Ginger crinkles

I make these soft ginger cookies every year for Christmas. It's a fairly standard recipe, but I got my version from a restaurant (and later a cookbook the owners published) that I frequented during college.

The Soup Bowl had a limited menu -- a choice of two soups, two breads and two desserts -- but the options changed daily, so it wasn't as limited as it sounds, and it meant that everything on the menu was fresh that day, and everything was the best thing they did, no options that fell in the category of, "oh, well, we might as well offer it, since someone, sometime might want it."

This recipe comes out well, no matter what, but for truly stunning results, use top-quality spices, like Penzey's (or the spice specialist of your choice). I haven't received anything in return for mentioning them; I just love their products. The year I switched from standard grocery-store ginger to Penzey's ginger, the flavor was so much better, I couldn't believe it was the same recipe.

You can make these up ahead of time, all the way to rolling them into balls and squashing them in the sugar, and then freeze them to cook later. Place the balls of dough on a cookie tray in the freezer, wait until they freeze solid, and then dump them into a freezer bag. You don't have to thaw them before cooking, just add a minute or two to the cooking time. You can also make a "mix" ahead of time, of all the dry ingredients (not sugar). I make several batches of the mix to have on hand, or to share with friends, since a lot of the prep time is just finding the spaces and measuring them. I line up four custard cups (to make 4 batches), and measure the spices and baking soda into them, assembly-line style. Measure the flour into a gallon-sized zipper bag, toss in the spices and then mix it all together. Stores in the pantry for a year or so.

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine:
4 1/2 cups flour
4 t. baking soda
4 t. ginger
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
1/4 t. salt

Cream:
1 1/2 cups shortening
1 pound brown sugar (I use dark brown)

Blend in and mix well:
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs

Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well. The dough will be quite stiff.

Dump onto a large cutting board covered with plastic wrap. Roll out to about half an inch thick. Cut into 1" squares. (I find this easier than using a spoon to apportion the dough, but that works too.) Roll the dough into 1" balls.

Pour some white sugar into a custard cup or similar small bowl. Drop the rolled dough balls into the sugar and squash them slightly, so that they're pressed into the sugar. This gives them a nice surface texture. Place on a cookie tray, sugared side up, and bake for about 8 minutes. They're cooked when the tops get crinkly. If you leave them longer, they'll get crispy; too long and they'll burn.

I use a silicone sheet in the cookie tray and find that the cookies take an extra minute or so to cook, but they're less likely to burn. Plus, the silicone sheet is easy to clean, when the sugar falls off the cookie and then caramelizes on the cookie sheet.

Stuffed cabbage, unstuffed

I like stuffed cabbage, but never make it, because I don't like all the fussy work of rolling things up in the cabbage leaves. And then I ran across a recipe for rice and cabbage casserole, which was essentially unstuffed stuffed cabbage, layered in a casserole.

And then, after a mild fall, cold weather arrived, and I was craving hot and hearty meals, so I was inspired to make my own version of the casserole with what I had on hand:

1/2 head cabbage (or more, to taste; I only had a half head in the fridge)
1 cup rice
2 cups water
1/4 lb ground beef
diced peppers (lots!) and onions
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 cups tomato sauce
Optional: 2 leaves of swiss chard, chopped into small bits
olive oil
romano or parmesan cheese, grated

At lunch-time, chop the cabbage and toss it into a slow cooker with water, to cook on high until the cabbage is soft.

About an hour before dinner, make the rice with the 2 cups of water. (I'm strictly low-salt, but a beef bouillon cube could be added to the water for salt and a wee bit of flavoring.)

While the rice is cooking, saute the ground beef, peppers and onions. When they're almost done, toss in the garlic. Add the tomato sauce, and cook until the sauce is heated through. Then toss in the swiss chard and the rice and turn off the heat. You can skip the swiss chard; it's not really traditional for stuffed cabbage, but I tend not to get enough green vegetables (except peppers), and I had a bunch of swiss chard still growing in the garden, so I included it.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. To assemble the casserole, start by drizzling some olive oil in the bottom of a two-quart casserole. Spread half of the cabbage in the casserole, top with half of the tomato/beef/rice mixture. Repeat with a second layer of cabbage, and then the tomato/beef/rice mixture. If the tomato sauce is particularly thick, you may want to add a bit of water to the finished casserole, just enough to cover the bottom of the dish to keep everything moist.

Sprinkle cheese on top of the casserole and bake for 30 minutes (or a little longer, if any of the ingredients weren't already hot) to melt the cheese and make sure the casserole is heated all the way through.

Serves 4.

This could be made vegetarian by skipping the beef and possibly adding mushrooms. The recipe that inspired me didn't have any meat in it. Or mushrooms, actually, but I think they'd make the casserole feel heartier than it would be without them.

Green tomato jam

I had a lot of green tomatoes this year, thanks to early blight. The plants had died, and the tomatoes would have rotted if I'd tried to let them ripen, so I chopped them up before the blight affected them. I like to make green tomato mincemeat from my great-grandmother's recipe, and I made a large batch, but I still had 4 pounds of green tomatoes left, and I really didn't need any more mincemeat, since I had plenty for a couple pies for each of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I went looking for alternative uses for the tomatoes and came up with green tomato jam. It's sort of like ginger-flavored honey with bits in. (I love the British "with bits in" phrasing, and it seems appropriate, because the jam has a passing likeness with marmalade, a Brit favorite, which has citrus bits in.)

Here's what I did, modified by what I wish I'd done (namely, use a food mill, which I don't have, to remove the seeds and get a smoother texture for everything except the lemon peel):

2 lb green tomatoes, chopped (and de-seeded if you don't have a food mill) and frozen, then thawed and thoroughly drained overnight to remove excess liquid. Toss the liquid (or use it to water the garden).
2 cups sugar (might start with half of this, to see if it's enough, and only add more toward the end, if necessary)
1 cup cider (to replace the tossed liquid and add some pectin)
1 stick cinnamon, broken in half
1" piece of ginger root, peeled and diced into tiny bits

Toss all of these things into non-reactive pan and bring to a boil for a few (maybe three to five) minutes, just to heat everything. Cover and let sit for several hours (or overnight) to absorb the ginger flavor.

This is what I didn't do, but wish I had: run through a food mill to remove seeds and skins. Alternatively, if you removed the seeds before freezing the tomatoes, then you could whirl the partially cooked stuff in a food processor until reasonably smooth. There would still be some skin bits, but that's okay.

Return to pan.
Take 1 lemon, and peel the zest (just the yellow part, not the white part). Cut the zest into itty-bitty pieces. 
Add the lemon zest and the juice of the lemon to the tomato mixture. (You could do this before the first cooking, but I like the texture of the little lemon bits, sort of like marmalade, so I prefer to keep them intact, not pureed.)

Bring it to a boil and just keep boiling it until it reduces by at least a third, possibly more. It never really gelled like jelly, but reached the texture of warm honey, and when it cooled it was a little more solid, like cold honey or cold molasses. Process or keep refrigerated.

It's EXTREMELY sweet. Really, a lot like honey. The sugar could be cut back. I cut it down from the original recipe, but I added cider, which is also pretty much pure sugar, so I should perhaps have cut back even more on the refined sugar. 

The places where I found the recipes to get me started all suggested using it with cream cheese on crackers. I do think it would be best with something savory to balance out the sweetness. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to use mine, because I'm not much of a cracker eater.