We’ve had monochromatic meals kicking around in our head for ages. As artists and food makers, the challenge of creating an interesting-to-eat, balanced meal within bizarre and essentially arbitrary parameters – such as a single color – fascinates us. But, apparently, just us. We’d floated the idea by most possible collaborators, and were disappointed again and again by the puzzled, what’s this avant-garde-weirdness reaction we were getting.

Then, we met Erin Zimmer.

And color dinners were born.

We hosted our first dinner – potluck style – on Sunday, to great success!

color dinner no. 1: green

After some pondering (purple? blue? white?), we decided that our inaugural dinner would be a Springy green. With more seasonal options than we could build into a 12 course meal (12 people…12 courses…ish) and even more slightly-less-seasonal options at our fingertips, we figured it would be an easy and delicious way to begin. So, we met at the Grand Army Plaza Farmer’s Market Saturday, where Erin’s friend Sam, a green dinner guest who works for the Greenmarket, gave us the rundown on the day’s offerings. Where to begin! Everywhere we turned, there was some new green thing to catch our eye and make us drool: snap peas and pea shoots, skinny asparagus and broccoli rabe, green tomatoes, knobby spring spinach, herbs, spring onions, green garlic, the last of the over-winterized leafy greens and the beginning of springy greens like bright, lemony sorrel and spicy mustard leaves. And ramps!

Erin and Sam pose for a Greenmarket moment.

We gathered as much as we could, and were off to the kitchen.

(For inspiration beyond the Greenmarket, we also came up with a pinterest board of greenspiration to get ideas flowing.)

Sunday we pulled out the crepe paper and got to work green-ifying our space.

When guests arrived, they found their name tags in a (musical) box by the door.

We took advantage of the beautiful warm eve for a photo opp on the roof.

And then, to feast!

photo by gabriella bass

photo by gabriella bass

photo by gabriella bass

photo by gabriella bass

photo by gabriella bass

Here’s to many more to come!

:  : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :  :

pssst. we also made a manifeasto to guide our guests.

Anyways. Food. There are differences between the two celebrations, of course, the most obvious one being the use of chametz, or leavening, with Passover being anti, and Easter being pro.

Growing up in my Italo-Argentinean household, there were no fluffy pink Easter bunnies, or basketfuls of plastic pastel eggs stuffed with jelly beans nestled amongst shiny strands of green plastic grass come Easter. There were no Easter egg hunts, and definitely no peeps.

Instead, there were three very important things. A single, beautifully wrapped chocolate egg, the size of small child, to be unwrapped by the smallest child and shared amongst the table:

A colomba di pasqua, borrowed from the Italians, and similar to panettone: a yeasty cake, shaped like a dove, laced with candied orange peel and studded with pearl sugar and almonds.

And bread. Sweet, eggy Easter bread.

My father is master breadmaker, and my hermanitos and I always looked forward to Holy Saturday morning, when we’d gather around a floured kitchen table and eagerly shape our bit of pan de pascua in whatever animal or form we desired. We’d make bunnies or birds, with raisins for eyes and corn husks for whiskers. Papa would make a regal braid, studded with colored eggs and twisted into a circle.

Traditions die hard, so this year for Easter, we pulled up tattered xeroxes of our beloved 1982 Cuisinez avec Silva: Le Pain, by Heidi & Gerold Albonico and Max Pichler (unfortunately now out of print), dusted off the French-English dictionary, and set to work, making our own pansitos for Sunday brunch.

(Dan’s idea of Easter bread shapes came in the form of ants and snakes. Ahem.)

A note. This recipe calls for fresh yeast, which is not always easy to come by. If you’re substituting dry yeast (active or instant), as we did, here’s a good overview of equivalents. And, we halved the recipe – a kilo of flour makes a lot of bread!

easter bread.

1 kilo all purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
40 grams fresh yeast (1 cube)
1 tablespoon honey
100 ml water, lukewarm
60 grams of sugar
150 grams butter
450 ml whole milk
2 large eggs, and a third for painting
Powdered sugar, for dusting

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in the lukewarm water with 1 tablespoon of honey. Set aside for ten minutes or so. The yeast will foam. If it doesn’t “start”, do it again.

2. Whisk two eggs lightly with a fork in a medium sized bowl. Add the whole milk and whisk lightly to combine. Melt the butter, allow to cool slightly, and add to the egg milk mixture. Once the yeast has foamed, add this as well.

3. In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, salt and sugar. Make a well in the middle, and add the liquid. Stir with a wooden spoon until the liquid is absorbed. Begin to kneed the dough, adding flour as necessary, until you have a smooth, not too wet, dough.

4. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead well – about ten minutes. Put the dough in bowl coated thinly with oil, cover with a damp towel, and put in a warm place – ideally, someplace that’s roughly 100F – until it’s doubled in size, about 1 hour. (We placed ours in the microwave with the door ajar, so that the light bulb from the microwave would add a bit of extra heat to the normal kitchen temperature.)

pausa

5. Once risen, turn the dough out again onto a floured surface. Punch down to release the air, and knead lightly for 2 minutes, until back to its original size. Divide the dough into pieces, and form into shapes.

Two notes: the shapes should be roughly the same size so that they bake evenly, and when making small details, keep in mind that the bread will rise a second time. Use whatever you have on hand for eyes and whiskers – we’ve always used raisins and corn husks, but other things will do!

6. Place pansitos on a buttered baking sheet, cover with a damp towel, put in a cool place to preserve the shapes, and let rise another hour. If your cool place is the refrefrigerator, as ours is, let it rise for two hours.

pausa

7. Preheat the oven 375F.

8. Paint the pansitos with the third egg that’s been beaten with a bit of water. Bake for a half hour, rotating the pans halfway through. Remove, cool, and dust with a bit of powdered sugar!

(Clara and her sweet tooth prefer Rosh Hashanah.)

A standard component of any Passover sedar is gefilte fish, most often of the Manischewitz variety. We know there are folks out there who love this stuff, folks whose childhood memory of this tradition is so strong that taste and texture and other troubling elements can do nothing to mar their enjoyment of the dish in their later adult life. We, however, are not these folks.

We find modern day gefilte fish…troubling. Though it’s supposedly made of fish, it comes jarred with a shelf life of three years. Yes. This jar of gefilte fish, on the shelves in April 2012, doesn’t expire until March of 2015. How is it possible that one of the most perishable edibles on earth – fish – can be canned for an extremely nonperishable shelf life?

Yes, yes, we know many kinds of fish can be and are shelf-stabilized. But still, there’s something about the pale, completely unrecognizable orbs of jarred gefilte fish and the mucousy goo (ahem, “fish stock jelly”) that surrounds them that make us decidedly suspicious. (At least tinned sardines look like sardines…right?). Whatever happened to the fish to get it in this state, we don’t really want to know.

The thing with foods that come in cans and jars, though, is that once upon a time, they had another, more organic form. Gefilte fish must, at some point, have started with a recognizable fish.

It did, of course.

We recently read Jane Ziegelman’s food-centric 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, and Gefilte fish is something of a star, taking up a place on most of the tables in the book. Ziegelman tells us that “‘gefilte fish’ comes from the German gefülte, meaning stuffed or filled, since the original version was exactly that, a whole stuffed fish” (page 87). Awesome! Here’s the beginning of a basic recipe:

The prepared fish flesh is seasoned and stuffed back into the original skin – fancy! -  then baked with vegetables.

It actually sounds delicious.

Ms. Ziegleman also tells us that, in fact, the dish is not originally Jewish, though “across Central and Eastern Europe, one could find some version of gefilte fish wherever Jews had settled, prepared, like clockwork, Friday mornings, and served that evening with grated horseradish. Aside from matzoh or challah, few Jewish foods were as ubiquitous” (page 87). It’s actually quite interesting to read up on the variations – we were surprised by how many of them there are! – and thanks to Google books (marvel of marvels), you can, too, here.

Most importantly, she notes that “because of its intricacy, the dish was also a perfect measure of the Jewish housewife’s culinary skill. No other food in the Jewish kitchen requires as much time or finesse” (again, page 87.)

Hm. We’re not sure we have the finesse to make gefilte fish from scratch. But we got to thinking: it couldn’t be possible that all prepared gefilte fish came in jars…

If you venture into Chasidic Williamsburg on a Sunday afternoon, and make it to the Lefkowitz grocery store on Lee Avenue at Ross without being chased off by a resident disproving of your bare wrists and ankles, squeeze past the over-sized carriages toting several small children apiece and past aisles crowded with jars of horseradish, cold whitefish salad, high-gluten flour, rainbow cookies, ground hazelnuts and almonds and jars of something that looks oddly like dulce de leche…in the back, in the narrow freezer case, you’ll find…frozen gefilte fish.

A lot of it.

This is the real deal. First off, it’s raw. You actually have to  cook it. And its freezer life is a few months at best. There’s no fish stock jelly. Just some white fishes (the combination depends on the brand), some onions, an egg or two. Win.

We took our lead from Zeigleman, and prepared it thus:

gefilte fish

Place the log of frozen gefilte fish in a pot. Cover with water, and add a tablespoon of granulated sugar, salt and freshly ground pepper, a sweet onion, quartered, and two carrots. You can also add some celery stalks or a can of crushed tomatoes, if you have them on hand. Cover tightly, and boil for an hour and a half hour (or, for a less smelly cooking experience, cover and bake at 350F for the same amount of time). Remove the log, slice, and serve, cold, with the cooked vegetables and a strong horseradish.

It’s delicious.

In fact, Clara always gets seconds.

*

Pstttt.

If you make it to Lee Ave, be sure to stop in at Flaum’s on Lee at Wilson for some sour pickles and smoked white fish.

And Oneg Heimishe on Lee between Rutledge & Heyward for the best rum balls & rugelach this side of the Atlantic.

And if you’re lucky, you might also witness a mega sale of, um, classic chasidic wear.

“When during the summer of 1934 Gertrude Stein could not decide whether she did or did not want to go to the United States, one of the things that troubled her was the question of the food she would be eating there. Would it be to her taste? A young man from the Bugey had lately returned from a brief visit to the United States and had reported that the food was more foreign to him than the people, their homes, or the way they lived in them. He said the food was good but strange indeed – tinned vegetable cocktails and tinned fruit salads, for example. Surely, said I, you weren’t required to eat them. You could have substituted other dishes. Not, said he, when you were a guest.”

Despite such misgivings, Alice and Gertrude Stein – as Alice always calls her – leave on the Champlain not long after. Their cross-country adventure is epic, and they feast on such fascinating items as Clear Turtle Soup (which begins with soaking actual turtle meat for four days in water), Bird’s Nest Pudding (the only recipe in the entire cookbook that calls for sour cream), Cornsticks (for which Alice buys a special cast iron pan to bring home to France) and the “ineffable” Iced Soufflé (which, Alice notes, is a particular favorite with men).

The trip is a success, with many interesting encounters with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Branch Cabell (and an amusing moment where Alice is asked not to light at a cigarette at the University of Austin, as “only men smoke”.) At the close of the chapter, Alice admits that “the seven months we had spent in the United States had been an experience and adventure which nothing that might follow would ever equal.” And yet, despite the success, the chapter is suspiciously thin on recipes. And the recipes she does note are not recipes we’ve ever come across, even in the most “authentic” of American kitchens. Did none of these recipes survive the 1950s?

It’s a particularly interesting question, especially when compared to the chapter that follows it: Little Known French Dishes Suitable For British and American Kitchens. Alice’s cookbook was first published in 1954, and while much has happened in the half century since, it’s intriguing to us that the dishes in this chapter, dishes she considered (we’ll assume correctly) to be a completely unknown quantities in the United States in the ’30s and ’40s, are ones that are still in the repertoire today. In fact, with the exception of Salad Meli-Melo and Mimosa soup and few others, we recognize all of them. And most interesting is the entry for onion soup, which is today as ubiquitous a dish a macaroni and cheese.

Who has a recommendation for a good book on the history of American food in the 20th century? Where did it all go?

(French) onion soup is a perfect dish for March, when the sky is white with clouds and the rain leaves an ever-present sheen on one’s glasses. March, here, is finally behaving itself (spring came early, but seems to have righted itself) and we took advantage of the new cold and our newly planted thyme to give this dish a try.

It’s not a hard dish. Anything but, really. But it takes patience and some attention. It’s a dish best made when you can’t leave the house anyways, and can take the luxury of a few hours to pad into the kitchen every so often, to give the onions a stir.

If you have hearty, homemade stock on hand, this is your chance to use it. Brown stocks are the best – long simmered with dark meats and darker vegetables. And rather than serve up individual bowls, restaurant style, we took Alice’s advice and did the final broil in a dish like so. We were skeptical, but the bread and cheese turned out perfectly.

(french) onion soup

For two as a hearty main. An amalgamation of Alice and experience.

2 pounds sweet or vidalia onions
2 tablespoons salted butter & 1 of olive oil
4 cups (32 oz) beef or another dark broth, warmed
A handful of fresh thyme, minced
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/3 cup sherry cooking wine
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons flour
A baguette
1/4 pound Gruyere

1. Peel the onions and slice thinly, as thin as you can manage.

2. In a large heavy skillet or pot, the largest one you have, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with the tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions, and stir to coat the onions evenly in fat. Cover, and let cook for five minutes, to get them going. Give them a good stir, cover and turn the heat down to the low.

3. Cook the onions, covered, on low, for 45 minutes or so. Stir them one or twice to make sure they don’t stick and are cooking evenly, but otherwise leave them be.

4. Uncover, and turn the heat up ever so slightly to medium low. Cook in this manner, stirring once or twice, for another 30 minutes. This will help cook off some water that’s leached from the onions. You’ll see the onions will begin to brown slightly, and the liquid they’re in will begin to reduce.

5. After the half hour, sprinkle in the sugar, minced thyme, and some freshly ground black pepper, stirring to combine. Cook uncovered for five minutes – the sugar will help the browning along. Add the sherry and white vinegar, stir, and cook uncovered another five minutes. Add the flour, stirring to combine, and cook uncovered two or three minutes more. The flour will absorb most of the remaining liquid.

6. Pour the hot broth over the onions, and stir. Bring to a boil, and boil, covered, for fifteen minutes. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning – you might want a splash more of the sherry, or some salt, or a bit more pepper. Reduce the heat to medium, and simmer uncovered for fifteen minutes more. The soup will be begin to thicken and reduce. But – you don’t want it to reduce too much; it still has twenty minutes in the oven ahead of it.

7. While the soup boils, preheat the oven to 375F. Slice six thick pieces of baguette, and lay them in a ovenproof casserole dish. Top each piece of bread with thin slices of the cheese, using the entire 1/4 pound.

8. Pour the soup over the bread, and put the casserole in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove and serve immediately!

So, we had a “getting to know you” party. Of a sort.

Getting to know you. Yes, we’ve had The King and I stuck stuck stuck in our heads since the idea struck. We’ll share it with you, in case you want it stuck in yours:

But — lucky for our friends, at the cup of tea line we realized we needed something sweet on our snacky party menu. We also realized that said menu – of pickles, pâté, herbed almonds, fried chickpeas, white bean & rosemary dip, and bread from the best spot ever - featured quite a bit of citrus. It’s still March, after all.

In our hunt for something sweet and citrusy, we came across a recent post on lemon butter slice-and-bake cookies from a new-found friend in the foodie blogosphere that we’ve, yes, been getting to know: Wonderland Kitchen. Plus we had some leftover Meyer lemons from our pi day pie, and white dazzle sugar just begging to be used. Synchronicity!

These cookies are exactly what you’d expect from lemon butter cookies: dense and delicious and not too sweet, with a fabulous extra sparkly crunch thanks to the sugar. A wonderful cap to an evening with friends.

citrus sables

adapted from Joy the Baker via Wonderland Kitchen

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter (high-fat, euro-style’s best), at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted before measuring
1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
2 large egg yolks, preferably at room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour.

zest of 1 lemon and zest of 1 small orange

For the decoration (optional):
1 egg yolk
Crystal or dazzle sugar

1. Beat the butter at medium speed until it is smooth and very creamy. Rub the lemon & orange zest into the granulated sugar with your fingertips, creating a fragrant sugar. Add the sugars and salt to the butter and continue to beat until smooth and velvety, about 1 minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 egg yolks, again beating until well blended.

2. Add the flour, and mix on low just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. If you still have some flour on the bottom of the bowl, stop mixing and use a rubber spatula to work the rest of it into the dough. (The dough will not come together in a ball — and it shouldn’t. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you’re aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy dough.)

3. Scrape the dough onto a work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long (it’s easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log). Wrap the logs well and chill them for at least 2 hours. The dough may be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.

4. When ready to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

5. To decorate the edges of the sables, whisk the egg yolk until smooth. Place one log of chilled dough on a piece of waxed paper and brush it with yolk (the glue), and then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with sugar. Trim the ends of the roll if they are ragged and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies. (Alternatively, you can brush the log with yolk, slice, and then roll the slices in sugar. Whatever seems to work better.)

6. Place the rounds on the baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between each cookie, and bake for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the halfway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top. Let the cookies rest 1 or 2 minutes before carefully lifting them onto a cooling rack with a wide metal spatula. Repeat with the remaining log of dough. (Make sure the sheet is cool before baking each batch.)

Despite our penchant for sucre, we’ve yet to master the macaron. (Let’s be honest, master is too ambitious a goal.) But – lucky for us, Clara’s father has become a macaron spécialiste in the days since July, and her childhood kitchen’s been transformed into a macaron making machine.

Well, it’s Macaron Day in New York today, alongside, bien sûr, le jour du macaron in Paree. And, we thought, no better day to introduce the new comer to the macaron scene:

bold macarons by our very own jorge schuhmacher

Aren’t they gorgeous? (Photos by the chef himself!)

peach with apricot buttercream

olive oil with vanilla buttercream

(And above, as the featured image, wasabi with candied grapefruit.)

We assure you, they are as delicious as they are beautiful.

Like what you see & live in Boston – ish? Email boldmacarons (at) gmail (dot) com to place an order!

It’s March 14th and despite macabre Shakespearean warnings about tomorrow’s Ides of March, it’s…

!!!

So. About that global warming thing. Yikes.

It’s also, in the oh-so-geeky world of numbers, pi day.

Obviously, sun + pi day = sunny pie, and what better fit for such an equation (ack, sorry, couldn’t resist) than a glorious meyer lemon tart from the pages of Lindsey Shere’s Chez Panisse Desserts ?

Lemons peak in late winter (yes, it’s not technically spring for another six days) and nothing is quite as lovely as a meyer lemon in season. They’re just gorgeous. Native to China, meyers are thought to be an ancient cross between a regular or mandarin orange, and the everyday lemon (the most everyday of which, we learned from Lindsey’s introduction, is called the Eureka!) They are sweeter, more aromatic and juicier than their ordinary cousins, making them particularly lovely to cook and eat.

And this tart really makes these beauties sing. (Lindsey’s introduction also notes that it’s – circa 1985, when the cookbook was first published – one of the most popular desserts at the restaurant.) It’s tangy and smooth, just slightly sweet, with a flaky crust and the deeply energizing scent of lemon. Of all the lemon tarts we’ve made in our time, it’s by far the best.

Lindsey offers two moments of alternatives in her recipe. First, omitting cornstarch and second, baking the tart for less time. Together, the result is a silky, shiny tart, rather than a denser, slightly chewier, crustier tart. They’re both delicious, though in this case we went with the alternatives and opted for that happy yellow sheen.

This tart is delicate, especially if baked as we did. A too hot oven, even slightly so, will scorch the crust and boil the custard. Pay attention to the oven, turn the tart shell and tart half way through baking, and cover with aluminum foil if it’s browning (too much or at all, depending on the alternative you choose.) Our oven is hopeless – even with an oven thermometer it’s difficult to maintain something as specific at 375ºF. So, not perfect:

but truly delicious!

En fin. We dusted a generous slice with powdered sugar and treated ourselves to a sunny celebration of pi(e).

a meyer lemon tart

adapted from Chez Panisse Desserts

For the pastry:

Makes a 9 inch shell

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp grated lemon peel
1/2 cup unsalted butter, not too cold
1 tablespoon water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Mix flour, sugar, salt and lemon peel. (If using salted butter, omit the salt.)

2. Cut butter into 1/2 inch slices and work it into the flour mixture with your hands or a pastry blender until the butter is mostly cornmeal size pieces and the mixture begins to hold together – the softer your butter is, the faster this will happen.

3. Combine the water and vanilla and work it into the flour-butter mixture until the pastry is just blended and will hold together if you press it.

4. Gather into a ball and wrap in plastic. Let rest a room temperature for 30 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the moisture more completely. (At this point you can wrap in foil and freeze for up to a month.)

5. Butter and flour a 9 inch tart pan (don’t use a black one, it will burn your tart!) Press pastry evenly into the pan. Wrap in foil and freeze for 30 minutes or overnight.

6. Bake in a preheated 375ºF oven for about 25 min or until the shell is light golden brown and baked all the way through. (You don’t need to fill the shell with beans before baking; this pastry doesn’t shrink much.)

For the custard:

makes 1 3/4 cup tart filling, enough for a 9 inch tart

2 lemons (any will do, though meyer lemons are spectacular here)
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 tsp cornstarch (optional)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons salted butter

1. Beat the eggs and egg yolks with the sugar in a heavy, non-corroding saucepan until just mixed.

2. Mix the milk into the cornstarch in a small cup, then add to the egg mixture. The cornstarch is necessary if the filling is to brown properly when baking. If you do not want to brown the tart, the cornstarch can be omitted. (*As we did!)

3. Grate the peel from the lemons into a small non-corroding bowl. Juice the lemons and strain the juice into the same bowl. Strain out seeds, but force as much as the pulp through the strainer as you can. Stir juice mixture into the eggs: it will look a bit curdled when the juice is added, but will smooth out later.

4. Cut the butter into pieces and add to the mixture. Cook over low to medium heat, stirring constantly in a figure eight motion, until it just coats the spoon and is the thickness of crème anglaise. Remove from heat. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken, then whisk slightly to smooth out the custard.

5. At this point you can pour the filling into a container and keep it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. (It’s delicious! Would be fantastic on warm biscuits or with chocolate and fruit!) In any case it is best to chill the filling before making a tart, but you may also pour it into the pre-baked tart shell without chilling it.

To bake the pie:

Preheat your oven to 375ºF. Fill the slightly cooled, pre-baked shell with filling and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is speckled with dark brown spots and the filling has puffed slightly. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack in its pan. You can also bake the tart just long enough to set the filling, about 15-20 minutes. This will make a smooth, shiny tart. (As we did!)

With all our recent thinking about early food memories, we’ve had rainbow cookies on the mind. Also known as seven layer cookies, they’re one of our favorite Italian-American bakery offerings. Colorful bites of apricot almond nostalgia that make us think of summer evening carnivals and spumoni ice cream cones. Good ones are hard to come by, though we’re spoiled – lucky to live down the street from Fortunato Brothers, and their perfect squares of Italian pride.

We needed an excuse to make them, and the bake sale was just that. Clara works for New Music USA? (Please ignore the worst organization name ever.) Rainbow cookies come in three colors? The point of the bake sale is to make an organizational impression on folks stopping by the table?

Ci presentiamo…

Rainbow Cookies USA for the New Music Bake Sale.

(Yes, Italian-Americans everywhere are gesticulating angrily in their graves. And yes, we realize the red is decidedly pink and suspiciously fluorescent. Still, the blue is fun!)

As usual, the recipes are as numerous as the approaches. We made these from Smitten Kitchen‘s adaptation of a recipe printed in Gourmet (although we’re curious about the simple syrup and almond flour in Spago pastry chef Sherry Yard’s version from her cookbook Desserts by the Yard ). From Deb, we picked up a few tips. First, don’t stack cooled cakes, no matter how much you need the extra counter space, because the greased parchment will leave a greasy residue on your layers, and the chocolate won’t stick later.

Second, too much jam between layers makes them difficult to cut  later – divide the jam in half after you’ve strained it, and err on the side of less. Three, these beauties are easier to cut when cold. She means frozen, but our cookies were denser (see below), so cold from the fridge was sufficient. In any case, she’s right. We didn’t even bother cutting them fresh. Too many textures to make one kind of knife work. (However, definitely bring them back to room temperature before eating, as too cold and they lose their moist,  fluffy deliciousness.)

And here’s a fourth tip, or more of an observation, from our own try. We don’t have a stand mixer in Brooklyn. As a result, the first step of beating the almond paste with sugar ended up being more of a knead-together-with-our-hands thing, as our less powerful hand mixer was, essentially, useless. To counter the power issue, we doubled or tripled the times Deb notes for beating ingredients in subsequent steps. Still, we ended up with a denser dough, and didn’t have enough to fill three 13×9 inch baking sheets. Not all was lost, though – we were able to spread the colors out into roughly 11×8 inch rectangles, and baked them as instructed. (This step could have really benefited from an offset spatula. It’s made the long kitchen-needs list.) Eh, voilà!

Ma dai! As the Bolognese would say. Buonissimi!

Sunday was a reluctant parting. We kept half for ourselves.

rainbow cookies

Makes about 5 dozen

4 large eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 (8-oz) can almond paste – tubes of almond paste tend to be drier, so use canned if you can find it
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
red food coloring
blue food coloring – or green, if you’re going traditional Italo-Americano!
1 (12-oz) jar apricot preserves, heated and strained
7 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped

1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 13- by 9-inch baking pan and line bottom with wax paper or parchment, leaving a 2-inch overhang on 2 ends, then butter paper.

2. Beat together the almond paste and 3/4 cup sugar until well blended, about 3 minutes. Add butter and beat until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add yolks and almond extract and beat until combined well, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to low, then add flour and salt and mix until just combined.

3. In a second mixing bowl, beat whites at medium-high speed until they just hold stiff peaks. Add 1/4 cup sugar a little at a time, beating at high speed until whites hold stiff, slightly glossy peaks.

4. Fold half of egg white mixture into almond mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.

5. Divide batter among 3 bowls (it pays to be precise in this step!) Stir red food coloring into one and blue (or green, if you’re going traditional Italian-style!) into another, leaving the third batch plain. Set white batter aside. Chill blue batter, covered.

6. Pour red batter into prepared pan and spread evenly. It takes time and patience to get your layers even, but it’s worth it. Layers will be about 1/4 inch thick.

7. Bake red layer 8 to 10 minutes, until just set. (It is important to undercook. They’ll look like they’re not done, but a tester does come out clean.)

8. Using paper overhang, transfer layer to a rack to cool, about 15 minutes. Clean pan, then line with parchment or wax paper and butter paper in same manner as above. Bake white layer in prepared pan until just set. As white layer bakes, bring blue batter to room temperature. Transfer white layer to a rack. (Or, if you have multiple pans, you can bake two layers in one go.)

9. Prepare pan as above, then bake blue layer in same manner as before. Transfer to a rack to cool.

10. When all layers are cool, invert blue onto a parchment or wax-paper-lined large baking sheet. Discard paper from layer, and spread with half of preserves. Invert white on top of blue layer, discarding paper, and spread with remaining preserves. Invert red layer on top of white layer and discard paper.

11. Cover with plastic wrap and weight with a large baking pan. Chill in the fridge. Deb says 8 hours; Sherry Spago says 2. We went with 4, and it seemed fine.

Pausa

12. Remove weight and plastic wrap.Trim edges of assembled layers with a long serrated knife.

13. Melt chocolate in a bain-marie, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat. Keep chocolate over water.

14. Quickly spread half of chocolate in a thin layer on top of cake. Chill, uncovered, in the freezer, until chocolate is firm, about 15 minutes. Cover with another sheet of wax paper and place another baking sheet on top, then invert cake onto sheet and remove paper. Quickly spread with remaining chocolate. Chill until firm, about 30 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and stick back in the fridge until firm enough to cut.

Pausa

15. Remove cake from the fridge, and cut lengthwise into 4 strips (or more, make them the size you remember!). Cut strips crosswise into 3/4-inch-wide cookies.

These will keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature for 2 weeks, Frozen they’ll keep even longer.

(Perhaps paella should grace these pages soon…)