Egg yolk sugar cookies

I made a chocolate truffle cake the other day. Because Ed asked for it. It was so-so, I thought I overcooked it and made it too dry but Ed liked it. Anyway, it used egg whites, so I had two egg yolks left over and remembered a really good egg yolk cookie I'd made a while ago. I decided to make those, but since I only had two egg yolks, I had to do some funky measuring things, and ended up sort of completely changing the recipe. Instead of being pretty moist, it was dry and stiff. Oh no! I was worried that I'd never be able to get these into balls, but, after tasting the batter (a necessary step, especially with cookie dough!), it was too good to not bake. So I rolled it out, which was the perfect thing to do with dry, stiff, cookie dough. This might have just become my go-to recipe for roll-out cookies, because they taste really good. It did make a pretty crunchy cookie, though, once it had cooled. But a yummy crunchy cookie.

Egg-yolk sugar cookies
1C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1C sugar (although if you are going to frost the cookies, I would use 3/4C)
1 stick butter
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon zest (or orange, or lime, or grapefruit... whatever)
2 egg yolks

Cream the butter and sugar until its pretty fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time and beat them in. It'll still be pretty dry. Add the vanilla and lemon zest. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this mixture to the butter, and combine until it looks like cookie dough. If its wet enough, you can roll it into balls, or if its dry, you can do what I did and roll it out.

The roll-out cookies took ~10 minutes at 350F. Start checking them after 6 minutes or so, because if you leave them in there a minute too long they go from perfect-slightly-chewy-golden to mildly burned.

This recipe made me 44 stars.

Eggplant parm

This is a little different than normal eggplant parm. For one, there is no slab of mushy, slimy eggplant coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. You may wonder how it is eggplant parm without that. Well, read on, hungry eggplantovores!


Sorry its not a great picture, rather unappetizing actually, but if you could smell it and taste it you wouldn't think as much. Actually, most of my pictures are pretty unappetizing, but thats because I'm hungry and want to eat the food I'd just made rather than photograph it.

This is sort of Alton Brown's recipes from Good Eats, I mean, it started out as his recipe but it becomes more and more of an eggplant stir-fry with Italian flavors the more we make it. I give to you the recipe the way we last made it, but it will probably morph some more next time. As it should. The basic premise is that when you cut the eggplant up and salt it, it oozes out all its water, and then when you cook it, it won't get mushy and slimy. Which is what I really don't like about eggplant, usually. So, what follows is a recipe, sort of, but you are encouraged to make it your own and change things. I think this time I even left out the parmesan, which totally negates the "eggplant parm" thing, doesn't it? Its a flexible recipe...

Eggplant Parmesan
This will make enough for just about three servings, two servings if you're feeding highschool boys and four servings if you're feeding highschool girls. We usually end up with three servings. One for me, one for Ed, and one for lunch.

1 eggplant
1 onion
olive oil for frying
2-5 cloves of garlic (depends on how you like your breath)
1 tomato
1/2C fresh parsley and basil or any other random fresh herbs you might have.
a couple mushrooms
1/4C panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1/4-1/2C grated parmesan cheese, or grated mozzarella cheese for a goopier dish (pictured above)
salt and pepper to taste
other vegetables, depending on what you have in your fridge and want to use up or what your mood is telling you

Slice the eggplant into rounds 1/4" thick. Salt each side with kosher salt, or any coarsely-ground salt, and let them sit in a colander for 20-30 minutes. Once they've beaded up with water and there is water that has come out of the colander, you're good to go. Chop your vegetables however you like them chopped, I like my onions and garlic diced finely, everything else in pretty big chunks.

Once your eggplant has sweated, rinse the slices under cold water to rinse off the salt and squeeze them a little between your hands to squeeze out any extra water. If you're wondering why you didn't just squeeze the eggplant first and dispense with the salting, its because of chemistry. 'nuff said. Jess can elaborate. Slice the rounds into long pieces.

Put some olive oil in the pan, sweat the onions until they're a little translucent, add the garlic until its toasty golden. Add everything else except the eggplant, then as the tomato is starting to look not-raw (maybe a minute in), add the eggplant, and toss it around for one minute. Add the salt, pepper, panko, and cheese, toss it about to combine, and serve.

The eggplant is going to be not-mushy, and its going to taste delicious. You can eat it just as a pile o' eggplant, or you can serve it over pasta. Or you could serve it over some other random grain. Or as a side dish. It all works.

Vegetable-polenta stacks

This is by no means current, but I found the picture as I was organizing my computer and it was too pretty to not post. Over the summer, I had just gotten back from the farmer's market, not sure what I was going to make for dinner, and this creation sort of just took place. Its a layering of polenta rounds and zucchini and eggplant and heirloom tomato and hummus and basil, topped with some olives and sundried tomatoes. I might have had a dressing for this, I don't remember, but I bet the lemon-basil dressing from the Gazpacho salad stacks would go really well with it. It doesn't matter, in the end, because you'll just deconstruct this thing to eat it, but while it lasts, it sure looks pretty.



To make the polenta rounds, start with a cup of polenta, or corn meal, or any combination of the two. Polenta is a coarser grind, I think that is the only real difference. Add three cups of water to the polenta, about a teaspoon of salt, and any herbs you think might go well. Basil, oregano, rosemary, anything really. Stir the polenta as it cooks, because otherwise it'll stick to the bottom. Its kind of a high-maintenance sort of dish, because if you stop stirring, not only will it stick, it'll start exploding at you. So, be careful of little polenta volcanoes. Once it is starting to pull away from the sides as you stir, which shouldn't be too long, maybe 10-20 minutes, its done, so add a quarter cup or so of grated parmesan, stir it in, and spread it in a baking sheet to cool.



You don't need to grease the sheet, this stuff will pull right away from it. You want it to be pretty thin, so you might need two baking sheets. Spread it out as evenly as you can, and let it dry/congeal/cool/not sure what word goes there for 20-30 min. Once it isn't steaming, you can stick it in the fridge, which will accelerate things. Once you take it out of the fridge, use a glass or other round thing to cut circles out. Leave them on the baking sheet, and bake them at 400F until they are crispy, flipping them about halfway through (sorry no times, it really just depends on your oven, keep checking the rounds). You can eat them without crisping them up, they're delicious that way, but they're even more delicious with an outside crunch.



For layering, its up to you. I had eggplant and zucchini, so I roasted those, and spread the polenta with hummus and just sort of layered stuff on top. Depends what you have available, but this stack is hummus-polenta-tomato-zucchini-polenta-hummus-tomato-zucchini and onwards. You can make smaller stacks if you don't want something to topple off the plate, or if you're into majestic, tall food, make 'em sky-high. Or, just pile stuff on a plate and eat it.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

I can't leave you without a muffin recipe for too long. It is, after all, my primary source of sustenance after rollerskiing. I figured I'd go along the lines of the King Arthur Flour Mini Pumpkin Cakes, which had been a success as a cupcake, but I wanted something a little healthier and a little less fluffy and airy. Fluffy is a great quality in a cupcake, but I like something I can bite into when I eat muffins. Something that will support nuts, and fruit, and whatever else I feel like putting into it. I made two versions of these muffins, the first was with all white flour (I wanted to make it whole wheat but I forgot until it was too late), twice the nuts, and no cranberries. This was a good muffin, and I was going to just make it again, but I didn't have as many walnuts, so I added half a cup of cranberries. Random. But they're a delicious addition. I upped the sugar a little too, since cranberries are so sour, but I love how you get little sour pockets of redness inside the muffin. If you're not so into the cranberry-explosions in your mouth, skip the cranberries and just go with all nuts. Or you could add raisins or dried cranberries. Its a muffin, people, the possibilities are endless!

Having gone through two batches of these muffins by now, I have discovered - they freeze very well. It must be all that pumpkin goop in them, but they stay really moist in the freezer, and won't crumble to pieces like some low-fat muffins are wont to do. I think these have moved up to second place in the "freezer muffins" category, behind the carrot spice muffins, and they're probably in the top five of my overall "favorite muffin" category. They got a good Ed-rating, too, despite having pumpkin in them. He even knew that they were pumpkin muffins, and went back for a second one. I call that a success!

Pumpkin Cranberry-Walnut Muffins
Makes 12 muffins with pretty big tops

1C pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1/3C plain yogurt (skim is fine)
1C sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbs spices (cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in this case, heavy on the ginger)
3/4C whole wheat flour
1/2C white flour
2 tbs ground flaxseed
1/2C chopped walnuts
1/2C chopped fresh or frozen cranberries*

*If you use dried cranberries or raisins, reduce the sugar to 3/4C. You could also add some crystallized ginger.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin, eggs, yogurt, sugar, baking powder, salt, spices, nuts, and fruit. Add the flours. Mix to combine, and then pour the batter into the muffin tins. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the muffins are starting to look pretty brown on top. Since these are so moist, they're ok with baking a little longer than normal, so that they don't start to taste gummy.

If you're in the mood for a cakier muffin, you can substitute parts or all of the yogurt for oil. It will make it lighter. No guarantees as to how it will work out with the nuts and fruit, though.

Sorry the picture is not great. Some things just deserve to be eaten instead of photographed...

Pumpkin gnocchi

I like gnocchi, and I've had pretty good success with both potato and ricotta gnocchi, so I figured I'd use some of my pumpkin glop to make pumpkin gnocchi. Success! Most of the recipes I was looking up online were using cinnamon and nutmeg and stuff in the gnocchi, but I decided that I wanted something more savory, that didn't necessarily taste like pumpkin. So I went with cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds. The flavor was good, the consistency was good, but Ed thought that I cut mine too big. I admit, I might have been lazy. Given that he doesn't like gnocchi but he ate these, I'll call it a success. I had pan fried them with some sausage, onions, parsley, and a little cream after they were cooked, and it was a pretty tasty meal. Its also really quick to make the little things, you can do it in the time it takes to boil the water. As with any recipe on here, you can substitute all sorts of things. Except the pumpkin and the flour, that part sort of is there to stay. But spices are fluid 'round here...

Ingredients
1C pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
1-2C flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp dried sage
2 links sausage
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs heavy cream

Put a lot of water on to boil. You want a big pot, with lots of water in it, because these things will float when they're done cooking, and if you don't have enough water, you can't tell if they're floating or not.

Heat 2 tsp of oil in a sauce pan, and once its warm, add the seeds of various things. If you have ground cumin, you can skip this step and just add the powder to your batter. Once the seeds pop open (you'll be able to hear them go POP), add the oil to a big bowl. I left the popped seeds in the oil. Add the pumpkin and the salt. Add a cup of flour, mix it around. If its still too wet to form into a dough, add more flour, until you can sort of knead it, like bread.

Once your dough is together, roll it into long ropes on a floured surface, and then cut the ropes into small pieces. Add the pieces in batches to the big pot of boiling water, removing them when they float. You can eat these as they are now, they'd be good with a light sauce, or pesto, or just plain with parmesan cheese...

Alternatively, chop up the sausage links, and cook them in a fry pan. When they're done, add the chopped onion, and cook that until its translucent. Add maybe a half tablespoon of butter, and then the gnocchi, and let them sit in place for a minute or two to brown the bottom. Flip them over, let them sit for another minute or two, and then add the parsley, sage, cooked sausage, and cream. I like just enough cream to get things coated, but thats just me. You can add more. Salt and pepper to taste and then eat it up! (this recipe served two of us, no leftovers).