Ciabatta - Fix a starter of 1 cup flour, 2/3 cup water and a pinch of yeast and chill for 12 hours. It will become turn bubbly and spounge-ish.  To begin making Christmas dough, add 2 cups flour, 1.5 teaspoons of salt, a measure of yeast in warm milk and about half a cup of water. For points, use a food processor to blend everything together. This sounds weird but works remarkably well! The processor makes every gluteney but if you don’t have one or enjoy being traditional: kneed, quarter turn, etc, until just prior to your arms falling off. Let rise for 90 minutes-ish. If you enjoy having larger bubbles in your bread, add a tablespoon of oil to the mixture. There were Experiments last night and we discovered this.

After rising, form two long, flat loaves. It shouldn’t need to be fooled with too much but punching it down helps. I also like to throw cornmeal on the tray before I transfer the loaves. Let rise for a slight bit more, then cook at 400′ F for 20 minutes.  You should get two well rounded ciabatta with a thin, golden crust and a fluffy interior.  Did you know ciabatta means ‘slippers’? I did not!

Vinaigrette- Add freshly pressed garlic, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, sugar, mustard and slight amounts of olive oil together. The consistency should be thick & syrupy. The secret is more sugar and less wet ingredients compared to one you’d make for a salad. I suggest making lots of this and keeping it about the house . By about the house, I really mean Securely in the Refrigerator.

Slice a loaf in two and drizze the vinaigrette on both sides, add lots of pepper, a little bit of salt and chopped basil. If it smells good, you’re doing it right! Add prosciutto, a soft mozzarella and if you both wish to be traditional and enjoy tomatoes, which I do not, slice & add one!

You now have a sandwich! You win! There’s a particular name for the vinaigrette, mozzarella, tomato & basil combination but it eludes be just now. Carefully piling the Tomato/mozzarella/basil together without bread or prosciutto will create a simple & elegant appetizer-salad thing.

I have the cookies for you.  Unrequited loves will contact you.  You’ll look prettier.  You will see your enemies driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

I am much beloved and have friends who like me for my cookies. The first batch was halved, and the cookies barely made it out the door before Gloria and I devoured most of them. When I made this recipe the second time, I came up with about 4 dozen cookies with the Platonic ideal size of a cookie–maybe, 3.5″ diameter? You can make them smaller and more plentiful, or halve the recipe. Moral: only halve the recipe if you have no friends. And be prepared, with the power of these cookies, to make more friends than you ever desired.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• Rum
• 1 1/2 cups of raisins
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt (you can use less salt, but then we can’t be friends.)
• 3 cups rolled oats

Step 0. You don’t have to do this, and the second time I made these, I certainly didn’t wish to expend the rum. But if you want, soak the raisins for at least 30 minutes in some rum (I used Cap’n Morgan’s Spiced Rum.) I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference, but it does lend a layer of mystique and beauty to the cookie. I’m not even joking. If not, drink the rum, and leave your raisins the hell alone. They’ll still be good, just not sell-your-children-for-raw-c0okie-materials good.

Step 1. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract. Doing this by hand is a drag, so make sure you have a mostly gooey base. The lumps of butter will come out a lot easier when you do step 2, but put something on the television and make sure the whole concoction is mostly free of giant lmps.

• FYI: no one ever has the right brown sugar when they need it. If you were a dunce and could only find dark brown sugar, substitute in about a 1/3 of a cup with white sugar.

Step 2. Whisk (or if you don’t want to wash a damn whisk, fork) together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then, little by little, pour and stir it into the goop from step 1. You should have a beautiful, smooth cookie dough by the end of this step, with a caramel color.

Step 3. Roll up them sleeves and stir in the oats and the raisins.

Step 4. Don’t skip this step. Cover your cookie dough in saran wrap and put it in the fridge. Leave it, like one Miss Britney Spears, alone. The dough needs to rest for at least an hour, until it’s pretty well chilled through. Why? Because it won’t get to be round but also thick and chewy if it the dough has time to run all over the place. Then you’ll have flacid cookies, and your friends will all call me wondering why.

Step 5. Okay, I know. It’s hard to be patient. But look, after a while, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Here is some motivation for waiting:

These cookies are beautiful.

Step 6. Put cookies on some parchment paper (the baker’s choice for cookies!). I use two large spoons and fill one with a heaping spoonful, then scrape it off with another one. You can shape your cookies to be a little more circular. They’ll expand by about an inch each, so put them a couple inches apart. A dozen per normal cookie tray is good. Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. I’d say do a batch, and see how they look at 8. They should look golden brown around the outside and still a leeeeettle bit raw in the middle. If they’re gooey in the middle, put them back in for a minute. If you overbake them by a leeeetle, then they’ll just turn out browner, but still delicious.

Step 7. After you remove each batch, let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to a plate where your friends will devour them.

Step 8. JUST BURY YOUR FACE IN THAT BUSINESS.

***

Bonus material: Here are some rousing endorsements of these cookies:

Donnie C.: “10 out of 10.”

Paul L.: “The secret ingredient is crack.”

Q.R.Murphy: Imagine a husk of a man trapped in the vice grip of a diabetic coma, but still giving a thumbs up as if to say, “Totally worth it.” Oh, wait, I think he just said, “These are good.”

I stumbled upon parrano at the store; the label read something like,  ”nutty flavor of parmagiano-reggiano, soft texture of gouda,” and I figured it would be pretty good even if that was mostly (but not entirely) true.  I got it.  I tried it.  Believe the hype.

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cap of largish shiitake mushroom; I was amazed by how much flavor I got out of such a small amount of mushroom.
• Tiny dash of thyme, powdered probably preferable.
• grated parrano, enough to make a very thin coating on the inside surface of the omelette. Too much and you will taste nothing but parrano- not bad, but not the point.

Whisk your eggs then add the thyme and the shiitake strips and whisk a bit more.  Cook in an omelette/small frying pan with the top on;  I think the extra moisture and heat will help bring out the delicious aroma of the mushroom.

The rest is, to me, common-sense egg and cheese preparation 101 but I’ll write it out anyway.  Flip once the egg is sturdy enough and put the parrano on top while the bottom solidifies a bit.  Once the bottom is good, fold the egg in half, enveloping the parrano in warm egg.  Put the top back on and remove from heat; let it stand to melt the cheese some more.  I suggest eating it with some bacon and a roll of bread with olives in.  Maybe it will fill you up; two eggs just gets me started.

Edit- this just in from Wikipedia: “Parrano won a gold medal at the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison, Wisconsin for ‘Best of class, Gouda.’ It was also first runner up for the World Champion Cheese Title.”  I think I would enjoy visiting the World Championship Cheese Contest.

Calzones are a mysterious breed of creatures. Delicious, but remarkably hard to find in this area. (There are two restaurants with decent creations, both about an hour away.) Calzones aren’t as difficult as you might think; more trouble than stirfry, certainly, but making dough, mixing the filling and folding/shaping are all rather straightforward.

Dough: 1/4 oz yeast, 1.5 cups warm water, 4 cups flour (I chose a bread flour, which resulted in far tougher dough that I anticipated. Beware.) 1 teaspoon salt, 1.5 teaspoons sugar, 1 tablespoon olive oil

Proof the yeast, as necessary, add ingredients together, knead until smooth, let rise for ~90 minutes. If you’ve ever watched the I Love Lucy episode on bread, in which bread rises and takes up the entire kitchen, this is about what you should expect. I formed 6 flat sheets (~8″x10″)to roll the filling into. The dough was rather tough and a rolling pin is suggested.

Filling: Here is your chance to go absolutely crazy, put in anything your heart desires! Add some combination of Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil, Mozarrella, Parmesean, Provolone Cheeses, Pepperoni, or anything else. Brocoli works well, but be sure to chop it up, soak it, and boil it first. Unless health issues are of concern, one can never add too much cheese. I added perhaps 3/4 of a cup of filling to each 8″x10″ sheet of dough, leaving about an inch perimeter.

Brush this outer edge with a mixture of a beaten egg and 1 tablespoon water. This will serve as a sort of glue. Fold the dough over the filling and then fold the edges and seal them. This is more annoying than it sounds. If the dough bunches up anywhere, you’ll get a lump of dough without any of the tasty filling. D: Spending more time here is absolutely worth it.

Brush the rest of the egg mixture on top of each ‘zone. I added sea salt, parmesean cheese and a sprinkle of love to the top of each one, just to make it even better.

Cook at 375 for 25 minutes. The surface should be firm golden-brown but not a rock-solid or carbonized black.

Calzone with Fork on Table

Here is a recipe I’ve cobbled together from several different sources, complete with a twist from my own deranged mind.

What you’ll need:

• Boneless Chicken Breast (1-2 per person, more if it’s a HUNGRY BOY)
• Sliced cheese (Swiss or Muenster are good choices, Provolone is acceptable but oh-so-boring. Honestly, use what you like)
• Sliced Ham (Bacon works as well, but I much prefer ham. For this example, I used Ham Capocolla, for the very slight salami-spice twist to its flavor)
• An Egg
• Bread Crumbs, Italian seasoning or Plain (Store-bought is actually just as good as any home-made, and a lot easier)
• Flour
• Salt & Pepper
• Toothpicks
• Cooking Oil of any variety (Olive Oil is a big plus)

Preheat your oven to about 400 degrees.

Begin by grabbing your nearest local meat tenderizer and gently beating the breasts into 1/8-1/4 of an inch in thickness.  Dust both sides of the breasts with salt and pepper to taste.  After you have done so, place 1-2 slices of your ham atop each breast, and top that with a slice of cheese, which you’ll probably have to tear in half and lay down length-wise.

*OPTIONAL RYAN MURPHY TWIST* – Lay down a line of Cholula or Sriracha right down the length of each stack. Really, use a hot sauce of your choice, but this step is deee-licious.

Okay, hot sauced or not, take one of the ends of each chicken breast and roll it up with the ham and cheese on the inside. Once all rolled, secure with a toothpick. When complete, they should look something like this:

Naked!

Now get three bowls. Fill one halfway with flour, the second with a single egg whisked to a smooth viscous wash, and the third with your bread crumbs. At this point, pour a little bit of your oil (Olive I hope!) into the bread crumbs and mix by hand. Continue to mix and add small, tiny amounts of oil until the bread crumbs are the consistency of slightly damp sand. Not thick and heavy, but crumbly. This is a trick my mom taught me to help a breading brown and crisp nicely, rather than have the breading risk remaining dry and burning to carbon instead. Dredge each chicken roll through the flour, then cover it with the egg wash, and finally coat it in your crumbly, damp, erotic(!) bread crumbs. Place the rolls into a casserole dish or other safe baking dish that has either been coated in Pam or had a layer of aluminum foil placed within it. Cover everything with aluminum foil and slide it into the oven, setting the timer for about 35 minutes.

Here’s where it gets good. The extra bonus that really brings this dish together is the Moray sauce. A Moray sauce is absolutely divine precisely because it will kill you and make you love it. Essentially, it’s butter and cheese. Anyway, here we go:

• Butter
• Cheese (The poor man’s version is Parmesan. if you have it, you’ll want some Gruyere as well.)
• Salt, pepper, Garlic Powder
• Whole Milk

Heat your stovetop to a medium heat. Take a small saucepan about 2 cups in size, and melt 1-1.5 tablespoons of butter into it. Once it melts, add one tablespoon of flour per tablespoon of butter into the mixture and whisk it until it’s thick and mixed otgether, which should take about 30 seconds. Then quickly add 1 cup of whole milk per tablespoon of butter to the sauce pan, and stir slowly.

Once everything has smoothly evened out, continue stirring as you add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste. I recommend going light on the salt, as the cheese and garlic powder will be salty in and of themselves. After those blend in, add about a half cup of Parmesan per 1 tablespoon of butter, stirring all the while. If you have the Gruyere, make it 1/4 cup Parmesan and 1/4 cup of Gruyere per 1 tablespoon of butter instead. At that point, just keep the stovetop going at medium heat, continuing to stir as the sauce thickens. It will thicken, trust me. You can add more cheese if you feel it needs thickening or a stronger cheesy flavor, though.

Once the Moray Sauce is done thickening, reduce the heat and prepare to take your chicken out of the oven, as the sauce prep should not take any longer than half an hour. Remove your chicken, and let cool for about five minutes. You may remove the toothpicks if you like, as the rolls should hold together on their own, though I feel they lend the dish a certain something… Anyway, plater the chicken with whatever else you are serving, and pour the warm Moray Sauce on immediately before serving. Tah-dah! Now you too can delight your tongue and belabor your heart, for your Chicken Cordon Bleu with Moray Sauce is done! Now you certainly can be knocked out as my momma told me to do, and have no regrets. In case you need convincing, just look:

Eat it. You know you want to.

Check out that spiral!

FOOD + FACE = OM NOM

Here’s what you need:
- 3 HUGE russet potatoes
- 1-1.5 lbs of a ground meat (beef or lamb preferred)
- An onion
- 2 cups of frozen vegetables of some sort
- 1 can chicken broth
- salt and pepper and worcestershire sauce to taste
- 1/2 a stick of butter

Ready for the super-complex directions? I’ve written them super stupid and hell of efficient for the quickest dinner possible. Here we go!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Boil and salt a pot of water.
3. While you’re waiting for the water to boil, peel and chop your carrots into strainable pieces. The smaller you cut, the faster they’ll cook, but the more chance you’ve got for them to fall apart, so make a good guess of it.
4. When you’re done, put potatoes into the water.
5. Peel and chop your onions.
6a. Brown your meat. I use a meat lean enough that I don’t have to drain it. 93/7 is pretty great. If you don’t know how to brown meat, heat a pan to medium hot, then flick some water into it periodically. When it sizzles and disappears in a second, throw the meat in. Swirl it around with a spoon.
6b. Season your meat. I throw on the worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper like it’s the honey of the gods. It sweetens the meat a little bit too, which could complement your veggies well.
7. Insert onions pieces when almost all of the meat is brown. Cook until all of the onions are clearish.
8. Insert frozen veggies. I love the frozen peas and carrots combo, plus corn.
9. Is it all cooking nicely? Keep your meat moist with that can of chicken broth. Now’s a good time to check your seasonings. The flavor isn’t going to change any more, so make sure you have something you want to eat.
10. Bring it to a boil, then simmer until you feel the time is right.
11. Are your potatoes done? Sure they are! Drain them.
12. Jo has had a beer and much wine by now.
13. Drop your half stick of butter into the potato. Now mash all of that shit together. If you’re not stupid, you will have a potato masher. If not, and for maximum PMS relief, ’cause you’re obviously a lady, you can use a slotted spoon or a fork or something. FUCK YOU.
13.5. You could, at this point, mash your potatoes in any way you like. But this is the easiest and most flavorful. After your potatoes are mashed or during, or whatever, salt your potatoes. Optionally, you can use salted butter, if you have some just lying around.
14. All of that liquid probably hasn’t boiled off yet, so if you’re really impatient (and I was), you can temper your meat with a couple spoonfuls of the potato. If your meat and such looks creamy, that’s a good sign. I had maybe an inch of creamy soup, but it was fine in the end.
15. Find an 8×14 inch pan. Pour your meat and such into it. Spread it out a little bit so the liquid is evenly distributed.
16. This is the hard part! Take your potatoes and spread it over your stuff. Nooo, all that tasty stuff! At this point, you can make peaks with a fork. At the end of the baking, if you can wait, turn on the broiler so that the top of the potatoes brown pleasantly.
17. Bake for 30 minutes. If you can wait that long. Mine usually comes out after a grueling 25 minutes, 15 of which are devoted to turning on the light in the oven and watching it.

As you can see, my taters are not browned, because I wanted to eat. Pictures! One is bad and the other is overexposed! But it is nommy and delicious.

YESS! Easy food!

PS: I forgot to add that this recipe scales down REALLY well. Put it into a pie pan, an 8×8, whatever. Just make sure your meat is moist, and that you scale down when you use a smaller pan or a different material. But this stuff reheats great, and you could probably freeze it for maximum keepability. But take my word for it: an 8×11 pan usually does not last two days between me and Ryan. And he eats like a little girl.