Greek Kourabiedes, or, Brandy Butter Cookies

It's time I came clean about something. I have a raging sweet tooth. I love sweets. I know it's not cool to admit, and I'm still at the age where I should be all “green juice! Kale! Juice cleanse! Acai! Quinoa!” but let's be real: I've never been that cool and I really like desserts. In a pinch, I've been known to eat cake for breakfast if I'm really hungry (read: if it's in the house) and I'm tired of being embarrassed because I think frosting should be a main food group.

Working my way through Eleanor's box of recipes, it's clear I come by this passion legitimately. Half of her recipes are for sweets, and I'm going to try them ALL. Today's cookies are labelled “Greek” “Kourabiedes” on the recipe card (quotation marks in the original). I thought the superfluous punctuation marks were just because Patty, a friend who apparently wrote down the recipe for Eleanor, didn't understand basic grammar, but then I looked up Kourabiedes and found that their trademark is that they are always made with nut flour. As these have no nuts, I guess they really are ersatz “Kourabiedes” instead of authentic ones after all.

THE VERDICT:

5 Spoons out of five. These are delicious, easy, and fast (though a bit messy) and we highly recommend them. I sent most of the batch to work with my husband and they were gone in 20 minutes. Bake yourself some!

The Recipe:

Brandy Butter Cookies

THE INGREDIENTS:

8 oz unsalted butter
1 1/2 tbsp confectioners sugar, plus significantly more for dusting/rolling (icing sugar if you are in the UK)
1 egg yolk
2 ½ cups sifted flour, approximately
1 jigger brandy (approximately a shot)

the directions:

Clarify the butter: bring it just to a boil, then skim off the white bits that float to the top, pour the remainder through a cheesecloth-lined fine mesh sieve and let the clarified butter cool and re-solidify.
Preheat oven to 350F/177C.
Cream the clarified butter until light and fluffy.
Beat in sugar, then yolk, then brandy mixing well after each addition.
Gradually work in sifted flour to make a soft dough that pulls away from the beaters-- note that you may not need all the flour (I only used a scant two cups and my cookies had a crumbly, shortbread-like texture. Basically you want the dough moldable but not sticky.).
Shape dough into u-shapes or crescents, one spoonful at a time by rolling them into a cylinder between your palms and then wrapping the cylinder gently around your thumb. Work quickly to avoid the dough getting too soft.*
Bake 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet for 20 minutes until just barely browned at the edges.
While cookies are baking, sift additional confectioners sugar onto wax or parchment paper.
As soon as cookies are removed from the oven, place them onto sifted powdered sugar while still hot. Sift additional powdered sugar over cookies and let cool.

*Crescents are nonsense and if you're in a hurry and you aren't taking these to a Greek wedding, you could just bake them as balls, since I'm sure they'd taste exactly the same. The powdered sugar does cling nicely to the curves of the crescents, though, so if you have the time it's worth the extra effort.

Makes approximately 30 cookies, depending on size and shape.

Pollo alla Verona, or, Wine-roasted Chicken

Eleanor was born in 1920, so she would have been a teenager during the height of the Great Depression. Although I have no idea what life was like for her during that time, I know she came from a HUGE Catholic family of sisters, and I can imagine they, like everyone else during that era, didn't do too well. So when I realised nearly every non-dessert recipe in The Box is heavily meat-centric, I wasn't too surprised. If you've gone through a period in your life where eating meat was not an affordable option, it makes sense that you'd later cook it for every possible meal.

I've never cooked a lot of meat, primarily due to an ill-fated attempt at vegetarianism that lasted through most of high school and most of university, and at which I'm sure Eleanor would have scoffed mightily. I guess I just missed my imprinting period when it comes to learning to cook meat, which means that, since I do nearly all of our meal-planning and grocery shopping, Judson and I don't eat a lot of meat.

THAT'S all about to change, much to Judson's delight. Pollo alla Verona was the first savoury recipe I've attempted from The Box (trying to ease my way in with a straightforward one before tackling things like “salmon loaf” and “pronto pups” later on). It calls for three 1.5 pound chickens, split. Let's take that sentence apart-- first of all, what even does it mean to “split” a chicken? I summoned Judson to handle this part, under the pretense of “I don't think my hands are strong enough to, you know, CUT THROUGH A BONE.” (Eleanor, give me a break on this one, please). So Judson came to my rescue and chopped the bird in half through its sternum, nearly breaking our knife along with it.

Secondly, THREE chickens to feed SIX people? I guess chickens were just a lot smaller back in the 1950s, because the recipe calls for 4.5 pounds (about 2kg) of chicken in total, and I bought the smallest bird I could find and it was that big on its own.

I'm not sure what makes this chicken “Veronese,” except that it has a tiny pinch of oregano in it, but it got a resounding thumbs up from us both. We ate it with a small green salad and some sautéed spinach, but it's hearty and filling on its own. Bonus? It reheats great, and the sauce was even better the second day.

he second best thing about it is that if you have someone you're trying to impress, it's really easy to make on your own-- no “stir this while chopping these” or “mix constantly while everything else in your kitchen burns.” The pan preps itself while you prep the chicken, then while it parbakes, you can make the sauce without worrying about the meat. Plus, the cooking times were perfect, even though I overcrowded the chicken halves in the roasting pan since we have the world's tiniest oven.

he best thing about this recipe? It calls for both red and white wine, so by the time you're done, you've got two open bottles at your disposal. My grandma definitely knew how to party. Dinner date, anyone?

The Verdict: 

5 Spoons out of five. It's delicious. Make this for someone who loves you tonight.

The Recipe:

Pollo Alla Verona

The Ingredients:

6 tbsp butter, divided
1 1/2 medium onions, sliced
2 cloves minced garlic, chopped
4 ½ lb whole chicken, split in two halves through the breast (for me, this was one medium chicken-- if yours is smaller, scale up and get two birds)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
½ lb mushrooms, sliced
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tbsp basil, chopped
¼ tsp oregano
2 tbsp flour
¾ cup white wine
¾ cup red wine
red or green grapes and mint leaves (optional garnish)

The Directions:

Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Put 2 tbsp butter in a roasting pan and place in oven as it heats, just long enough to melt butter, then allow oven to continue preheating.
Scatter onion and garlic in this pan.
Rub chicken with salt and pepper, arrange skin-side down in butter mixture and bake 15 minutes.
Turn skin-side up and bake 15 more minutes.
Meanwhile, toss mushrooms with lemon juice and saute in remaining 4 tbsp of butter in large saucepan for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
Remove from heat, stir in parsley, basil, oregano, and (very slowly) flour.
Return to heat and gradually stir in both wines.
Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then reduce to a simmer for 5 minutes.
Pour sauce over chicken in roasting pan and continue baking for 20 minutes longer, basting halfway through.
Chicken is done when juices from the thickest part run clear.
Taste and adjust seasoning. If sauce is too thin, put the roasting pan across two burners of your stove and heat it until it reduces to desired consistency. Spoon sauce over chicken and “arrange on a platter garnished with red and green grapes, parsley, and mint leaves.”

Serve with a chunk of crusty baguette to soak up the sauce. You can thank me later.
Serves 4, generously, or 6 with a side salad and baguette.

“I Have No Idea What I'm Doing Cheesecake,” or, Airy Crustless Cheesecake

I didn't know a lot about Eleanor's taste in food before I started this project, but one glance through the recipe box and it's hard not to notice that she had a hell of a sweet tooth. I found dozens of recipes for cookies, cakes, and frostings (most annotated with her own revisions), and, my personal favourite, TWELVE cheesecake recipes. Twelve! What does anyone need twelve cheesecake recipes for at all? Considering they are ALL for plain cheesecake, I can't imagine any of them are really THAT different, but... here we are.

When I told my mom that I had found a dozen recipes for cheesecake, her exact response was “you know, it would be just like Eleanor to save those recipes from her friends and test 'em all out, just to prove hers was the best.” I don't know if that was her rationale, but I do know I've only made one cheesecake in my life (an ill-fated, too heavy, bourbon pumpkin pecan monstrosity for my 25th birthday), and it wasn't even particularly good. Now faced with a dozen recipes I have to try, I'm going to do one each month in hopes that by the end I'll have at least one reliably decent version.

This month's cheesecake is a crustless one, made with nothing but a plethora of dairy products plus sugar. The card, which (importantly) is entitled “Cheese Cake,” notes that the recipe comes “from Louise Bloom, via June,” Eleanor's sister-in-law. It cracks me up that, in an era without the internet, etiquette required a two-stage citation of the source of a recipe. As a former grad student, this appeals to me on a lot of levels.

This cheesecake is airy and light, making it an easy sell for those who (like my poor husband, doomed to taste-test eleven more varieties) have no palate for heavy, wet-cement style cheesecakes. But beware: if your oven runs hot, you're going to have a cheesecake with a dark brown hat, as the thing cooks for TWO HOURS. Plus, the batter fills a standard mixing bowl so full that I couldn't properly fold in the egg whites at the end, so mine ended up craggy and almost meringue-like on top instead of smooth and custard-y like it's probably supposed to be.

That said, it's hard to believe this recipe has no flour in it. It's featherlight, despite having nearly three pounds of dairy in it. The egg whites make it rise like crazy and the cornstarch gives it a texture almost like angel food cake, far removed from the brick-of-cream-cheese style desserts usually called cheesecake today. Plus, the butter that lines the pan melts together with the sugar to make an amazing dulce-de-leche type sticky “crust” around the rim, which is worth the price of admission alone. All things considered, it's tasty and simple but not pretty, so I don't know that I'd make it for a dinner party or to impress anyone, unless I had some kind of awesome fruit compote to top it with... though I'm sure Eleanor would frown on adding anything like that to a perfectly good cheesecake.

the Verdict:

2 spoons out of five. The flavour is perfect and the texture is unique, but unfortunately it's just too ugly to make for anyone I'm not married to.

The Recipe:

Airy, Crustless Cheesecake

The Ingredients:

5 medium eggs
16 oz cream cheese
16 oz sour cream
15 oz ricotta cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp vanilla

 

The Directions:

Bring all ingredients except eggs to room temperature.
Preheat oven to 350F/177C.
Grease a springform pan.
Separate eggs, reserving both parts.
Beat whites until stiff then refrigerate.*
Beat together yolks and cream cheese until thoroughly mixed.
Add sour cream and ricotta, one at a time, and mix well.
Add sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla, mixing constantly.
Turn mixer to low and fold in egg white gently until just combined.
Pour mixture into greased springform pan and bake 1 hour at 350F/177C, then WITHOUT OPENING OVEN DOOR** turn heat off and let cook for an additional hour.

*If you, like me, only have one bowl that attaches to your mixer, beat the whites until they are stiff, scoop them into a smaller bowl and refrigerate them. Wipe the mixing bowl out with a paper towel and put the yolks in before continuing.
**June's caps, not mine!