I remember my mom making these when I was a kid, and I remember thinking that they were fucking impossible.  But, replace “fucking” with whatever powerful adjective I had at my six year-old disposal, which was probably just “super”.  I didn’t learn the f-bomb until I was maybe nine or ten?  And I learned if from my friend Marika.  HI MARIKA!  She’ll probably never read this.  But her sister does.  HI ANNE!

What was I saying?  Checkerboard cookies.  Turns out they are the best of the Fancy Pants cookies because the dough itself is very difficult to screw up.  Now that I’ve said that about it, it’ll probably fail for everyone.  The checkerboard part is also very easy, but the more obsessive-compulsive you are, the more precise the cookies are.

This is a Maida Heatter recipe and to be totally blunt, if you like chocolate, you have to own a copy of her Book of Great Chocolate Desserts.  There is no better book of bottom-line, time-tested, classic chocolate recipes.  The only downside is that her recipe descriptions are like reading an IKEA instruction manual minus the drawings.  She will tell you precisely how to separate your dough into two equal parts in a way that is so strikingly inefficient that you’ll re-read the recipe three times trying to understand what she’s saying.  But she will tell how you to hold the spatula while you are doing it, goddamn it.

The checkerboarding itself is good for a rainy afternoon – it’s the kind of bored play-dough activity that is made especially pleasing by having hot cookies to eat when you’re done.  But making perfect 6″x6″ squares cut into perfect 1/2-inch strips is somewhat maddening, bored or not.

Luckily we’re just making cookies and not rockets.

If the checkerboard part is entirely a turn-off, it’s also easy to make spirals (roll thin sheets of each flavor, lay one on top of the other and roll into a cylinder and then slice) or artistic strata (alternate layers of color just with your fingers, mash everything into a long rectangle and then slice).  The truly ambitious could make some pretty cute panda cookies.

And the taste?  Comfortably unchallenging.  There’s not so much cocoa in the chocolate part to make them chocolate-bombs, and the white part is lightly scented with almond extract.  You’re not making these cookies because you want to taste something exotic — don’t get me wrong, they taste great.  I love them, in fact.  It’s difficult to keep from eating all of them once you’ve started.  But the real reason you make them is because they make your six year-old brain go TOTALLY BONKERS.  Dudes, it’s invisible tea party time.  Except you’re a grown up now and you can have a real tea party.  Put that in your bottle and suck it, six year-olds!

Maida Heatter’s Checkerboards
i’ve totally rewritten Heatter’s instructions and added more salt, but otherwise the recipe is unchanged from her book.  i highly recommend the extra salt – I think it’s what makes these slightly more interesting than just spritz or shortbread cookies.  which are good cookies!  but these can handle the very slight complexity that extra salt adds.

8 oz. (2 sticks) of unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
2 3/4 cups flour
2 Tbsp. baking cocoa (not Dutch process)

1 egg, beaten and set aside for gluing the cookie together with

• In a bowl, beat the butter until smooth and very soft.  Add the sugar, and beat for a few minutes until the butter and sugar has lightened a little.  Add the vanilla and almond extract and mix just until incorporated.  Add the flour and salt and mix until the dough forms into a smooth, dense, play-dough like mass.  If you are using a hand-beater, this may never happen because of the little beaters.  If it seems like it’s taking forever, dump the dough onto a clean work surface and knead by hand until play-dough like.

• Split the dough into two equal parts (either weigh them or do your very best eyeball guess) and mix the cocoa into one of the parts.

• Form each of the flavored doughs into perfect 6″x6″ squares.  I can walk you through doing this exactly, but basically: use a ruler, push out the dough on plastic wrap and don’t be afraid to use your fingers to push everything into shape.  To form really crisp edges, use the flat of the ruler to push up against the sides.  Take your time, the dough can handle a lot of abuse.  Put the first one on a plate and put it in the fridge while you do the second one.

• While the second square refrigerates, cut the first square into perfect 1/2-inch strips, again using the ruler.  You will have exactly 12 strips.  Do the second square.

• To make the checkerboard, alternate strips to use a total of twelve (making a 3×4 stack).  Make a second stack with the remaining twelve.  Or make a giant cube out of 24 strips for all I care — do whatever you want.  But!  Be sure to glue each stick to its neighbor by brushing a little eggwash on.   Carefully wrap your stacks up in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing.  The dough stacks can also be frozen in this state so that you can theoretically bust out an awesome tea party on short notice.

• Of course the Mad Hatter version of the above is to not measure anything and make it as screwy as you can.  That works too.

• Slice into 1/2-inch thick slices, which will make exactly 12 cookies.  Or, in my case, you’ll get a mysterious 13th cookie.

• Bake at 350° for 15 – 20 minutes, or until the edges are golden.

And here we have Henry, who has, I believe, entered all the giveaways to date and now finally won himself something for his tireless effort.

And there you have it.  For the rest of you, I’m sorry, but you know: comfort yourself by calling Tipu’s at 888-506-CHAI and request a sample at the very least.

And to the winners: Henry will be getting the slow brew since he requested it and Rita didn’t voice a preference (and the instant is better for a chai n00b anyway).  Huzzah!

Hold your horses about the giveaway, I’ll get to it in a second.  Or just scroll down now, I’m not the boss of you.

Anyway, I used the flawlessly great King Arthur Flour Cinnamon Bread recipe, replacing the cinnamon with instant chai.  Also, during the mixing process I added about a cup of chopped cherries.  Oh, and I replaced 1/2 cup of the white flour with whole wheat.  And I used a pan somewhat larger than what they recommend, hence the lack of the nice big, lofty sandwich loaf shape.

But whatever: it was totally radical.  I ate half of the entire loaf in one day and then was too full to eat dinner, which is as good an endorsement as any. I can only clutch my abdomen in gastronomic woe and wonder what kind of awesome french toast this would have made.

So anyway, you wanna have some of this chai?  The kids at Tipu’s were happy that I liked their product, and unbidden by me sent two 4oz. packs to do with as I pleased.  I debated for a long time about keeping the Slow Brew stuff, but I actually feel too guilty.  I don’t know where this misplaced guilt comes from.  I’d steal candy from a baby, but I wouldn’t keep free chai?  It’s true.

So, for those of you not familiar with the rules of these lands:

1) You may only comment once.  If you comment more than once I will delete all but one of your comments.  It’s not personal, but more than one comment will throw the odds of the random number generator.  AND THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TWO.

2) I don’t care what you say – but!  I do want you to state if you have a preference for either of the chai varieties.  If you both have the same preference (or none) then I will randomly choose who gets what.

3) Contest closes at 8pm PST on Monday night – any comments made after 8pm will not qualify.

4) Anyone may enter, dad.

5) Leave a valid email address in the field that asks for an email address, not in the body of the comment.  If you don’t respond to my follow-up email within 48 hours if winning, I’ll give the chai to someone else.

So that’s all she wrote.  Don’t thank me, thank the internet.  And Tipu’s.  But mostly the internet, without whom we would never have met each other, you and I.

***UPDATE FROM VARADA FROM TIPU’S:

Very clever use of the Instant chai in the bread. To your fans who don’t end up winners, anyone who calls can talk me into sending a little sample of the Instant Black Chai as long as they hold out. We’re making more – as fast as we can! So anyone who wants to try it before they buy it, call me at 888-506-CHAI. LOVE your blog! You SO get our chai!!!

Man, these guys are on the Google alert ball.  Call Varada and get a free sample either way.  And just to be clear: I’m not associated with Tipu’s in any way; my first taste of their chai is from a package I purchased, and I’m getting nothing from them for my adoration.  I just genuinely love their product, and they seem like enthusiastic, friendly people.

*****CONTEST IS CLOSED!*****

Stand by for winners!

I have a strange relationship with salsa.  First of all, it’s rough on the ol’ Crohn’s.  All those vegetable skins, I guess.  Secondly, jarred and “fresh” salsa from the store all contain sodium benzoate, which I can taste because I have some kind of pointless supertasting skill just for sodium benzoate.  If god has a purpose for each of us, then mine is to detect the presence of preserving salts, I guess.  The last thing is that salsa is always so much better in a restaurant than when made at home.  This¹ always intrigues me.

But!  Mike the Viking used to use his powers of pillaging for delivering Mexican food from a restaurant in Olympia that had the best salsa ever, in spite of or perhaps because of the rest of the food sucking balls.  And he told me: they roast it.  Their secret was an even ratio of red bell peppers to tomatoes, and the peppers all get roasted until black and toasty.  The part I can’t bring myself to comply with is that they used canned tomatoes, which is insane, but also makes sense considering that tomatoes don’t really exist in the Pacific Northwest.

My recipe still isn’t exactly right – I think I tend to under-roast the peppers out of fear of over-roasting them, and I suspect the real secret may be in using canned tomatoes (baby jesus forgive me), but it’s getting much closer.  Also: the liquid fill line in your food processor is there for a reason.

Restaurant Salsa, Almost Perfect

3 medium sized tomatoes (or plain canned tomatoes if you’re feeling nutty)
2 red bell peppers
1 hot pepper of choice – I use something super mild like a poblano, pasilla or Anaheim
1 whole yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
1 – 2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
juice from 1/2 a lime
large bunch of cilantro, stems and all

• Line a cookie sheet with foil and broil the shit outta those vegetables, everything but the cilantro.  Because my broiler has hotstpots, I have to monitor the sheet and pull out items as they start to blacken and rearrange the rest to keep them browning.  So much depends on your own broiler, the distance from the broiler, the size of the vegetables, yadda yadda, that I can’t give you any kind of guidelines on how long this will take.  You’ll have to just hover around the kitchen, use your nose to smell for when they start to blacken, and stop them before they actually char.

• Oh!  And don’t peel them!  Leave the char on!  I fought this several times, insisting that they did not in fact leave all that burned skin on, and Mike insisted I was a fool.  He was not wrong.

• Take note that both the onion and the tomato have a higher water content, and may not readily brown – this is okay, we’re just trying to un-raw them.  When all the peppers are done browning, remove the tomatoes and onions and garlic as well, no matter what they look like.

• Throw everything into the food processor all together and pulse quickly until it is the texture you want.  Also consider putting about half aside when it’s chopped rather large and then processing the rest until practially smooth , mixing the two parts together when you’re done – this will make a nice thick salsa, but with some large texture still in it.

• If you dawdle taking photos, the whole thing will puke liquid all over.  Just so you know.

¹ Want to know why mashed potatoes from restaurants always taste so good?  Butter.  And cream.  And salt.  In levels that you would never knowingly put in your body.  EVIL CACKLE!

Of course it’s more complicated than that.  I have some serious opinions about quiche that go a little something like this: IT IS NOT AN OMELET IN A PIE SHELL.  I hate firm, eggy quiche, it makes me gag and yes I am being a drama queen.  Quiche should be a savory custard pie.  Not frittata.

Mike the Viking has been bothering me for years about showing him how to make the quiche, but I wouldn’t because when he can make it himself, he doesn’t need to keep me around any more.  I finally gave up and showed him, so I guess I should pack a satchel and steal away in the dead of night.  Wait, that’s ninjas.

For science, we used a Trader Joe’s frozen pie crust and guess what?  It was pretty okay!  I don’t think it’s an all-time replacement for homemade, but since this was an experiment in Mike’s autonomy, I wanted to see if he could just pick up a frozen crust for when he wants to woo my replacement with his quiche-making skills.  The problem was that the crust is too small, the morons.  It’ll fit maybe one of those little disposable aluminum pie tins, but not my standard glass Pyrex pan, hence the manual pushing around of the dough to get it to fit.

There is 100% no reason to use fresh spinach, because you’d just have to cook it down anyway.  I’d never eat frozen spinach in anything else (well, I would in spinach dip), but it needs to be squeezed dry before you can use it.  This is messy and leaves your sink looking like someone murdered the lawn in it.

This happened again.  I read somewhere that dogs need consistency in the home, so, you know.

Everything gets layered in.  I kept pointing out to him that the true craftsmanship of the quiche came from making sure the fillings went all the way out to the edges, but I’m not sure how much of that part he absorbed.

Oh for christ’s sake.

Well, he’s got one fan anyway.

The other issue the Viking is undoubtedly going to screw up when he’s alone is the patience aspect.  You can’t just dump the cream and eggs in, you have to coax it in.  Like with a lady.

Lumps get gently patted down.  Also like with a lady.

I live in terror of him using the oven when I’m gone.  I mean, “on” he gets.  “Off” is the sticky wicket.

When it’s done it turns golden and puffs up, but when you let it sit for 10 minutes it deflates to normal size and firms up a little more.  The interior is soft like pudding and might fight you just a little getting it out of the pan, but I don’t imagine I have to convince you this is a bad thing.  It’s a whipping cream and cheese pie.

Anger Burger Family Quiche
the primary piece of advice I have for quiche is to use either heavy cream or half-and-half (adding one extra egg to the latter).  don’t use whole milk.  do not.  the second piece of advice is to – with the exception of spinach, which should be from frozen – cook any filling before assembly.  say for example we make the other household favorite, the “breakfast quiche”: this consists of two or three small red potatoes, half an onion, half each of a red and green bell pepper (all diced small) and a quarter pound of breakfast sausage (or Gimme Lean), and everything gets fried up in a saute pan until brown and delicious as though you were going to eat it just like that.  THEN it gets put into a quiche with cheddar cheese.  or another example: broccoli and ricotta.  the broccoli is either steamed or sauteed until almost tender, allowed to cool just enough to squeeze some water out of it with your hands, and then added to a quiche with big globs of fresh ricotta and some part-skim mozzarella.  see a pattern here?  nothing goes in raw.  if you put in anything raw, it’ll weep water during cooking and make your quiche runny.  fair warning.

1 bottom pie crust, uncooked
2 eggs
1 pint whipping cream (heavy or regular, both are fine)
12 oz. of gruyere and/or standard swiss cheese, even the cheap stuff works great, grated
1 bag or two small boxes of frozen, chopped spinach, thawed and squozed
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
fresh pepper to taste

• Prepare the crust first by forming it into the pan and putting the whole thing in the fridge to stand by.  Set oven to 350°.

• Drain thawed chopped spinach by taking handfuls of it over the sink and squeezing it mostly dry.  Don’t get obsessive about it, just drain it the best you can.  There’s a lot of waste doing this, lots of small pieces will escape each time, but them’s the breaks.

• In a measuring cup that holds 2 cups or more, beat the two eggs, then mix in the pint of whipping cream.  Mix thoroughly.

• In the pie shell (uncooked still) layer as follows: half the cheese, then the spinach (crumbled up nicely to discourage big solid wads), salt, garlic powder, then the other half of the cheese.  SLOWLY pour the cream and eggs over the top, allowing it time to trickle down into the cheese and stuff.  If you pour too fast it’ll just flow right over the top and off the sides of the quiche.  Using a fork, lightly pat down the cheese and everything, taking care to remove pieces of cheese from the crust edge.  Top with lots of fresh pepper.

• Bake for 45 minutes, or until puffed and golden and the quiche seems pretty solid if you give it a little shimmy.

• Allow to sit 10 – 15 minutes before attempting to cut.  Or it’ll be a little runny, that’s all, if that doesn’t bother you than dive in.

• Quiche leftovers are better than fresh.  Reheat slices in the oven at 300° for 20 minutes, uncovered.

So there I am, making this pie, when I remember that Anger Burger reader Jason sent me a packet of guava paste.  Which is well and good, lord knows I love a fruit paste, but I was having trouble deciding what to do with the stuff.  It’s very dense and heavy, and while I wanted to make a guava cake, I knew I would have to cook it down with some water or guava juice to make it work in cake.  And you know, that’s a lot of work for someone who recently bought nicer jim-jam bottoms so that she felt less embarrassed about going out to check her mail in them.  However, I am standing there, staring at the usual pile of pie dough scraps, when a little fruitfly whispers in my ear: pasta de guayaba!  And I’m all, I don’t speak fruitfly!  You’re in America now!  Learn the language!  Freeloader.

First, a taste.  Primary reaction: SUGAR!  Holy christ, that’s sweet.  But then: GUAVA!  Lovely, floral, tropical guava.  It even has the slight grit of a guava – like a pear.  Somewhat disheartened, I wonder how I can make something so sweet palatable.

Hmm, I wonder, while staring at some fresh peaches.  Hmm.  What will I do.  Hmm.  Go buy some lemons?  What would I do with them then?  Hmm.  Man, there’s a lot of fruitflies around those peaches.

I know what you’re thinking: for a lady, she’s a sharp one.

There was enough dough left over for four hand-pies, which included 1 1/2 good-sized slices of guava paste and three slices of peach each.  Unsure of what else to do to them, I left them plain.  Just peach and guava paste, no spices, nothing.  The paste was plenty sugary to sweeten the slightly underripe peach, and I was getting too hot to give a shit otherwise.  I hit them with some egg wash and granulated sugar to form a crust and into the oven they went.

So basically, here’s the deal: this was maybe the best fucking pastry I have made in my entire goddamn life.  The guava paste softened in the heat and peach juices, and the peaches themselves were perfectly cooked.  For whatever reason, instead of suffering under the indignity of a re-roll, my pie dough turned out perfectly flaky and crisp.  The proportions, the flavors, everything about it was incredible.  As I ate I was overwhelmed with a blind fury, incensed that I hadn’t made a dozen of these things instead of wasting my time with that stupid raspberry pie.  Crumbs sprayed from me in a cloud.  I gulped for air around giant, still-warm mouthfuls of pie.

Jason, we may have to arrange for more of this guava paste to belong to me.

It’s like this: what would make a waffle better?  They’re already at the upper end of the awesomeness scale, but there’s room for improvement.  Perhaps if they were made from a denser yeasted dough rather than a batter, and were then just rolled in balls of pearl sugar so that when they were in the iron they turned chewy and caramelized.  At this point I’d say yes sir, you have achieved over-awesomenating.  Huzzah.

A restaurant in my neighborhood recently opened that serves Liege waffles, called Shaky Alibi.  I have to get this out of the way now so I can focus on the waffles but: for such a cheeky name, the place was naptime serious.   I wasn’t feeling it.  But also: who cares?  Waffles.  In the above photo you can see where the unmelted chunks of sugar remain, and I assure you this is a lovely thing: they are crunchy and sweet, and most of them have caramelized.  The texture of the waffle itself is fascinating, somewhere between a good, soft British scone and an American sticky bun.  The exterior is crispy and breadlike, but the interior has heft and grain.  In fact, the whole thing has heft.  It’s like a good-sized puppy.

Mike the Viking did actually take some good photos of me, but this is the one I identify with.

Now, the interesting thing is that they’ll make you a savory sandwich from these waffles.  So, the same sugared waffle, but sliced open and filled with turkey or ham (we chose ham) and a variety of cheeses (we chose swiss).  The Viking was reluctant to declare like-at-first-bite, but as a card carrying Monte Cristo addict, I was preemptively on board.  If I’d had some blackberry jam on the side I’d be dipping that fucker.  <– I can say that about a lot of things, now that I think about it.

Eventually he said he’d like it if it were saltier, to balance the sugar, which I can’t argue against.  I mean, saltier, sure.

But still we are not to where the problem lies.  FIFTEEN DOLLARS FOR THAT.  Well, $9 for the sandwich, and $6 for the plain waffle.  It’s a shame, too, because they are delicious.  But … I don’t know.  We kept discussing it like I imagine kind-hearted people discuss whether or not to stop eating meat.  Which is to say, with feeling.   On one hand, we kept rationalizing that we were eating an artisan product made fresh.  It’s no supermarket croissant we’re talking about here, we’re talking about a hot-from-the-iron yeasted pastry.  On the other hand, FIFTEEN DOLLARS.  No.  It’s like, I just paid $6 for what amounts to a really, really awesome donut.  Well, okay.  Wait, is that okay?  I don’t know!  If it were $4 I’ d be all over that shit.  I’d be back there right this second.

But $6?  I don’t know!  I still can’t decide.  Rather, I can say for certain: the sandwich is out.  The waffle itself is the star, and the ham and cheese present themselves as merely a $3 distraction.

Now, if it had a big piece of breakfast sausage and an egg in the middle…

¹ 100% true story. Ask me about it in person; for all I know they’re still standing by with their coterie of lawyers, seething.

Part of being angry involves moping around the house during the daytime when I can see how filthy it is, which makes me pretty irate.  Why don’t we have a fucking maid?  Since when do I have principles?

Part of what is really pissing me off lately is this:

Do you have this?  I didn’t used to be like this.  I am disgusted by counter clutter, it drives me nuts (arr, it’s drivin’ me nuts!).  It makes me so angry I didn’t feel like doing a decent job in Photoshop so now the letters are all nuclear retina-searing red.  RAGE!

Anyway, without a pantry I can’t put foods away easily; every food item is carefully stacked and piled into two cabinets.  Moreover, Mike the Nordic Berserker does not like it when he can’t find his snacks because he gets low blood sugar cannot hear Odin’s call.  You laugh (I hope) but it’s no joke, he really will go a whole day without eating and then suddenly have a skull-splitting headache and talk backwards and start getting his flaming crossbolts ready¹.  It started with just the bowl of Lara Bars, but in the last year it has come to be the entire prep table.  So then today I spent a lot of energy trying to wrangle the technical details of making a whole “snack cabinet” but then I blacked out and woke up with frozen yogurt and delivery vegetable korma all over my face.

Is there such thing as an antacid patch?

¹ During one of the last posts Mike said to me “I like how I’ve become the villain of your blog,” which might have been said sarcastically by a normal person, but since Vikings aren’t capable of complex emotional undertones, I’m going to take it at face value.

She looked for that piece for a long time, much to our somebody-call-the-ASPCA entertainment.

And patiently waited for another one.

Until her head started to implode from need.

(For the record, the cheese stayed there until it became translucent.)

I should tell you: this was the day after my birthday dinner, which meant that I was still grossly full on meat fat.  But the truck hasn’t been near my house in a long time, and I feared I’d miss out on this quest entirely if I didn’t act.

I got a half-order each of the “All-American” (aka, the cheeseburger sushi) and a vegetable roll, partly because my arteries were begging me to stop, and partly to see if the Yatta-! boys could actually make sushi.

Short version: they can!  And the cheeseburger sushi was pretty delicious, all things considered.  The thing is, it doesn’t taste like sushi at all, but like a cheeseburger-flavored tater tot.  I’m not sure what made it such a strong tater tot flavor (maybe even just the ketchup), but there was nothing offensive about it. Crispy, fried, with a snap of pickle in the middle and the faintest whiff of cheese, I fear the presence of something like this next time I’m drunk.

The vegetable sushi was lovely, the rice was slightly warm and sticky but with good individual rice grain definition, not too tightly packed and small enough to pop the whole thing in your mouth.  I was sad I hadn’t gotten a full order.  Which, you know, is a very sad sentence to type.