Not Derby Pie

Our kitchen’s been busy as ever, with spring finally here. The fridge is full of green (and even some red: rhubarb is back!) and I can’t control the urge to cook a million things all at once. It’s a special kind of attention deficit, and fortunately, its only notable side effects are too many pots bubbling on the stove and lots of full containers in the fridge/freezer/sink. Not too bad.

Chalk it up to my enthusiasm about spring recipes that I never shared this gem from fall. I love rooibos tea, I love vanilla beans, and I love sable cookies. One good day last November, I decided to put those three things together. A few whirls of the food processor later, I wound up with these lovely cookies, fragrant from toasted rooibos and whole vanilla beans and crunchy from their coat of sanding sugar.

The recipe actually won first place in Food52’s Vanilla contest, and it’ll be featured in (I think) the 3rd Food52 cookbook. So far, I’ll have been published in all 3 books. So exciting!

In the fall, I’d have recommended you eat them with a spot of hot tea. But now that it’s nice out, why not serve them with either iced tea or iced coffee? I’m already picturing a plate of them set out on our deck.

GIVEAWAY
…But I know why you’re really here: giveaways are so fun, aren’t they? This one is especially delicious: the kind folks from Sucré are offering one lucky NDP reader macarons! That’s right: Sucré will send the winner of this giveaway its Signature Macaroon Collection. That’s 15 macarons in flavors like chocolate, salted caramel, and pistachio. What’s not to love?

To enter, simply Like our Facebook page, then leave a comment below sharing either your most frustrating macaron baking story, a tip for baking perfect macarons, or just your favorite flavor of macaron. I’ll pick a winner next Wednesday, May 1st. Stay tuned, and good luck!

Update 5/1/13: The giveaway has ended! I picked a random number on random.org:

And the 15th non-duplicate comment is….Margot C! Congratulations, Margot! I’ll be in touch with details about your macarons.

Vanilla Bean Rooibos Tea Cookies
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons rooibos tea leaves (about 5 tea bags)
1 vanilla bean, whole, ends trimmed, cut into segments
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons milk
1/2 cups unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons turbinado sugar

Heat a small stainless steel pan over medium heat. When pan is hot, add rooibos leaves, and shake pan to distribute tea into a single layer. Toast for about 2 minutes, until tea is fragrant but not darkened. Depending on your leaves, this may happen much more quickly; watch it carefully. When leaves are fragrant, transfer them to a bowl and let cool for a couple minutes.

Combine the sugar, vanilla bean, and rooibos in the bowl of a food processor and pulse for about 2 minutes, until there are no chunks of bean left in the bowl. Add the powdered sugar, flour, and salt to the bowl and pulse a few times to combine. Then add the milk, vanilla, and butter and pulse several times, until a dough forms.

Turn dough onto a very lightly floured surface, gather it together, and roll it gently into a log 1.5-inches in diameter.

Sprinkle turbinado sugar on a plate or work surface, and roll cookie dough log in the sugar, making sure to cover the entire surface of the log with sugar. Wrap log in plastic or wax paper and transfer to the fridge or freezer for at least 30 minutes to chill. (You can leave the log in the freezer and slice off cookies one by one, whenever the urge strikes.)

When ready to bake, turn on the oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with parchment or silpat.

Remove log from fridge or freezer, and cut 1/3-inch slices off the log, rotating the log as you go to ensure that cookie slices stay round. Transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet, leaving 1/2 inch between each (they don’t really spread, but they need breathing room to crisp up). Bake for 12 minutes, until cookies are just starting to brown. Leave on the cookie sheet to cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to racks.

Cookies will keep in an airtight container for several days.

Over the years, my mother has taught me that rarely is restaurant food out of reach for the home cook. Once, she and I went to a Thai restaurant in Tenleytown; while I proceeded to heap spoonfuls of fish curry into my mouth, she speared a small piece of eggplant, took a bite, then another, and thought a long while before saying, “yep, I can make this one.” And sure enough, she did.

Since adopting her practice, I’ve made Thai pomelo salad, Indian dosas, and Japanese ohitashi. I’ve developed a habit that waiters and cooks are almost guaranteed to find horribly annoying, where after trying something especially delicious, I ask just a million questions about what’s in it, how it’s cooked, what spatulas they use to flip it, etc. What’s a girl to do? I can’t schlep out to Woodlands every time a dosa craving sets in.

But last week, I attempted a new party trick. This one’s called “recreate a restaurant dish you’ve never even tried.” Ballsy? Yes.

But you know what? It totally worked.

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It seems the Sequester has had dilatory effects not only on the budget here in DC, but on the weather as well. We’ve waited far too long for spring, and last Sunday, I started to get impatient. There are only so many months for grilling, and I count April as one of them. So, on a whim, we invited a couple friends over for burgers Sunday night. If the weather won’t beckon me to the grill, I’ll beckon the weather.

By the time I had 8 burgers all pattied up and ready to go, there was quite a bit of ground beef left over in the bowl. It was then that I remembered this beef empanada recipe, which languished at the bottom of my to-make list for years, seeming too fussy for a weeknight. But now it was Sunday, and I had an hour or so before I needed to fire up the grill. I figured if I got the empanadas in the oven by the time folks came over, we’d have lunch for the week.

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As promised, here’s the companion dish to the Burmese black eyed peas I made last week.

Can we have an honest moment about fish stew? It’s usually a pain in the butt. Many recipes call for fish stock; they require you to brown the fish before stewing it, which makes a mess and smells up the house; and at the end of the day, after painstakingly browning lots of little pieces of fish, perhaps some onion and other vegetables, you end up with a big pile of nondescript food that doesn’t always seem worth the effort.

Not this stew. This one’s different.

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On our trip to Thailand, we spent some time biking up north between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. For two days of our bike trip, we rode along the Thai-Burmese border. It’s amazing how you can see into one country from the other – they essentially share a big plot of land – and yet, the topography changes when you cross over. The ride reminded me of a trip I took to Amman, Jordan, while I was living in Jerusalem. The two cities are probably only 50 miles apart, and at that latitude, there isn’t even a river separating Jordan from Israel. And yet, where Jerusalem has rolling hills, Amman’s main highway runs along a straight cliff.

Apparently, the foods of Thailand and Burma are like the topographies: similar, but also quite different. I’ve been working my way through Naomi Duguid’s wonderful new cookbook, Burma, for the past couple of weeks. Before these peas, I hadn’t cooked anything from it, but I’ve been reading it in bits and pieces, and her stories and recipes are really beautiful. The balance of spicy, sour, and salty flavors in each dish recalls Thai food, but from what I can tell, Burmese cooking is less sweet, possibly spicier, and perhaps slightly funkier as well.

Many of the recipes call for things I don’t stock in my kitchen, like dried anchovy powder and preserved soybean disks. But Duguid lists substitutions (fish sauce, miso) where they work, which makes the book more accessible.

We had a couple family friends of D’s in town last weekend. Their sons are both chefs, so they know from good food. I decided it was the perfect time to take Burma out for a ride.

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When I was a kid, my favorite restaurant was a spot called Siddhartha, in downtown Silver Spring. Siddhartha was unfussy, inexpensive, and – at least when we started going – patronized almost exclusively by Indians. In retrospect, I suppose it’s a parent’s dream: kid loves cheap, relatively health Indian food more than pizza, chicken nuggets, whatever. But when we were at Siddhartha, chicken nuggets were off the menu. I could think of only one thing, and that was masala dosa.

For the uninitiated, a masala dosa an Indian pancake, crisp and lacy outside but soft within. It’s cooked like a crepe, and then filled with a mixture of spiced potatoes and onions. Dosa batter is made of ground rice and lentils which have been fermented, so the pancake takes on a slightly sour, funky flavor (like sourdough bread: less sour, but equally distinctive).

If it isn’t clear already, I am obsessed with dosas.

If I’m being truthful, dosas fell off the map for me. There were probably 5 or 6 years when I didn’t have a single one. Looking back, that was pretty stupid. I went without because I couldn’t find a decent restaurant nearby that made them. Now I realize I could have been making them at home, all along.

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I always say that the true test of a Passover dessert is one simple question: would you eat it not on Passover.

In the case of these macaroons, which I first made last June, again in July, and once again in the fall, clearly the answer is yes. They remind me of those piña cola cookies I made back in October, but – dare I say it? – they’re better.

No surprise there: David Lebovitz masterminded these macaroons, and most everything he makes – especially ice cream – is awesome. Pineapple macaroons, blissfully, are no exception.

Here’s how it all goes down.

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