice krispie treats, Pepperidge Farm cappucino pirouettes, Candy Cane Jo Jo's, and some sort of white chocolate chip cookie also from Trader Joe's. All very delicious, but I was most delighted to discover the simple yumminess of sourdough baguette dipped in melted chocolate. Divine!

Cheers to the end of eight long years!

I think I might be a food snob.

Or maybe a restaurant service snob? Let me just add a disclaimer that I had this epiphany while brunching at Shari's. You heard me. Shari's. In small-town Idaho. Where the service is invasive and inept, but the servers are friendly, folksy, and persistent.

On a not-unrelated topic, why do women in Idaho (excluding, of course, my gorgeous sisters, nieces and Moms) look like trannies or drag queens? Except that trannies and drag queens are expontentially classier and more subtle, especially with the eye makeup.

And why does everything close so fricken fracken early? If I can't get tater tots at 7:30 on a Friday night, I'm in the fricken fracken wilderness, people.

These are reasons number five hundred forty seven through five hundred fourty nine on my list of why I favor Seattle over Moscow.

Lowell Guest Post: The Dough Whisperer

Like many families, mine gathers at Christmas time every year to stuff our faces with delicious food and spend time together. In my family there is one food item that is non-negotiable: mom's orange rolls. These rolls have become legendary in my family; my mother makes 13 billion of them (an intergalactic baker's dozen). And no one sees her do it. It's a Christmas miracle!

If you spend this special day at my mother's house you would see mountains of dough in various stages of rising, a huge bowl of grated orange rind and you would experience the drool-inducing smell of rolls baking. You would not see my mother making them. We don't know how she does it. Us kids will gorge ourselves and take home our fair share of the bounty, and she will give these rolls away to almost everyone she knows but the creative process would have been entirely unobserved.

This year she allowed me to sit in so I could learn to make them. I learned she ground her own flour (?!) and that she doesn't really measure anything. I watched carefully as she kneaded and divided the dough. She pounded one half out into a ideal rectangle of perfect thickness and covered it with brown sugar and orange rind. This was then rolled into a cylinder of buttery, orangey, doughy goodness. The other half was meant for me to roll out. As part of my education.

It all looked so easy. The lumpy trapezoid that I created was almost insulting to her seemingly careless, but ideal, golden rectangle. Although my rolls ultimately turned out fine, they didn't seem to taste as good as Mom's. I have only myself to blame. Some mysteries shouldn't be tampered with.

Monkey Valley -- Again!

Meeting AJ at Monkey Valley on Thursday. Two visits to Monkey Valley in the first half of the first month of 2009? Oh, it's a good year.

Pies & Pints with My Peeps

I love that I can hop on the bus and get myself to our favorite neighborhood pubski, Pies & Pints, and meet up with my peeps after work. Always a good place for a drink, Pies & Pints is best for food in winter. Though salads are included on the menu, and portion sizes are reasonable, this is hearty winter comfort food. And they serve up a very good Guinness.

Tonight I had the mac n cheese of the day: bleu cheese and apple. It was mild and yummy, with the usual breadcrumb and fresh basil topping, and the beer cheese sauce base. P&P's mac n cheese isn't as creamy as I like, but the flavor is always very yummy. I couldn't finish it, but my peeps helped me out.

The fries I snatched from HP's plate were very good, and she said that her pint of Fat Tire was delicious! This was before Michael launched into Draft Beer vs. Bottled Beer 101. It's handy to have a nerdski homebrewer and beer snob at my beck and call.

Michael tried the lamb and potato pie, which I just now realize I forgot to taste. Stupid, Jean! Oh well, we'll be back there soon.

Cooking Shows With Dad

It was the 1980s. Two of my favorite toys were my Barbie dream kitchen and my Combo Kitchen set, complete with all the various plastic food hand-me-downs leftover from the older kids’ toy sets. Mom was so committed, she gave up an entire kitchen cupboard (now the cereal cupboard, also formerly known as Margy’s “secret place” circa early 1970s.) I was also allowed a small portion of dried beans and rice to play with, and was allowed to chop up someone’s fake pearl necklaces that I fancied looked like giant tapioca balls.

I remember watching cooking shows with Dad on weekends. I also remember lots of James Bond and detective tv shows like Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. But I digress. Back in the day before Food Network, one of the only places I remember seeing chefs in action was on PBS. I’m sure Dad tried a bunch of their recipes and learned countless techniques, but I remember a few specifics.

First there was the cutting of grapefruit, where you slice away the peeling and cut the fruit from the membrane, working your way around it.

Then there was Sauce Potat’. I think that one came from Justin Wilson’s “Louisiana Cookin'." Ooooo, I guarantee! I can’t seem to find the recipe online, but it’s basically bacon and sliced potatoes fried with onion and parsley. I think. I was young. It was delicious and we had it for supper all the time.

The second recipe was the infamous Apple Pan Dowdy that we made together. Once.

Dad retired when I was in 4^th grade. After years of meals on the road in rural Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington, he must have gained some weight. After retirement he dieted with scientific precision and unequaled fervor. There were spreadsheets that auto-calculated nutritional information and portion size. I don’t remember seeing a kitchen scale, but he probably had some gadget in his IBM toolbox that did the same job, while measuring current and predicting lottery numbers. In those days he took over some of the cooking from Mom (and all of the dirty dishes; he wanted her to have some illusion of “retirement” too). He was naturally lean, and he didn’t have much weight to lose, so the diet quickly served its purpose and he could get on with his life. But the cooking stuck.

I must have shown an interest in Apple Pan Dowdy because I clearly remember the enthusiastic mission that the two of us undertook. There was some specialty cookware we needed in order to try out the recipes: ramekins. Finding these became our goal.

Ramekins can now be purchased in all sizes and colors at supermarkets, drug stores, and (probably) convenience stores. But this was pre-Rachel Ray. This was small town Idaho. There were no mini-souffles. There was no….what else do you need ramekins for?….crème brulee! No. There was none of this. After an arduous search at The Bon, JC Penney’s, Sears, and whatever the heck that weird store in Lewiston was, we found some ramekin-shaped oven-safe soup mugs at Ernst Hardware.

We tried Apple Pan Dowdy.

I no longer have the recipe because it was horrible. Basically, you butter and sugar white bread and make a sort of a mini-pie in the ramekins, filled with molasses and chopped apples and stuff. I was a child. It was disgusting. Why would we make that? Why? Why when Mom’s apple pie was perfect, would we bother to make that disgusting bitter and sulfurry flavored crap?

At any rate, I now use the very same soup mug “ramekins” for hot artichoke cheese dip, and Dad and I continued to share a love of cooking for the rest of our lives. Even now after a particularly delicious meal, I think to myself, “I gotta email Dad about this!” I’m pretty sure he’s God’s VP of IT, so maybe I should try sending all my anecdotes to dad@heaven.org. Hmmm. Food for thought.

Monkey Valley – The original yumski.

Our Friday afternoon chat went exactly like this:

Jean says:
so, dinner?
Michael Lowell Cat says:
well. I am happy to take lady somewhere. but I don't want to have to pick.
Jean says:
i wish monkey valley was open
Michael Lowell Cat says:
its not? weird.
Jean says:
AJ warned me. closed for vacay
Michael Lowell Cat says:
ah.
Jean says:
i'm calling Monkey Valley
Jean says:
DUDE! MV is open
Jean says:
please please please
Jean says:
please!
Michael Lowell Cat says:
ok
Jean says:
please please please
Jean says:
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Michael Lowell Cat says:
AJ is FALSE!
Jean says:
ohmygod you made my entire day
Michael Lowell Cat says:
what what!

Ristorante Machiavelli has only recently become my favorite restaurant. I had gone there a few years ago and it was good, but I wasn't addicted. Soon I discovered that Poppy ranks it as her favorite place, and during our discussion about it, HP misheard "Machiavelli" as "Monkey Valley." Please note that Monkey Valley is heretofore the name of this lovely restaurant,thankyouverymuch HP.

Poppy recommended the tuna carpaccio (She doesn't share. Order your own. No joke.) and the chicken piccata. The chicken is everything a piccata ought to be, with a light lemon caper sauce. But the carpaccio--this is something you dream about when it isn't on a plate in front of you. Unless you don't like raw fish, like HP, who bravely gave it a taste anyway. It is ice cold sashimi-grade tuna, pounded flat and drizzled with balsamic-dijon dressing, capers, parsley, parmesan, cracked black pepper. Squeeze a little lemon juice over it.

Heaven!

I always order the fettucine carbonara as an afterthought, because I don't feel like I am allowed to order plate after plate of the tuna. Incredibly, I always eat every last bite of the creamy, bacony, noodley goodness. This is the only place I have ever finished an entire restaurant plate of pasta, so that tells you something about the reasonableness of the portion sizes here.

One of the reasons I love introducing friends to this place is to see what they will order. That's the only way I'm able to try new things, as I am compulsively loyal to my two favorites. Vicky let me sample some of her melt-in-your-mouth Chicken al Forna, roasted with whole garlic cloves and rosemary. I was worried at first that AJ wouldn't find something sufficiently non-dairy, but the spinach shells with Italian sausage in marinara are phenomenal, with just the right amount of heat. Michael, like me, always goes with the carbonara, though he favors salad over the tuna as a first course.

Someday I want to try their Lasagna Bolognese, something seafoodie, or the filet mignon. They always have delicious sounding specials as well. And pizza. Did you know they have pizza?!

So, what is the appeal? Is it the simple and delicious Italian menu? The reasonable price? The phenomenally convenient Capitol Hill location of Melrose & Pine? The inexplicably nice servers who are helpful without ever being intrusive? All of the above. Poppy is right. It is just straightforwardly good place to go, over and over again.

Japanese Shortbread? Hai!

I am heading to AJ's New Year's Day party today, with a Japanese American menu. I thought this would be a great opportunity to try out Martha's Green Tea Shortbread recipe. I used vegan margarine in place of butter, and my little star-shaped cookies turned out pretty cute. They have a mild earthy flavor and a fun green color, and I think they will taste quite yummy with a little cup of tea.

I couldn't help myself and made half of the batch into plain shortbread. I dipped them in melted dark chocolate and added some candied ginger, which is an idea I stole from a delicious heart-shaped cookie I recently enjoyed at Cafe Vita.

Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu!