In a previous post, you heard me wax poetic about a hand-delivered Meyer lemon. As I thumbed through cookbooks and browsed the Internet, lemon curd was the frontrunner for a foodstuff that would really showcase the lemon in all its lemony glory. I’d never made it, so there was that challenge as well.

So what do you do with lemon curd? Other than eat it with a spoon straight from the bowl? Smear it on toast (or bagels or english muffins or scones). Fill a crepe. Or, make a tart.

Which is where I went. I wanted to try mini-tarts, for the ideal crunch-to-creamy ratio. I also wanted something that would work better for us two to nibble over the course of a few days — a full-size tart would get soggy (I could assemble 4 or 5 of these little guys just before nom nom nom). And I knew I wanted a sweetish-crust, not a classic pie crust, so I decided to go with a shortbread-cookie crust. The CGP really raved over these!

One thing I read is that the egg whites **may** contribute a certain, well, egginess to your curd. With that in mind, I chose to separate the eggs and use only the yolks (never fear, make these insane macaroons with the whites). I also wanted to avoid straining at the end as I saw in some recipes, so another reason to stick with just the yolks.

Meyer Lemon Curd
Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa

1 large-ish Meyer Lemon, peeled and juiced as described below
1 cup sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, slightly softened, cut into tablespoons
4 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Use a vegetable peeler to peel the skin from the lemon, trying to get as little of the white pith as possible. Put about half of the peel in the food processor and reserve about half for another project.

Juice the lemon, yielding (hopefully) about 1/3 cup of juice. Set aside.

Put the sugar in the food processor with the peel and whir until the peel is finely minced and fully incorporated. Add the butter one chunk at a time while the processor is running until the butter and sugar are fully incorporated. It won’t be as fluffy as when you cream for a cookie, but the butter won’t chunky, either. Add the yolks one at a time and process. Add the lemon juice and salt and process until smooth.

Pour into a medium-sized heavy-bottomed saucepan. Heat over low to medium-low heat, stirring CONSTANTLY, until thickened. You are aiming for about 170F, just shy of a simmer. I switched between a wooden spoon and a heat-resistant spatula to make sure I kept sides and corners stirred as well. Remove from heat and cool. Refrigerate if you aren’t going to use it immediately.

Shortbread Cookie Tart Shells
Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa

Makes about 36 shells

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, cool room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ginger liqueur (or one teaspoon vanilla)
Baking spray

Preheat oven to 325F. Spray the wells of your mini-muffin pan with baking spray.

Whisk the flour and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar. Add the liqueur (or vanilla). Gradually add flour mixture on LOW speed and mix well. This is a stiff dough and your mixer will tell you when to STOP.

Dump the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap that has been dusted lightly with flour. Shape into a large disc, wrap, and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

Pull your dough from the fridge and use a large knife or bench scraper to portion off about 1/3 of the dough. If your muffin pan has 12 wells, wrap and re-refrigerate the larger portion [If your muffin pan has 24 wells, wrap and re-refrigerate the smaller portion]. Portion into 12 [or 24] equal-sized balls, about 1″ in diameter. Drop a ball into each well. Press the ball into well, using your fingers to press the dough against the sides and shape a hollow in each, but not letting the crust rise above the rim of the well.

Bake for 8 minutes and remove from the oven. The shell will have puffed up in the center — gently use the back of a metal teaspoon to press a hollow in the center. Return to the oven and bake another 8 minutes. Remove from the oven while it’s a light golden brown. Again, the shell will have puffed up in the center — gently use the back of a metal teaspoon to press a hollow in the center. Let them cool just 3 or 4 minutes in the pan and then use a spatula to coax them out. Put on wax paper to finish cooling. Fill with lemon curd shortly before serving and garnish with candied lemon peel. Count on 2 or 3 bites per person (I ate 4 in one sitting and admit it was a bit too much LOL). The curd recipe above will fill about 24 of these mini tart shells.

In the interests of transparancy, you need to understand you are going to dirty up ALOT of dishes:

So in my kitchen adventures, I frequently have some leftover odd item that I have to figure out how to use. Which starts another adventure, right? Or ends up in the freezer in one of those mysterious ziploc bags my husband is always dropping on his foot.

So in my Meyer lemon adventure, I made lemon curd with four egg yolks, leaving me with four egg whites. Egg WHITES? As you can tell from my pic, I don’t generally eat egg white omelettes for breakfast. Pie with meringue just isn’t practical for a household of 2. Puffy meringue cookies were just too precious. And tedious. So I did a little googling (side note: per Wiki, Google would prefer I didn’t use this word as a synonym for general web searching) and saw several variations on macaroons. Ding Ding Ding! I’ve never made them before, and I don’t know if I’ve ever had a GOOD macaroon. I’ve had some really lame storebought ones (comes in a canister once a year not naming brands). I’ve had some from bakeries that were awfully pretty to look at, but heavy and dense and light  on flavor. But the idea of a macaroon grew on me — and I felt myself rising to this self-perpetuated challenge.

Think about Mounds. And Almond Joys. Coconut is the dominant flavor. Truly moist interiors, but not gooey. Firm but not dense. So in my mind, a macaroon should be a cookie version of those. As I compared and contrasted the recipes and techniques and photos (sorry, it’s the analyst in me), it became clearer that the fewer ingredients the better, oven temperature was uber important, and the ingredients needed to be handled very gently (forget about whipping anything to peaks).

The step-step version pictured used classic semi-sweet chocolate chips, roasted/salted pistachios, and a little Key Lime zest (’cause I had some leftover from here). I’ve also made a version with toasted hazelnuts and DARK chocolate chips (see left) that made me swoon. Literally. I gave a dozen of them to a dear friend (because I wouldn’t be able to control myself if they were in my house), and she swears she ate all of them herself. That good.

So this might be my new favorite cookie. It’s definitely a coconut cookie. Moist and not too sweet on the inside, and that amazing toasted coconut on the outside. Just enough chocolate and nuttiness to make it interesting. The lime zest is subtle — and intriguing.

Michelle’s Mahvelous Macaroons
Adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction
Yield: About 30 cookies

4 large egg whites
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt [optional]
A bag of sweetened shredded coconut
1 cup chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped nuts
~ 1 teaspoon lime zest [optional]

Preheat the oven to 325F. Line a sheet pan with a silicon baking sheet (“silpat”). I did NOT test with parchment, but I bet that would work. You’d probably need a fresh sheet for each batch, since these are REALLY sticky. I would NOT recommend baking spray or butter/shortening on the bare cookie sheet.

In a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, whisk the egg whites, sugar, vanilla, and salt [skip the salt if your nuts are already salted] until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is frothy, about 2 or 3 minutes. Start on low and then crank it up a bit! Mix in the coconut by hand with a wooden spoon or spatula, ensuring every coconut strand is evently coated with the eggy liquid. Gently stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.

Scoop onto the silpat with a medium-sized cookie scoop — eight scoops per pan. You’ll note that I have two pans — but only ONE goes in the oven at a time! In my 40 years of baking, I have never been happy when I baked two pans of cookies at a time, even if I rotated and flipped racks halfway through. For cookie perfection, ONE pan at a time!

Bake a single pan at 325F for 10 minutes. Rotate. Cook another 10 minutes. Remove to the counter and allow to cool about 5 minutes before removing with a spatula to waxed paper or cooling racks to fully cool. Makes about 30 cookies.

NOTES:

• Don’t scoop until JUST before you are putting a pan in the oven — otherwise they slump :(.
• You will want to stir the batter once or twice while pans are cooking so the last couple of cookies, from the very bottom of the mixing bowl, aren’t too wet and eggy.
• I use dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips, but feel free to use milk chocolate if that’s what you prefer.
• If using hazelnuts, you’ll want to toast the raw hazelnuts in a dry skillet over medium heat. Remove from hot pan and set aside to cool. Most nuts benefit from this treatment.

Sometimes I make something absolutely DELISH without realizing it’s going to be good enough to blog about (meaning I don’t take pictures along the way). This old-fashioned comfort dish is one of them. I’ve had several requests for the recipe, so let’s go for a mini-post!

Ham and Spaghetti Squash Casserole
Serves 4 – 6

1/2 of a large-ish cooked, seasoned spaghetti squash (about 4 cups) [*]
1 small onion, diced fine
Extra virgin olive oil
2 cups cubed ham
1 container plain greek yogurt
1 1/2 – 2 cups shredded cheese [**]

Cook the onion in a tablespoon or two of olive oil until soft and slightly colored. Allow to cool.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Gently mix the cooled squash, onion, ham, yogurt, and a cup or so of the cheese (reserve some for later) in a large bowl. Pour into a 7″ by 10″ baking dish that you’ve sprayed with baking spray. Bake 30 – 45 minutes until it starts to get all bubbly. Sprinkle the reserved cheese over the top and cook another 10 or 15 minutes until it’s brown and crusty.

Serve hot with some crusty bread.

And maybe a glass of wine :).

[*] I roasted off a large spaghetti squash earlier this winter, generously seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. We ate half at the time and I froze the remainder, so this casserole used the frozen portion. Drain well after thawing — it tends to give off some water as it thaws. There’s a great pictorial at theKitchn that describes how to roast a spaghetti squash. Also, it turns out that dogs love spaghetti squash too.

[**] Any melty cheese will work. I think I used a combination of something frozen and unlabelled, cheddar, and “six cheese Italian”, since I had partial bags of all.

I’m still not cooking. My palate is still off while recovering from bronchitis (29 days and counting), so the stuff that appeals to me is veggie-based pizza, very select soups, and nursery food (think jello, simple cookies, oatmeal). I normally drink my morning coffee with 2% milk, but I can’t tolerate that — too bitter — so I’ve started buying flavored creamers. I’m really sensitive to salt as well. Chips and most crackers are just intolerably salty. I assume all will settle back to normal once I’m recovered, but for now, I’m just going to take it easy in the kitchen.

So a few years back I had a 20-mmmph-year high school reunion (Glynn Academy, Brunswick, GA). Facebook ended up being the easiest way to circulate all the event info, so I ended up “friending” a boatload of people from high school. Helen Stergius happens to be one of those people. I’m thinking she was probably funny in high school, but I am embarrassed to say I don’t really remember details. She’s out in Colorado and I’m on the East Coast, so our interactions are pretty much limited to reunions and Facebook. Now, in Adult World, she is one of the funniest people I know. Like spit-out-coffee-all-over-your-Kindle funny. She makes fun of herself and embraces her own special awkwardness. So when she posted the following on Facebook, I knew I had to share:

“Next time you think you are a total dork in the kitchen, imagine yourself doing this and you’ll immediately feel competent:

You make fettuccine by hand, including mixing, kneading, and rolling. You boil it. You strain it over the sink. The strainer tips and dumps all of your handmade pasta into a few slightly dirty dishes and a little soap. Begin cursing the same word over and over and over. You desperately plunge your hands into the sink to save the pasta, forgetting that the water you just poured had just been boiling. Spray cold water into the sink, refill the colander, rinse the pasta like crazy, boil some fresh water so that you can flash boil the pasta to reheat and clean (?) it. Transfer the pasta to the boiling water, imagining a noodly slither but instead getting a noodly plop of all noodles. Boiling water goes everywhere, into your cream sauce, into the butter package, all over your legs. Continue cursing then stop because it’s stupid and not helping. And calling attention to the fact that you just dirtied then washed then reboiled noodles. Complete meal as planned with slightly soggier noodles and a watery sauce. Family graciously says it’s awesome. The rest of the meal only slightly overcooked because of pasta debacle.

There – your dorkiness pales in comparison tonight, I am sure.”

See what I mean? Once I read this, I immediately messaged her asking permission to share this with a broader audience, as well as permission to use her name. She’s a good sport, and responded with:

“Haha! Sure you can identify me it’s no big deal. I did not scald my self and though my hands and shins feel sunburned a bit they aren’t even red, so you might want to add that so that no one thinks I have 3rd degree burns as a result. What a silly mess. It’s easy to make pasta but it takes so long to do it – when it all dumps out in the sink there’s just no rational reaction”

You know, this is JUST as funny on the fifth read as it was on the first! Many thanks to Helen for inspiring an interim post until I return to regular blogging!

This is Nurse Buddy. My near constant companion as I fight the Mack Truck of Non-Fatal Illness: Bronchitis. After eight days of fever, I may be turning the corner. That little “flu” my husband had before Christmas — well I came down with it New Years Days. And got steam-rolled. The blog hiatus continues, but I leave you with a quick photo of the last thing I cooked in 2013, a pork-rib bibimbap.