lemon sandwich cookies

This baking adventure began with a pretty new apron purchased on a whim from the World's Greatest Hardware Store:



Sure, I already had an apron waiting faithfully for me at home. A simple cotton one that had served me well for many years. But this apron wrapped its arms around me and would not let me go.

One might call it a trophy apron.

Baking is an activity I find deeply calming and deeply joyful. It's so simple, yet so mysterious. I still find it surprising that mixing a bunch of ingredients together in a bowl and applying heat to it can yield such an unbelievably delicious payoff.

I also purchased a rolling pin recently, and I wanted to make a cookie with a dough that required rolling.

So I made lemon sandwich cookies. This is a Martha Stewart recipe, laid out in typical Martha fashion. The editorial voice in these recipes is so spartan. There's minimum of direction, and a tacit understanding that you are a cook who owns multiple aprons and thus knows her way around a rolling pin. Martha would never say anything like, "If the dough tears up when you roll it, and sticks like a fiend to the rolling pin, just take a breather and let the dough warm up a little." (I wish she would.)



Once I let the dough warm up a little and tried moving the rolling pin much more slowly over the dough, the cookies came together fine. It really is a joyful thing to use cookie cutters on dough — my interior second grader leaped with glee every time I punched the fluted cutter through the dough.

Lemon Sandwich Cookies

Makes 3 dozen cookies if you're using a 1.5" cutter; less with a larger cutter.

• 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for rolling
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, for sprinkling
• Creamy Lemon Filling (see below)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl using an electric mixer on high speed, beat butter, confectioners' sugar, lemon zest, and salt until combined. With mixer on low, add flour (dough will still be stiff); finish mixing with a wooden spoon.
2. Turn dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap, pat into a disk about 1/2 inch thick. Wrap, and chill until firm, about 1 hour (and up to 3 days).
3. Unwrap dough; place on a lightly floured piece of parchment or waxed paper. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll dough about 1/8 inch thick (if dough cracks, let it warm up slightly. If dough sticks like a fiend to the rolling pin, just laugh a little and take a walk around the block).
4. Cut out cookies with a 1 1/2-inch round cutter (reroll scraps once, chilling of too soft). Place 1 inch apart on two baking sheets; sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until barely beginning to brown, 15 to 20 minutes; transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
5. Form sandwiches: Place about 1 teaspoon (or more!) Creamy Lemon Filling between two cookies, sugared sides facing out; squeeze gently.

- - - - - - - - -

Creamy Lemon Filling

Makes enough for about 3 dozen sandwich cookies

• 1 package (4 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. In a small bowl, mix cream cheese and zest until smooth. Gradually add 1 cup confectioners' sugar, mixing until smooth. Mix in remaining sugar as necessary to create a firm but spreadable filling.

— from Martha Stewart

Spring green risotto

Last night Lalah and I made risotto. Risotto, of course, is another one of those Scary Food Things I've always been too intimidated to try. All that stirring! And who's to say what al dente really is? I can't be responsible for judging these things!

But we made risotto, and it turned out beautifully. I pretty much demanded that we try Ina Garten's Spring Green Risotto recipe. The seatback TVs on my long flight back to Atlanta from San Francisco last month featured the Food TV channel with Ina Garten cheerfully making this risotto. People, I hope you will never be strapped into a chair and made to watch Parmesan cheese softening luciously into tender arborio rice in a glorious closeup as you're gnawing on airplane peanuts. It's torture.

I'd been thinking about this risotto for weeks, so I was ready to get to it.

This recipe is particularly enjoyable because it introduces a number of spring vegetables to the line-up. Asparagus, peas, leeks, fennel. Risotto primavera!



Revelations:

First, as expected, risotto is a demanding but extremely pleasurable dish to make. It's not a good idea if you're really hungry, because Lord knows, it takes some time. It's a very good idea if you feel like taking your time, having a cooking experience, sipping some wine while you stir, filling your kitchen with delectable fragrances.



The overall texture and vibe of this dish was just what we wanted. It was creamy and comforting and filling and rich. You'll taste many layers of flavor in this dish. They all play beautifully together. Creamy rice, earthily sweet asparagus, savory broth, the bright blanket of lemon tying everything together.




This recipe makes a lot. Invite a crowd over for this one. A crowd that's not in a hurry.

Spring Green Risotto

nocoupons1 1/2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (2 leeks)
1 cup chopped fennel
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
4 to 5 cups simmering chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 pound thin asparagus
10 ounces frozen peas, defrosted, or 1 1/2 cups shelled fresh peas
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
* Note: This is a lot of lemon zest. Lalah and I both loved the prominence of the lemon flavor in the finished dish, but if you are not nutty about lemon, you may want to start with the zest from one lemon, taste, and work up from there. *
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (ditto on the mention of zest above)
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, preferably Italian
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives, plus extra for serving

Directions:
Heat the olive oil and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and fennel and saute for 5 to 7 minutes, until tender. Add the rice and stir for a minute to coat with the vegetables, oil, and butter. Add the white wine and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until most of the wine has been absorbed. Add the chicken stock, 2 ladles at a time, stirring almost constantly and waiting for the stock to be absorbed before adding more. This process should take 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the asparagus diagonally in 1 1/2-inch lengths and discard the tough ends. Blanch in boiling salted water for 4 to 5 minutes, until al dente. Drain and cool immediately in ice water. (If using fresh peas, blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes until the starchiness is gone.)

When the risotto has been cooking for 15 minutes, drain the asparagus and add it to the risotto with the peas, lemon zest, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. ( * Note: 2 teaspoons of salt felt like a lot. We added one and found it to be sufficient.)

Continue cooking and adding stock, stirring almost constantly, until the rice is tender but still firm.

Whisk the lemon juice and mascarpone together in a small bowl. When the risotto is done, turn off the heat and stir in the mascarpone mixture plus the Parmesan cheese and chives. Set aside, off the heat, for a few minutes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve hot with a sprinkling of chives and more Parmesan cheese.

— from Food Network's Barefoot Contessa

the spiritual vibrations of food

I've been wondering for a while about what to do with this website.

I'm past my personal era of confessional blogging. I no longer feel inspired to bare my heart to all who visit this space. But I have enjoyed writing here a lot over the past five or six or seven years — I forget how long it's been — and I don't want to give it up.

This week I'm having an epiphany about how to use this space. Naturally, this epiphany comes with a story. (Epiphanies usually do.)

At the end of December, my good friend Lalah and I went to North Carolina for a women's retreat led by Christine Kane. We had a wonderful weekend, full of laughter and reflection and unusually delicious food. The meals at this weekend were prepared by a local chef, a lovely woman named Deva who served mostly vegetarian fare. Many of the vegetables she used for her dishes came from her own garden. Each meal was colorful, inviting, comforting, and delicious. Almost as an afterthought, I'll add that these dishes were probably pretty nutritious, too.

On the way home from the retreat, Lalah and I stopped to have lunch at the Early Girl Eatery in Asheville. We both had a post-retreat glow — we felt clear and aligned and happy. We had been fed beautiful food for three days. We had been drinking herbal tea and doing yoga. We were feeling pretty zen.

Lalah said, "I loved the food at that retreat. Everything felt totally nutritious and totally yummy at the same time."

"Yeah, it was really nice."

"I really want to learn how to cook," she said. "I've always wanted to feel more comfortable in the kitchen."

"Well, maybe you can take lessons," I said.

"Or maybe we could try cooking together," she said.

Hey. There's an idea.

Since January we've been getting together to cook. It usually happens about once a week, though we took a few weeks off in February when life got in the way. We talk beforehand about what to prepare, and we take turns buying the groceries. Dishes are often vegetarian, but when they're not, we steer toward sustainably harvested seafood or free-range poultry. We go for the good stuff.

The meals are timed carefully after the arrival of Lalah's husband home from work and their 3-year-old son's nightly bedtime routine. They are not elaborate meals, but they are consistently delicious. And the process of cooking with Lalah in this context has been, well, utterly delightful.

Here's what I really want to say in this entry:

As I've been cooking with Lalah, I've been tuning into the many layers of my relationship to food. I've become much more attuned to what I would call the spiritual vibrations of food. Does that phrase sound a little odd to you, or do you instinctively know what I mean? There's a difference between eating a plate of nachos with yellow cheese sauce, and eating a little piece of really good cheddar from the farmer's market with a sliced apple. There's a hell of a difference between eating a Smart Ones® Honey Mango Barbeque Chicken frozen entree (that's part of Weight Watcher's "Fruit Inspirations™" line, FYI), and actually preparing a piece of free-range chicken with a chutney barbeque dressing.

It's not just the nutritional differences between these options that I'm talking about — it's the way you feel as you're preparing the food, how you feel when you're eating it, and how you feel afterwards.

What I'm seeing is that my relationship to food feels like an invitation to something richer, something more sacred.

I think this is something a lot of Americans are waking up to right now. I don't think Michael Pollan's message would have had the same resonance if he'd been writing in the early '80s. But now, his words are like springs of water in the desert.

We're reaching the end of our relationship with un-reality. We're reaching the end of our relationship with fake food. Eating an Egg McMuffin doesn't really fly when we can dine on fresh berries and Greek yogurt instead.

In the coming weeks and months, I'll bring you reports from my cooking dates with Lalah. I'll give you our recipes and a summary of what we loved or didn't love about the recipe. I hope you'll read along, and comment, and even cook along with us.

I'm looking forward to this.