Month: December 2015

The Dessert Table: Cranberry Torte

Growing up outside of Pittsburgh, I assumed that all wedding receptions featured those decadent displays known as cookie tables. Weighted down by platters of cream-filled lady locks, lemon bars, nut horns, Mexican wedding cookies, spritz cookies and anise-laced pizzelles, these linen-covered tables attracted guests in droves. Introduced as a low-cost alternative to an expensive wedding cake, the cookie table eventually became a companion to cake. Custom dictated that family members make the cookies but, if you didn’t have gifted bakers at home, you could do as my mother did and enlist the help of a local bakery and family friends. At parties it was the dessert table around which people clustered. Here the cookies were less ostentatious — think chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter blossoms, pecan sandies and butterscotch — but just as plentiful. So too were the brownies, fruit and custard pies, marshmallow-studded ambrosia and heavenly angel food cakes. What didn’t make it to the dessert table? For obvious reasons I never saw ice cream, make-your-own-sundae bars or chocolate fondue pots. Generally, anything …

Books for Cooks – 2015’s Cookbook Reviews

Out of the 3,000 or so cookbooks published in the U.S. and the much smaller number that I’ve encountered since last Christmas I have felt apathetic about most, appalled by a few (‘Seriously? Did you not test a single recipe in this book? Apparently not.’) and excited by the following titles. A few are older publications. Several possess 75 recipes or less. Yet, all would be lovely gifts for new or seasoned cooks. Citrus: Sweet and Savory Sun-Kissed Recipes by Valerie Aikman-Smith and Victoria Pearson (Ten Speed Press, 2015) In Citrus exotic pomelos, yuzu and kumquats join everyday lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit in 75 recipes for drinks, entrees, sides and dessert. Here familiar dishes—key lime pie, limoncello, whole roasted fish with lemon—appear alongside the inventive—grapefruit and gin marmalade, tangerine sticky ribs, orange-rosemary polenta cake—resulting in a broad, approachable, citrus-driven collection. With colorful photos and text Citrus is a pleasant pick-me-up for those dreary winter months. Kitchen Hacks: How Clever Cooks Get Things Done by the Editors of America’s Test Kitchen (America’s Test Kitchen, 2015) …