Monthly Archives: December 2010

Chex Mix Cha Cha

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Chex Mix. It’s one of the simple things of life.

It seems to me Chex Mix has been around forever. I remember my mom mixing up a batch or two each year at Christmas time, following the directions on the box. I also clearly remember all the Wheat Chex remaining at the bottom of the bowl. No one seemed to care for those dark pieces, yet the Wheat Chex always went into the mix.

About 10 years ago, I got gutsy and broke my mother’s Chex Mix mold. I left out the Wheat Chex. I stirred in some Cheerios instead. I changed the seasoning ingredients. Nothing left in the bottom of the bowl any more. After making it at Christmas time and for Super Bowl games for a few years, I forgot all about that mix my family gobbled up each time I made it.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I was staying with my son and daughter-in-law in Fargo for a weekend. I noticed my daughter-in-law had a recipe on the counter for Chex Mix Cha Cha. She had gotten the recipe from me. I’m not sure how I could have totally forgotten about it. I copied it, feeling very uncertain about where I would look for it in my own recipe collection.

Chex Mix Cha Cha gets its cha cha from the addition of 2 teaspoons of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. Some friends who had moved to North Dakota from Louisiana were spending a weekend with us shortly after we’d moved to Bemidji. When Lou spotted the Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning on my spice rack, he said something like, “Oh, you’ve got the Chacha’s!” He was astounded to see this fiery made-in-Louisiana spice blend in my kitchen in northern Minnesota.

I just mixed up my first batch of Cha Cha in years last night. Today, each time I walked through the kitchen, I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing a handful and popping it into my mouth. My little golden, Gracie, was right there with me, hoping a Cheerio or a Chex would make it to the floor. She likes Chex Mix Cha Cha, too.

It sounds like we’re going to be snowed in this weekend. I’ll curl up in front of the fire with the good book I’m currently reading and a bowl of Chex Mix Cha Cha. And Gracie, too.

Here is the simple recipe, from me to my daughter-in-law to me to you. Just in time for New Year’s Eve.

Chex Mix Cha Cha

  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 teaspoons Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 3 cups Corn Chex
  • 3 cups Rice Chex
  • 3 cups Cheerios
  • 3/4 cup roasted and salted whole almonds
  • 3/4 cup roasted and salted cashews
  • 1 1/2 cups broken pretzel sticks

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place butter in large roasting pan and put in oven to melt. Add Worcestershire sauce, Creole seasoning and garlic powder. Mix well.

Gradually add cereals, nuts and pretzels, stirring to coat with butter mixture. Bake in 250-degree oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Spread Chex mix on paper towels to cool. Store in airtight container.

It’s nuts how enjoyable going green can be when you add a little sweet, salty and spice

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If you’re feeling a little fluffy after days of nibbling Christmas cookies and candy, sipping hot cocoa and eggnog and dining on sumptuous Christmas meals, you may want to go green for a few days before the next holiday weekend of celebrating with food and drink.

I’ve got just the green salad for you. A bowl of fresh organic green and red leaf lettuces along with some romaine lettuce is far from ho-hum when it is tossed with slices of apples and Bosc pears, dried cranberries and your favorite blue cheese, all glistening with a light vinaigrette.

But what really makes this salad irresistible are the spicy pecans.

A couple of weeks ago my friend, Bobbie, hosted a cocktail party. There was a wide variety of food to nibble as our small group of friends sipped and visited. It was the spicy pecans, though, that seemed to have my name written on them. I kept reaching for a few more and then, just a few more.

I came home with Bobbie’s recipe for the pecans and within a few days I had made three batches of the crunchy, tongue-burning nuts. Well, they don’t have to burn your tongue. You can control how much pepper you add to the sweet, salty, spicy coating on the pecans.

When I was asked to bring a salad to a dinner last week, I decided to toss up one of my favorite green salads and sprinkle it with some of these hot pecans. I’m hooked. I’ve been eating the salad everyday since that dinner. And, I think I’ll be eating it everyday this week, too. It’s nuts, I know. But, believe me — this salad makes it so easy to go green and lighten up before the next major round of food and drink.

The pecans are not difficult to make. They toast in the oven before getting a finish in the pan on the stove with some sugar, salt and some kind of peppery heat. Bobbie told me she and her husband have experimented with different kinds of spicy heat, buying dried peppers and grinding them up before adding to the sweet, salty pecans.

I’ve been using Penzey’s Black and Red Spice, a blend of black pepper and cayenne pepper. A little goes a long way. I use a teaspoon of the blend to make 3 cups of pecans. Whatever you decide to use as the source of spicy heat, start with a light hand. You can always add more.

You’ll want to make plenty of these pecans before the New Year weekend. They will be nice to have out on New Year’s Eve. Put some out during the football games on New Year’s Day. They’re great with beer.

And, you may get on the salad kick along with me. Just keep the prepared pecans, once they’ve cooled, in an airtight container. Keep the container out on the kitchen counter. I forgot to tell you — these pecans are a real kick to add to your morning oatmeal. I know, it’s nuts!

It’s Easy Going Green Salad

Dressing:

  • 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 cup white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar (my favorite for this salad is Pear Balsamic from Vinaigrette)
  • 3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 chubby clove garlic, minced

Salad:

  • Green leaf lettuce (preferably organic)
  • Red leaf lettuce (preferably organic)
  • Romaine lettuce (preferably organic)
  • 1 tart, crunchy apple, cored, diced (mmm-hmm, organic, too)
  • 1 ripe Bosc pear, cored, diced (yup, organic)
  • Sweet, Salty and Spicy Pecans, broken (see recipe below)
  • Dried cranberries
  • Blue cheese, crumbled (My favorite right now is Hook’s Paradise Blue)

Put ingredients for vinaigrette in a jar and shake to blend. Set aside.

Just before serving, combine fresh greens with remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Pour some of the dressing over the salad and toss gently. Remaining dressing can be stored in jar in refrigerator.

Sweet, Salty and Spicy Pecans

3 cups pecan halves

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/4 cup (heaping) sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt or sea salt

1 teaspoon Penzey’s Black and Red Spice

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spread the pecans in a single layer on a sheet pan and roast until fragrant, about 25 minutes. Stir a few times so that they color evenly. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the pecans and stir to coat with oil. Sprinkle with sugar and salt and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat, until the sugar melts and just begins to caramelize and coat the nuts, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat. Continue to stir until the nuts cool slightly and the sugar stops caramelizing. Add Black and Red Spice to the nuts and toss. Transfer pecans to a plate to cool. Store at room temperature in an airtight container.

  • You may want to experiment with another source of spicy heat, such as chipotle powder, hot paprika, chili powder.

“Old Country” Hungarian for Christmas

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My Hungarian grandma came to the United States when she was just a teenager. Her husband came before her to find a place for them to settle. She left her family behind to travel to a land of opportunity where she and her young husband believed they could create a better life for their family. Young Rose arrived with their first-born, a son, who was still a baby.

I’ve often wondered what it was like for my grandma to be in a strange country, a place where she could barely communicate with the people around her and where she had no family or friends, just her Hungarian husband.

Over the years, Rose’s family grew as she and her husband ran their own boarding house and restaurant in Chicago. One day, when their four sons and one daughter were still very young, Rose’s husband decided to leave. He wanted to go back to “the old country.” Eventually, the strong and very hard-working single mother married again. She and her second husband, Paul, had one more son and one more daughter. They moved to a farm in Indiana to raise their seven children. Their daughter, Rosemary, the baby of the family, became my mom.

The five sons and two daughters grew into adults and moved away from their Indiana home, but I do not remember even one Christmas when they were not all together at the farm to celebrate together, coming back each year with spouses and children of their own.

When I was growing up, our Christmas tradition began with a long ride in the car from our home in a northern suburb of St. Paul to the farm in San Pierre, Indiana. Our car would be packed with presents my mom had beautifully wrapped. (Her secret desire was to work as a gift-wrapper at Dayton’s during the holiday season.) My dad became an expert at packing up the trunk of a car. Every year he intricately pieced every package, each suitcase and all the tins filled with my mom’s homemade Christmas cookies into the large trunk of the car, as if putting a puzzle together.

Christmases celebrated at my grandparent’s Indiana farm were full of laughter, my aunts and uncles speaking to each other in Hungarian (their poor spouses had no idea what they were talking about and the children didn’t really care), and lots of Hungarian food prepared just as my grandma had learned in “the old country,” the land of her birth and the place where her birth family had stayed.

We would wake up in the mornings to the sound of my grandpa putting logs in the stove in the kitchen. And before long, from my cozy cocoon under the down quilt my grandma had made, I would begin to smell the sweet and thin Hungarian pancakes that she was lovingly preparing on that old wood-burning stove.

A large holiday meal was not complete without a huge pan of my grandma’s Hungarian noodles, turos teszta. Homemade egg noodles tossed with creamy cottage cheese and a generous amount of crunchy bits of bacon were prepared in the largest cast iron skillet she owned. This dish wasn’t reserved for holidays, though. We enjoyed this easy-to-make meal all year long. When I was growing up, while my friends would be eating weeknight meals of macaroni and cheese, at my house we would be eating turos teszta. I have a feeling my grandma and grandpa often ate turos teszta when they were growing up in their “old country.”

Today, feeling a bit melancholy as I thought about Christmases of the past and missing all those people I loved so much who are no longer with me, I made a big pan of turos tezsta for lunch. With each bite, I could almost hear my grandparents and my mom and her siblings visiting with one another in Hungarian. I could almost see my uncles fighting over the last bits of crunchy bacon in the large cast iron pan. And, when I realized the extra saltiness I was tasting was coming from a couple of tears that had landed on my lip, I smiled.

Merry Christmas to you. May the season be filled with happy memories of traditions from Christmases remembered and the fun of making new ones.

My Grandma’s “Old Country” Turos Teszta

  • 2 pounds sliced bacon
  • 1 (16-ounce) bag medium egg noodles
  • 1 (22-ounce) container small curd cottage cheese, room temperature (maybe a little bit more, if you like)
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Sour cream, room temperature, for serving

Slice bacon crosswise into about 1/2-inch wide strips. Fry the sliced bacon pieces in a large skillet over medium heat. When the bacon is very crisp, use a slotted spoon to transfer the bacon from the pan to a paper towel-lined plate. Pour all but 1 or 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from the pan.

Boil egg noodles until done, following directions on package.

Drain noodles and put into the skillet with bacon fat. Stir to coat noodles. Add bacon pieces and cottage cheese. Stir to mix. Turn heat to medium and stir just until heated through. Sprinkle generously with freshly ground black pepper. Serve immediately. Have sour cream on the table. Each person can put a dollop of sour cream on their serving of turos teszta. Serves 6 as a main dish, more if served as a side dish.

Tips from the cook

  • Be sure to use full-fat cottage cheese. Reduced-fat and no-fat cottage cheese will make the dish a watery mess. Use full-fat sour cream, too. It’s the only way I will guarantee the success of this dish:)

Hold back those extra holiday pounds with a healthful holiday smoothie

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Just before Thanksgiving, wellness and nutrition experts on the morning news programs were warning viewers to beware of the 7 additional pounds of weight they would gain between Thanksgiving and the start of the New Year.

Cookies and candies that appear just once a year, holiday parties with rich foods, thick hot drinks and cold cocktails and punch, along with extra stress and often less sleep, all combine to make this eating season a hotbed for weight gain.

I decided I didn’t want to be one of the average Americans who find their waistline a bit larger when 2011 comes around.

My ammunition for holding back those extra 7 pounds? A morning smoothie.

I have the same protein and fruit smoothie just about every morning. Unsweetened juice gets the concoction started. I use either cranberry or pomegranate. Then, I cut up a whole organic lemon, skin and all, into large chunks and toss that into the juice in the blender. Ground flax seeds join a big scoop of Tera’s Whey protein powder. My favorite protein powder of the several offerings from this Wisconsin-based company is the organic Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla whey protein powder. Finally, I toss in some frozen organic strawberries and blueberries. Whirl it all together and drink up. I feel full and satisfied for hours after gulping down the big smoothie.

In the evenings when I start craving a bowl of popcorn, one of my favorite winter snacks, I pop some up. Rather than dousing the popped corn with melted butter, I use lime olive oil that I purchase from Vinaigrette in Minneapolis. Lime olive oil, drizzled over the popcorn, then sprinkled with hot cayenne pepper is a more healthful route to go. I feel full and quite satisfied after that snack with no desire to grab holiday cookies or candy.

So far my tactics are working. There are still a few more holiday celebrations to get through and lots of tempting foods to nibble and taste rather than gobble.

If I have a holiday party to attend in the evening, I have my smoothie later in the day so that I’m still feeling satisfied when I face the food and drink. Drinking plenty of water throughout the day helps, too.

This is not just a holiday time smoothie for me. I drink this breakfast in a glass all year long.

But, this time of year, I make sure I never run out of the ingredients. Seven pounds? No thank you.

Holiday Survival Smoothie

  • 1/2 cup unsweetened pomegranate or cranberry juice
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 organic lemon, washed
  • 1 scoop whey protein powder
  • 1 tablespoon flax seeds, ground
  • 4 frozen organic strawberries
  • 1 cup frozen organic blueberries

Put all ingredients in blender in order they are listed. Blend until smooth. Makes one breakfast serving.

Tip from the cook

  • I have an electric coffee grinder that I use only for grinding flax seeds and dried herbs and spices.

On top of spaghetti….

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Each year at this time, I usually find myself spending more time than ever in the kitchen as I prepare homemade Christmas gifts of food. This weekend has been my annual Christmas cookie making time with my daughter-in-law and two granddaughters (ages 10 and 7 and one grandson, who is 3 1/2.  We always make tons of a few cookies that have been in my family for generations, at least one or two kinds of candy and sometimes, a new cookie or candy that we’ve never tried before. This year the process seemed to go more quickly than ever with all the little helping hands that have become experienced over the last few years rolling dough into balls, into egg whites, into coconut, squeezing pastry tubes filled with frosting and breaking nuts into small pieces. Many of our cookies will be arranged on plates and in holiday tins for gift-giving.

There will be more than sweet gifts coming from my holiday kitchen this year. Some of the people on my list will be getting homemade spaghetti sauce. The recipe, one that I got years ago from my Dad’s Italian friend, Johnny Nicosia, is in my newspaper column this week. Packed in with the spaghetti will be Italian meatballs.

I’ve come up with a recipe by combining ingredients and techniques from a couple of recipes — Johnny Nicosia’s meatballs and another recipe that I got from a friend years ago.

I appreciate the fact that these meatballs are baked in the oven, eliminating a splattered mess on the stove from frying meatballs. Nicosia recommended meatballs get packed into freezer containers with the sauce

These meatballs are firm and so flavorful, with grated Parmesan cheese and plenty of garlic adding wonderful Italian depth of flavor.

Glass containers of meatballs and sauce are in my freezer, already wrapped up with a bright red ribbon. I’m planning to put a meal kit together with the meatballs and sauce, a package of spaghetti noodles for sure, homemade Italian bread maybe, if I have time to make it. Who wouldn’t love getting a homemade gift like this?

Italian Meatballs

  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1/2 pound ground pork
  • 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup dried bread crumbs
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine beef, pork, cheese, bread crumbs, eggs, garlic, parsley flakes, salt, pepper, oregano and fennel seeds. Mix well. Shape into 12 to 14 equal-size balls. Place meatballs on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet with sides that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Bake meatballs for 25 to 30  minutes. Drop the meatballs into pot of Italian Tomato Sauce. At this point meatballs and sauce can be served, refrigerated or stored in freezer. Makes 12 to 14 meatballs.

Pecan-Topped Gingersnap Cookies

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A couple of weeks ago I was calling around to area bookstores, trying to find a specific book that I wanted to give as a gift. I found a copy at Beagle Books, an independent bookstore in Park Rapids, Minnesota. So, a few days later, my husband and I were driving down Highway 71, heading to the cozy little bookstore. We wound up making an afternoon of walking up and down Main Street, browsing the shops and having some lunch at 3rd Street Market.

It was while we were in Summerhill Farm that my husband discovered some gingersnap cookies he fell in love with after the first bite. Owner of Summerhill Farm, Eileen Reish, had made the cookies for holiday shoppers to nibble as they browsed through her store. I had passed them up. I was filled to the brim after having a large, chubby avocado wrap for lunch at 3rd Street Market. Before we left the store that afternoon, Eileen had already emailed the gingersnap recipe to my husband. He forwarded the recipe to me. I guess he thought I’d be more likely to make the cookies than he would.

Each morning this week, I would sneak out to the garage to get the tin holding pfeffernusse, one of my new favorites. I had made them on Sunday during springerle baking (see my previous post) and baked them on Monday. They were going fast. I love these cookies, chock full of dried fruit, chopped nuts, sweet spices and anise. They seem to be one of those cookies you either love or hate. I love. My husband hates. And that’s a good thing, actually, because it leaves more of them for me.

The tin was nearing an empty state and I was beginning to panic.

That’s when I decided to make a batch of Eileen’s Gingersnaps, which came to Eileen from one of her coworkers, Peg Mosbo. According to Eileen, Peg is a fabulous baker. I was hoping to create cookies that would at least give me a little bit of a fix for my pfeffernusse addiction. To do that, I had to adjust Peg’s recipe by adding some allspice and black pepper. If I wanted my husband to eat them, there was no way I could add anise oil to the cookie dough. I wouldn’t even think about stirring dried fruitcake mix into the gingery dough. But, I could safely push a pecan half into the top of each cookie before baking. I rolled the cookie balls in sugar to give them some holiday sparkle. Peg Mosbo’s original recipe says to coat the baked gingersnaps with a powdered sugar glaze.

These cookies are soft and chewy, spicy and sweet. A perfectly satisfying Christmas cookie with their spicy fragrance. I love them. But, they’re not pfeffernusse. No…….they’re gingersnaps. Mighty good ones.

Pecan-Topped Gingersnap Cookies

  • 1 ½ cups butter
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 ½ cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • ½ cup dark molasses (I used half mild molasses and half full-flavored dark molasses)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons ground cloves
  • 2 teaspoons ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • Sugar, for rolling cookies in
  • Pecan halves

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in molasses and eggs. Sift dry
ingredients together then mix with butter-sugar mixture until blended.
Chill the dough. Roll into small balls. Roll balls in sugar to coat. Push a pecan half into the top of each cookie. Place on ungreased or parchment-lined cookie sheets and bake 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 10 to 11 dozen cookies when using a #100 portion scooper.

German Springerle-Making Day

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I’ve seen wooden molds with delicate designs carved into them many times as I’ve browsed through antique shops and rummaged my way through flea markets. I never really knew what they were supposed to be used for. A neighbor once gave me the light colored rolling pin you can see in the photo above. She’d had it for years and wasn’t exactly sure if she’d ever used it, but she thought it would be a nice addition to the collection of old rolling pins I kept in an old wicker bike basket hanging on the wall in my kitchen. That was years ago. I’ve never used that carved rolling pin. Until last Sunday.

I was invited to join the Oja family in their spacious kitchen for their annual springerle-making day. Snowflakes were falling as another friend and I pulled into the long driveway leading to their house tucked into the countryside outside of Bemidji, Minnesota. As I stepped into the warm and cozy home, I was immediately hit with the aroma of mulling spices and cardamom. Beth Oja, our hostess, had prepared Finnish Pulla and mulled cider made from apples the family had picked from their trees and pressed themselves. I thought I might be in heaven. And, I knew this was going to be a great day.

Beth had already pulled out the tried-and-true springerle recipe that she had gotten many years ago from a German family she was friends with when she was growing up in Burlington, Iowa. For many Germans, the crunchy, biscuit-like springerles (an archaic German word meaning a springing or jumping horse) are a Christmas tradition.

Beth has a collection of springerle molds that she has gathered over the years, finding some old ones at flea markets and antique shops. She has some newer molds, too. She recommends anyone looking to buy a wooden mold or two to check out her favorite resource for springerle molds, House on the Hill in River Forest, Illinois. Beth keeps her molds out on display all year long.

Anise-flavored sweet dough, rich with butter and eggs is rolled out, stamped with wooden molds, and the embossed design air-dried before baking. In the heat of the oven, the imprinted dough puffs up like little pillows. They are almost too beautiful to eat. Almost.

In one bowl, Beth mixed sugar with egg yolks and butter until the mixture was light and creamy.

In another bowl, the egg whites were beaten until stiff. The beaten whites then got folded into the fluffy yolk mixture. Beth set the timer for 20 minutes and let the mixer go at medium speed.

An old-time leavening agent called Hartshorn, sometimes referred to as bakers ammonia, is used rather than baking powder to produce the fluffiest texture possible. Don’t stick your nose in the jar — the smell is awful. It could actually take your breath away — in a bad way. But once the dough is baked, hartshorn cannot be detected by smell or taste. It seems to disappear and the anise takes over, casting its strong licorice aroma throughout the kitchen.

Finally, the flour is incorporated into the batter and it’s ready to roll. Beth buys bleached flour only once a year, and that’s for the springerle. One five-pound bag is just enough for one batch of the dough. The bleached flour keeps the baked springerle almost as white as snow.

The counter is cleared to make way for the dough, the molds and plenty of flour for rolling.

The dough is rolled out to just the right thickness.

Springerle molds are brushed with flour before being pressed onto the dough.

The molds are pressed onto the dough, creating delicate designs.

Making springerle is a group effort.

It takes almost surgical precision to cut out each imprint.

Unbaked springerles are left out to dry overnight. Baking comes the next day.

The same dough can be used to make German pfeffernusse by adding chopped nuts, chopped dried fruitcake mixture and heavenly spices.

I discovered the Oja kitchen is never quiet. No sooner was the springerle dough off the work counter, the molds and rolling pins swept away, and out came some cracker dough.

A successful day of making springerle. I came home with two trays filled with beautifully embossed cookies. I left them out on the kitchen table overnight. In the morning, I was greeted with the wonderful fragrance of anise. I’ve left a few of my baked springerles out on the kitchen counter just to keep the house smelling like a German Christmas.

Beth’s Springerles by way of the Blaufuss family in Burlington, Iowa

  • 6 cups sugar
  • 12 egg yolks
  • 3/4 pound (3 sticks) butter

Cream sugar, yolks and butter until smooth.

  • 12 egg whites

In another large bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. Add to egg yolk mixture and beat at medium speed for 20 minutes.

Add:

Beat at medium speed for 10 minutes.

Add:

  • 5 pounds bleached all-purpose flour

Mix well.

Roll out pieces of dough to 1/8-inch thickness on a floured surface. Press with springerle molds. Cut out each cookie. Dry springerle, uncovered, overnight.

Bake on parchment-lined baking sheet in 350-degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Cooled springerle freeze well.


It’s the cranberries, ya know, that make this Norwegian-Style Lefse Wrap not too bad

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A few days after Thanksgiving, when we were still enjoying hefty sandwiches made of turkey leftover from our feast, my husband shoved what looked like a turkey wrap under my nose and said, “Taste this.”

I was about to take a bite when he continued, ” I wrapped up some turkey and that cranberry cream cheese stuff you made in a piece of lefse.”

My mouth immediately shut tight. “Oh, that’s okay. I really don’t care for a taste.”

I prefer lefse warm, rolled up with butter and sugar.

He insisted his creation was fantastic. I gave in and took a bite. He was right. I liked it enough to take a second bite.

If you are not of Scandinavian descent and don’t have any friends who are, you may not know about lefse. With Hungarian and German blood running through my veins, I didn’t know what it was, either, until I started hanging out with the guy who became my husband. His mother made lefse. And now he bakes the soft, thin rounds on a hot griddle. They resemble a flour tortilla. See some photos of made-in-Minnesota Lena’s Lefse.

Lefse is made of potatoes, so why wouldn’t it be great rolled up around some turkey?

But it was the cranberry cream cheese spread that made the wrap, well…not too bad. Everyone knows what cranberries are.

I had made the mixture to serve with crackers as a snack to keep us satisfied on Thanksgiving Day until the turkey was ready to eat. Never imagined it would ever get spread on lefse, of all things.

To make the cranberry cream cheese, I cooked a bag of whole, fresh ruby red cranberries with a few cinnamon sticks added to the pot. As soon as the cranberries were soft, I strained off the syrup. The remaining cranberry solids in the strainer got blended together with some ginger and hot pepper sauce. Once the cranberry mixture had cooled, I blended it together with a chunk of cream cheese. It’s great spread on crackers.

And, it’s darn good smeared on a wrap (made of lefse or a tortilla), smoothed over slices of bread for a sandwich or slathered onto a toasted bagel.

Norwegian-Style Lefse Wrap

Prepare 1 (12-ounce) bag of cranberries according to directions on package. Add a few cinnamon sticks to the pot.

When the cranberries are soft, remove pot from heat and immediately pour the mixture into a fine-mesh strainer placed over a glass bowl. Save the strained syrup for another use or discard. Transfer the cranberry solids to a mixing bowl.

Add:

  • 1/2 to 1 teaspoon grated fresh gingerroot
  • 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
  • a bit of prepared horseradish is optional, for an extra kick of flavor

Blend well and allow to cool.

Mix cooled cranberry mixture with 1 (8-ounce) package of cream cheese that has come to room temperature.

Store, tightly covered, in the refrigerator.

For each wrap:

Spread a piece of lefse (or tortilla) with cranberry-cream cheese mixture.

Lay rinsed leaf lettuce over the cranberry cream cheese. Arrange thinly sliced roast turkey or deli-style turkey over the lettuce. Add cheese if you like. Carefully roll up.

Sparkling and Spicy-Sweet Persimmon Cookies

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It seems a bit absurd, I know, but until this week, I had never tasted a persimmon. I’ve been curious about them, though. Especially when I discovered my friend, Pat, who grew up in California with a persimmon tree in her yard, orders them by the case each year through the local food co-op.

Persimmons started simmering up in my mind a few weeks ago when I was in the Twin Cities. After reading a recent review at Heavy Table about some interesting food being served for lunch at Hmong Village in St. Paul, I was determined to get over there to explore on my own.

The large building was filled with vendors selling fresh produce, individual nooks offering a variety of this and that, and several vendors offering freshly made, ready to eat Hmong, Thai, Asian and Vietnamese food.

It was in the fresh produce area that I was tempted to grab a bag of ripe persimmons. They were the Fuyu variety — the kind that are shaped like a tomato, but with a burnt orange-colored skin. They can be peeled, sliced and eaten. I decided against purchasing one of those bags that held at least 8 persimmons. I had no idea what I’d do with all of them. But when I got home, I picked up a few Fuyu persimmons at the store.

I had planned to just eat them or maybe add a few slices to my morning smoothie. After leaving the fruit out on my kitchen counter for a few days, the persimmons got nice and soft. I did eat one. Soft and so ripe, it was filled with juice. And then, quite by accident, I came across a recipe for Persimmon Cookies in an old cookbook my mom bought for me in 1989. The recipes in the book were compiled by Home Economics teachers in California.

The recipe for Persimmon Cookies was submitted by Sandra Robertson at Whittier High School in Whittier, California. She commented that her mom made these cookies every year during the holiday season.

I decided to give them a try. It wasn’t until I started measuring out the ingredients that I noticed there were no eggs listed. Seemed strange to me, but I decided I could trust a home ec teacher. Then I realized there were no instructions for oven temperature or baking time. Maybe I shouldn’t trust a home ec teacher.

I made a few simple changes to the recipe. Rather than using the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg that were listed in the recipe, I used some Cake Spice that had just arrived this week in a box of herbs and spices that I ordered with a gift card from the The Spice House. Baking Spice blend or even a blend of Pumpkin Pie spices would work well, too.

The cookies are soft and sweetly spicy. I added chopped dates and broken toasted pecans, but dried cranberries or raisins would be good, too. Before baking the cookies, I used a rubber band to attach a damp cloth to the bottom of a glass. It makes a great non-stick cookie press/stamper when the damp cloth-covered bottom of the glass is dipped into sugar first.

If you can get your hands on persimmons, give these sparkling, egg-less cookies a try. They’re delicious with a cup of tea or hot cocoa.

If you can get your hands on several persimmons, make the cookies and make some persimmon margaritas. Just days after I turned my back on those bags of plump persimmons at Hmong Village, I saw this margarita recipe over at City Pages. Oh, I should have come home from my trip to the Cities with one of those bags of persimmons.

Persimmon Cookies

  • 1 cup peeled and chopped Fuyu persimmons
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup shortening
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons Cake Spice, Baking Spice or Pumpkin Pie spice blend
  • 3/4 cup chopped dates
  • 3/4 cup broken toasted pecans
  • Sugar for stamping cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease lightly. Use a fork to mash the chopped persimmons, achieving a pulpy consistency. Stir baking soda into the persimmons and set aside.

Blend sugar and shortening. Sift dry ingredients together and add to sugar mixture. Beat on low speed to mix. Blend in persimmon mixture. Stir in dates and nuts. Drop by teaspoonful on prepared cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.

Cover the bottom of a glass with a small damp cloth and fasten with a rubber band. Dip the damp towel in sugar and use it to press down each cookie. Dip glass in sugar before stamping each cookie.

Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until bottom of cookies are golden brown. Cool cookies on wire rack. Makes 3 1/2 to 4 dozen cookies.

Store in airtight container or tin. These cookies can be frozen.

Tip from the cook

A thin-skin peeler, the kind with serrated blades, is a good tool for peeling persimmons.