Weekend update, October 21,2012

variety is the spice of life.

Not exactly an obscure or remotely original idea, is it?
And that's the (slightly ironic) point. Because this little metaphor about change has become so commonplace that it settles in my mind with a soft cloud of meaningless word dust.
Until about 2 weeks ago, when I had good cause to dig this tired old saying out from it's cobwebbed corner of my brain and ask myself
"What in the world does that mean anyway?"
Because about 2 weeks ago, one of the food yodas I met at the pumpkin patch looked me in the eye and said
"You need to go to Penzey's"
"What's a Penzey's"? I queried.
And before she could form an answer, the happy awe on her face made me put Penzey's (whatever that is) on my inner itenerary.
This, my friends, is Penzey's:

Welcome to the spice shrine.

See those shelves? Every single one filled with the best herbs and spices the world has to offer. Yes, I said world. There's cinnamon from Vietnam, Ginger from Australia, rosemary from Spain. What my son called a king's ransom in spices.
And he's not wrong- ask google!  Wars have been fought, empires built and destroyed, ships launched and legends made, all because  spice makes dinner, and by extension life, healthy and delicious and unboring.
I left penzy’s with a refreshed soul, 3 spice blends, poppy seeds, cinnamon and ginger, all packed into a perfect new sleeping bag for unripe fruit.



shh...there are 5 pears in there, dreaming
cinnamon dreams.

 And that's when I started pondering the tired old cliche about variety and spice. I'm thinking that sometimes, a change in the way we do our days can be a little like sprinkling cinnamon on toast, or smoked salt on an omelet. It may seem like a little thing, but it has the power to transform tedious to tasty.
And to put the metaphor to the test, I returned home to play with my fragrant new toys

First up, a batch of the home audience's fave gingerbread cookies.

 A memo from the disaster department regarding the tweaking of reliable recipes:
Try to avoid the temptation to change more than one major recipe component at a time, okay? I mean, if things don’t end well, you’re not going to know why, are you?
For instance.
It may not be a good idea to, in the same batch of cookies, substitute rum for bourbon, brown sugar for all of the white sugar, a darker molasses for the one you usually use and cloves for cardamon.
Just sayin.
If, in an immoderate burst of misguided creativity you ignore this advice, make sure that you’re playing for an easy audience. I served up a batch of mudballs that ought to have been very nice cookies to a kitchen full of Texas Tech students last Wednesday, and their kindness was displayed as 100% of them, after one thoughtful bite, said
“ I’m sure these are really good, but you know, I’m not really a ginger cookie person.”
Liz’s friends, I don’t know whether you learned your social skills from watching your parents or Jane Austin movies, but your sweet manners in the face of those bitter cookies filled me affection for you and hope for the future of the world.
The thing is, I KNOW this is a great recipe. So on Friday, I sought redemption.

and redemption dreweth nigh

And here’s the recipe:
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup bourbon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 tsp ginger
4tsp cinnamon
2tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1tsp cardamom
6 to 6 1/2 cups flour

1. melt the butter on the stovetop, and keep up the heat till it begins to turn a golden brown. Keep an eye on it- butter goes from browned to burned pretty quickly
2. stir the browned butter, sugar, molasses and bourbon together in a bowl
3. stir together all the dry ingredients
4. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture
5. From here, you can roll the dough into balls and roll them in demarrara or turbinado sugar, or you can refrigerate the dough then roll it out and cut it with cookie cutters.
6. bake them at about 350 for about 10 minutes.

*note 1* I'm making far fewer burnt offerings to the cookie gods since I started lining cookie sheets with parchment paper.

*note 2* If you decide to do cookie cutter cookies, think about icing them with a batch of royal icing made with lemon juice instead of water. Lemon and ginger. Amazing.
 
Next up, I tried the spiced chicken breast with apples and squash and it was a fantastic surprise. Honestly, I didn't think it'd be as good as it was. It even earned a triple "wow" rating from the home audience.
But look at the prep on that recipe! Layer, sprinkle, layer, drizzle...Sometimes I wonder if recipe writers spice up their own days by making things way harder than they have to be for us cooks in the trenches.
I simplified. I mixed the spices with the olive oil in a big bowl, then threw in pieces of boneless chicken breast, pumpkin, onion and apple, gave it a thorough stir, tipped it in a roasting pan and baked it.
Not the sophisticated presentation the writers had in mind, but look:

It was kinda pretty after all.
and tasted really good.

 I hope this week your life is perfectly spiced, with change to hold your interest, and constancy to hold you together.And I hope your meals and your days hit just the right spot between bland and chaos.
Happy cooking, and happy eating- I'll be back on Wednesday with menus