Torta della Nonna

We had a small dinner party last night for one of the Hitachi engineers with whom Mike has been working at the PTC.
Hitachi has officially turned the project over to M.D. Anderson and Mr. Nakagawa is returning home to Japan after spending 4 years in Houston. (His next project may be in Milan, so we made him promise to keep Mike in mind as a consultant :-) My mom had given Mike this cookbook for his birthday last month and I used a couple of recipes from it, as well a few old stand-bys. For dessert I decide to make the Torta della Nonna. The crust contains flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, melted butter and olive oil.



It was supposed to be made in a 10" tart pan, but since I don't have one,
I used a 10" springform instead. The bottom crust is pressed into the pan.



The filling is eggs, sugar, lemon zest & juice, fresh ricotta and pine nuts.



The top crust is rolled out and put on very carefully...


baked for 40 minutes...



released from the pan...



and served on a pretty plate.



It was quite tasty, not too sweet or rich, a good thing after braised lamb shanks,
saffron risotto and caramelized brussels sprouts.

Cookies (the kind you bake)

Today I made gingersnaps from this recipe...not an old family recipe, but very yummy!

GINGER SNAPS

3/4 C. butter
1 C. sugar
1/4 C. molasses
1 egg
2 C. sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 t. salt
2 t. soda
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
1 t. ginger
granulated sugar for rolling

Cream butter; add sugar gradually. Blend in molasses, egg and sifted dry ingredients; chill. Shape into 1 inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place 2 inches apart on greased cooky sheets. Bake at 375º 10 to 12 minutes; cookies become crisp when cool.

Makes about 6 dozen

Or not. Why is it that I never get as many cookies as the recipe says I will? My theory is that these recipes get handed down over the generations and when they originated people ate a lot less and cookies were smaller. Still, even though I use a scoop to portion out the dough and maybe they might be a bit bigger than 1 inch, I made a double recipe and only got about 9 dozen.

Okay, so the dough is not so pretty...
But the cookie scoop works great!
And I'm with Martha...I LOVE Silpat. I don't know if everyone has this problem, but my oven seems to bake unevenly, so halfway through I switch the trays from top to bottom.
And the results were delicious...
Although Purrkins was bored with the lot of it...maybe I should be baking catnip brownies?

Cookies

I'm hosting a cookie exchange tomorrow, so today I baked 12 dozen (is that a gross?) of these cookies. The recipe is from my grandma, the cookie queen, who got it from her Aunt Ida, so it goes waaaaay back. It was published in many of the Milwaukee Gas Company's Festive Foods cookbooks after my grandma worked in their home service department in the very early 50s.

MEXICAN CHRISTMAS COOKIES

375º for about 10 minutes

3 C. flour
1 t. salt
1 t. ginger
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. ground cloves
6 oz. chopped, pitted dates
1 C. chopped pecans
1 C. butter
2 C. sugar
3 eggs
3 T. milk
1 t. baking soda


Mix and sift flour, salt and spices; add dates and pecans and mix well. Cream butter well, add sugar gradually and continue creaming until light and fluffy. Add well-beaten eggs and mix well. Add milk in which soda has been dissolved and mix well. Add flour mixture gradually and mix. Form dough into 3 rolls about 2 inches in diameter, wrap in waxed paper and chill thoroughly. Slice thin and bake on baking sheet in preheated oven. Approximate yield: 6 dozen. Store in covered container.

More pies...and some cranberry sauce

One of the things I miss the most in Houston is cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Now it is much easier for everyone if we go to my brother's. So I have been relegated to making pies and bringing wine. This afternoon I baked two pies, one apple and one pumpkin. My pie crust attempt last weekend was so successful that I did it again.
One thing I have never done is make a pumpkin pie totally from scratch, cooking the pumpkin. This is as close as I get...


We are huge NPR junkies, and after many years of listening to the piece about Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Relish Recipe I started making it a few years ago. Now it's one of our standards.






Try it...you'll like it!