Retro favorites, two sweet, one savory

Orange-pecan coconut candy Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Maybe it's because I love "Mad Men," or maybe it's the other way around, but the early 60s seem to have a hold on me. I can do without the floofy hair and the waist-whittling foundation garments, but everything else - pointy-toed heels, handbags and gloves; the Betty Crocker kitchen and the Corningware casseroles, I love. Maybe it's because my parents were married in 1962 and our house was filled with the everyday items of that era. Nevertheless, I'm in a retro frame of mind and a few of my childhood favorites, (no doubt gleaned from my mother's copy of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, or from a handwritten recipe card from a friend) usually grace my Christmas goodie plates.

Here are a few of my favorites, beginning with the classic no-bake treat, orange-pecan-coconut candy. If you can melt butter, you can make these treats. Another favorite, this time a stovetop treat, crispy date candy, made with Rice Krispies. The only downside to this recipe is that it makes so few, you'll find yourself hiding the box in the back of the refrigerator and sneaking little nibbles during the day, and possibly night.

Crispy date candy. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Every 60s hostess will recognize this recipe for cheese wafers, although this is the plain version. It's usually gussied up with pecans or cayenne pepper. My kids love these plain - in fact, they're quite lovely with a bowl of soup. If you're a smart cook, you'll make an extra loaf of the dough, wrap it well and place it in the freezer for those times when supper's running late and you need to feed someone something good fast.

Cheese wafers. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Cheese Wafers

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 375. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse just until mixture comes together to form a dough. Remove work bowl from processor and, using whatever little hands are available (my three year old loves this part), form walnut-sized balls and place them on a lightly greased baking sheet (the slick wrapper from the butter works especially well for this purpose). Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, or until set, but not really brown. Remove from oven and let cool. Don't let them cool too long on the baking sheet or they may stick. When cool, place in a paper-towel-lined airtight container.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.





Just one more cookie before we diet

100 Cookies. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Christmas has come and gone, and while I made a handful of chocolates and cookies to give away as gifts to teachers and neighbors, the inevitable time crunch meant that the 100 Cookies had to wait until the week after Christmas. The 100 Cookies are sandy and buttery, with crunch from Rice Krispies and oatmeal and Heath Bar toffee bits. The coconut makes them reminiscent of a Ranger cookie, another oldie-but-goodie. If you're coconut-averse, give them a try - the coconut kind of melts into the cookie - there are no discernible shreds.

I’m not sure why they’re called “100 Cookies,” my guess is that because the recipe yield is close to 100, which puts it on my holiday must-bake list. Assemble the ingredients once, dirty up the kitchen once, and you have lots of cookies to package up and distribute to friends, family and co-workers. This cookie keeps well and would be a nice addition to a lunchbox.

100 cookies

3 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

¾ teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1 cup canola oil

1 cup Rice Krispies cereal

1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 oz. Heath Bar toffee bits

1. Preheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt. Set aside.

2. Cut butter into tablespoon-size chunks. In a large mixing bowl, combine sugars, butter and oil. Blend well, until butter is in small pieces or creamed with sugar. Add Rice Krispies, coconut, oats, egg and vanillla. Gradually add dry ingredients and mix well. Fold in toffee pieces. Dough will be stiff; you may need to use your hands to incorporate the last of the ingredients.

3. Using a cookie scoop or teaspoon, drop by rounded teaspoon onto cookie sheet. Bake for 12 minutes at 350 or until slightly golden around the edges.Let cool on wire rack. Keep at room temperature in an airtight container.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

An old-fashioned favorite: Orange-Pecan-Coconut Candies

Orange pecan coconut balls. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Here's another goody from last week's kitchen marathon. I wrapped these up to give to friends and family and tuck into the teachers' goody bags, too. This is an oldie-but-goody that I remember from my childhood Christmases - vanilla wafers and pecans pulverized in the food processor and combined with orange juice concentrate and butter and confectioner's sugar. The mixture is shaped into balls and rolled in coconut, or crushed pecans. I boosted the citrus flavor with a bit of orange extract from the spice shelf. Did I mention that no baking is required? Call the kids and let them help in the kitchen. Give these treats a try - I'm sure they'll become a family favorite in your house, too.

Orange-Pecan-Coconut Candies

1 (12 oz.) package vanilla wafers

1 cup pecan pieces

1 cup confectioner's sugar (10 X)

1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

1/4 teaspoon orange extract

2 cups flaked coconut

1. In food processor, add vanilla wafers, pecans and sugar to food processor bowl and blitz into fine crumbs. Add room temperature butter and pulse until combined. Add orange juice concentrate and orange extract (if using) and pulse until combined. Scoop mixture into 1-inch balls and roll in coconut. Store in airtight container in refrigerator for up to one week.

For more teacher gifts from the kitchen, see here.

Have bento, will travel

Turkey bento

Once the calendar flips over to November, we seem to be in a Thanksgiving tizzy. I love the holidays, but in recent years have taken a relaxed approach. It helps when the feast is located at a house other than mine. We’re fortunate, my husband and I, that our families are nearby and it’s just a matter of driving a few miles and showing up with food. This year, we’ll roast the turkey to burnished perfection, wrap up the bird, place it in the cooler and drive 15 minutes to my mom’s house.

As much as I love being close to home during the holidays, there are times when I think it would be grand to stick my toes in the sand the last Thursday in November. To sip a frosty drink, relax with a frivolous magazine and stare at a Pacific blue sky. It must be an accident of birth, surely, that I was born in Tennessee and not in Hawaii, where my heart belongs.

Let’s just pretend, for a few paragraphs, that I’m getting my wish for my upcoming wedding anniversary - a trip to Hawaii. Hawaii, the 50th state, home of pristine beaches, volcanoes and SPAM. That's right, mainlanders, Hawaii is the largest U.S.  market for SPAM. In fact, the savory pork in a tin is referred to as "Hawaiian steak." The Pacific popularity of the canned “SPiced hAM” began during World War II when 100 million pounds of the tinned meat were shipped abroad to feed Allied troops.

SPAM is universal and it’s a product that I grew up with - Pan-Fried SPAMwiches with mayo on white bread being a specialty of my father’s cooking repertoire. (I kind of miss the dangerous-seeming old packaging with the pull tab that zipped off the wall of the can.)

I'm homebound this holiday, but I can dream up some yummy travel snacks inspired by Hawaii's favorite meat and the Japanese tradition of bento - small portable foods, usually made with rice and known as much for their artistry as their taste.

I fried sliced SPAM in my homemade teriyaki sauce, then chopped the meat and used it as a filling in onigiri (rice balls) and also in the Hawaiian portable snack musubi, SPAM slices with rice and nori. There's a lot to learn to making onigiri and musubi, and especially bento. The techniques and recipes are simple, but much too involved to write about here - check out this excellent tutorial  from Just Bento on forming the rice balls.

SPAM musubi is a plank of teriyaki fried meat and a finger of rice bound together with nori. This portable tropical treat is simple to make - nori is difficult to find at my local upermarkets, so I subbed blanched bok choy.

SPAM musubi

Teriyaki Sauce

Fry SPAM slices in this flavorful teriyaki sauce and use in fillings for onigiri 
and also as a dipping sauce.

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1. Combine all ingredients. Keep in glass jar in refrigerator or freezer. Use as marinade for SPAM, chicken or salmon or steak or vegetables. Put on ice cream. (just kidding).

Onigiri with noodles and vegetables.

Dessert is light and simple, a cornstarch-thickened coconut pudding with sliced bananas and grapes. Use the cute small containers and keep refrigerated.

Coconut Pudding with Bananas and Grapes

4 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1 ½ cups water
1 (12 oz.) can coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Bananas and grapes for garnish

1. In a bowl, stir together sugar, cornstarch and water.

2. In a saucepan over medium heat, pour in coconut milk and add sugar - water mixture. Whisk constantly until mixture is thickened. Stir in vanilla and let cool. Spoon into small cups, layering bananas in cups and topping with sliced grapes. Seal individual portions. Keep refrigerated.

All text & images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

The coconut pudding recipe is adapted from "Yum-Yum Bento Box" by Maki Ogawa and Crystal Watanabe (Quirk Books, 2010).

For bento inspiration, check out Just Bento.com.

Granola and a good friend

Granola by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When I was a new mom, I knew one thing for sure: I didn't have the first clue what I was doing. So I did what sensible mommies do: I paid someone to teach me how to play with my baby. I confess here that beginning when my daughter was 5 months old and could barely sit up, I drove 45 minutes from my home to the Gymboree play program, where other new mommies took off their shoes, sat in a circle and clapped and sang and learned how to play all over again. My baby daughter didn’t make friends there, absorbing the colors and sounds and trying to avoid the screaming toddlers was consuming enough, but Gymboree was really all about the moms, and I made a keeper of a friend.

Mary Jo is the girl that everyone wants to be friends with, the leader of the nice pack. I tend to shyness in groups, but Mary Jo is the kind of girl who is everyone’s friend, and she became my first new mommy friend by giving me a compliment that I hold dear to my heart - she said I was a little bit granola. She redeemed this odd comment by saying that she was a little bit granola, too. In fact, she was a full-blown seitan-eating vegetarian. I think she said I was “granola” because my husband and I were building our house at the time (really building our house, as in “my husband comes home every afternoon from his office job, puts on his jeans, work boots, and tool belt, and builds our house.”)

Mary Jo and I spent the next couple of years dragging our babies around Atlanta - the zoo, the museums, the parks. She introduced me to her Merry Band, a lively bunch of mommies from the ‘hood, flip-flop and sunglass-wearing girls who talked about stuff I had no clue about - potty training, SUVs vs. minivans, kindergarten. It was my first taste of the mommy network that I’ve relied on ever since, the women who reach into their well of personal experiences and share.

Granola ingredients by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When our babies grew old enough to start school, we stopped calling each other. This was before long-distance friendship was easy with Facebook. The excuses were many - she lived so far away, about an hour’s drive in dreadful traffic; she had boys (three of them!) and I had girls; her husband played golf and my husband liked to fish. We still exchange Christmas cards, hers with black and white photos of angel-faced boys. But we don’t call each other anymore.

I miss you, Mary Jo, my granola friend. You’re the reason I have a minivan and why I think of you every time I make granola. And if you read this, get on Facebook so I can watch your boys grow up.

Measure granola ingredients directly in batter bowl. By Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Granola

I make this granola every week or two. It comes together very easily in a batter bowl that has marks on the side - no dry measuring cups needed.

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
3 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup roasted sunflower seeds

1. Preheat oven to 325. Measure oil, syrup and honey into a small saucepan and heat to a low boil; remove from heat and let cool.

2. In mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add oil and syrup mixture and stir in to the dry ingredients. Spread granola mixture onto a lined sheet pan. (I use a Silpat, foil or parchment paper would work). Bake at 325 for 25 minutes (I use convection), stirring once halfway through.

3. Remove from oven and let cool. If you like chunky granola, do not stir during the cooling. If you like a crumbly texture, stir several times as it cools. Keeps well in an airtight container at room temperature.

Dried fruit by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This granola mom likes granola with dried fruit, which should be added after the granola is baked, or the fruit will burn in the oven. A favorite breakfast or dessert is a yogurt parfait with vanilla yogurt (or plain, if you must), dried fruit and a generous handful of granola on top. This is even better in the summer when you can use sweet local blueberries instead of the dried fruit.

Granola Parfait by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 
Text and images copyright Lucy Mercer, 2010.