Holiday Goodies

Another classic Christmas cookie - Shortbread is a traditional Scottish dessert that consists of three basic ingredients: flour, sugar, and butter. According to Wikpedia, this cookie resulted from medieval biscuit bread, which was a twice baked, enriched bread roll dusted with sugar and spices and hardened into a soft and sweetened biscuit called a Rusk.

Eventually, yeast from the original Rusk recipe was replaced by butter, which was becoming more of a staple in the British Isles. Despite the fact that shortbread was prepared during much of the 12th century, the refinement of shortbread was actually accredited to Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 16th century.

The name of one of the most famous and most traditional forms of shortbread, petticoat tails, were named by Queen Mary. This type of shortbread was baked, cut into triangular wedges as they are in this recipe from Cook’s Illustrated.

Europeans do it better. Not the wine, beer, and cheese, which are all great, but the holidays and vacations. A holiday in Europe occupies at least two weeks. Summer vacation is six to eight. With that much time off from work, one’s internal clock resets.  The mind and body slow down to take in the pleasures of the moment.

Probably one of the best ways to sample Italian wines is in a pairing with Italian cucina especially when chefs of note are involved in the preparation and choices, and so it was one evening. To celebrate the Holiday season this very special event took place at Market City Café in Burbank, California. Together the Executive Chefs from the MCC Hospitality Group joined forces to produce a superb repast – seven courses of fabulous Italian food paired with Italian wines from Tuscany, Umbria, Asti and Friuli Venezia Guilia near the Slovenian Border. The bustling restaurant on the edge of the Burbank Mall was bright and shiny with Christmas decorations and sparkling lights, and a lot of excited and happy people, all looking forward to a very eventful evening and willing to forget all their dietary conditions and the no-nos that many nutritionists and doctors want to place on food loving folks!

The opening course was a delightful array of three cheeses, a pressed goat’s milk Garroxta produced in the Catalonia region of northern Spain, a creamy white New York Camembert and a lovely Fourme d’Ambert which is one of France's oldest cheeses dating as far back as Roman times. Slices of bread, grapes and the slightly sweet pochettes of date preserve and onion marmalade offset the cheeses perfectly. Servers came round pouring a subtle Santa Marina Pinot Noir from Venezia and if I had not known there were many more different wines to be poured, I would have spent the evening with this!

For as long as I can remember, Thumbprint Cookies have been my favorite holiday cookie treat. My paternal grandmother started the Thumbprint tradition. The cookies soon became a favorite of her little son Ronny (my dad.) So, of course, my mom had to learn how to make them and carry on the Thumbprint tradition. My mom’s been gone for many years, so the Thumbprint tradition was left to me. I’m certain the tradition will be carried on for generations. My daughter-in-law makes them now, too.

Our Thumbprint cookies are made of a rich, buttery dough that is rolled into a ball, coated with coconut and poked in the middle to make a bowl to hold creamy frosting — red and green, of course. Long ago, my grandma may have used her thumb to push a shallow indentation into each little ball of cookie dough, thus the name Thumbprints. Somewhere along the line, though, my mom began using the end of a wooden spoon for the job. It may have been because the thumb-pressing process doesn’t take place until the cookies have baked for 5 minutes. It makes for a very hot, steamy thumb. Ouch!  The end of a wooden spoon creates a space for frosting much too small for my taste. Over the years, I’ve started using the end of the handle on a small Swedish butter knife made of wood. It’s the only thing I ever do with that wooden tool. The rest of the year it stays tucked in a kitchen drawer. The end of that knife makes a large basin to hold lots of frosting. Perfect!