I'm sorry I didn't write in the blog yesterday. I had been intending to write every day, but it snowed in Chicago, and I needed to pick up some prescriptions and do some shopping, so off I went. By the time I got all the stuff, lugged it upstairs, unpacked it, parked my car, and talked to my sweetie for an hour or so, I was totally exhausted.
The first snow, naturally, turned to slush right away because the ground isn't completely frozen. And in Chicago, homeowners are not penalized for failing to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes, so getting back from my car involved a process of shuffling along over packed slush so as not to slip and break my back or an arm or, god forbid, my precious brain case.
One of the things I scored at Target was two very nice tins for cookies or fruitcakes. I'm not making fruitcakes, so cookies it'll be. I worked on a cookie book this year so I'm wheedling my friend for a copy so I can use some of the author's recipes. Of course we have family traditions, but I'm tired of those cookies. I've been making pecan crescents since I was twelve. Gads! When my son was a child we made a cookie to roll out and decorate, which I've actually made since. Boring. I want to try sablés and tuiles, macaroons and amaretti. These are cookies I've never made. What a challenge. But of course, they could all be total failures. Although I don't usually fail at baking (she said modestly), I must admit a friend gave me a recipe for oatmeal and almond crisps last week and I rushed to make them. All went well until I left the kitchen and let the timer count out the 14 minutes they were supposed to bake. Well forget that. When I went back, they were all slightly burned. I ate them anyway, but I could never have used them for gifts. Henceforth I'll bake them for 10 to 12 minutes and keep an eye on them.
That last part is the real secret of baking: keep an eye on the goods. Although my oven always seems to run at the correct temperature for recipes, there was apparently some error in this recipe. I know they're really fine little cookies because my friend made them for me when I was visiting Massachusetts in November, so I'll do them again, and for my own information, I made a note in pencil on the recipe.
Cookbooks are, in reality, suggestions of recipes in many cases. Many cookbook writers include recipes they've never tested themselves. I know. Very odd. But when I was working at Random House, right around the corner from Bridge Kitchenware, Mr. Bridge told me this when I bought a tube pan from him. I've tried recipes when I'm working on cookbooks and found them to be really horrible. I'm not going to name the author, but I tried a recipe for scones in a cookbook written by a well-known English cooking personality, and it was dreadful. Too dry—I had to add extra milk—and when baked, the scones were totally uninteresting. Just wrong. I can't say it any other way. I couldn't believe anyone had tested the recipe, since it was such a disaster.
I always give a recipe one try to see if it was written properly and whether it works. If it does, fine. But if it doesn't, depending on how big a disaster it was, I start changing it to make it work better. If the disaster is too great, there will be a recipe for it elsewhere and I'll just try someone else's version. Or if I generally like it but see ways it could be improved, I make notes on the recipe.
Lemon bars have been the most difficult to pin down. I have a friend in Massachusetts who has the perfect recipe, but I've never been able to get it from her. Nearly every other recipe I've tried has had faults. The one in the new Joy of Cooking is by far the worst ever. It uses far too many lemons. When I made it, the acid of the lemons actually burned my mouth and gave me indigestion, so ultimately, I ended up throwing most of the batch away.
I always make notes in pencil about changes I think I should make in a recipe, or never to make this recipe again. All of my cookbooks have pencil notations somewhere, and I think any good cook or anyone who wants to become one should pencil away. Cookbooks are meant to be written in, have food spilled on, and in general be mistreated by their loving owners.
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