Melomacarona- Holiday Cookie of Greece

Christmas is not Christmas without Melomacarona in Greece- these are crumbly syrup drenched cookies with orange and cinnamon and honey (the "Melo" in the name comes from "Μέλι" = honey). I made these once in 1990 and they were perfect. the recipe was written on a scrap of paper I lost, and I never ate one I liked as well, so I never bothered making them again until now. This is a hybrid of several recipes- taking what I liked of each, to make a cake like moist cookie sweet with cinnamon, filled with minced walnuts, and scented with orange and a little liquor. 

This is a project, but not a difficult one, and it makes a mountain of cookies, and the house smells fantastic for days afterwards. A nice plus- in a season of butter and eggs, this is a cookie vegans will love.

Syrup-

Boil together for 4-5 minutes, untilsugar is disolved:

3 C sugar

3 C water

half of an orange with its peel

4 whole cloves

3 cinnamon sticks

pinch salt

then add:

2/3 C honey

Let cool completely.

In a your largest bowl, blend-

1/3 C sugar

zest of 2 oranges

- until the oils are released and the sugar is like bright orange wet sand

then add:

1 C fine semolina

8 C all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 T cinnamon (if you just opened it and it's sweet and fresh. Otherwise 3)

nice pinch ground cloves

a few grinds of fresh nutmeg

In another bowl, blend:

1 2/3 C fresh orange juice

1 C vegetable oil

1 C good olive oil

3-4 tablespoons brandy or whiskey or whatever you like

Pour into the dry mixture and blend quickly and very lightly with your hands. If you over-mix or kneed it, the oil will seep out if the dough. Be quick, decisive, casual.

Chop well:

2 C walnuts

and add:

a little cinnamon, a spoon full of sugar, a little booze to moisten

Now take a piece the size of a walnut, flatten it into a disc, and put a little nut mixture int he middle. Seal the dough around it into an oval, and mark with a cake cutter or fork or anything to make decorative indentations to catch the syrup.

Bake at 180 C/375 F for 22-25 minutes, until deep golden. They will lighten first, then darken again. Hot from the oven, put them into the syrup- bottom side down, then after a minute turn them over and leave them ten minutes. (Most recipes say ten seconds). Then let them drain on a rack.

They will be wet and sticky but still crispy at first, but the syrup will gradually seep into every crumb.

More on holidays:

Kourabiedes are butter rich and light as a snowflake

Christmas in Greece

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A Five-Minute Frozen Chocolate Wafer to Enjoy Summer Better

It's too hot to spend much time in the kitchen, but summer is for pleasure. Just three minutes with a mixer and you will have two sleeves of black rich chocolate dough for the freezer. Then, whenever you want something nice, slice off some wafers, thin as you like, turn on the oven, and go water the plants or something. It's a maximum return for minimum effort:

We will need:

250 g/ 1 C butter
1/2 tsp. salt
250 g / 1 1/4 C sugar
125 g/ 4 1/2 oz. melted semi-sweet chocolate
1 egg
70 g/scant 1 C cocoa powder
300 g/ 2 1/2 C flour
coarse grained raw sugar is you have it, for rolling the logs in.

Beat the softened butter, salt, sugar, and melted chocolate together. Add the cocoa powder and the egg, and when that is smooth, blend int he flour with a spoon so the dough does not toughen.

Divide in two, and make logs as fat and short or as long and thin as you like. I do one of each- small for tea time, large for constructing desserts.

Roll the log in coarse sugar if you have any, or chopped nuts, or chopped chocolate, or anything you like or nothing at all, wrap in plastic, and store in the freezer. when you are ready to have some, turn the oven on to 170 C/ 350 F, line  baking sheet with non-stick paper, and slice as thinly as you like. Put them on paper with just a little room between them.

Bake 10 - 12  minutes- they will look dry, but you can press your finger into them- they will crisp as they cool.

Great with cherries.

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Cream Cheese Semifreddo

This festive dessert takes about as long to make as an omelette. Make it next time you have leftover egg whites, and keep it in the freezer. It's very flexible- ours is vanilla, but you could add anything- espresso, almonds, chocolate swirl, fruit...

Most semifreddo tortes have a crust- this no exception- but we won't use the blender to crush the cookies, or an oven to bake the crust. We'll just line a pan with paper and crush some cookies in by hand, spreading them around evenly-

This is 8 chocolae covered digestive biscuits, because that's just what we happened to have around.

For the torte, we will need:

3 egg whites

dash salt

150 g / 3/4 C sugar

60 ml/ 1/4 c water

- boil the sugar and water hard for a minute. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with the salt until fluffy, and, with the beaters still running, pour the syrup in a thin stream- not on the beaters and not down the side of the bowl but somewhere in the middle. Beat slowly so it stays silky and cools off a little.

then:

200 g/ 8 oz cream cheese

200 ml/ scant 1 C heavy cream

some vanilla, or a shot of espresso, or some crushed fruit, or melted chocolate, nuts, whatever you like-

Beat the cream cheese before adding the cream. When it is fluffy, add cream and keep beating until it is light and fluffy, but not so long the cream splits and turns to butter. Blend the meringue in gently

Dollop evenly over the biscuits then smooth gently, and put in the freezer for several hours. If you are not eating it soon, wrap it in plastic wrap once it is frozen (semi-frozen- like the name. With all the air it will never be rock solid).

In heat like this, a big fat chocolate bar- at super warm room temperature- is the easiest topping. Just peel off big fat ribbons with a potato peeler:

Since it was never fully frozen to begin with, it softens quickly- don't leave it out on the table too long. 

Everyone loves this.

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Last-Minute Easter Desserts

Happy Easter! It has taken me by surprise entirely. Orthodox Easter is usually later, but rarely five weeks later- we are just barely into Lent. If the Holiday has also come up sooner than you had planned for, there's still no reason to go without dessert, and a very glamorous, festive one.

Austro-Greque Pavlova-

Pavlova dazzles- lofty, creamy and light. Rustic meringue shaped with the back of a spoon, some poached fruit, and Baroque heaps of whipped cream. 4 ingredients (plus a little whiskey or rum?)

Toulouse-Lautrec Chocolate Cake-

Can a cake be a turning point in your life? This one was for me- I have been making it since I was 13 and got a cookbook by Maida Heatter, thereafter my mentor and guardian angel in all things sweet. Toulouse-Lautrec cake is so simple that you can make it on a tv show, mess it up by forgetting 2 of the 5 ingredients, and it will still come out perfect (I did- that's what the photo is from). 

Meringue Mushrooms-

We make these very simple meringue mushrooms to decorate our Bûche de Noël. On their own, they are full of whimsy, perfect for the Holiday, and a delight for children and everyone else. If you have no block chocolate, melt a couple of chocolate eggs to glue them together.

Lenten Chocolate Cake-

Perhaps you've already boiled and dyed all the eggs in the house? Borrow this delicious, moist chocolate sheet cake with a fluffy light texture from lent. Mix dry ingredients straight in the baking pan- no bowl needed. Add water, oil, and vinegar, stir with fork, put the cake in the oven, and the fork in the sink when you're done. And you're done. 

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Jewelled Puddings of Istanbul

Jewell covered puddings fill display windows all over Istanbul. We were beguiled. And we did not manage to try them. If I had not taken pictures, I would think I am exaggerating them in my memory.

Unabashedly, unpretentiously pretty, they have the straight-forward simplicity of a dessert from  the 1950's

I have looked for recipes for these with no success, and in the meantime I found an incredible variety of Turkish puddings/creams. 

Until I learn otherwise, I imagine they are thought too simple to provide a recipe for- just a cream topped with a simmering, decorated jell. I would love to know more to make them properly, and will keep searching and experimenting. In the meantime, we tried our best, and loved the result inspired by the photograph.

The first batch we tried- chocolate with strawberry- was nice- but no nicer than pudding with jello. It needed more delicacy. The next batch we went with a white cream to show off the sparkle, and a jell with a much lighter set.

First prepare the fruit or nuts. We used sanguini here. You ant them to be ready so you can place them on the pudding before it forms a skin. If you lay them on top of the skin, they will float of the jell layer and the dessert will not have the jewel-like shimmer.

If it is something very juicy, like oranges, put them in a strainer.

Cream:

1 l/ 4 C milk

100 ml heavy cream

150 g/ 3/4 C sugar

60 g/ 1/2 C corn starch

a vanilla bean or some vanilla extract

a few drops of almond flavor

Simmer 3/4 of the milk, the cream, and the sugar over medium heat. Blend the cornstarch into the remaining cold milk, and when the milk and cream mixture is just before boiling, pour in the cornstarch mixture, whisking smoothly the whole time to avoid lumps. It will thicken nearly at once, but let it boil gently for a minute or two longer.

Arrange such glasses and clear bowls you have to show it off (it makes 6 - 8 good servings), and divide the cream among them, being careful not to get any on the sides and rims by using a ladle or even a wide-mouthed funnel. Arrange the fruit on top right away, and let it cool.

The Jell:

1 package commercial flavored gelatin in a color that suits your dessert

250 ml/ 1 C boiling water

500 ml/ 2 C fresh juice 

This is a much softer set- the package instructions call for just 500 ml of water. We used pineapple so the color of the sanguini would stand out. Now just pour the jell over the creams and carefully put in the refrigerator to set.

These are as much fun to sink a spoon into as a creme brulee, and the texture is wonderful- delicate jell, silky rich cream. Fancy and pretty and a like a grown up children's dessert.

If anyone knows the real recipe for these, I will be very grateful. This is just an affectionate interpretation, inspired by the beautiful window of a patisserie in Istanbul.

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Love and Chocolate

This sweet little guy brought a heart shaped box of Russell Stover's to school for Carrie something-or-other, and then he ended up being too afraid to give them to her and, frankly, none of us could blame him. That wasn't going to go well. Love can be rough. He was quite a few years shy of being old enough for his friends to go out and get him drunk. I hope he ate the chocolates- they were the best you could buy in our isolated town in the North Country- there was no See's Candy, and no one had heard of Godiva, let alone Teuscher, or Neuhaus (we'd barely even heard of Switzerland or Belgium- we were 8). There were a lot of these episodes. The only good thing to come out of this was learning to root for the underdog of romance (little guy with the Russell Stover's, Colonel Brandon, any John Cusack character....). Anyway, every day is a holiday when you're in love. Designating a special day? That's just all kinds of pressure.

Not that we don't celebrate Valentine's day at our house- we do! We celebrate everything. We eat only red food- nothing challenging- beet vinaigrette, penne all'arrabbiata- no red velvet cake because it freaks me out a little. Usually we make rolled sugar cookies, heart shapes, sandwiched together with red jam and the top cookie with another shape cut out of it like a window- a small duck, a piglet. We make lots of them, and the girls give them to their friends, and so do I. We make chocolates too. There is some romance, but it's all on screen. This year we'll see Imagine Me and You- the girls were more in a Lemony Snicket stage when it came out, so we missed seeing it together. A nice bonus- a world where homogeneous heterosexuality is just assumed feels to us small and sad and dull (one of the few ways Greece sometimes disappoints, but, to be fair, we are comparing it to San Francisco). If I'm not wrong, this sweet movie was not overly self-conscious- much more plain love story than "gay love story." If we feel like a dose of underdog, we go for Notting Hill or, kind of obviously, High Fidelity.

Here are some things we make throughout the year, because they are easy, and easy to share, and we have fun in the kitchen together, and everyone likes them a lot. I put them in order of easiest to least easy (but still easy), with the links under the pictures. Wish you a happy, low-key, messy Valentine's Day.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Double Greek Coffee Meringues

Candy Bar Meringues

Meringue Mushrooms (Huge Hit with Children!)

Salted Caramel Truffles

Butter Ganache Truffles

Salted Butter Caramels

Love is great. It's romantic love that stirs up all the trouble. You never go wrong staying in the kitchen, and sharing something sweet with everyone dear to you.

I love that Strawberries start their
hothouse season so early-
we had our first this week, and they were good!

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The Best Rice Pudding.

People ask me for this recipe more than any other, which is surprising because it's the simplest dish, and everyone has their own version, and they're all delightful. Still, everyone who tries this one says it is the best rice pudding they have ever had. They get excited about it, and rice pudding is honestly not usually an exciting dessert. 

Three easy steps make this so rich and delicate you will want it for lunch boxes and fancy dinner parties both. First, use almost no rice. Give it room to swell, be tender to the bite, and swim around in the milky pudding. Too much rice and it is dense and heavy.  Second- salt the rice while it is swelling in the simmering water- you won't taste the salt, but you'll taste rice, and a balanced flavor with the sweet milk. Third- add heavy cream at very end. It makes all the difference (and there is so much water in the rice that it will not be overwhelmingly rich).

We will need:

4 T/ 40 g short-grain rice- like sushi rice or risotto rice

1/8- 1/4 tsp salt

450 ml/ 2 C water

1 liter/ 4 C whole milk

150-200 g/ 3/4 - 1 C sugar (use the lesser amount if you will be making the syrup)

200 ml/ scant 1 C heavy cream

60 g/ 1/2 C cornstarch

a vanilla bean, or good vanilla extract (easy to make your own!) to taste

Put the rice and the salt in a large pot with the water- it will look like too little rice and way too much water, don't worry- and simmer on low heat until the rice swells and absorbs all the water. The rice should be as full and soft as possible, but without falling apart.

This takes 20 - 30 minutes. Add 3/4 of the milk, and all of the sugar and simmer until it is quite hot. Meanwhile blend the rest of the cold milk with the cornstarch (this is called a "slurry"). Add this to the hot sweet milk and rice, whisking gently all the while, until it comes to a full boil and thickens. Pour in the cream, blending gently:

Add vanilla to taste:

and pout into individual bowls, or one large one. Serve warm, or cool, or chilled, with cinnamon if you like.

But, if you want to turn it into something a little more exotic, Try this:

200 g/ 1 C sugar

1/2 C water

rose water to taste- 1-2 Tablespoons 

a spoonful of corn syrup or glucose if you have it (prevents crystallization)

a drop of red or pink coloring, or a few drops of pomegranate juice

a few pistachios for garnish 

Pour the sugar into the middle of a pot, and surround it with the water (so that no sugar crystals cling to the sides of the pan). Bring to a boil gently, add the corn syrup, and then the rose water, and the faintest toothpick dab (I color a shot of syrup and add it back to control the intensity) of color or a drop of pomegranate juice.

The delicate color of the syrup is beautiful against the snowy cream, and the milky richness of the pudding holds up against the exotic perfume. A couple of green pistachios set it off.

Note: When I am serving the pudding with the rose water syrup, I sometimes flavor it with half a bay leaf rather than vanilla- it gives an elusive masculine perfume, and plays up the distinctly feminine fragrance of the syrup. Some crushed cardamon pods will give this simple pudding some exotic mystery.

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Sea Salt Butter Caramels- Surf and Turf.

It would be too bad if salted caramels became, as it were, a victim of their own success. American tastes have always run to the salt-tinged sweet; we just never identified it in a way that could deem it faddish. Chocolate covered pretzels, tin roof sundaes, gritty Reece's peanut butter cups, cracker jacks, pay day bars- salt keeps sweets lively and balanced. Fashion aside, salted caramels are one of our confectionery staples. They glitter with flaky salt scraped off of rocks in the sea in Crete and the other ingredients are just cream and butter and sugar, and a shot of rum, marrying the flavors and giving a subtle base note. These are a satisfying project- turning a liquid into a dense creamy solid with a gently yielding chew feels like magic. They have a bold luscious dairy richness, and that bite of salt is fresh like the sea air.

Just because making candy is like magic does not mean it is difficult- a candy thermometer makes these very simple. (However, growing up without a candy thermometer and using instead glasses of ice water lined up on the counter to test the consistency brought me closer to the secret life of things).

We will need:

600 g/ 3 C  sugar

120 g/ 1/2 C corn syrup

120 ml/ 1/2 C water

1 tsp flaky sea salt

400 ml/ scant 2 C heavy cream

140 g/ 5 oz butter

1 shot rum, or some vanilla

Before starting to cook, line a loaf pan with foil and butter it thickly and thoroughly. Get our a candy thermometer and put it in a glass of hot water.

Heat the cream, butter, and salt together in a small pan.

Take a large, tall pan (the mixture will bubble up like mad when we add the cream to the caramel), pour the sugar into the center, the water around it, and the corn syrup over the whole. Warm, then let it come to a full boil- it will be frothy and white-

Keep a watching it- don't leave the stove for a second. It will stay white, and white, and white, then. as soon as it starts to take on some color, it darkens quickly. When it is a deep honey color, stand back as far as you can and pour in the hot cream. It froths and steams like a volcano and is really loud.

As soon as it subsides, give it a few stirs with a long-handled wooden spoon, attach a candy thermometer, and again keep the closest watch. The thermometer climbs slowly at first and then picks up speed.

The very second it reaches 115 C/ 240 F, take it from the heat, add the rum, and pout it into the waiting pan lined with buttered foil. Sprinkle lightly with more sea salt. Let it cool at room temperature- which takes forever or at least 5 - 6 hours, or put it outside, as I did. It's winter, and the cold caramel gets really hard and you'll think, at least I did, that it is overcooked it and it would be too hard and chewy. As it comes to room temperature and also seems to take in some softening moisture from the air, it is firm enough to hold its shape, soft enough to melt on the tongue.

Turn the bar out upside down onto a piece of non-stick baking paper. Carefully peel off the foil and, while still upside down, but it into whatever size pieces you like (cutting through the softer underside makes neat pieces).

Finishing-

They are ready to eat and delicious plain, but hard to wrap or serve or give- you cannot trust the surface to not stick to anything after a few hours. An elegant solution is to dip the bottoms only in tempered chocolate. Also, the salt has sunk in and you can't see it so well- a few streaks of chocolate on top give the more salt something to cling to and shimmer.

Take a little over half of 200 g/ 7 oz. dark chocolate, melt it in the microwave or over simmering water, then add the rest of the chocolate. Stir until it melts in and the temperature of the chocolate cools (it will feel cool to your bottom lip). Dip the bottoms of the caramels, letting it come up the sides as much as you like, set them on a piece of non-stick paper, and drizzle the rest over the tops, sprinkling with salt flakes right away before it has a chance to set (tempered chocolate sets fast).

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Chania Sesame Biscuits, with Cinnamon, Orange, and Clove- Memory in the Mouth.

"Mmmm...Chania...," My daughter is munching on a cookie with her eyes closed, as far away from Crete as you can get and still be in Greece. We have these simple crunchy cookies all summer long when we are in Chania- with coffee, with wine, with milk for the little ones. Three batches of messing around with some flour and oil, and I got them just right. Memory in the mouth.

Our bakery in Chania has a huge wood-burning oven. By one in the afternoon, the dishes of the neighborhood start coming out, and people come and pick them up- Gemista (stuffed vegetables), Chicken and potatoes, this being Crete of course zesty minty Boureki. The food tastes better from the romantic heat of a true hearth with wood smoke, extra seasoning from the steam of your neighbors' dishes. They make a cookie like this, and a lady comes fro Rethymnon every week to the farmers' market to sell another one. They are all over in one shape or another. What they have in common is that they are all made with olive oil because it flows like water in Crete, they have no eggs(!), and almost always they have some raki (tsicoudia).

Some shape them into rings or fanciful twists, but the sesame makes them pretty enough. I think their virtue is that you can make lots and lots of them in no time at all, because they will disappear quickly- not too sweet, not too rich, just fragrant, beguiling. A simple trick keeps them crumbly rather than tough or hard. If you never bake, these area good start-mix with your hands, no tricky shapes, and makes a ton for your minimal effort. Perfect for making with kids.

We will need:

700 g/ 6 C flour

1 1/2 tsp/ baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp flaky sea salt

200 g/ 1 C sugar

Finely grated orange zest

3 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

240 ml/ 1 C good olive oil

200 ml/ 3/4 C fresh orange juice, plus a couple shots of raki (or vodka), more if you like. The raki burns off in the oven, evaporating, leaving the biscuits more airy and crisp.

Blend all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, rubbing the orange zest into the sugar a little as you do-

Add the oil only-

and mix with your hands until the oil is completely blended in- it will be crumbly This is the trick- the oil coats the flour grains, and keeps them from forming gluten strands when you add the liquid. 

The oil turns the flour this rich, green-tinged gold.

Now go ahead and mix in the juice and raki with your fingers, until it makes a dough that just holds together. 

Take large handfuls and shape them into flat logs. Dampen the outsides with water, and roll them to coat them completely in sesame seeds. The seeds stick easily to the damp log.

You will probably need 2 baking sheets for all the logs- I usually get about 12 logs. Now slice them on the diagonal like you are making biscotti, and give them a little space- they puff. Don't be very careful- they are a rustic shape.

Bake them at 170 C/350 f for almost a half an hour- they will have puffed, and may be a little soft still when you remove them form the oven but they will crisp as they cool.No need to use baking paper or even oil the baking sheet, but you may need to loosen a couple of them with a spatula.

Unlike most cookies, these are not better hot, and in fact are not even very god hot or freshly baked- give them an hour for the flavors to settle.

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