Long Overdue, a Cookie Update

Last night I went to a cookie swap party hosted by a loyal reader, my friend Joanie's cousin Mary Kate. Mary Kate describes herself as my "only reader," and I think she's been re-reading the post about cupcakes daily while she waits for Garlic Knot updates. So here we go with a post about another important member of the dessert family—cookies!

I'd heard of cookie swaps before but had not been too eager to participate because the tales I'd been told were just too scary. Another friend, who will remain nameless to protect her innocence and sanity, goes to a dictatorial cookie swap every year where each participant has to bring nine dozen cookies and email the recipe in advance so that the hostess can assemble a spiral-bound cookie cookbook for each guest to take home, along with the nine dozen cookies they receive from the other bakers. Yikes. Too much work and too much preparation for a disorganized flake like me. Joanie invited me to Mary Kate's party on Thursday, and we decided what to make on Friday afternoon. Much more my style.

After work on Friday, Joanie and I headed to the Boston area's finest source of provisions, the Johnnie's Foodmaster in Charlestown (not to be confused with the carpeted Foodmaster on Beacon Street in Somerville or the scary Foodmaster on Route 16 in Somerville). The Charlestown Lord of the Food, as those of us in the know call it, is in a shopping center with a whole bunch of other New England-headquartered or New England-only businesses (the Ninety-Nine, CVS, Dunkin Donuts, Friendly's, Papa Gino's, and so on). We grabbed some basic baking ingredients along with a bag of Rolos, a bag of peppermint candies (the kind that I think of as "starlight mints"), and a bag of sweetened flake coconut. Then it was off to Joanie's parents' house down the street to start baking while watching a WGBH pledge drive and fending off Joanie's dad, who kept coming downstairs to check on our progress (read: look for cookies) and get some ice cream (read: look for cookies) and things like that (read: look for cookies).

I always forget—willfully, I think—that baking takes a lot longer than the recipe indicates. I had picked out a Martha Stewart, Barnard '63, recipe for something called coconut balls that looked about as simple as cookies get. And it was, but it took a lot longer than Martha said it would. Or than it would have taken Martha herself to make.

Part of the problem was that we started baking later than anticipated (those of you who know Joanie and me are shocked to hear this, I'm sure) and got impatient while waiting for the butter to soften. I also willfully forget how hard it is to work with butter that isn't completely softened, especially when you're using a hand-held electric mixer. The butter kept getting trapped in the beaters, and I had to scrape and poke it out with a spatula and a knife. Martha would not have this problem, so take note—be like Martha and let your butter soften.

Joanie doctored up another Martha recipe for chocolate-raspberry thumbprint cookies and made chocolate-Rolo thumbprints and chocolate-peppermint thumbprints. Things got a little dicey when I tried to figure out how to smash the peppermint candies for the thumbprint fillings.

Gourmet had recommended, in a recipe on their site, putting the candies in a plastic bag, wrapping the plastic bag with a dishtowel, and hammering it. This did not end well. The bag broke, and little peppermint shards and a cloud of powdered candy dust went flying all over the kitchen. I ended up smashing the candy by putting it in several ziplock bags and throwing the bags repeatedly on the floor. It made a lot of noise and sort of worked. Then a few minutes later, in an unrelated incident, I dropped a bag of flour on the floor. After the ruckus and the mess, I'm still waiting to hear whether Joanie's parents will let me come over again.

When all was said and done, the coconut balls were very good, we think the peppermint thumbprints could have used a bit more peppermint, but the Rolo thumbprints were the real standout of the evening. A true work of genius. They were chocolately in a comforting warm fudgy way, and the melted Rolos gently infiltrated the cookie in pleasantly gooey fashion when you bit into them.

By the time all the cookies were out of the oven and somewhat cool, it was after 9 o'clock, and the party had been underway for more than an hour. We threw everything in some uncovered containers, hollered up to Joanie's parents that cookies were waiting for them in the kitchen, hopped in the car, and zipped over the Tobin Bridge to the party. I came home with an assortment of other cookies—far less than nine dozen and just a few of each—that will be breakfast for the next few days. The verdict: we should do this again!

Charlestown Chocolate Rolo Thumbprint Cookies
Based on Martha Stewart's Chocolate-Raspberry Thumbprints

I'm noting here some changes in baking time and Rolo placement based on a post-baking consultation with master chef Joanie, but otherwise, these are pretty much as we made them last night.

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon salt
2.5 cups flour
4 ounces semisweet chocolate (4 squares if you're using Baker's brand)
1 large bag of Rolo candies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar, ideally using an electric mixer with a bowl and a paddle attachment. We used a food processor, and if you're very patient, a hand-held electric mixer will work. Mix on high speed until light and fluffy.

Mix in egg, vanilla, and salt until just combined.

Add flour in two batches and mix on low speed.

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill until firm (at least two hours). Note that we did not do this because we were in a rush, but I'm sure Martha would do it. Use your best judgment or go by what your watch says.

Melt chocolate carefully using your chocolate-melting method of choice. I am a fan of the double-boiler method on top of the stove, which can easily be improvised by nesting a little saucepan in a medium saucepan with boiling water in it. You can do whatever you want to do as long as you don't burn the chocolate. Warning: it's easier to do that than you think.

With dough still in mixer or back in mixer, drizzle melted chocolate on top. Mix on low speed until combined.

Roll dough into one-inch balls and place on parchment-lined cookie sheet, about two inches apart. Gently squash each cookie a bit using your thumb. There should be a shallow thumb-shaped indentation with enough room for filling.

Bake for seven minutes. Use this time to unwrap Rolos, one for each cookie. I think this recipe should yield about three dozen, but hey, you can count, and the worst thing that happens is you end up with a few extra Rolos and have to eat them. Bummer.

Remove cookie sheet from oven and gently press an unwrapped Rolo into each cookie with the wider end facing up. Don't push the Rolo all the way through, but make sure it's far enough in to be wrapped in a nice little well of dough. The cookies will be hot, so be careful.

Put the sheets back in the oven and bake for an additional seven minutes. It's probably a good idea to switch positions of the the sheets for the second baking shift. We forgot to do this and the cookies were fine, but with some ovens you could end up with uneven baking, so be careful.

Remove cookies from oven and place on wire racks to cool. If you're late to a cookie party, allow them to cool a bit and then transport in uncovered containers to avoid problems with condensation. Otherwise, store in an airtight container until devoured.

Puerto Rican Beans

I would tell you that I’ve been busy: that the caucuses here in Minnesota took a huge disorganized bite out of my schedule; that Ash Wednesday mass the following morning was one more difficult thing to fit into my week; that grad school work and presentations and teaching and general winter blahs have made it difficult to spend any amount of time at home; but the events that seem to have knocked me on my butt occurred last week and I’m loathe to let you all in on my precarious ability to stay afloat.

Instead, I want to talk to you about comfort food. As I understand it, comfort food is something a loving parent makes for you growing up, something you eat that makes you feel loved and taken care of and generally all right with the world. For Ian I’m pretty sure this is macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. For me, it’s rice and beans, plantains, and a sunny side up egg.



My grandmother is the type to make everything from scratch: adobo and sofrito in her mortar and pestle, chilling the seasonings of her arroz con gandules over a period of days. My mother, not so much. She embraces the can, and as much as I want to start from dried beans and be “authentic,” I must admit I’ve embraced the can too. It’s quick, it’s easy, and your beans are done by the time your rice is done. What more could you want?

Puerto Rican Beans (the shortcut way)
1 15oz can small red beans, undrained
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped
2 tablespoons Sofrito
1/2-1 tablespoon oregano
1/4 cup tomato sauce (the kind that comes in a can)
Olive Oil

In a medium saucepan, warm a good palm-sized amount of olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and onion, and cook until the onion is translucent. (Make sure the garlic does not color or burn!)

Add beans and everything else. Stir to combine, and simmer until your rice is done. Serve over white rice (1 cup uncooked / 3 cups cooked).

My mother used to make red kidney beans, and this works for black beans as well.

There are dozens of things you can add to your canned beans, and what I noted here is just one. I will omit and add as I see fit (or depending on what I have on hand). If nothing else, you should get yourselves a jar of sofrito, which is a red sauce that acts as a base for a lot of Puerto Rican cooking. If you’re my grandmother you’d make it yourself, but if you’re me you buy the Goya version. On the East Coast, or in places with a large Caribbean population, you should be able to find it in the “ethnic” section of the grocery store, but in the Twin Cities the only place I’ve found it so far is El Burrito Mercado in the District Del Sol neighborhood of St. Paul. Because that market is generally out of the way for me, I buy big jars of sofrito and freeze them in ice cube trays. Each cube is about two tablespoons, and you can add the frozen cube directly to your beans.

One more thing – I should note that one of my favorite food bloggers ever, Orangette, has a post on doctoring beans as well (though her version uses hot sauce).

Say it with Cupcakes

It's not a celebration without cupcakes. In honor of my birthday, my good friend Isolde's newly minted citizenship, and the Super Bowl, a cupcake recipe!

A few weeks ago, I was at Barnes & Noble across from the Burlington Mall with Jordana on one of our Friday Night Movie excursions. While browsing the bargain section of the store, we came across a cupcake cookbook.

"That's ridiculous!" I yelled, for the benefit of most of the store. "You don't need a special cookbook to make cupcakes! You just make a regular cake and pour the batter into a muffin tin!" A man on the other side of the display pretended not to listen. Jordana put the cupcake cookbook back on the shelf and we scurried away to the games section (there are now about eight different versions of Scrabble—who knew?).

It's true, though—you don't need special recipes for cupcakes. Any cake batter from a birthday-ish cake will do. By that I mean a fairly simple sponge cake, yellow cake, chocolate cake; something you'd probably bake in layers and frost, not a loaf-like cake or something closer to quick bread.

I proved this by baking cupcakes at Jordana's two days later during one of our "football parties." Read: Get together and cook large meal with football on in the background. Every so often, one of us will wander over to the TV and announce with great authority, "The Pats have the ball!" or "It's second and four!" or "I think that's Randy Moss!" Sometimes we'll sit in front of the TV and eat and say things like, "I think that was an interception."

"Yeah, I think so."

"I mean, what else could that have been?"

"Right, that was totally an interception."

Anyway. For cupcakes, you'll need a muffin tin or two and some cupcake wrappers (the package I have says "baking cups"). The colored paper ones are more festive and easier on the eyes than the foil ones, I think, but the foil ones allegedly don't require a muffin tin, so use your best judgment. You'll want a spreadable frosting, and if you're into it, sprinkles and other decorations—football themed or otherwise—to up the Festive Level.

The recipes below are are adapted from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. The cake recipe is my mom's adaptation, and the frosting is mine. I own the Fannie Farmer Cookbook but not the Baking Book, and I have to say that I don't use it terribly often. The recipes are solid, but a lot of them are very old-fashioned and just odd. They're not the kind of food I usually think to serve. The instructions and advice are good, though, and worth reading.

Mom's Birthday Cake or Cupcakes

This is one of my mom's classic birthday cake recipes from when I was little. It makes one eight-inch square cake, two eight-inch round layers, or one dozen cupcakes.

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup boiling milk
2 tbs unsalted butter
1.5 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

If making a cake, line the pan(s) with wax paper. Cut to fit and adhere with cooking spray or shortening. If making cupcakes, just drop the wrappers into the muffin tin.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt three times until blended and airy. It is important to use cake flour in this recipe. You can buy it in fairly small boxes, but if you can't find it or don't want to buy it, there are conversions for using regular flour instead. You don't need a sifter to sift. I usually just use a mesh strainer and a large metal spoon to stir the flour through the holes. I speak from experience when I say that this is easier than using a crappy sifter (although maybe not as easy as using a good sifter).

Meanwhile, heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan just until boiling.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs for one minute at fast speed. Use a bowl that will be large enough to accommodate the milk, flour, and sugar later on. A small electric hand mixer is all you need for a recipe like this. If you don't already own one, ask an older relative if they have one kicking around that they're looking to get rid of, because those things last forever, and you'll gain major street cred with an avocado-green 1970s hand mixer. No packrat relatives? The mixer I linked to costs 20 bucks at Target.

Gradually add the sugar and keep beating for a while until the mixture becomes light-colored and thick. When you're mixing, it's important to move the mixer around the bowl and get the stuff on the sides of the bowl every so often. Don't be afraid to be a little aggressive with the mixer—it needs your help to do its job.

Add flour to egg mixture and beat until just blended on low speed.

Slowly add milk and beat until blended on low speed.

Add vanilla. I've become very attached to Penzey's vanilla extract. OK, and the rest of their product line, but the vanilla is one of the gateway drugs. Use it once, and you'll never be able to go back to the supermarket stuff. If you don't have a Penzey's nearby, you can order online or from their catalog (which is written in a rambling, gregarious Midwestern style and makes great bedtime reading).

The batter will be fairly thin. You can mix with a spatula at this point. Pour into the pan(s) or muffin tins. A ladle or scoop of some sort is helpful for this step. Fill the wells of the muffin tin about three-quarters full. You want enough batter for the cupcakes to puff up pleasantly but not look freakish or cause some kind of oven disaster.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean and the tops are golden brown.

Cool cake layers in the pan three to five minutes, flip out onto a wire rack, and peel off wax paper. If making cupcakes, cool three to five minutes and then just lift out of the muffin tin and place on a wire rack. Cool until closer to room temperature before frosting (otherwise the frosting will melt!).

Katy's Zesty Lemon Frosting

This is a simple frosting recipe that doesn't require boiling anything (I'm terrified of such frosting recipes). The lemon flavor is my personal twist, but you can make it without and use food coloring for color if you want. The flavor will be creamy and vanilla-y. Make the frosting while the cupcakes are cooling and spread it as soon as you can. It'll solidify a bit and become less spreadable if you let it sit around.

1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup cream (maybe a splash more)
1 tsp vanilla or rum
Approx. 2.5-3 cups confectioners sugar
zest and juice of 1 lemon

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. I always use unsalted butter, but for baking it's especially important because the salt can alter the flavor of the baked goods. I mean, do you really want salty frosting?

Mix butter, cream, and vanilla with the electric mixer. I recommend heavy cream, but light would be fine. You really can use rum in this recipe. In fact, you can substitute it for vanilla pretty much across the board. But see Penzey's vanilla addiction above.

Slowly beat in the sugar a bit at a time until the frosting is thick and creamy. This is a great example of a non-scientific moment in cooking. You'll know when the texture is right. It will be thick and spreadable but not dry or stiff. Stop adding the sugar when you reach this point (I think it happens at about 2.5 cups). If you've added too much sugar, you can fix the frosting by throwing in another splash of cream and beating it into the mixture. The last time I made this frosting, I had to do this, and you know what? I think I liked the results better.

Beat in zest and lemon juice. You can zest the lemon directly over the bowl of frosting and then squeeze in the lemon juice in the same manner (just use a strainer or something to grab the pits). A zester is a nice thing to own, but you can just use a grater with small holes and no one (OK, most people) will be none the wiser.

Taste the frosting for flavor and consistency. You'll have more than enough for a two-layer cake or a dozen cupcakes.

Spread the frosting on the cake or cupcakes with a spatula or knife. There's no real art to this, if you ask me—I mean, you're a home cook, not a pastry chef. No one will be expecting perfectly smooth frosting. Just make it look presentable.

The finished cupcakes will keep for two days or so in an airtight container before they start to go stale. I doubt they'll last that long, but if they do, they'll be fine—just a bit dry as they age.

Multitasking Quesadillas

I was never one to improvise. If there was a resource to seek out I would, trusting the wisdom of the printed word over my own ability to fumble through. When I learned to play the piano it was through years of lessons and dozens of songbooks, exercises and drills and scales. When I learned to knit, it was through Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch and patterns on Knitty. When I learned how to cook a few years ago, actual full balanced dinners for two adults and not just mac and cheese and frozen broccoli or rice and beans, I turned to cookbooks and followed recipes down to the quarter teaspoon. Chemistry was never my strongest subject, but no one would know by watching the precision in my cooking. I needed exact direction, exact measurements, exact ingredients. No substitutions, no guesstimating, nothing. What was on the page was in my bowl.

This was no way to go through life. It drove me crazy. I need to eat every day – do I have to follow a recipe to the letter to do that? I had to allow myself to break away from the books and figure things out for myself. I want to just sit down at the piano and fool around, playing notes on the blues scale. I want to sit in front of the TV and figure out how to knit some leg warmers. I want to throw all of my food in a 12-inch skillet and sauté until it’s done.


I hadn’t meant to start out with this recipe because like all my recipes it’s not really much of a recipe at all. Still, it’s a fitting first entry, because it’s probably the first time I trusted myself to make up a whole meal on my own, and it’s now a go-to weeknight meal. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it might be healthy, and the prep is the hardest part. And while I will in the course of this blog post the possibly maybe kinda ethnic meals promised in the introduction, what follows is definitely of the “ethnic” variety.

Multitasking Quesadillas

This recipe could also make fake fajitas, depending on if you decide to melt the cheese at the end. The boyfriend and I have been known to eat these both ways, depending on our mood and time constraints.

1lb chicken breast or cutlet, cut into strips
1 small yellow onion, cut into strips
1-2 peppers, cut into strips, or most of a 16oz package of frozen pepper strips
Large tortillas or wraps
8oz shredded cheese (cheddar, taco blend, what-have-you)
1 1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon chili powder (or more to taste)
salt to taste
Lime juice
Olive oil
Cooking spray (optional)

Serves 2 with leftovers


In a 12-inch skillet or other large skillet over medium heat, put a quarter to half dollar-sized drop of olive oil in the pan, and add chicken. Move the chicken around in the pan until it turns white and is cooked through. Thinner chicken strips will cook faster. Remove the chicken to a bowl or plate.

If there is no more oil in the pan, add another quarter to half dollar-sized drop. Saute the onions and pepper strips until the onions and peppers are shiny and wilt a little. (5-10 minutes)

Add the chicken, then add seasonings: oregano, paprika, chili powder, salt if using, and a squirt of lime juice. Feel free to eyeball these – besides chili powder, it’s hard to use too much of the spices. You can also add a 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of cumin, but since I don’t have any I never do. You could also add garlic powder, but since I prefer minced garlic and that’s another step I don’t use that either.

If you’re making “fajitas,” you’re done. Wrap the chicken and shredded cheese in your tortilla wrap and eat. If you want quesadillas, you can either move the chicken and peppers to your bowl or plate, or use a separate griddle. If you use the same pan, the grease spots and leftover stuff will mean your quesadillas might not be as pretty when cooked, but they’ll still taste great.

If using, spray your pan/griddle with cooking spray. Your burner should still be over medium heat. Lay your tortilla in your pan and top evenly with shredded cheese. Use as much as you’d like, but as more cheese will take longer to melt, you should turn down the heat slightly for a pile of cheese. Add chicken and peppers to one side of the tortilla, and fold the other side over on top of it. Cook for a moment (a minute or two) turning over halfway through. Remove quesadilla, and repeat process until you’re done, you’ve run out of chicken, or you’re bored. You can eat the rest as fajitas, and you can freeze the chicken better if it’s not assembled into a quesadilla. Assembled quesadillas will taste fine reheated from the refrigerator the next day or two.

I have served this as an appetizer at football parties - cut into wedges and served with salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. Sometimes for dinner we have none of those things, but it’s still good. Enjoy.

A note on lime juice: I keep both a bottle of lemon juice and lime juice in the fridge for use in many recipes as well as to flavor my water and beer. They’re cheap and keep much longer than lemons and limes. Of course, you can’t zest them, but when’s the last time you used lemon zest, anyway?

Pumpkin soup two ways

Sometimes you come across a familiar food in an unfamiliar setting, a food you'd written off as gross or weird, and discover that you like it. Pumpkin was one such revelation for me, in the form of pumpkin soup one of my dad's colleagues brought to our house when we spent the summer of 1996 in New Zealand.

At the bottom of the world, living in winter when I thought it was summer, I was ready to give something new a try, and I was hooked within two spoonfuls. When I thought of pumpkin, I thought of the dessicated inside of a jack-o-lantern, not something you'd eat, and the rich warmth of the pumpkin took me by surprise. The flavor was complex but smooth, and it was perfect for the cool, damp New Zealand winter. People kept apologizing to us for the "terrible weather," but by our standards it wasn't all that bad—50 degrees and rainy? People from the northeast United States will take that anytime over ice and snow.

A little more than five years later, it was winter in New York, and I was thinking, as I often do, of pumpkin soup. It's one of those food archetypes that gets lodged in my brain when I'm hungry, along with real Long Island pizza, crispy roasted potatoes, tapioca pudding, and ripe summer tomatoes. I googled "pumpkin soup" and got a lot of recipes involving whole pumpkins. A whole pumpkin? Cue jack-o-lantern mental imagery. Where was I supposed to get a whole pumpkin? And I had a small kitchen in a Barnard dorm—how was I supposed to dismantle said whole pumpkin? Oh, and I didn't own a blender, which seemed to be necessary.

I panicked a bit and got grouchy, and then I read through the recipes and did something I've often done since—I made a makeshift version of the real thing using a few shortcuts. Not a bad thing to do when you don't know what you're doing. I went to Appletree Supermarket (supermarket is overstating the case a bit, but I have a serious soft spot for Appletree even so) and grabbed a few things and was ready to go.

Plimpton Hall Pumpkin Soup

1 can pumpkin pie filling
1 can chicken broth
few splashes whipping cream
salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, heat the chicken broth. I'm picky about chicken broth and only like College Inn and Swanson brands. They taste the best by far. Don't be duped by the store brands at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods—they are inferior.

Dump in the pumpkin. Stir until blended. Heat until, well, hot.

Transfer to a bowl. Stir in a few splashes of cream (enough to flavor the soup but not enough to significantly change the color or texture) and salt and pepper to taste.

Eat while doing the readings for class tomorrow.


Fast forward again, this time to my life post-college. I've spent a semester in Dublin and have become enamored of the pureed vegetable soups that are common in Ireland, and I own a blender. I spend several winters pureeing vegetables left and right with varying results. I'm so into pureed soups that my roommate gives me an immersion blender for Christmas.

What follows is the butternut squash-dominated soup I made the other night for the trial run of the immersion blender. Squash has a nice warm flavor that works particularly well in this kind of soup. You can mix up the vegetable combinations and proportions to suit your taste, being mindful of the interplay of different flavors and textures, but I think this version is one of the best I've come up with. The principle of pureed vegetables and broth is similar to the Plimpton Hall Pumpkin Soup, but the result is more nuanced (which is not to say I wouldn't make the Plimpton soup again in a pinch!).

The basic recipe is adapted from one in Darina Allen's Irish Traditional Cooking, a really fun book that's part cookbook, part history lesson.

Pureed Vegetable Soup

approx. 2 lbs. peeled and chopped butternut squash
approx. 1 lb. chopped winter vegetables (turnip, carrot, potato, parsnip, etc.)
4 or 5 shallots, chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 14-ounce cans chicken broth, or the equivalent amount of homemade stock
whipping cream
salt and pepper
parsley for garnish

Chop the vegetables and peel as necessary or desired and transfer to a bowl. I prefer my potatoes with the skin on, which means you have to wash them well. I cheated by buying peeled and diced butternut squash, which should be easy to find, but it's not that much trouble to peel and chop a squash (use a knife to peel it). I recommend shallots over regular onions because their flavor is more delicate. If you use carrots, take it easy because they can overwhelm the other vegetables and will turn the entire soup orange (not a concern with the squash base, but something to be aware of). I don't really care for parsnips, but I mentioned them here because some people like them and they would be an appropriate ingredient if you liked them.

In a dutch oven or large, deep saucepan, melt the butter (I always use unsalted). When it is melted and begins to foam, add the vegetables, being careful not to splash yourself with hot melted butter (drop handfuls in very close to the surface of the pan). Stir the vegetables to coat evenly with butter. Cover the pan and allow it to sweat for 10 or 15 minutes until the vegetables are shiny and are starting to look a little cooked.

Meanwhile, heat the chicken broth in a separate saucepan. You can use water, but I wouldn't because the flavor of the soup won't be as strong or complex.

Carefully pour the warm broth over the vegetables. Stir gently and cover the pot. Cook for 20 minutes or so until the vegetables are tender but not overcooked. If you overcook them, they'll begin to loose flavor and texture. The texture of the vegetables is important to the texture of the puree.



The next step is pureeing the soup. You can do this three ways: with a foodmill, with a regular blender, or with an immersion blender. I don't own a foodmill, so I have no direct experience with that method. If you use a regular blender, transfer the soup a few ladlefuls at a time into the cannister of the blender. Puree at a low-ish speed while holding the lid on tight. Transfer the pureed soup to a bowl.

If you have an immersion blender, just puree the soup right in the pot. Be careful not to splash yourself or to nick the pot if you're using nonstick, and make sure you get all the vegetable chunks (stir around to find them). I thought the immersion blender took a bit longer than the regular blender, but it seemed to keep the soup at a higher and more uniform temperature, and the texture was just right.

In any case, make sure the soup really is pureed and not just finely blended. It should be smooth and uniform in color and texture. Taste a spoonful—it should be velvety and not at all chunky. It's OK to feel the vegetable fibers a bit, especially if you didn't peel the potatoes, but you shouldn't have to chew.



Transfer the soup to serving bowls and stir in a dash of cream. This is not strictly necessary but is a nice touch for flavor and texture, and you can substitute sour cream, creme fraiche, plain yogurt, half and half, or even milk to similar effect (I wouldn't bother with skim milk, though, because it's too watery). Garnish with the chopped parsley and serve with green salad and bread for dipping, mopping, and whatever else you like to do with your soup.

The soup freezes well and is great when reheated for lunch. I freeze leftovers in serving-size containers and defrost and reheat on the stove. Start by soaking the container in a bath of hot water, and liberate the soup when the edges have melted enough to make it easy to remove.

Because dairy doesn't freeze well, don't stir in cream if you intend to freeze the soup. You should add it to the defrosted soup just before you eat it, just as you add it to the soup just before you eat it when it's first prepared.

And so it begins

Sheena and I have decided to start our food blog. Welcome to the Garlic Knot!

Garlic knots are a Long Island pizza place specialty: little knots of pizza dough slathered in parmesan and garlic and baked. They are wonderful, and you can't find them outside of the New York area. We are both Long Island expats and wanted a name for the blog that would somehow reflect our vision of who we are and what we like to cook, if you will: straightforward food, strong flavors, simple preparation, possibly maybe kinda ethnic at times (depending on your definition of "ethnic"), unpretentious, and fun to eat with your friends. With a strong dose of some transplanted Long Island attitude, of course.

Let the cooking begin!