slip away
new cookie recipes and eating a whole potato
Is it still okay to say happy new year? What’s the grace period on that— a week? The first half of the month? The first time you talk to someone again, so long as it’s in January? No one really knows. Anyway, I hope everyone had a good one, and a good holiday if you celebrate. Jeff got a bad cold the week after Christmas, so we unfortunately had to skip what would have probably been a lovely board games and acoustic jam New Year’s Eve at Eryn & Graham’s. Jeff went to bed at 10pm and I drank a couple of prosecco spritzers by myself while watching Glass Onion and an episode of Star Trek. Honestly not the worst NYE I’ve had (I did feel very bad for Jeff though).
This week, now that Jeff’s feeling better and I seem to have avoided catching whatever it was, we finally tried the fresh pasta restaurant near us, InGrain. The menu and the space are both small, but the portions are generous and delicious, and you can get a quite good glass of wine for less than $15— almost unheard of these days. I need to go back and buy some of their dried pasta to take home.
The weekend before Christmas we had our usual raclette night with Jeff’s side of the family, which is always a good time, the same sort of satisfaction you get from hot pot or Korean barbecue. We tried a new vegan cheese this year for the dairy-free people, Parmela gouda, and it was really good. In the past we’ve used Chao, which I like fine for burgers and mac & cheese, but this one fit the raclette theme a little better. We had a couple of slices left over afterwards, and Jeff and I used them for a baked potato dinner with vegan bacon bits. To get a beautifully cooked potato, with crispy skin and buttery soft insides, poke it with a fork in a few places, rub oil and salt on the skin, then bake straight on the rack (or a baking sheet) for 45-60 minutes at 450°F. I did 425° on convection, so maybe turn them halfway through if you’re not using a convection oven. This satisfied the strange craving I’d been having for a Wendy’s baked potato… even without the chili.
Yvonne and Martin were sick Christmas Eve, so we didn’t have our usual dinner with them and Natalie and Dave and the kids. It was sad not to see them, but Jeff and I both had to work so it did make our day a little less hectic. We had nachos at home while I finished up the last batch of cookie baking to take to my mom’s. We got there around 10 and stayed up til after 1am playing card games with my brothers, drinking mulled wine, and stuffing stockings.
In addition to the usual suspects I talked about in my last newsletter, I made two new cookie recipes this year. The first one was these miso-peanut butter cookies, which were an instant favourite for me: amazing texture and flavour, easy and fun to make. One of my guilty pleasures is reading the unhinged comments people like to leave on NYT recipes. and I was baffled by multiple people on this one lamenting the amount of sugar and saying they cut it in half. First of all, this wasn’t a particularly shocking amount in my books (a cup and a half for the batch); they are cookies, they are supposed to have sugar in them! And secondly, removing so much volume of an ingredient will also alter the texture and cohesion of the dough, not only its sweetness, so those people are essentially making a whole different cookie.
Anyway, reading the ingredients list I was mildly skeptical of it using more miso than peanut butter, but I made the recipe as is and would absolutely not change a thing. I was also very thankful to one commenter— the person who noted the weights of the miso and peanut butter, 100g and 75g respectfully, because these were given in volume only (though in both metric and imperial).
The other was these white chocolate strawberry cookies, which are actually raspberry in the recipe, but I already had freeze-dried strawberries so that’s what I made. They were a bit labour-intensive— make brown butter and let it cool, mix the dough and let it chill (I rolled the balls and put them in the freezer for about half an hour, because I was short on time), add more chocolate and crumbled berries for topping— but they were really nice. I’ve made a few types of cookies with browned butter before and in some cases you don’t really taste it too much, but in these you definitely get to really enjoy the flavour of it. I think if I weren’t making these for an event, I would just mix all the chocolate and berries into the dough and skip the topping step, but it does make them look impressive.
Christmas day is always too hectic for taking photos when it matters, but it was the usual affair of basically an entire day of eating and drinking. Bagels and lox and cream cheese for brunch, with mimosas and fruit (Cory and Michelle brought the most ENORMOUS muscat grapes). Crackers and cheese and condiments when people start to get hungry again around 4:30. The best part of Christmas dinner for me is stuffing and brussels sprouts (I made this year’s sprouts with miso and grainy mustard), but my mom’s roasted potatoes (based on this recipe, I believe) rarely have any leftovers. Also, I had a moment of pure inspiration when we didn’t have enough room for both pans of potatoes in the oven at the same time, and created a makeshift additional oven rack by standing a wire rack on top of the pan of brussels sprouts, resting the potatoes on top of it.
Recovering from the holidays, and with the weather still treating us badly, meals lately have been things that are veg-heavy, comforting and filling. Turkey-vegetable soup made from Christmas dinner leftovers. Curried peanut sauce with tofu, kale, and broccoli. The miso caesar salad with yams again. The lablabi I made for my birthday again. Spicy hoisin stir fry with sui choi, carrots, and tofu. Curry ramen with wilted greens and a boiled egg. (Aside: we accidentally bought gluten-free ramen noodles at Costco, and I cannot in good conscience recommend them, unless you like your ramen noodles to be the size of cappellini spezzati by the time they get to your mouth. They aren’t bad flavour-wise though.)
I will have more to share with you next time as I get back in the swing of thinking about my cooking before it’s time to actually make dinner. No promises that I won’t still sometimes just make up a batch of popcorn with dill seasoning and nutritional yeast for lunch, though.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. Finally, some words of encouragement from our good friend Captain Picard. A better world is possible!