hippy love

Don't these little jewels just reek of Valentine’s Day cuteness?

My mother thought I was slightly deranged when I asked permission to harvest rose hips from the front garden one rainy day in December. “But they’re pretty,” I said, “and I’ve always wanted to make jam out of them.”

So I ambled on out to the garden, armed with scissors and a wal-mart bag, joined by my intrigued dad and a continual dusting of light rain. (And in case your mind goes kinda fuzzy when I mention rose hips, these are the beautiful, often colorful berries left after the blooms falls off.) We clipped and picked and filled just the bottom of the bag, and despite my father’s considerable doubts, I did in fact glean enough to make a pint of jam.

And make jam I did! With just two cups of perky, coral-colored “berries” and a ton of sugar. They happen to release the most lovely, subtly strawberry-esque fragrance as they cook. The results were less than spectacular, considering I let them boil too long, but I’ve amended the recipe, positive that your results, should you care to dedicate a couple hours to them, will be positively spectacular.

Rose Hip Jam

2 cups rose hips
2 cups sugar
Water

De-stem and clean rose hips with a paring knife, then soak them in about 2 1/2 cups of water for an hour. Boil hips in the same water for 15 minutes to soften them. Remove from heat, strain liquid into another container, and roughly chop the berries. Add them back to the water, stir in the sugar, and set to boil for 12-15 minutes. Remove from heat (even if it seems too liquid!), pour into a jar, and refrigerate.

a fresh start

It may not seem a likely choice for a cold-weather culinary entry, but considering it’s 80 degrees outside and most of the trees are still fully clad in green leaves, iced tea is the ideal drink for a day like this. And it’s such a lovely, crisp thing to swirl in your mouth, to cleanse out all the fatty, rich foods you’ve probably been cramming in your mouth since November, that I just couldn’t resist.

My husband is a great tea-drinker, and when I type “great,” I mean, he puts most big Southern boys to absolute shame. Waiters tend to find him tiresome because he requires refills every ten minutes (not an exaggeration.) Our gallon-sized pitcher is well-worn with use, because he grows through A WHOLE PITCHER OF TEA PER DAY. I kid you not.

This quantity of tea, however, has not dulled his palate at all. Daniel is persnickety about his tea - he wants it lightly sweetened, preferably with Sweet-n-Lo, with a touch of citrus and a subtle-rather-than-strong flavor. Sigh. It took me a whole year to figure out exactly how to craft this fragile balance by the pitcherful (this is the picture of true love). I borrowed from Nanny’s method and tested multiple batches on the man himself until I came up with a foolproof way to make perfect tea. Even I’m hooked now!

Barely Sweet Tea

2 family-size bags Luzianne or Lipton tea
1 small bag of orange-and-spice tea
5 packets of Sweet-n-Lo

Dunk the tea bags in boiling water and let steep for about 4 minutes. Pour the sweetener in the bottom of a gallon-sized pitcher and pour the tea over it to dissolve quickly. Fill the pitcher with cold, clear water, pour over ice, and gulp.

the real cookie monster

Tom Brown is a lawyer back home in East Texas. And a runner, a bear-hugger, and father to a perpetually dirty kid who made fun of me every day in the third grade. But most importantly, Tom Brown is the creator of the (eponymous) greatest cookies ever.

And for the past decade or so, he has generously bestowed these oh-so-mouth-watering cookies upon our family, which has the good fortune of his friendship and, by extension, his cookie-receiving circle. In fact, I’m so darn special I got a batch of ‘em sent to me while at art school in Paris — a gift even more delicious considering the lack of peanut butter in grocery aisles of the “culinary capital of the world.”

At their gooey hearts, these are simply peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies. But if you have a handful of similar recipes, even a drawerful, I demand you toss them aside like the rubbish they are. Because even though no one can make a Tom Brown cookie quite as well as Tom Brown, any copies are more than worth the effort.

Tom Brown Cookies

2 eggs
2 sticks melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 bag chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix together the first seven ingredients, then add the flour. Stir in the peanut butter and chocolate chips, and bake for 7-9 minutes.

sweetmilk

Happy birthday, dear wee dad!

The odd, yet enticing, photo above stands as a tantalizing preview of the chocolate dulce-de-leche bars you will receive in a scant two days. Take this as an early birthday card.

Yes, father, I have crafted my very own dulce de leche. You should have seen it… simmering and frothing in a sweet, milky puddle in my Calphalon pan which was a wedding present from your own wallet (though somehow I doubt you remember). It was a rich, fragrant, swirling whirlpool of goodness -- more delicate, more fragile, more dairy than its petty American counterpart.

Sigh.

I think it’s pretty obvious by now who should be getting the fattest inheritance.

Dulce de Leche

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
A splash of vanilla

Scald milk in a heavy pan by stirring occasionally over low heat until steam breathes gently from its surface. Add the sugar, soda and vanilla, slowly, and stir till it dissolves. Cook over medium heat for an hour, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Be sure to remove it from heat the instant it thickens into a gorgeous, tawny syrup.

not quite there

I like pie.

I’m a custard pie fiend. A brown sugar pie master. And the forerunner of maple pie in the Randall-Boone culinary lineage. But fruit pies… thou hast thrown the gauntlet down.

A clump of strawberries and rhubarb, already chopped, has been tucked in my freezer door since the Great Jam Day of ’08, especially reserved for my first attempt at crafting a wholly-from-scratch, kick-butt fruit pie. And for once, my fierce independence in the kitchen (i.e., my refusal to stick to a recipe) served me wrongly.

The one recipe I followed, from the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens, produced a crust that was passable but flavorless. Thus, I will not reveal that recipe here but vow to continue a dedicated search for the perfect homemade crust, because I simply cannot believe that Marie Callender has upstaged me so easily.

My method for the filling was pulled from a bunch of different recipes, and while the flavor was lovely and rich, the texture was two steps away from gluey. So the recipe I’m providing now is much improved from what I originally followed, and it should produce lovely, rich, juicy results.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Filling

3 cups chopped strawberry and rhubarb
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Stir it all together and, what the heck, just pour it in the boxed M.C. crust from the supermarket.

melon goodness

Watermelon itself is sweet, cool, summery, and totally cliché; watermelon pudding is sweet, cool, summery, and totally bizarre. I don’t know about you, but I’m the type to consistently choose unusual over normal. When I spotted the recipe for Sicilian watermelon pudding in the August issue of Saveur, I knew it was a dessert destined for my mouth.

Beware: the recipe sounds très simple, but it will ruin your entire kitchen. I mean, fat, pink, sticky globs everywhere. You can fix this problem by cleaning as you cook, but that just sucks all the joy out of creating a big, beautiful mess. Don’t even try this without a large, fine sieve and a lot of time. As with most pudding, you’ll be hunched over a big pot, forced to watch and stir til it boils, for about 40-45 minutes.

But I’m giving you the pessimism before optimism. Truth be told, once the pudding has attained a lovely coolness in the refrigerator and is topped by a quivering dollop of whipped cream, it bursts in your mouth with its gorgeous, forceful watermelon flavor. The texture is certainly odd at first, but the taste is unbeatable.

Gelo di Melone

6 cups watermelon, seeded and in chunks
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Whipped cream, for garnish

Purée watermelon in a blender until liquefied, and set aside. Whisk together sugar and cornstarch in a big pot or saucepan. While whisking, drizzle in liquid fruit. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping bottom with a spoon. (Easier method: stir very regularly, occasionally cover pot with top to speed boiling.)

Boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching, for five minutes or until it thickens slightly. Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla. Using a rubber spatula, push and scrape the pudding through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-6 hours.

To serve, spoon pudding in small bowls and top with a hearty amount of whipped cream.

guffaw-scrawls

Oftentimes the greatest recipes are the simplest. And there’s nothing like a warm snickerdoodle to convince you of that. That soft, pillowy texture, that creamy, buttery taste and all dusted with crystals of cinnamon and sugar… bet your mouth is watering right now.

These are my husband’s favorite cookies, and the recipe happens to be the very first cookie concoction I ever tried. Of course, chocolate chip is the classic starter for a preteen baker, but after my eyes locked on the word “snickerdoodle” in the cookbook index, there was no going back. Little did I know the recipe produced, oh, about six dozen cookies. My sugar-lovin’ dad was delighted, but I was hot and sweaty by the time I’d shoveled all the cookies off the pan.

So here is your fair warning: you’ll have cookies coming out your fridge, pantry, freezer and ears with this recipe. Totally worth it.


Snickerdoodles

3 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 sticks butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

Stir together the first three ingredients and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs, milk and vanilla and beat well. Gradually add flour mixture and beat til combined. Chill the dough for about an hour (or 20 minutes or so in the freezer). Roll dough into one-inch balls, roll around in a bunch of cinnamon and sugar, then place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.

cobblin' genius

I trust that I’ve already convinced you of my die-hard love for Texas peaches. Now, allow me to convince you of the utter necessity of falling in love with my Nanny’s recipe for cobbler. Sure, there are hundreds, even thousands maybe, of sweet little grandmas championing their cobbler methods above all else, but to them I say, “Prepare to meet your doom.”

Those classic, crusty strips criss-crossing fruit in a Pyrex dish? My Nanny tosses her hair at them. (She might stick out her tongue, too; she was a pre-kindergarten teacher after all…) Instead, she has concocted an easy-as-pie, even-more-delicious way to fix cobbler that results in pools of buttery juice, mountains of caramelized dough and valleys of sugar-soaked fruit — and all that after about five minutes of kitchen time.

And on an occasional summer afternoon, after Daddy Tom (her husband, my grandfather) wanders out toward the four stalwart peach trees bordering the driveway in their front yard and comes back with a couple jewels in hand, she’ll whip up one of these babies with fresh peaches from their very own land, and nothing tastes sweeter.

Believe me, you don’t know how darn lucky you are that I’m sharing her recipe with you.

Nanny’s Cobbler

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter or oleo
1 cup flour
Pinch salt
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup milk
3 cups fruit (peaches!!)

Melt butter in 1 1/2-quart dish for oven. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and 1 cup sugar. Stir in milk. Pour into middle of melted butter. Place fruit in the middle of the dough. Pour 1 cup sugar on top of the fruit. DO. NOT. STIR.

Stick the whole thing into a 325-degreee oven for 50 minutes to an hour. In my immortal Nanny’s words, you’ll get a “crazy crust great tasting cobbler.”

Sidenote: Every time Nanny invites us up for dinner we hope and pray cobbler will be waiting in the wings. It usually is, and it tends to be even better with a hunk of vanilla ice cream on top.

jam session

The expanse of time after noon til suppertime in the South is usually so blistering hot it feels like a wet electric blanket has been tossed over the whole world. It’s a time best reserved for naps, mint juleps and porch swinging. Unfortunately, many corporations in our great nation do not understand this.

As a teacher, however, I thumb my nose at them and enjoy long bouts of reading and cooking in air-conditioned comfort, though gin gimlets tend to be my favorite alcoholic company.

Last week, in an effort to buck up my status as Southern housewife, I strapped on my apron and headed for the kitchen, bravely entering the realm of a cooking pastime I just knew would result in sticky, messy disaster: jam-making. I was armed only with gritted teeth, high hopes and a simple recipe I’d found on the Internet.

And while the jar sterilizing, strawberry and rhubarb chopping and bubble watching were more time-consuming than I’d figured, the whole thing ended up being a smashing success. Especially considering I’d imagined ending up with gallons and gallons of ruby-hued jam and no where to put it but Tupperware. The recipe below is tweaked a bit for clarity, but best of all, it’s manageable. You’ll end up with about 2-3 cups of homemade jam — not 87.

Berry Jam

2 1/4 cups cane sugar
2 1/2 cups crushed berries (feel free to add those deliciously tart crimson stalks, too)
A squirt of lemon juice

Start by thoroughly cleaning your jam jars by sticking them in a boiling pot of water. Remove the pot from heat, and let the jars sit in there until you’re ready to pour the jam. Clean the lids by dunking them quickly in the boiling water. The hot jam mixture works better with warm jars and lids.

Mix up the sugar, berries and lemon juice in a good-sized pot on high heat, stirring regularly until the mixture comes to a boil (this will happen faster than you think). Reduce heat to medium, and continue cooking at a slow boil (20-30 bubbles on the surface is ideal) for about 15 minutes. Mixture will still be thin but pretty as a jewel.

Fill jars immediately (funnels are a good idea here) and cap. Line them up on the windowsill so you can admire them as they cool. Once they’re about room temperature, put them in the fridge and enjoy within the hour!

Sidenote: My husband can’t stand preserves and jam, and he thought this stuff was to-die-for. There’s the true measure of success.

peachy keen

Georgia may be known across the country as a land flowing with milk and peaches, but we all know the sun shines brightest (and most hellishly) in Texas. And that means fuzzy-skinned fruit just as sweet and succulent as the ones produced by our Southern neighbors.

As soon as mid-June comes around, the skinny roads meandering through the Texan countryside play host to scores of itty bitty fruit-and-veggie stands, most of them run by overall-clad, dusty farmer’s wives or retirees with a piece of straw in their mouths. They stick signs by the side of the road with squished, painted letters promising “Shelled Peas! Melon! Jacksonville Tomatoes!” and, if you’re very lucky, one of those signs will hold the seven juiciest letters in the summer alphabet: p-e-a-c-h-e-s.

I don’t care if your wife is in labor or you’re already late for a funeral — when you see one of those signs, you pull over just as fast as you can. Take the two minutes to hand over a couple crumpled bills for that precious mound of homegrown peaches, almost always balanced in a little basket, then carefully dumped in a plastic Wal-mart bag for your enjoyment. At least when you get back in the car and time rushes you on, you can dampen its obnoxious ticking with your first bite of that gorgeous, peachy flesh.