Coconut Cherry Almond Bars

Twelve servings of goodness.

I’ve been alternating desserts around here lately, my taste with my husband’s. That means one week I’ll make a fruit dessert, and the next week I’ll make something chocolaty. We’re pretty simple folk.

I rearranged my cupboard and found some ingredients hanging out in nooks and crannies. Shredded coconut, almond flour, chocolate pieces… Hm… That, and the cherries were on sale at Publix again. Something chocolate, and cherry, and almond? I’m in! A recipe from 101 Cookbooks was just what I had in mind, modified and embellished to suit what I had on hand. I subbed almond flour for AP, sweetened coconut in a bag for the unsweetened stuff. I reduced the sugar by 1/2 cup. I added sliced almonds and chocolate pieces.

I pitted the cherries with an actual pitter (thanks, James!) and tore each cherry apart with my bare hands as I went. It was satisfying work, if a little gory. Meditative.

Cherry guts.

Ahem, moving on. I love layered bar desserts like this. In this case, especially, all your major dessert categories are taken care of. Cake. Chocolate. Fruit. Nuts. Coconut.

No special reason for the ice wine, acquired on our trip through Niagara wine country, other than that we’d had it for nearly two years and had been promising that we’d drink it for six months. It turns out it was just the thing, in a tiny stemmed glass, super-cold. Uniquely sweet, like port for kids.

Potatoes Au Brat'n

Before adding the top layer of potatoes

My husband is a wonder. When we were first married, he was mighty dissatisfied with the meals turned out at Casa di Diana, and rightly so. I had no concept of portion size and was used to spare, light suppers consisting mainly of Green Giant microwave vegetables like broccoli and cheese, or cauliflower and cheese. When I would try to come up with something new, he would ask by way of offering his opinion, "Did you use a recipe for this?" I got the message and started over, mastering the basics and working my way up to more creative enterprises. Always, I would make sure the combination of flavors was one that had been tried before, even if in a different form.

Gradually, as my cooking improved, his tastes expanded. He began suggesting dishes of his own, most of which I dismissed as being too heavy or just plain nasty-sounding (ground beef does NOT belong in my mashed potatoes). This time, I decided to give in to his suggestion. The result was marvelous. A little heavy, yes, but simple so as not to overwhelm: A pound and a half of potatoes layered with two leftover grilled, sliced beef bratwurst and smothered in a cheese sauce (any will do - try one here) seasoned with a touch of salt and red pepper flakes, topped with breadcrumbs and baked for about 90 minutes at 375. Let it settle and thicken for 15-30 minutes, then slice and serve with a salad on the side. I imagine those with medium to small appetites might call this six servings, but in our house, we'll get four.

The name? He came up with that, too. Endearing, if not groundbreaking.

Love me some June running

It's been pretty toasty around here lately. I'm debating whether it's useful to know the temperature and humidity level before I go out in the morning. If I'm going to run anyway, do I need to know that it's already nearly 80 degrees (at FIVE A.M.) with a dew point not far behind? Only once have I wimped out. Last Friday, hoping to put in 10, I ran about 6.5 before succumbing. I showered, breakfasted, and drove to the gym. Four boring treadmiles later, I decided this Tennessee gal needs to suck it up.

Oh, it was so wonderful to run in Florence and Rome. Well, maybe not Florence. Running by the Arno is romantic in theory (if there is any romance to be had between yourself and the pavement), but in practice the still air, pigeon poop, and gnats up the nose and in the mouth make it a little tedious. Rome, with the Tiber much further below street level, feels more open and breezier. Plus, I saw other joggers, which is always a great comfort. I even saw a woman once. As it happens, there is a triangular 5.5-mile route up the river from the Circus Maximus past the Vatican to the Piazza del Populo and down the Via del Corso (partially closed to traffic, woot!) back to the hotel by the Colosseum.

Fast forward to this morning: Ten miles is the plan. Five miles out, five back. Cutting it short is not an option. I get to the turnaround point and feel great! There's a breeze, there's cloudcover, and my legs feel good. I run another half-mile out, then head back, stretching out to run the last three miles faster than the first three. Yippee!

I'll be ready to start training for a fall half marathon in a couple of weeks. The chosen venue? After the craziness of the Country Music 1/2, I've opted for a smaller venue. It will be my first race in my home town (I was no runner when I left!). I'm running in the Clarksville Half Marathon.

Roasted beets and greens over pasta

But Mom, it tastes like dirt!

That’s what I would have told my mother if she’d tried to make me eat this. Luckily, I have reframed my brain to think of foods that taste like dirt as “earthy.” Next time, still, I’ll peel the beets. No amount of scrubbing removed that special flavor. Sweet beets are the fruit of the earth. Yum!

Adding the pasta--I got a fun shape from World Market--to the cooked beets and greens stained it with a beautiful reddish pink. The addition of cheese and onions was critical to my enjoyment of this dish, which says a lot.

To do: Trim two medium-sized beets of greens. Roast the beets whole and unpeeled in a foil pouch at 375 for an hour (or almost 2 hours if you forget all about them, as I did—apparently there’s no such thing as over-roasting beets).

Sauté half an onion until soft in a large sauce pan.

When they are cool enough to handle, peel beets and cut into large chunks. Add to skillet along with some cooked greens, as much as you and your dining partner like. I used collards, because my beet greens were not looking too spry by the time I got around to using them. Last week, I had microwaved the collards with a bit of water in a covered Pyrex dish, a method which I recommend as an easy way to cook up a mess of greens to be used in some other way later. I suppose you could even cook the greens down in the skillet, but I wanted to precook them to make sure they lasted.

Add 2 servings of cooked pasta to the skillet; toss. Divide into two pasta bowls. Grate a generous amount of parmesan cheese on top.

Buns

Michael Ruhlman has issued a challenge: Make a BLT from scratch. This includes curing your own bacon, growing your own tomatoes and lettuce, and baking your own bread. The flour may be purchased, but I have a feeling that this concession was made only grudgingly.

Yes, I have a lot of time on my hands, but have neither the skill set nor patience for such a task. I read the major cooking magazines and blogs, and I usually select things to make based on three criteria, listed in order of importance: (1) ease--both of obtaining quality, inexpensive ingredients and of executing the recipe (2) perceived deliciousness, primarily for my palate, secondarily for my husband's, and (3) impressiveness. Call me vain, but there is surely a delicate balance here. If a recipe is too easy, it cannot impress and often falls short in deliciousness. To wit.

This recipe, while not technically difficult, does require two two-hour rising periods. Throw in mixing, cutting, and baking time, and you’re at 5+ hours. Pick a rainy day off and make sure you have a good book to read. The result, though, is delicious. Also, while buns are not impressive in themselves, once people realize you made them from scratch, they are generally impressed.

So, yes: At some point during this whole operation, I remembered that I could get perfectly adequate buns from the Publix bakery at a reasonable cost. Less satisfactory, but still serviceable, buns are currently 10-for-$10 at Kroger. Nevertheless, this is satisfying in a thrill-inducing, primal way. It is still magical to me that you can add yeast to flour and water producing whatever risen carb your heart desires: sandwich bread, pizza, rolls, brioche… Some people garden. Others bake. The truly enlightened can do both, but I try not to be jealous from my clean, air-conditioned kitchen.

The hardest part was getting the dough to come together. The recipe calls for five cups (note to Gourmet: please use weight measurements!), but I added nearly another cup to get the darn thing to make a ball in my mixer. The recipe says the dough will be wet, but I don’t think it means a batter. I was stumped, but not for long.

I closed my eyes and imagined a Gourmet recipe tester in a New England commercial kitchen in the dead of winter, humidity close to zero. Rejoining the present, I saw that this day was pregnant with the threat of an afternoon thundershower, hot as all heck, with a dew point through the roof. I grabbed a spoon and the flour container.

Once I had my dough ball, it was mostly a matter of waiting. Two hours for the first rise, then cut half the dough into hamburger buns (I made 13 because of all the extra flour I’d added) and roll the other half into hot dog buns (8 gigantic). Once your buns are trayed up and loosely covered with oiled plastic wrap, you must let them rise another two hours.

Brats are in my future... yeeesss...

Patience is rewarded!

Yeah, but with pizza on a bagel, you can eat pizza any time.

I’m missing my Italian lifestyle. Scratch that: I’m missing my American-tourist-in-Italy lifestyle. Pastries and coffee for breakfast, sightseeing, a lunch of pizza a taglio (pizza by the slice), afternoon nap, gelato, sightseeing and shopping, and a late multi-course dinner.

Never mind that we could only eat this way because we were walking miles and miles. Nothing creates an appetite like back-to-back museums, or walking from the Colosseum to Castel Sant’Angelo. Since the most walking I can do here is with my little dog around the block, it seems I’ll have to scale things back a little while stateside.

The CSA thing, and the bounty of produce it brings, has forced some changes. I would not expect my dear husband to eat beets for lunch, or pack kale chips for an afternoon snack, so it makes sense to make a home-run lunch so it can be followed by an unorthodox dinner. Why not pizza for lunch? Reheating might be a challenge at the office, since the only means is a microwave. Maybe we can invest in one of those Domino's HeatWave (R) bags.

For this experiment in changing our eating habits, I made a double batch of my favorite pizza dough to work with on Sunday. After my nap, I divided the huge blob into eight balls, covered with a towel, and got my mise en place ready. There were to be three kinds:

Margherita, a throwback to our Naples pizza. Dunno if it’s D.O.C., but it’s as simple as can be, with a homemade marinara, fresh mozzarella, and basil. Four dough balls met this end.

Ham, swiss, collards, onion, mozzarella, and parmesan. This one for my husband, a fan of greens with any kind of pork. Two pizzas.

Yellow squash, spinach, onion, mozzarella, and parmesan. This one for me, who loves a good gourd. Two pizzas.

Total: Eight pizzas over three hours, including an hour to proof the dough while I got the ingredients ready. Each pizza counts as two servings. I froze half of the pizza in freezer bags, individually portioned, for next week. Is three hours every two weeks a sustainable habit? Let the proof be in the pizza. Looks good, smells good…

BACK: Let the endless slide shows begin!

FAIL.

No, we didn't eat there.

We're back from our Italy vacation. News flash: Rome is in ruins. Florence remains my favorite city of those visited in Italy. Naples is still crazy. Gelato is absolutely necessary. The pictures are trickling in via Picasa (link on right).

It's weird to be back in a place where everything is 2500 years newer. I have to say I learned more on this trip than on any other, on every level (including how much I love my dog). I've spent time in Italy before, but I always held the culture (between A.D. 476 and the present) at arm's length. I don't know exactly how to go into this without getting deeply personal, but let's just say it's been a spiritual awakening.

I feel inspired. We'll see where this leads. Yesterday it led to strawberries macerated in amaretto and made into shortcake. A peanut butter noodle stew thing with cabbage, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Two hours-plus in the kitchen after weeks away? Heaven on Earth.