Pignoli Cookies

A couple weeks ago, I went up to the North End and had some awesome pine-nut-cookies from an Italian bakery up there. They were pretty great, but I figured I'd never make them. Then I got some almond extract for Christmas, and found a recipe online from King Arthur Flour, and figured, why not. The one problem with these cookies is that they are pretty expensive to make; you have to buy marzipan, pine nuts, almond flour, none of the generic cheap stuff that normally goes into cookies. I couldn't remember if I needed marzipan or almond paste, so I got some of both, and it seems that the difference is that almond paste is way more almond-y, a little too much for my liking. Despite the expensiveness, though, they were delicious!



Pignoli Cookies
1C (9oz) marzipan
1/4C sugar
1/8th tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract (don't use this if you don't like almond flavor, you could use vanilla instead)
1/4tsp lemon extract, or 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2C almond flour*
1 egg white
1-1/2C pine nuts

*I couldn't find almond flour, so I ground up a bunch of almonds in a food processor. They didn't get that ground up, but that didn't seem to affect the texture too much. I would imagine that you could just use regular flour, but I didn't test that.

Grease two cookie pans and preheat your oven to 325F.

Break up the marzipan either using the food processor or with your fingers. Add everything else except the pine nuts and use your fingers to mush it around until it is homogeneous. It will be really sticky and goopy. Roll the dough into little balls, and then roll those balls in the pine nuts. Flatten the cookies into cookie-shapes, and pop them in the oven for 22-24 minutes. Enjoy!



This is the texture of the almond "flour" that I ground up. Still pretty nutty, but the cookies didn't taste like they had nuts in them.


Marzipan vs almond paste?


The almond paste


The marzipan oozes out of a tube

California Rolls

Eating California rolls when I eat sushi is just about paramount to sacrilege. Sushi, for me, is about showcasing the freshest, most beautiful, best fish you can get your hands on. So what was I doing playing around with imitation crab?

I don't really know what I was doing. For some reason, I wanted to get some while I was at the store. And then I had it, and the only thing I could think of doing with it was to make sushi. There are two options for a California roll, you can either make a crab-mayo mixture, or you can just put the crabstick into the sushi straight up. I went with the crab-mayo mixture, but next time it'll be just crabstick. If there is a next time... It was still good, though. Rolls of bite-size rice and stuff is always good. So, if you want to try eating sushi but you don't want raw fish, or you happen to have some imitation (or real!) crab to get rid of, here is an excellent way to do it.

California rolls

1C sushi rice
1/4C rice wine vinegar
1/4C white sugar
3 pieces of dried seaweed (nori)
3/4C diced crab meat
2 tbs mayonnaise
sesame seeds
1 avocado
1 cucumber, peeled and seeded

First make the sushi rice. Rinse your rice under cold water a couple times, until the water runs clear, not cloudy. Cook it according to the directions on the package, my rice says to cook 1C of rice with 1-1/3C of water. Once the rice is done, let it cool. Meanwhile, mix the vinegar with the sugar. If you don't have rice vinegar, you can use regular white vinegar, but it is much stronger so don't use too much. Start adding the vinegar mixture to the rice, and fold it in gently, preferably using a wooden spoon. Don't do this in a metal bowl, as the vinegar can react with the metal. Keep adding vinegar and sugar until it tastes about right (you be the judge). I used just about all of it.

Dice the crab meat and mix with the mayo. Stir it up and set it aside. Peel and take the seeds out of the cucumber, then cut into long, thin, slices. Slice the avocado into long, thin, slices. Tear each sheet of nori into half-sheets.

Set up your sushi-rolling station. The rice should be in a big bowl. You need a sushi rolling mat, although a dish towel will work. Since California rolls have the rice on the outside, and it is sticky, line your mat (or towel) with plastic wrap. Have a bowl of cold water to dip your hands in. Have your fillings assembled nearby.

Dip your fingers in water, and use them to spread some rice evenly over the smooth side of the seaweed. It will probably take about a quarter of a cup of cooked rice to cover the seaweed. Sprinkle this with sesame seeds. Flip the seaweed over, so that the rice is now on the downward side. Begin to fill the roll. Start with some crab, add a little cucumber and avocado, and then roll it up. Use your fingers to press the fillings into the roll and get the roll as tight as you can.

Once it is rolled, use a very sharp knife to cut the slices. I generally get six pieces out of one roll. If you dip the knife blade in cold water, it will cut better.

I ended up using half of the avocado, half the cucumber, and made six rolls.


Use about this much filling. Experiment to see how much filling you can get in the roll without overstuffing it.

Kale and white beans

This meal felt like comfort food, which is strange, because I never ate cooked greens growing up, they were certainly not part of my life at least until the age of 20. Except to look at them and go ewwwwww. So why does boiled kale seem like comfort food to me? I have no idea. A while ago I was trying to figure out what to do with some leftover kale, I had made a kale, white bean, and sausage soup, which was delicious, but I had leftover kale. I could have made kale crunchies, but that seemed like too much work. Then I found this post, and she writes about her kale so poetically that I had to try it. I kind of did my own thing, since I had leftover beans, too, but this bowlful of glop was totally inspired by that recipe. If you aren't into fried eggs with runny yolks (and I know Ed doesn't like runny yolks, but thats how I love my eggs- crunchy on the bottom and goopy on top), you could cook your egg over easy or just leave it out, but, I really do think the yolk adds something to the overall dish. Ups the yum content...

So, this dish also goes really well with some sort of thick, whole-grain, toasted bread. I happened to have some of that leftover from the soup (because all soups go best with bread), but, like pretty much everything I make, its a flexible dish. You could leave out the bread. You could leave out the beans. You could leave out the egg. You could leave out the bacon. It all works, but, I like kale with all its accoutrements.

Boiled kale with stuff
Makes two servings, more or less. Maybe three if you don't eat much.

1/2C white beans (dry), or 1 can white beans (cooked)
1/2lb kale (those big bunches at the supermarket are about one pound)
3 pieces of bacon
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
two thick slices of whole wheat bread, toasted
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
2 eggs

The total cook time will be about half an hour, but its an easy half hour, you're just boiling things. If you forget to soak the beans, the cook time could be more like an hour and a half... so just stick the beans in a pot of cold water before you leave in the morning and they're ready to cook when you get home. Prep time is pretty short, too.

Soak the beans for 8 hours, or do a quick soak, where you bring the water to a boil and then let them sit for an hour. Or buy canned beans, but, its a lot cheaper (about eight times cheaper) to buy the dry ones. And then you can flavor them.

Bring your soaked beans to a boil, and then turn down the water to a simmer. Add a bay leaf. These will take 20-30 minutes to cook, I didn't time it, just keep checking them. Meanwhile, chop your bacon into little pieces, however big you want, you can leave the pieces all stuck together when you do this, they'll separate as they cook. Throw the bacon into a pot, and cook it until it is at a consistency at which you would eat it. In other words, no raw bacon. Instead of draining the grease into wherever you drain grease, drain it into the bean water. If you have lean bacon that doesn't drain, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the bean water. I find the fat helps the skins get soft. At this point you can add salt to the beans, too, about a tablespoon or so.

Chop your onion and dice your garlic. Add the onion to the bacon in the pot, and cook until they're translucent. Add the garlic and cook until its toasty golden. Add 3-4 cups of water, and bring it to a boil. Take the leaves off the stems of the kale, chop them up, and add them to the water. Its probably a good idea to wash the kale first, but, I forgot, and it wasn't gritty. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook the kale for 15 minutes or so in boiling water. This is plenty of time to clean up the mess you just made prepping dinner.

Toast some bread. Fry an egg, I actually used olive oil, and it got really nice and crispy, just how I like it! Once the beans are done, layer a piece of bread in a big wide bowl, then stack some beans around it (throw out the bay leaf). Put a big ol' pile o' kale (and bacon) on top of the bread. If you want soup, pour in some broth, otherwise, just the kale. Put the egg on top. Break the yolk, and mix everything around until you have a delicious, yolk-soaked, pile of glop. Dig in!