Comfort Foods and Indulgences

I have been craving my favorite spicy hot chocolate, but instead I turned on the oven and made these.

I have been on a late night baking kick. It seems like the perfect time to get into the kitchen and make some magic. Oh who am I kidding, I have no other time to do it. But I still like it!!

And these muffins. I love them. I mean really love them. I wanted spicy and chocolate-like, not to mention I was slightly motivated by the very ripe bananas sitting on my counter. They needed to be made into something or into the freezer they would go.

Now, let's get back to the spicy. Have you had chile and chocolate? You're missing out if you haven't. I used chile powder and cayenne to create the heat and flavor I wanted. The spicy taste lingers and heats up. It's perfect...PERFECT. You could even add a cream cheese frosting if you wanted to be fancy, but it doesn't really need it.   

Every time I step into a meat market, I think of my mom. I can’t count the times I impatiently waited as she stood in front of the clear glass that separated her from rows of raw meat. As the butcher stood on the other side of the meat case waiting for her order, she examined the ground beef and the red, marbled roasts.

She carefully inspected the pork chops and the loins. The beef she would eventually purchase must have just the right amount of marbling running through. The pork must have enough fat to give it flavor and keep it moist as it cooked.

Somehow, my antsy behavior in all of those meat markets I frequented with my mother has made a complete turn-around over the years. I’ve become my mother. Meat markets and chocolate shops (she couldn’t pass up a Fanny Farmer store) are high on my list of places I love to visit.

Last week I had the opportunity to stop into Steve’s Meat Market in Ellendale, Minn. Owner, Donnavon Eaker, was busy helping a customer as I stepped into the smokehouse-scented store.

“Having steaks on the grill tonight?” the petite Eaker asked her customer as she added up the cost of the meat purchase. The happy customer shared her plans for that day’s meat purchase and walked out with a hefty bag of meat.

Biscuiterie familliale depuis 1905. St. Michel is a family owned bakery in Commercy France. In 1755 a young French girl named “Madeleine” created a recipe for a sumptuous little cake. These legendary cakes so inspired Marcel Proust that he dedicated pages to describe his experience of first biting into them in his novel, Remembrance Of Things Past. The little cakes became so popular that the recipe has been a closely guarded family secret to this day.

They are irresistible and addictive, redolent of citrus and sweet butter. Dunked in tea or coffee or vin santo. Dunked into honey. Or simply on their own.

Or as French Toast! I just thought it would be delicious, and it was! I used a serrated knife and carefully sliced each one lengthwise into three equal pieces, then soaked them for a couple of minutes in an egg bath, then gently sauteed them in sweet butter until they were golden brown. Then I plated them, drizzled all with Maple Syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar. The resulting warm miniature French Toasts had intensified their citrus taste during cooking, which was a surprise, and which tasted absolutely etherial with the toppings.

Tortellini has been a part of our family’s Christmas day repast since our kids were … well, since they were kids. We used to make tortellini in brodo, a Northern Italian Christmas tradition. I would make a chicken, beef-bone and vegetable broth on Christmas Eve and then on the day we’d all pitch in to make sheets of fresh pasta and a meaty, cheesy, herby filling out of which we’d fashion hundreds of little belly-button-shaped beauties to float in the rich steaming broth. At the table we’d grate Parmigiano over the top and count our holiday blessings.

One year instead of broth I served the tortellini in a bolognese sauce and it was such a hit we haven’t been back to broth since. I use Marcella Hazan’s classic recipe for the meat sauce and I follow it to the letter because it’s quite perfect. Well, in truth, I add a bit more onion than she calls for. I’m a whore for onions. I tripled the recipe this year because I knew once I tasted it I would want to have more in the fridge for later. This is where the trouble started.

There’s something supremely satisfying about Marcella’s bolognese. Bubbling a cup or two of milk through the meat before adding the tomatoes creams up the sauce and sweetens it. And the five-hour simmer patiently breaks down the components and gives them time to take advantage of each other. It’s a meat sauce to dream about and this year’s version was no exception. The kids and I scarfed down our beefily-sauced tortellini while Jill tucked into her lentils with vegan gusto. Ah, chacon à son goût.