Merry Christmas 2011!

Best wishes for peace, joy, health and prosperity to all!

Christmas Cookie Baking 2011

I did all my cookie-baking within about 36 hours this year. At the top, gingerbread from a recipe of 1831 that I'm supposed to master (with a wood oven) as part of my training for the historical cooking program at Fort York. Right: Scandinavian Sand Cookies from Dede Wilson's Baker's Field Guide to Christmas Cookies. They're made from an eggy Swedish recipe that calls for dipping them in sugar, cardamom and cinnamon, like rather sophisticated snickerdoodles. Bottom: Pecan Tassies from The Joy of Cooking. A great recipe: tiny pecan tarts with a shortbread crust. Left: The wonderful Mayan Chocolate Sparklers from Robin Hood. Centre: Roberta Schiff's Thumbprint Cookie recipe, published in my own book and featuring raspberry jam made with berries I was given for an appearance at the Markham Fair. And now to package them up to hand out to my friends and relations!

PS: My mom's making the shortbread this year.

Books for Christmas Baking

As the temperature drops and the days darken, it’s getting nicer to have the oven on for hours at a time. I think that’s half the allure of holiday baking. Then of course there’s the pleasure of giving and serving (and snacking on) rich, buttery treats, and the fun of decorating them and wrapping them up beautifully. Here’s a short list of some enjoyable books to help with the seasonal sugarfest.

First, though, an inspiring mini-interview with one of my baking gurus, Montreal-based master baker Marcy Goldman of Betterbaking.com (pictured above), a lovely person and the author of A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking, A Passion for Baking and The Best of BetterBaking.com (discussed further below).

• Sarah: When it comes to baking, are some people gifted? Is there a magic that some people have and others don’t?
• Marcy: I think there is a magic. There are people who will have success by following the rules and those who just have the touch. Sometimes people email that they’ve always baked bread, and they don’t understand why the bread doesn’t rise. There’s a karma in the kitchen; we can’t always trace the energy that’s going on.
• Sarah: What’s the single piece of equipment a home baker needs?
• Marcy: A good stand mixer is really the heartbeat of your kitchen. It’s an investment to make at the beginning.
• Sarah: How can a good baker become a great baker?
• Marcy: Ingredients that are the best of the best: the best extracts and the best butter. It makes a very big difference which rack you bake on; the right rack can give you loftier muffins and more tender shortbread. And doubling up baking sheets or putting your pan on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper will help you make chewy cookies, and not overbake them.

The Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies by Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker (Scribner, 1996): Bought on impulse from a remainder bin, this convenient little hardcover is my own treasured go-to for Christmas cookie baking. The Pecan Tassies (little tarts with a shortbread crust), the shortbread and the Snickerdoodles are among the surefire winner recipes. Good luck finding it, though; it seems to be out of print.

The New Best of Better Baking.com by Marcy Goldman (Whitecap, 2009): A huge, beautiful and inspiring cookbook that covers far more than cookies. It's especially rich in biscotti recipes: Tiramisu; Soft Cherry; Triple-almond; Chocolate Chip Cinnamon-almond: in short, numerous potential holiday treats. There are also rafts of recipes that would eminently suit a luxurious winter brunch, like the Madison Avenue Orange and Lemon Frosted Scones; the Country Plum Tart; the Weekend in New England Cranberry Scones; the Bread Pudding Muffins and the lawsuit-dodging "Fried Flaps of Dough that Resemble the Tail of the Castor Canadensis". And don't get me started on the pies and cakes!

Robin Hood Baking (Robert Rose, 2010): With over 250 recipes for cookies, bars, muffins, cakes, pies, desserts and savouries like quiches and turnovers, plus a substantial how-to section, this is a great all-round home baker's book. It would be a good choice for family baking, because it has lots of unfussy drop cookies, squares and bars that kids could master without too much trouble, in a handy ring-bound format.

A short holiday section at the back offers some basics like Pinwheel Cookies, Fruitcake and of course Sugar Cookies, along with a few twists. For instance, the shortbread recipe includes rolled oats. There are also some really fresh ideas, like Chewy Cherry Bars and Cranberry Orange Bubble Bread. Still, I am puzzled why they didn't include one of my all-time favourite Christmas cookie recipes: Robin Hood's own Mayan Chocolate Sparklers, an attractive dark-chocolate cookie with extra bite from a dash of cayenne. (You can really make it fancy by using the best possible chocolate.)

Gourmet Gifts to Make Yourself and Wrap With Style by Dinah Corley (Harvard Common Press, 2011): I have a love-hate relationship on for this book. On the one hand, it's gorgeous to look at. Also, it goes far beyond traditional baking to include pickles, preserves, teas, and even cheeses and pâtés. On the other, even though I'm as crafty as they come, I found myself a little daunted that the wrapping supplies checklist includes découpage medium, a sewing machine and a power drill.

I truly do want to try making the candied Seville orange slices, to be packed in nests of waxed lime-green tissue paper in flat round metal tins. I love the recipe for "100 cookies to pinch and press or slice and bake". The Italian-style grissini (breadsticks), to be packed with red, white and green paper flags, look awesome (although the recipe is marked as "challenging"). The one that tempts me most is "a rich and buttery yeast dough, and five breads to make with it", which can be transmuted into Sunny Orange Marmalade Danish (a natural for me); Greek Savory Sweet Rolls; Black Currant Buns (which use grappa or marc in the recipe!); Sweet Baby Brioches, or Asiago and Pine Nut Twists.

Somehow, though, I doubt I'm going to find the time to dive into this book. However, even if you never get around to making any of its 100 projects, it's certain to offer an afternoon or two of sensual enjoyment merely in imagining yourself doing them.

A Baker’s Field Guide to Christmas Cookies by Dede Wilson (Harvard Common Press, 2003): If you can't find the Joy of Cooking book (above), have a look for this one. Devoted to Christmas cookies alone, it includes all the traditional favourites from Germany, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Italy, England and across the U.S. (among other locales), and the instructions seem really good.

There's a plethora of gingerbread and sugar-cookie recipes, and a more vegetarian-friendly version of the delicious Mexican anise-flavoured cookies known as biscochitos, made with vegetable shortening instead of lard. It includes the fancy types of cookies that require special molds, like springerle, speculaas and spritz cookies, as well as easy, kid-friendly recipes and some fun add-ons like rolled cinnamon-applesauce dough and salt-flour dough for modelling (inedible) ornaments. There are meringue mushrooms, and there's even a recipe for dog biscuits.

To add to the fun, the book is indeed laid out like a field guide (author Wilson has written a number of cookbooks with this format), so  each recipe has a picture and standard notes like "habitat", "description", "field notes" and "lifespan". Finally, I have to credit Wilson with one of the least scary explanations of how to temper chocolate that I've ever seen: a real bonus compared to some books that don't even warn the inexperienced baker about the possibility that molten chocolate will seize or go out of temper. All in all, a real winner of a book for the dedicated Christmas baker.

Charcutepalooza Farewell

I could say it's been a grind... but in fact it's been swell, it's been fun and I've learned a lot. However, it's with a sense of cheerful relief that I've decided to bow out of the last two Charcutepalooza challenges. Jonathan and I just don't constitute a big enough crowd for the December challenge; I'm not going to prepare three meat dishes, only to throw them out.

I still have enough curing salts to pickle a bison (more than enough, probably), but I won't be posting a dry-cured sausage recipe. I have Christmas baking to do, and assignments from the historic cook program at Fort York to tackle, a recently renovated house to clean... and a living to earn. So dry curing can wait.

I'm immensely grateful to the Charcutepaloozans all, especially Mrs. Wheelbarrow, The Yummy Mummy and Michael Ruhlman himself. I had already bought Ruhlman's book Charcuterie, but might never have delved into it so deeply if not for the Charcutepalooza challenge. Now I feel ready to attempt anything in the book,and I've acquired some key equipment and even more crucial skills. So there will be more sausages. But not yet.

Photo by Niamh Malcolm.

Taste Ontario at Longo's

Is this not a picture of culinary concentration? Here, chef Matt Kantor of Little Kitchen carefully disposes his handmade caramel over the tops of several dozen chilled Cremes Catalan, a crème brulé dessert with a Catalonian twist. It's a delicate task involving molten sugar; see how the steam billows upward from the pan, and watch his careful maneuvering as reflected in the mirror above!

The occasion of all this kitchen intensity was an event titled Taste Ontario, Taste the World, organized by Alexa Clark of Cheap Eats Toronto, a one-woman empire who's also involved in Second Harvest, HoHoTO, BookCampTO and (with Kantor) the Secret Pickle Supper Club. The special meal, prepared for about two dozen people, was lovingly designed to illustrate the wealth of local Ontario food (and wine), even at this off season for fresh produce, and also to show off the wide range of ingredients in regular stock at the big, bright and shiny Longo's at 15 York Street.

I hadn't really checked it out yet, so it was fun to get a look inside. I made a mental note to pop back in, if not for my regular groceries, certainly to spend a little time at their wine bar Corks, which frankly has my dream wine, beer and cheese list, with a huge selection of Ontario VQA wine by the glass, a $10 craft beer-and-pizza special, and even an oyster night! All this in a cozy corner with TVs tuned to whatever big game happens to be in progress at the time.

The meal started off with a Swedish-inspired salt, lemon zest and sugar-cured Ontario trout on a bed of pickled beets and Honeycrisp apples (pictured above). This was brilliantly paired with a musky, pearlike blended white wine, Tolgate White 2007 from Stratus. Alexa informs me that Honeycrisps get sweeter the bigger they are; the opposite is true for most apples, so it's a good shopping tip.

The fish was followed by my favourite dish of the night, cubes of Ontario squash lightly cooked in a Thai-style red curry sauce featuring ginger, lemongrass, lime and coconut milk. The curry was paired with a sweet local beer, Duggan's #9 IPA, which made a great partner for the richness and spice of the Thai ingredients.

Moroccan cuisine was the starting point for the evening's third dish, an Ontario chicken tagine served over couscous with dates and almonds, absolutely delicious in its caramelized skin, redolent of cinnamon and saffron. It was served with Tawse Grower's Blend Pinot Noir 2008, which was also the accompaniment for the meat course, a Persian-inspired Ontario spice-rubbed lamb dish with sweet potatoes and raisins (pictured above).

A selection of Ontario cheeses, and the pièce de résistance, the Spanish-influenced dessert, were both accompanied by the gently sweet Cave Spring Indian Summer Late Harvest Riesling 2009: the topper to a feast fit for a king. An impressive roster of dishes to come from just one grocery store, indeed, and a fine celebration of Ontario's late fall bounty.