Tropical Macaroons

The other night, Bruce asked me if I wanted coconut or almond macaroons for dessert. I couldn't make up my mind. Not that I'm all that indecisive. Oh, a little. But not a lot. I'm like any good Southern boy who's lived a decade and a half in New York City and New England. You know, just a remnant of good manners left. I smile before I cut you off on the highway.

Anyway, I couldn't decide. So he ended up making both--at once. With some chopped candied pineapple in the mix, to boot.

Here's the shtick for about 32 cookies:

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Everything-But-The-Kitchen-Sink Chocolate Chip Cookies

OK, that's my world right now. Or more specifically, my backyard. It's been raining for days. The snow is giving way to rank ugliness. It looks as if we're going to have an early spring in this part of New England, up here in the iron-cold dark where Calvinists sprang full formed from the ground.

Mostly, it means the brook behind our house is flooding, filling the meadows with water. Not a bad thing, mind you. I'll be glad of it come July when the wildflowers flourish. But right now, it just means mud. And lots of it.

So it's a good day to stay inside and make cookies. The kind that empty the pantry: maple syrup, coconut, wheat germ, tahini, oats, chocolate chips.

Wow, are they good! Pour yourself a glass of milk. Whole milk. I mean, what's the point of low-fat? You saved, what?, thirty calories? Really? That's going to save the world? Listen, if you're going to make these cookies, go for broke.

But before we get to the recipe, a confession. (It is Lent, after all.) I like crunchy cookies. Period. I'm not a soft-cookie guy. Yes, I learned to like a few of the gooey ones for our chocolate cookie book. But mostly, I'm all about the crunch. Because I'm all about the dunk. You realize we're back to the milk discussion, right?

OK, Let's get started.

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Coconut Fish Curry

We've had a wonderful two weeks in the South Seas, going down the Chilean fjords, around the horn of South America, and now out into the Atlantic to the Falklands, Uruguay, and Argentina. We've been teaching cooking classes aboard Holland America's Veednam all the while, paella and cookies and lasagna, for crowds and for small, private groups. (The photo is of the audience gathering in the cooking theater for one of our demos.)

One of our favorite dishes we do in these cooking classes has always been a simple coconut curried fish. The dish lets us teach the secrets to making a good curry blend, as well as a simple way to make fish more enjoyable come dinnertime.

But you don't have to go on a cruise with us (although it would be nice). Here's the recipe: start by making a simple curry paste. Crush two 2-inch pieces of lemongrass under a heavy pot on a cutting board, then put them in a mini food processor or a spice grinder. Add 1 small seeded jalapeno or serrano chile, 2 halved medium garlic cloves, 4 whole cloves (the dried spice), 2 tablespoons cumin seeds, 2 teaspoons ground coriander, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, and 2 teaspoons turmeric. Grind these up until they make a fine, powdery paste, more dry than wet.

It's too much curry paste for this dish, but you can save it back in the fridge for future stews, braises, and other curries. Keep it covered for up to 4 months.

OK, preheat the oven to 400F. Place 1 1/2 pounds thick-fleshed fish like cod or hake in a large sauté pan. Now pour in enough white wine to come about halfway up the fish pieces in the pan. There's no real measurement here--just eyeball it.

Remove the fish and set the pan over high heat. Add 2 chopped medium scallions, about 6 ounces thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps, and 1 1/2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger. Bring it to a full simmer--then add 2 to 4 teaspoons of the curry paste, depending on how strongly flavored you like the dish. You might start with the lower amount the first time, just until you get the hang of it.

Cover the pan, reduce the heat to low, and cook at a slow simmer for 5 minutes.

Place the fish back in the pan, cover it, and bring back to a simmer over medium-high heat, usually in just a few seconds. Place the pan in the oven and cook until the fish will flake with gently scraped with a fork, about 7 minutes per each inch of thickness.

Remove the pan from the oven--it's hot!--and transfer the fish to a serving plate. Set the pan back over high heat and bring to a full simmer. Stir in 1/4 cup coconut milk, 2 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves, and 1 tablespoon soy sauce. Pour this sauce over the fish and serve at once--with rice, of course. A stick white rice like sushi rice is best. But you want to keep up every drop of that sauce.

Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

Someone's going to say I'm a day late and a dollar short for Passover.

Actually, no. Because we're going to a seder on Saturday night. That's right: a seder after the holiday. Because our hosts were traveling last week during the "real" Passover. So they're having a seder the first night they can.

Which is about as it should be. (And forgive me if I'm about to step on any toes.) Because the sacred doesn't exist on a calendar.

In Greek philosophy, there are two concepts for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the day-to-day, minute-to-minute time, the one that consumes our lives, the fire in which we burn.

Kairos (KEYE-ross) is elemental time, time in its quintessence, the time at which you forget the minute-by-minute details, the tick-tock-tick-tock, and suddenly exist in a fuller moment, a deeper moment. (We sort of retain the distinction in English: the difference between "a minute" and "a moment.") People try to schedule the sacred, but it's too deeply rooted in chaos and creativity for it to have a calendar.

Not temporal, not chronological, the sacred abrupts into life with shocking abandon. Like the sudden riot of daffodils, glimpsed as you drive down the road on the way to some boring errand or doctor's appointment. The sacred isn't on schedule; it arrives, like the cloud bursts of robins in spring--while we're going about out other business, making other plans. The minutes evaporate; time shifts from a line to a sphere, a wholeness, a fullness. Maybe that's why Emily Dickinson once wrote "Who has not found Heaven below will fail of it above." It's easy to miss it "below." Because we're on schedule (mostly); it's not.

And so to our chocolate macaroons.

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Coconut Chocolate Chip Macaroons

Bruce teaches knitting. He's even writing a knitting book. (Have I said this a zillion times?) And no, it's not like the cobbler whose children have no shoes. I wear hand-made sweaters. Only. Always. No exceptions.

Except sometimes. On the sly, I sneak into Gap stores to try on a sweater. You know, just to see what a normal one feels like. I lay my gray, black, and white alpaca/mohair/cashmere/wool/cotton/nylon ragland on the bench in the dressing room and slip into a blue cotton sweater.

Ah, normalcy, I sigh. This is how everyone looks. I look at myself in the mirror.

And hate what I see. Because the sweater's not shaped to my shoulders, not made for my neck, not crafted to my dimensions. And there's not much flare. So off the blue sweater comes and I go back in the hand-made one, knowing that normalcy is not for my life.

Nor for the cookies I eat. Because Bruce likes to mix things up. He's totally about flare. I honestly wouldn't know a ragland from a hole in the ground. But Bruce does. Always has.

Which may also explain why his cooking can become so wonderfully creative. Sure, sometimes I'd sort of like a plain coconut macaroon. And then he hands me a plate of his own, studded with mini chocolate chips, along with a tall, cool glass of raw milk. (Yep, it's legal to sell raw milk in Connecticut. But that's a whole 'nother story.) And then I know why I married the guy. Because I'd be stuck eating the standard--and he's always breaking the mold.

OK, the cookies.

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Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Now we're talking. Although I would have been dead silent as a kid. Because I hated coconut. Well, the kids in the Peanuts cartoons hated it. I read; I hated. Sheesh. There's a lesson in there for a food writer, no? Anyway, I always blech-ed at coconut--until I met Bruce who made, oh, curries with coconut milk, macaroons, and a host of absolutely divine dishes. Now? Bring it on. I am post-Peanuts.

This morning, he made a batch of coconut chocolate chip cookies from THE ULTIMATE CHOCOLATE COOKIE BOOK to take to his knitting class tonight.

At least he claims he's taking them. Let's see how many get out the door at 2:00 this afternoon.

Here's how the whole thing goes down:

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