Christmas Cookies: Gold Bars

These are cookies my mother makes -- actually, I think she got the recipe out of Victoria magazine, many many years ago -- that I love. They are a perfect balance of rich and sweet and nutty, with the added advantage that they're easy to make, hard to mess up, travel well, and store well (and if you want to freeze them, they last half of forever, with no discernible difference in quality). They taste like caramel and nuts and shortbread, sort of like a hybrid between pecan pie and pralines -- quite a bit less gooey and sweet than pecan pie, but softer than pralines -- with the pecan topping layered on a firm but tender buttery crust. (You can also make them with walnuts, if you prefer, or if your budget stretches more easily to walnuts.) They take about an hour to make, including baking time, and require neither special tools nor special skills. I love them. I make them every year, for myself and to give away.

For those of you who work with me, these are the cookies I brought to the office last week. Actually, I got some very flattering comments about them at the time, including 'best cookies ever!', which I appreciated very much. :D

( Gold Bars )

Cooking Method: Easy Caramelized Onions

I love caramelized onions—onions that have been well-cooked, so the sulfurous harshness of raw onions is completely gone, replaced by a complex sweetness and a deep onion flavor and a hint of richness. But they're not easy to make. For a long time, I could only make caramelized onions in one of two ways: either cooking on very high heat and needing to stir them a lot (and still having them scorch half the time -- and scorched onions are not so tasty), or cooking on low heat, with no risk of burning but also an incredibly long, multi-hour cook time, and sometimes with the onion never quite cooking through anyway, so bits of it wind up not quite the right silky caramelized-onion texture.

Fortunately, Cooks Illustrated came to the rescue with an onion caramelizing method that has worked, faultlessly, every time, and without taking too long.

( Easy Caramelized Onions )

What to do with caramelized onions? All kinds of things. They're good on sandwiches and burgers, or as the base for soups, or to make sauces both thicker and more complex; they taste wonderful mixed into pilafs or risottos, or on pasta, or alongside meat dishes. They can add a rich, unctuous flavor to dishes without adding very much fat. I use them all over the place—now that I know how to reliably make them.

Anime: Naruto 1-6

( First Impressions )