Shortly after we first started dating, I made a batch of cookies for Paul. He had been feeling under the weather, and I wanted to do something sweet to cheer him up.

I pulled out my brand-new copy of the Joy of Cooking and paged through the Cookie section until I found a recipe that met the few requirements I had:

• It had to be a cookie that was familiar to me
• I had to have all the ingredients in my very limited pantry
• It had to be easy (I had very little patience for baking back then)

Oatmeal cookies fit the bill perfectly. Paul ate them with enjoyment, and in the many years since, they have become a familiar friend in our home. Where I once had to look up the page number in the back of the book, it now falls open automatically at the right spot. And that page is beautifully marked with speckles of vanilla, flour and sugar.

So when I was notified that I was selected to participate in the Marx Foods Fregola Sarda recipe challenge, this family favorite kept begging me for consideration.

I was skeptic, however. The key ingredient that I had to utilize in a dessert was Fregola Sarda pasta – little toasted balls of pasta. When cooked, they bear a striking resemblance to tapioca pearls. Taste-wise, they are a little chewy with a slight nutty flavor.

Along with the pasta, Marx Foods also provided me with star anise, vanilla beans and saffron. I had to use at least one of these in a dessert recipe.

My thought was that I would simply substitute the Fregola for the oatmeal in the recipe. So I boiled up a bit of the Fregola with half of one of the vanilla beans, and mixed it in to the dough.

That first batch of cookies was – uh – yucky. Apparently the oatmeal provides a lot of bulk to the cookies.

For the second batch I added extra flour. Hot out of the oven, they were pretty good. The pasta added a light, pleasant chew. I thought I had it nailed.

But then they cooled. And the pasta became little balls of gummy rubber. Not good.

At all.

I tried baking them less time, more time, hotter and cooler. Nothing worked. They always reverted to an unpleasant chewiness when they cooled.

By this time, I only had enough Fregola left to try one more time. So I boiled the pasta way beyond any definition of al dente. Where I had originally cooked them about 12-15 minutes, this last time I had them going for 23 minutes. There was no bite left at all.

And I met with resounding success! After cooling, the cookies developed a very slight, and very pleasant chew to them. To finish them off and make them beautiful, I used the saffron to create a beautiful and delicious glaze. Update: Voting is happening now. Please visit Marx Foods Fregola Dessert Recipe Challenge to vote.

I must say, the infusion of the vanilla flavor into the Fregola is amazing! The flavor permeated the pasta, leaving behind a delicious pop of vanilla with every bite. I imagine that the pasta would pick up other flavors just as readily. I intend to get some more and explore it’s savory use as well.

Vanilla Pearl Cookies with Saffron Glaze

• 1/2 cup Fregola Sarda pasta
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split down the middle
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c butter, room temperature
• 1/2 c firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp. milk
• 2 c all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Glaze:

• 2 Tbsp. hot water
• 1 pinch saffron threads
• 1 c powdered sugar

Cook Fregola, vanilla bean and salt in boiling water until pasta is very soft – approximately 20-25 minutes. Drain and cool completely. Remove and discard the vanilla bean. Measure 1 cup of Fregola.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar together.

Mix in egg, vanilla extract and milk. Beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir thoroughly into butter/egg mixture. Stir in 1 cup cooked and cooled Fregola pasta.

Drop cookies 2 inches apart onto a cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until light brown.

Remove cookies from pan and cool on cooling rack. When cooled, combine all glaze ingredients and drizzle over cookies.

Yield – about 24 cookies.

Disclaimer (please read really quickly and quietly)- Marx Foods
provided me with the Fregola Sarda, vanilla beans, saffron and
star anise (which I did not use). This recipe was adapted from
the Joy of Cooking Quick Oatmeal Cookies recipe. If this recipe
is selected as a winner in the Marx Foods Fregola Sarda dessert
challenge, I will win a Marx Foods gift certificate.

I wonder if there are people who were born with a natural cooking ability. With an intuition for knowing just what a recipe needs. With a knack for adding the perfect amount of seasoning and spice. With the instinctive touch to make the perfect adjustment that elevates the dish from good to amazing.

I wasn’t. I absolutely was not a natural-born cook. I became the cook I am today (which – all modesty aside – is a very good cook) after years of hard work combined with a willingness to accept critique and the generosity of others who shared their knowledge, tips and recipes. And it is this last component which I am addressing today. Those who share.

My go-to cake recipe came from Mom; the recipe for the world’s greatest pizza sauce was given to me by my sister; a previous co-worker generously shared her husband’s secret for an amazing artichoke dip; I learned the secret to homemade fried rice during a brief conversation with a man who cooked at a favorite Chinese restaurant; and the list could go on and on.

But mixed in with all these treasures are recipes that are also missing. I never did get a friend’s mother’s famous apple pie recipe. The only person she would give it to was her own daughter who was sworn to secrecy. And I would dearly love my friend’s dill pickle recipe, but she has considered selling them someday, and wants to keep her recipe a secret just in case.

Personally, I have always been generous with my recipes. If someone asks, I share. To me, it’s an honor to be asked. And only once have I regretted it.

By all accounts, Paul’s grandmother was an amazing cook. Although I never had the privilege of enjoying anything she made herself, I did inherit some of her treasured recipes. Her biscuit recipe is unlike any other I have ever seen, and it is the only recipe I ever use. I used to watch Paul’s Dad make these amazingly light and delicious biscuits many times and saw how important it was to mix the dough and cut the biscuits quickly, flipping them in scorching hot grease in a searingly hot pan and then into a hot, hot oven where they rose perfectly and came out toasty brown and crispy on the outside while staying fluffy on the inside. It’s all in the timing. And if you know the timing and aren’t afraid of heat, they are easy to make.

Since I came into possession of the recipe, I have shared it outside of my immediate family exactly once. A friend of a friend asked me for my recipe and I wrote it down for her along with what I thought were detailed instructions. She was most unkind and vocal in her “review.” Words like “flat” “hard” and “extremely disappointing” were tossed about freely. She seemed to feel that I had done something to sabotage her family’s breakfast. She suggested that I was one of “those” cooks who left out critical information in order to keep the title of world’s greatest biscuit maker for myself. Or something.

I’m sure she over-worked the dough or didn’t completely preheat the oven and the pan or used old baking powder or didn’t hold her mouth right or … I have no idea. I just know that she was unhappy, and that made me sad.

When I share a recipe, its with the hope that they will enjoy it as much as we did. I am afraid to share my biscuit recipe again. I don’t want to disappoint.

What about you? Do you share recipes or do you keep them to yourself?

This weekend I made what might be the most scrumptious cherry pie that has ever been made. It was just sweet enough to be pleasant, but not tooth-achingly sweet like pies made with canned pie filling tend to be.

I would have loved to have made it from fresh cherries, but they were too expensive to get enough for a pie, so I went with the canned cherries that are in the fruit aisle – NOT pie filling. There were three different kinds of cherries to choose from. I took a can of tart cherries and a can of cherries that were in a heavy syrup (neither one had high fructose corn syrup). I was worried that the$ two cans (one was 15 oz. and the other was 14.5 oz.) wouldn’t be enough for the pie, but it actually was the perfect amount.

The recipe I based my pie on was titled “Prize Winning Cherry Pie.” I made a few modifications to it, and, all modesty aside, I think my pie would have beaten the one from the recipe.

Better-than-Prize-Winning Cherry Pie

• Double pie crust – enough for a top and bottom crust of one 9″ pie
• 2 15-oz cans pitted, red cherries (see above for comments on what I used)
• 3/4 c + 1/4 c cherry juice (drained/reserved from canned cherries)
• 1/3 c flour
• 1/2 c sugar (you might need more or less depending on whether your canned cherries are in syrup or not)
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1 T butter
• 1 t almond extract
• pinch salt

Line your pie plate with the bottom crust – being careful to gently lay the dough in without stretching. Trim only if necessary. You want about 1/2″ – 1″ of extra dough around the rim to help seal the top crust on. Refrigerate.

Drain the cans of cherries, saving 1 cup of the juice. I got exactly 1 cup from the cherries I drained. If you’re a little shy of a cup, add enough water to equal the 1 cup you need.

Pour 3/4 cup of the cherry juice in a small pan and bring to a boil. Whisk the flour into the remaining 1/4 c cherry juice. When the juice in the pan comes to a boil, add in the flour/cherry juice mixture, stirring constantly. The mixture will thicken almost immediately. Cook for a couple of minutes, then slowly add in the sugar. Cook 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat.

Add in remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Mix in cherries. Set mixture aside to cool for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Roll out pastry for top crust.  If making lattice top, cut into strips.

Pour cooled cherry mixture into pie crust.  Cover with top crust, crimp top and bottom crusts together. If you didn’t make a lattice top, cut several steam/vent holes in top.

Place pie in oven on middle rack. Place a baking sheet on the rack directly below to catch any filling that might overflow. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn oven temperature down to 350 degrees and continue baking for 25-35 minutes.

The crust should be dark golden brown, top and bottom (obviously the bottom crust can only be seen if you’re using a glass pie pan). Don’t be afraid to leave the pie in the oven a bit longer if it just doesn’t look done.

Remove pie from oven and set on a cooling rack. Best served at room temperature or slightly warm with ice cream.

When I was a teenager, and wanted something from Dad … money, the car, permission, etc. … I always opened the conversation with the question,”Daddy, Do you know how much I love you?”

And he would always answer with a question of his own, “What do you want this time?”

Well, this weekend I had the opportunity to show Dad how much I still love him. It was his birthday weekend, which, as in most families, means he chooses the meal.

And thus it was that on this gorgeous 80+ degree weekend in a valley in the Greater Puget Sound region, I baked bread bowls and made a kicker pot of clam chowder.

Dad, I love you enough to not only cook clam chowder for you on a hot day, but I also grilled some of the proscuttio-wrapped asparagus that you wanted to try.

Happy Birthday!

Bread Bowls

Recipe from Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques cookbook

9 c all-purpose, unbleached flour
3 envelopes yeast (6 3/4 tsp)
3 1/2 c water (at approx. 80 degrees)
1 T salt

- Mix the yeast and water together, and place two-thirds (6 cups) of the flour in the bowl of an electric mixer.

- After 2-3 minutes, stir the water/yeast mixture again. Wait another 5 mins. until the water starts to bubble on top. Add the yeast mixture to the flour and using the dough hook, beat on medium for about 5 mins. Add the salt and keep mixing for a few seconds.

- Add 2 more cups of the flour and keep beating on low for 1 minutes.

- Place dough on counter and knead by hand with the rest of the four. More or less flour will be needed, depending on weather, humidity, etc. Reserve at least 1/2 cup flour for the end. Work the dough by folding it with the palms of your hands. Continue kneading 7-8 mins. Sprinkle with more flour if it is sticky and absorbent. The dough should be satiny and resilient.

- Sprinkle the dough with flour and place it in a large bowl to allow for expansion. Cover with plastic to prevent a skin from forming on the top and to retain moisture. Allow to rise for 2 hours in an 80-85 degree area.

- After 2 hours, check the dough by plunging 2 fingers into it. If the depression made by your fingers remains, the dough has risen enough.

- Knead the dough for a few seconds to knock down the air bubbles. Let the dough raise a second time, or divide it into whatever shapes you wish.

At this point, I divided mine into 9 very large “buns”, let them rise a second time. About 1/2 hour before I thought they would be ready for the oven, I turned the oven on to 450 degrees and set a pan of water on the bottom rack to create steam.

Since we would be using the bread for soup bowls, I wanted a really good crust on the bread. Right before I put the bread in the oven, I tossed a couple “handfuls” of water on the hot oven floor to create steam and turned the oven down to 400 degrees. Then 5, 10 and 15 minutes after I put in the bread, I repeated the water-throwing process. It baked about 20 minutes more, to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Next up…the chowder recipe…

I sit down to check out a couple quick things and the next time I blink, and hour’s gone by. Or two.

Sometimes three.

So if you visit my house and find that I didn’t get my kitchen floor mopped, and wonder why there’s laundry piled up, know that it isn’t my fault. I just got caught in a time warp.

Then sit down and have some of Smitten Kitchen’s Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie.

Strange how I can always find the time to cook, though. Isn’t it?