Sweet Potato Pizza

Our publisher at HarperCollins once said that people want to braise in the summer and grill in the winter. They yearn for what's not in season.

For my part, I get impatient with the stand-bys at the holidays--and then want them at other times of the year. A roast turkey mostly gets a "meh" from me on the holidays. I mean, I like it. It's fine. But I'm much more excited when Bruce makes cowboy rib-eyes or some succulent racks of lamb.

But that said, I love roast turkey on an average Wednesday night in January--or June. When it's not so expected.

This past week, I asked Bruce if he could revamp the standard sweet potato casserole, found on so many holiday tables. We've got lots of company over the holidays--kids, too--and I was wondering if we couldn't play around with what's expected. What if we still had a sweet potato dish, one that's kid-friendly, but we morphed it a bit?

His answer: sweet potato pizza.

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Big Buttery Sugar Cookies

As you know, we're all about what's real on this blog, about real food at every turn.

Which means baking can be a problem. Modern baking was designed for food that sometimes doesn't meet with the "real" test: hydrogenated this, overly refined that.

We can push back. Not completely. But enough that it makes sense with busy lives and normal resources. Don't worry: we're not going overboard. Don't put on the Birkenstocks. (I assure you Bruce has on his pair at this moment.) Don't tell me about how hemp is an important crop for "other" reasons. Don't break out the patchouli. (Yet.) Instead, push back a little.

In that spirit, I offer you this revamping of one of our own recipes, this time from THE ULTIMATE COOK BOOK, our 900-recipe tome. In those pages, you'll find a more standard sugar cookie recipe. Here, we're going to get a little "realer." You'll note in the top picture that our cookies are not the standard, lily white sugar cookies. That's because they're using a little whole wheat pastry flour, a little less-refined sugar.

Let's get to it.

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Cranberry Buckle

Want to know a secret? I've been married four times. Three times to the same person. What am I, Elizabeth Taylor?

Bruce and I have had a commitment ceremony (1999), a legal civil union (2007), and now a legal marriage in Connecticut (2009).

OK, there's three. But before those, I was married, yep, in "the traditional way" to someone else. Without a lot of blathery confession, let's just say that it was a wonderful relationship with a great person. And in many ways a darn fine marriage: companionable and safe. As well as a part of my life I still cherish. In fact, a part that Bruce and I talk about all the time.

One of the best things about Bruce is this: he's not threatened by any of this stuff. I talk about my past and he doesn't blink. He accepts it--and assumes we'll always talk about things that may be painful, may not include him, and may be made up of great memories that happened long before him. Even relationship memories. If his grace is not the heart of redemption, I don't know what is.

So how does this all relate to buckle, that American coffee cake with a sugary topping so heavy, the cake buckles underneath it? Because my first spouse loved buckle. And I'd make it for her all the time, a breakfast treat for quiet, special mornings--or a dessert after a long day. (I was in grad school; she was working her way far up the corporate ladder.) I associate buckle with that marriage. And mostly feel warm and safe when I do.

Still, I haven't thought about buckle in years--until I ran across a recipe for Blueberry Buckle in The Ultimate Cook Book, our 900-recipe tome. I pointed it out to Bruce, told him about making it so many times before in a "previous life," told the story very nostalgically--and he asked me if I'd like him to make it for me as a treat this past weekend.

Isn't life nuts? It twists and turns into redemption with the most shocking abandon.

Anyway, he did. Except we had no blueberries. Instead, lots of cranberries. (We live in New England, after all.) Here's how to get eight servings of this terrific treat, with some real food morphs on the recipe:

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Cocoa Brownies

If it's time to sift some flour and cocoa powder, it's time to make some of my favorite brownies!

Yes, good brownies usually require you to melt chocolate. But these are a little simpler: just cocoa, in fact. Yet they're dense, fudgy, and a little chewy. If you want them even fudgier, bake them a minute or two less, until a cake tester inserted into the brownie cake comes out with several moist crumbs attached.

Before we begin, two quick things. One: that darn sifting. Yes, it's important--to remove lumps from the flour and the cocoa. The brown lumps can be forced through the wire mesh, but leave any little bits of floury lumpiness in the sifter. We use a fine-mesh strainer for the task. Better still, the sifted flours make for a lighter cake and crumb. In other words, num num num.

Second: cocoa powder. As you know, there are two kinds--Dutch processed (with an alkali that helps it dissolve more quickly) and "natural" (without said alkali). This is not a fussy recipe. Either will work, although the natural kind will produce slightly chewier brownies.

Let's get to it. . . .

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Banana Upside Down Cake

OK, tell me you don't want it: a dense, buttery cake with bananas sitting in caramel.

Well, OK, maybe you don't. If September is truly the start of the new year, you might have a resolution or two up your sleeve. I want to bone up on my French. I've lost it since we moved to the country four years ago. I don't get into too many conversations about the proper use of the subjunctive with my neighbors.

But I digress. I'm supposed to be writing about banana upside down cake. How it got mixed up with the subjunctive is. . . .

Right. Resolutions. The best thing about calling September the new year is that you don't have to make any. No French, no gym memberships. Those are all well and good. But you don't have to. You can just celebrate this thing called time. (Or not. At fifty, I can't decide which.)

I warn you, real food lovers: this cake is a also a celebration of butter. Without a doubt, it's empty calories. Probably eight servings in this thing. But butter is a real fat. Better that than some fake stuff. And yes, there's sugar involved. Even corn syrup. We'll get to that. On to the cake:

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Brown Sugar Brownies

For us, the process of writing a cookbook involves finding the middle ground.

It's ever the dream, no? I once had a discussion once with a sommelier who told me that he tries to gauge the middle bottle of wine and then build the list out from there in both directions. (Unfortunately, he thought the middle bottle ran about $90US. Ah, well!) 

When Bruce and I write cookbooks, we also try to figure out that illusive middle. Which recipe stakes it out--and which then have the freedom to break it?

We believe the middle ground is made up of three things: taste, effort, and cost. To give you a little peak into the behind-the-scenes thinking in our latest book, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, the seven-step plan to get off processed food, we staked out the middle ground with the oven-fried fish fillets, the ones included in the discussion about effort v. cost in our food choices, found in chapter 2, "Make Informed Choices."

We later included far easier and less costly recipes (like the no-cook peach salsa) and more difficult, challenging ones (like the Mapo Dofou--which you can also find on this blog here).

That process is perhaps nowhere more evident than in The Ultimate Brownie Book. So many people have their notion of brownies: there's the caky camp and the fudgy camp, for one thing. So we first sat down to try to find something that fell right in the middle, all other brownies moving out to the edges. And believe me, there some out on the edges. Like the caky brownies made with a can of Coca-Cola, a riff on my Cousin Wilma Faye's "co'-cola cake." (Yes, I had a cousin named Wilma Faye. Doesn't everybody?) Or like the fudgy Sour Cream Brownies. Crazy. Barely holding together in the pan. One minute less baking time and you could use them as an ice cream topping.

So here's the middle ground of brownies, a little bit cakey, a little bit fudgy, with only one kind of chocolate not three or four, certainly indulgent as a treat but not too much so, a little decadent but certainly not too much so.

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Danishes, Part 1

Well, really. Have you ever seen anything so gorgeous? Lightly browned, flaky, with creamy cheese centers. And completely from scratch. Nothing fake about it. All real food.

Now hold on there, you might say. I thought you guys said something about losing weight if I eat real food.

Well, we did. And we meant it.

One of the things we talk about endlessly in REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, our seven-step plan to get off processed food is making sure you occasionally treat yourself. You should eat dessert. (Right before I sat down to type this entry, I had a snickerdoodle and a glass of iced tea while sitting on the back deck, listening to the birds. I should shoot you guys a video of it. We live in a symphony here in the New England woods. And I should also add that that snickerdoodle was made with lard. Bruce's own. Rendered right here at home. And here.)

So OK, let's talk about treats. First off, they should be just that: treats. I would suggest if you're having more than one a day, there may be another problem you want to address.

Second, they should NEVER be eaten on the run. If you're going to have a treat, sit down and have it. Enjoy it. Every bite. It's worth it. I did it with my cookie on the deck. And I did it with these cheese danishes the other morning.

Finally, keep this in mind: all treats are empty calories. So they should be hard to make. That's right: should be. Part of the root of the American weight gain--and now indeed the global weight gain--is that the emptiest calories are available with ridiculous ease. There aren't lovely broiled fish stands lining our roads. Instead, there are fried chicken joints. And bakeries with pastries. And ice cream stands. And even cheesecake parlors.

In other words, all the stuff that's hard to make. And it's hard for a reason. Because you're not supposed to eat it every day. (Well, it's hard for other reasons, but you know what I mean.)

So cheese danishes. They're hard to make. It'll take us three days on this blog to get through Bruce's recipe. Bear with me. We'll have fun. And it's a crazy thing to do: make your own sweet rolls. But they freeze perfectly. (So you can have one, save one back for breakfast the next day, and squirrel the rest away for company visits this summer.) And they're a great way to have a fun weekend project, something to push your boundaries a bit. And it doesn't get much more human--or real--than learning new things and having a treat at the end!

So let's get to it.

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Let's Talk: The Fat Discussion

Since we're been having some good discussions on Wednesdays about food, I thought we'd continue that trend with one today about fats.

Specifically, tasteless fats.

We're on a war path against the tasteless stuff. During the third step of our new book REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, the mini-detox program, we first take on the myth that fats are somehow bad for us.

We need fats to live. Some vitamins are fat (not water) soluble. Dietary fats aid in proper digestion. They also build neural structures and connections in the body. And they build the wall of every single cell in the body. Want to recover from your work-out with weights? Don't forget the role of fats.

But most importantly, fats bring on satiety. If only we register that we're eating them.

The research is pretty solid: we eat more and more these days because what we eat is pretty darn tasteless. We're caught looking for satiety because we're not eating flavorful food.

Fats, too. We eat copious amounts of the no-flavor stuff. But we crave big, bold flavors for satiety.

Or as we put it in the book, "You'll never see anyone canola-oil-ing their bread."

Let's be honest: all liquid fats have 120 calories per tablespoon. Every one. So why would you "waste" 120 calories on something tasteless? Why wouldn't you DEMAND walnut oil, or hazelnut oil, or olive oil? Why would you not want butter (which actually has fewer calories that a liquid oil)? Or (wow) lard--which is actually a monounsaturated fat like olive oil?

Yes, we consume too many fats. Saturated, monounsaturated, whatever. No doubt about it. The modern world is awash in fat. But most of them are tasteless. And craving flavors, we search for more. But we also eat more because we can't taste what we're eating.

The answer is not to pull away from fat. The answer is to embrace is for the real pleasure it is. The answer is to demand more flavor from every calorie. The answer is to use less of better, not more of worse.

Got a favorite, full-flavored fat--and a way to use it? We'd all love to hear from you.

(Hey, did you know we now have a channel on youtube? Check it out here. OK, don't laugh at me. It's rudimentary, for sure. But hey, I'm working on it!)

Cherry Oat Bars

Um, yum. Crunchy bar cookies, laced with jam. I ask you: what could be better?

But before we get into it, and because we're into real food, let's have the discussion. You know, THE discussion. The one about empty calories. The one about sweets.

Listen, anything like this is nutritionally void. Oh, sure, I could blather on about oats. But really? These are a treat. Period.

And should be. You need treats in your food choices, if only to vary them. But two things. 1) Despite any ad copy blather, any dessert should have a whole grain in it. Hey, let's not kid ourselves. We need to get in the grains where we can. And 2) we shouldn't have treats lying around the house for days on end. So here's a strategy. Make these, then cut them into squares and freeze them in small batches. There'll be ready to go when you are. Or share them. The very best way to enjoy treats? With others.

And you know the final rule: never make pans of dessert within two weeks of a relationship break-up. I'm just saying.

OK, enough. On to the bars.

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Let's Talk: Detoxing Off Tasteless Fats

Only a week or so before REAL FOOD HAS CURVES comes out. (You can find it here.) We're so very excited about it. And to that end, we started an important discussion in the comments thread the other day, a discussion that's pertinent to the new book; so I thought I'd give it more space here.

It's about fats. As you know, there's been a fair amount about it on the blog--making your own lard, making your own butter. And that long discussion about canola oil--and finding the best you can, if you want to use it.

All that said, the research is pretty solid: you have to taste something to register the cues of satiety along your gut's enteric nervous system. I spell this out more fully in the new book, but here's some of it:

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