I know, I know. It’s hardly haute cuisine. The first time I ordered it, at the sea-level dining room of Cook’s Lobster House on Bailey Island, it was mainly out of morbid curiosity. The term “lobster dip” on its own isn’t terrifically appealing; it doesn’t, however, sound like something that could exactly be bad. Their version is served in a bread bowl, and like most things at Cook’s, is excellent exactly one-half of the times you order it. That first batch was a winner, a combination of succulent Maine lobster, swimming in a thick cream sauce that bubbled and dripped over the edges of the crusty bread, which we tore apart and hungrily devoured.

It wasn’t until my second exposure to this dish, served to me by a dear friend I’ve had for nearly 30 years, a friend well-versed in Maine classic cooking, that the pieces began to fall into place. “Cream cheese,” he explained, absentmindedly flipping a beer cap onto the kitchen counter with a heavily tattooed hand, “It’s a huge pan of lobster and cream cheese.”

I’m ordinarily not crazy about lobster used as an ingredient, preferring to enjoy it naked and on its own. In this case, though, a 13×9 glass baking dish of the stuff, along with an entire sliced baguette, vanished in minutes, leaving the four of us standing around his Midcoast kitchen, scraping the inside of the tray with any last scraps of bread we could find.

We’ve tweaked the recipe ever so slightly, adding a tiny bit of crunch and warm background heat, while still allowing the flavor of the lobster to be the focus. The hot sauce adds a touch of light pink color and spice, but you can, by all means, leave it out. It’s a great way to stretch the meat from just a few lobsters into enough food to serve with a loaf of bread at your next swingin’ party. And if you can transfer it into a Jadeite loaf pan and get it in the range before those benzos kick in, all the better.

Maine Lobster Dip
Makes about 4 1/2 cups. As an appetizer, serves 4-6.

Ingredients:

• 2 1.5 pound live Maine lobsters
• 16 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 2 shallots, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon horseradish
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 teaspoon Sriracha or other hot sauce
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

In a large stock pot, bring an inch of salted tap water to a boil. Add lobster and steam, covered, until shells are deep red, about 10 minutes. If pot boils over, leave lid off a crack to allow some steam to escape. Let cool, then crack shells and pick lobster meat, including tails, claws, and knuckles. Tear or chop lobster meat into small pieces, and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine cream cheese, shallots, garlic, horseradish, Worcestershire, cayenne, Sriracha, salt, and pepper. Add lobster meat, and mix well to combine. Transfer to a glass baking dish, and put in the refrigerator to chill for at least two hours.

To cook, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook, uncovered, about 25 minutes, or until lobster dip is hot and bubbly. Serve with bread, crackers, vegetables, or right off your finger.

It wasn’t long before I began trying to figure out a way to make eating tacos for breakfast socially acceptable. Oh, sure, the world already has huevos rancheros; I was looking for something simpler, a more direct vehicle for applying hot sauce to the back of my throat.

After field testing this dish three times for out-of-town overnight guests to From Away Worldwide Headquarters, and delighting our visitors each time, I think we’ve found the solution.

The secret here is twofold. First, we scramble our eggs properly, which is to say, slow and low. Your scrambled eggs should take a fair investment of time to cook over low heat, while you lazily scrape a wooden spoon along the bottom of the pan occasionally. Cook them on as low a flame as you can muster, and be patient. Your scrambled eggs should be just barely set, creamy, with a custard-like consistency. “Fluffiness” should only be the goal of a scrambled egg that is made from a powder and about to be served at the free continental breakfast in the lobby of a Comfort Inn; your scrambled eggs should be soft, curdy, and ever-so-slightly underdone when you take them out of the pan.

The second part of the secret to this dish, and this shouldn’t really be a secret to anyone, is that crunchy-fried bits of pork fat and skin instantly send any dish into the stratosphere. We used some leftover skin-on pork belly from our porchetta recipe, scoring the skin so that it puffs and crackles in a hot pan. The combination of tender meat, flavorful fat, and crunchy skin make the perfect compliment for the velvety eggs.

You can invite your guests to assemble these tacos themselves, using any combination of toppings they like. We serve ours with sliced green onions, diced tomatoes, a sprinkle of cotija, and our fakey-crema (sour cream diluted with milk). You could also try adding some black beans, refried beans, or jalapenos. Of course, as with everything else I am eating these days, a liberal application of habanero hot sauce is recommended.

Breakfast Tacos con Chicharron
Makes 8 small tacos; Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 cup skin-on pork belly, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1o eggs
• 5 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend, such as Jack or Cheddar
• 3 scallions, finely sliced
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/4 cup Mexican crema or sour cream
• 2 tablespoons cotija or Parmesan cheese
• 8 small corn tortillas, warm
• Hot sauce

Method:

In a small frying pan over high heat, warm oil until nearly smoking. Add pork belly and cook, stirring occasionally, until pork is brown and crunchy, about 10 minutes total. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain on paper towels, and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine eggs and water. Whisk until eggs are smooth, with whites and yolks incorporated. In a medium frying pan over very low heat, melt butter. Add eggs, and salt and pepper, to taste. Cook slowly, dragging a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan when curds begin to form, about 5-7 minutes. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until eggs just barely begin to set. Add cheese, and continue cooking until cheese melts and eggs are no longer runny, about a minute more.

For each taco: Place a few spoonfuls of egg on a tortilla. Top with cooked pork belly, scallions, tomato, crema, and a sprinkle of cotija. Serve with hot sauce.

A Midcoast Maine institution since 1973, The Cabin is located in historic Bath, directly across the street from the windowless, sixty-foot tall corrugated steel montolith that is the backside of Bath Iron Works. You can smell the pizza grease hanging heavy in the air from the moment you step out of the car. A single streetlight illuminates the front of the restaurant and the small sandwich-board sign highlighting the weekly specials, located on a side street next to what appears to be a completely vacant multistory apartment building.

Jillian: There’s something sinister about heading down into Bath. Under the dark, shady overpass, right at the railroad tracks. I can’t see the ships, but I know that they are there. In darkness, our car drove in the umbra of the ironworks, until we reached The Cabin. It was a port in the storm, amber-lit and nautical as dead reckoning.

Inside the first-floor restaurant space, a former rope mill used by Bath’s shipbuilders, The Cabin is divided like a private home into three comfortably dim, low-ceilinged rooms, all lit to varying degrees of brightness by hanging stained glass lamps. The wood-paneled walls are adorned with vintage nautical tchotchkes, including giant black-and-white etchings of ships, large bits of rope, and huge half-models of boat hulls. The overall effect feels like someone converted the bilges of an old wooden ship into a cozy dive bar, that happens to also serve pizza. Each tall dark wood booth further segments the various smaller dining rooms into several small, private, intimate spaces, lit by wall-mounted brass gaslight-style lamps,where you can sit and feel completely separate from the rest of the world, even as you eat in a communal space.

Jillian: I love the wooden beaminess of its low interior, the beers on the wall, the knotty tables and cozy booths. There were lots of nooks and crannies where we might sit drinking all night, ordering small pizzas slowly to stem the tide of intoxication.

When you first walk in the door and join the queue of locals waiting in line, it’s a little unclear what the protocol is. An ATM stands on one wall (a relief, since The Cabin is a cash-only restaurant), where you place your order at the counter, give your name to the busy kitchen staff, and let the counterperson know which area you intend to sit in. There are numerous blacklit boards advertising the daily beer and all-you-can-eat spaghetti specials, including a surprisingly wide selection of insanely inexpensive pints and pitchers that run the gamut from $1.75 Coors Light pints to pitchers of Pemaquid for $15 bucks.  We settled on a Garden Salad ($3.50), a small Cheese Pizza ($8), and The Cabin’s specialty “White Pizza ($8),” a mozzarella and garlic butter-sauced creation that came recommended.

The first beer went down entirely too quickly, as we sat in the dim light, sharing the room with just a few other customers. The Cabin makes you feel immediately at home; the kind of place you can imagine sitting down to round after round of beer, the fuzzy warmth of the place growing ever fuzzier to match your beer-soaked brain. The kind of place where day and night seem irrelevant, where you can just as easily spend an afternoon filling yourself with a 28-inch pizza and cheap beer, or make a quick stop after work for a pizza to bring home. It’s dark, cavelike, all shadowy corners and low ceilings, cordial but not overly welcoming, staffed by a group of guys that are happy to hand-toss you a pizza, but don’t necessarily feel the need to dazzle you with the pleasantries of small talk. It’s exactly the kind of place I want to go, when I imagine going out for pizza.

The pizza itself? It’s just okay. The much-lauded hand-tossed crust, described on The Cabin’s pizza boxes rather assertively as “The Only Real Pizza in Maine,” is thicker than most, though light, with plenty of pockets lending a much needed airiness to the dough. The sauce is tart, perhaps even a tad overly acidic, with lots of raw oregano flavor. Both pizzas were a veritable celebration of rubbery, gummy, salty mozzarella, applied with such a heavy hand that the pizza crusts became more like enormous edible bowls, whose main function was to contain the pooling, stretchy white cheese. I wondered in each case if perhaps ordering a larger pizza might have gotten us a shorter pour of mozarella; there was easily enough on our small pizzas to cover a large pie.

There are red pepper flakes and Parmesan cheese (which I realized I have collectively referred to for years in my mind as “shakie bits”) at each table, which helped add spice and flavor to our slices. The “White Pizza” was strongly flavored with garlic and herbs, like a gigantic round cheesy breadstick. A few dollops of ricotta, a pizza topping unfortunately not offered by The Cabin, would have improved it mightily. The Garden Salad was a bit of a bummer, as well, a plate of iceberg lettuce, a few tough tomatoes, and some sliced onions. For three bucks, though, even if this salad only serves as a vehicle for blaze-orange Thousand Island dressing, it has done its job.

Jillian: Yes, the sauce was too tart and the cheese heavy-handed. Fortunately, I have a high tolerance for cheese, and though I am particular about what I consider the best pizza, I am in no way discerning. I am powerless against its melted cheesy goodness. Not very elegant, but there you have it. An admission of a guilty pleasure makes us all faster friends.

Why, then, will The Cabin be the next place I likely visit, when I want to pack the family into the car and spend an hour eating pizza in public on a weeknight? It’s because The Cabin delivers absolutely perfectly on a cozy, warm, winter oasis, free of pretense and prejudice, where I can get a cheap pizza, an even cheaper pitcher of beer, and be left alone to hungrily munch away in a back corner, until I am more mozzarella than man.

Jillian: The Cabin is a sort of perfect place. It’s snug and welcoming on a Thursday night, a restaurant for secrets plans and weekday revelations with the people you love best. We wanted to leave before the baby woke up, which meant we only had one round of ale and porter. A new normal. The bulwark was less intimidating on emerging into the night. We drove home in silence, in a gooey pizza stupor, happy to live right where we do, near the coast in Maine.

It’s the kind of place where you want to be a local, the kind of place where you either start or end a night of drinking combatively. It’s the kind of pizza place that I didn’t know I needed until my first visit; the kind of place that has existed only in my imagination. I loved every minute of my time there. Okay, so it may not be mind-blowing pizza. It hardly matters. There are plenty of places to get a less-than-stellar pie in the area, but there may not be a pizza place in the whole state that is delivering quite as much atmosphere, personality, and sense of history. I’m already planning my next trip.

Notes: Is there a better sandwich on planet Earth than the classic bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich? Variations on the sandwich’s classic structure are almost always completely unnecessary, and often take away from what is already a perfectly balanced combination of crisp, salty, fatty bacon, with crunchy, cool lettuce, and a juicy, acidic sweetness from the tomatoes. Adding cheese or avocado or lobster is almost never an improvement, such is the excellence already inherent in this sandwich.

Unleeeeeessssssss…you are in Maine in the middle of Winter when your BLT craving hits. There’s a reason we tend to think of BLTs as a Summertime sandwich; the deliciousness of tomatoes picked at the height of their season are a major contributor to your overall impression of a BLT. And unless you are willing to take out a sketchy payday loan on a bunch of organic hydroponic vine-ripened vat-grown stem cell tomatoes flown in from Argentina, you’re simply not going to scratch your BLT itch with the kind of tough, flavorless, pale tomatoes found at the supermarket this time of year.

Enter the “Tomato Confit BLT,” one of the few variations on the classic sandwich that I dare say may be better than the original. Normally, when I think of “confit,” I think of something French, poached in its own fat, as with duck, until the flesh becomes impossibly tender and soft. Adding fat to meat imparts a huge blast of flavor, and even acts as a preservative. It’s a wonderful way to coax additional flavor and texture out of an ingredient that may need a boost, like the tough leg of an aquatic waterfowl, say, or the three-for-a-dollar softball-sized tomatoes at Hannaford.

“Oh ho,” you say, “but tomatoes are a fat-free food! How in the world are we to prepare them confit-style?” That’s easy. We’re going to cover them in bacon fat. A little bacon fat, a sprinkle of salt, and three hours in the oven at low temperature are all you need to transform tough, flavorless tomatoes into bite-sized grenades of acid and flavor with the consistency of a warm custard. Piled high on a BLT, they bring more tomato flavor to the sandwich than you ever thought possible.

The rest of the standard BLT rules apply. Use a fresh loaf of sourdough, or a loaf of Jillian’s no-knead Dutch oven bread. Get the thickest-cut bacon you can find (I used Oscar Meyer “Super Thick Cut”), and cook it slow and low in a frying pan until it is dark brown and crisp, but still chewy. You don’t want bacon that shatters when you take a bite. I like a soft Boston-style lettuce, and as much Hellmann’s Blue Ribbon as I can fit onto a butter knife, on both sides of the bread, please. Toast your bread in a little butter on just one side, so that the outside of the bread gets a little crunchy, while the inside stays soft and warm. Spend a little time making a tomato confit, and your reward will be one of the best BLTs you’ve ever tasted.

Tomato Confit B.L.T.
Makes two big sandwiches; likely enough for four people. Adapted from a recipe on The Meaning of Pie.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 pound of thick-cut bacon
• 6 large tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 4 slices fresh Sourdough bread
• 4 leaves Boston lettuce
• 4 tablespoons mayonnaise

Method:

Place oven racks in middle position of oven, and preheat oven to 275.

In a large frying pan over low heat, cook bacon, turning occasionally, until brown and crisp, about 20 minutes total. Drain on paper towels and set aside.

Place a paper towel over the mouth of a heat-proof container, and carefully pour bacon fat through paper towel to remove any chunks or burned bits.

Slice tomatoes to 1/3 inch thick, and arrange on parchment paper in a single layer on a large baking sheet, or two if needed.

Using a teaspoon, drizzle each tomato with some of the strained bacon fat. Turn each tomato over, and repeat so that both sides are covered in fat. Sprinkle each tomato lightly with Kosher salt.

Bake in preheated oven for about three hours, flipping once. Check tomatoes often during the last half hour, and remove before any blackening occurs.

Butter one side of each slice of bread, and grill butter-side down in a frying pan over medium heat, until one side of bread turns crisp and golden. Remove from pan.

To assemble: For each sandwich, spread mayonnaise on two slices of bread, with the toasted side down. Arrange a layer of bacon, then the lettuce, then half of the tomatoes on one slice of bread. Top with remaining slice and serve.

But then comes Monday again and the hectic workweek begins anew. Sigh. Spatchcocking is a perfect way to make something wholesome without a tremendous time commitment. A whole bird roasts under the broiler in about a half an hour. It definitely yields a juicy, tender, delicious bit of bird, and is easy as cake and satisfying, to be sure. However, I am not entirely convinced a simple roast chicken needs improvement. See, here. Decide for yourself. It’s something you should try if you haven’t already, to add to your arsenal of cool kitchen maneuvers you do to impress your friends and influence people. Host a lively dinner party this weekend, and spatchcock that bird, just for kicks.

Spatchcocked Roast Chicken

Ingredients:

• 1 4-5 lb chicken
• Olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon each ground fennel seeds, coriander seed, cumin seed, and paprika
• Kosher salt and ground black pepper

Method:

Turn the broiler on high whilst you prep the bird. Remove the innards and thoroughly wash and pat dry your chicken. Place chicken breast side-down on a plastic cutting board.

Use sharp kitchen shears to cut along one side of the backbone. (You’ll know it when you see it.)

Cut up other side of the backbone, and remove. You can save the bone for making stock.

Spread chicken apart, and flip over, so that the breast faces up.

Spread the legs akimbo, tucking the wings back.

Tuck the wing tips under the skin of the breast.

Cover it with olive oil and season with spices and herbs, salt and pepper.

Broil on high, breast side up, for ten minutes. Flip. Broil on high, back side up for ten minutes. Flip. Turn down the broiler to low and finish cooking, approximately fifteen minutes, until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165 degrees. The chicken should be golden brown with crisp skin. If skin begins to blacken and burn, cover with foil. Remove from oven.

Let it rest for fifteen minutes. Carve it up and serve with lemon wedges, an herb salad, white wine, and crusty bread. The end.

We’ve always tried not to place too much emphasis on the more superficial aspects of the day, forgoing presents over the years and instead trying to create a memory together. These experiences have varied wildly over the years, usually directly corresponding to our financial solvency at the time. Sometimes celebrating Valentine’s Day has meant weekend trips to New Orleans; other times, local romantic dinners out together, or even dried, glittered macaroni glued to a giant cardboard heart. This year, with a newborn baby in the house, we are celebrating even more simply. We tend to lean more toward the grammar school-style, cut out paper heart-version of Valentine’s Day, and allow ourselves to revel in its hokey sweetness.

These cupcakes are the perfect embodiment of that style. Rather than wringing our hands over an overwrought, Raspberry Chocolate Silk Martini Souffle that falls all over itself trying to be seductive, these cupcakes are simple and sweet. Innocent, even. They’re a handmade Valentine stuffed into a shoebox with your name written on it. They recount a childlike infatuation, in cupcake form. And in our case, they even feature Jillian’s favorite cereal, which she pretends is Kashi GoLean Honey Almond Flax, but is really Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cupcakes
Adapted from recipes from Bon Appetit and Your Cup of Cake; Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1  teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup 2% or whole milk
• 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Buttercream:

• 4 ounces cream cheese (1/2 regular package), room temperature
• 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup Cinnamon Toast Crunch powder (see note)
• Additional crushed and whole cereal pieces, to garnish

Method:

For the cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.

In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt, and set aside.

In a small saucepan over low heat, warm milk and butter until butter melts, and set aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix eggs, sugar, orange zest, and vanilla extract until thick, about 5 minutes.

Add the flour mixture and stir until blended, then add milk and butter mixture. Stir until combined.

Fill each cupcake liner approximately 3/4 full, and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 16-18 minutes. Cool in pan for a few minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

For the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Buttercream:

Crush approximately one cup of cereal using a rolling pin, and sift into a bowl. Repeat as needed, setting aside the bigger bits left in the sifter, until you have 1/3 of a cup of very fine Cinnamon Toast Crunch powder.

Mix cream cheese and butter in standing mixer until very smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch powder, and mix until incorporated. Taste for sweetness, and add more powdered sugar as needed.

Frost cooled cupcakes, and sprinkle with the larger leftover bits of cereal that you sifted out. Garnish with a whole piece of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

When he quit his four-pack-a-day habit and subsequently became utterly consumed with thoughts of elaborate breakfasts that would put even the “Full Irish” to shame, which he would begin cooking at dawn, he tried a few different techniques. There was a brief pause, I remember, on frozen hash browns that could be cooked in the toaster. He opted to fry the frozen slabs in oil, instead, which resulted in plenty of golden crunch, but a completely obliterated shredded potato inside that was reduced to dust. Ultimately, he settled on slicing the previous nights’ leftover baked potato, the ubiquitous starch found at nearly every family dinner, and frying the slices in oil before sprinkling them with salt and pepper. The results were good, but not perfect: the inside of the potato slice would pull apart, becoming soggy and overcooked, while the skin of the potato would pull away from the flesh and become bitter.

I think he would have been happy with this technique, a slight spin on the version of the crispy potato he nearly perfected in our kitchen in Tenants Harbor. As with a properly cooked french fry, the secret to these potatoes is in the par-boiling. A few minutes in some boiling water, followed by a finish in a hot oven yields a fried potato that is golden and crunchy on the outside, with a soft, fluffy interior. I like to use Yukon Gold-style potatoes; their yellow flesh is particularly creamy and ever-so-slightly sweet. Dipped in a little Sriracha-spiked ketchup, these potatoes work equally well as a side at dinnertime, as they do at breakfast.

Crispy Oven-Roasted Potatoes
Adapted from a recipe by America’s Test Kitchen; Serves 3

Ingredients:

• 3 large Yukon Gold potatoes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• Kosher salt and ground black pepper

Method:

Place a large baking sheet in the oven, and preheat to 450 degrees.

Slice potatoes into half-inch thick slices.

In a medium saucepan over high heat, add potatoes, 1 teaspoon of salt, and enough water to cover potatoes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until edges of potatoes begin to cook, but inside remains firm, about five more minutes.

Drain potatoes, and toss in a large bowl with 1 teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Toss vigorously with a plastic spatula, and drizzle with another teaspoon of olive oil and some more salt. Continue tossing, 1-2 to minutes, until potato slices are covered in a starchy paste.

Carefully remove baking sheet from oven, and drizzle with remaining teaspoon of olive oil. Place potatoes in a single layer and return to oven.

Bake potatoes until bottoms turn golden brown, about 20-23 minutes. Flip potatoes with a metal spatula, and return to oven to brown other side, about 10 minutes more.

Remove from oven, and sprinkle finished potatoes with kosher salt and pepper, to taste.

I wore my favorite Power Puff Girls t-shirt on the plane my mom didn’t want me to board. He met me at the gate and we walked arm and arm into the sultry tropical night, a harbinger of things to come, perhaps. After dinner with his parents, they took us out on their boat and spontaneously we jumped undressed in the water, hoping to impress one another. To make matters even more romantic, we found ourselves surrounded by bio-luminescent plankton, swimming under the stars in an ocean glowing with wonder and dinoflagellates. It may have been the fifth best night of my life thus far, and is an important piece of totally factual lore, as we tell and retell the story of our courtship.

Not every January 31st has been quite so dramatic, but we’ve been together to ring in the new and wring out the old, sipping champagne, wishing on twelve grapes, streaking the halls of fancy hotels, holed up at a cozy cottage in The Catskills, getting shoved and stupid at Brooklyn bars, playing “Rock Band” in a basement in the suburbs, dancing a sort-of-a-salsa with new friends in the middle of the Yucatan peninsula, and cooking a decadent feast with old friends at our apartment in Portland. 2011 was our last New Year as just us, a carefree couple. It was quieter, but lovely, and totally typified the tenor of our lives at the time, as all New Year’s Eves seem to do in retrospect. We cooked and ate and drank until we were totally in our cups. On the menu: bone marrow on toast, lobster bisque, rack of lamb and these: Brown Butter & Bacon Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Brown Butter and Bacon Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated

Ingredients:

• 14 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips
• 3 tablespoons milk chocolate, grated
• 10 strips bacon, crumbled

Method:

Place oven rack in the middle of oven, and preheat to 375 degrees.

In a large skillet over low heat, cook bacon until crisp, but not burned, turning often. Drain on paper towels, roughly chop bacon to approximately 1/4 inch, and set aside.

In a medium saucepan over low heat, heat 10 tablespoons of butter over low heat, swirling and stirring often, until butter is a warm golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat, add remaining butter, and allow to melt.

In a large mixing bowl or in bowl of standing mixer, combine granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, vanilla, egg, and egg yolk. Slowly incorporated melted butter, and stir until all sugar crystals have melted. Batter should be smooth and shiny.

Add flour and baking soda, and stir until no pockets of flour remain. Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate, and crumbled bacon. Stir until combined, but don’t overwork the batter.

Working in batches, line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, and place heaping teaspoon-sized dollops of batter onto baking sheet.

Bake until edges are golden but middle is not quite set, about 11-14 minutes.

Transfer cookies to cooling rack, and allow to cool completely.

Giant Ravioli with Spinach, Ricotta, and Egg Yolk
Adapted from a recipe in New Classic Family Dinners; Makes 12

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup semolina
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large egg
• 2 egg yolks
• up to 4 tablespoons ice water

For the ravioli:

• 12 ounces baby spinach
• 2 cups ricotta
• 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• up to 1/2 cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper
• 12 large egg yolks
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Method:

For the dough:

Use fingers to combine flour, semolina, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle. In a small bowl beat olive oil, egg and egg yolks. Slowly stream liquid into the dry ingredients; combine until mixture has the texture of coarse cornmeal. Add water a tablespoon at a time until the dough comes together in a ball. Remove from bowl and knead for five minutes – dough will be stiff. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic and let it rest for an hour. Roll out the dough into very thin sheets. I used nothing but a rolling pin and my wits. A pasta machine would also work well here.

For the ravioli:

Blanch spinach for ten seconds in a large pot of salted, boiling water. Drain and transfer to an ice water bath. When cool enough to handle squeeze by the handful until dry, then chop. Should be about one cup.

In a bowl combine ricotta, garlic, spinach, parsley, Parmesan, salt and pepper to taste. Fold in cream until the mixture is malleable.

Cut the pasta into twelve squares: 6 4 1/2-inch and 6 5-inch squares. Cover dough with a damp towel as you work.

Spoon two tablespoons of the ricotta mixture onto each of the 4 1/2 inch squares.

Using the back of a spoon, make a well in each scoop of ricotta.

Carefully place egg yolk in the depression.

Cover egg yolk with another tablespoon of ricotta.

Brush the perimeter of the pasta with water, and gently cover with the 5 inch square of pasta, pinching or pressing the layers together.

In a large pot of simmering (not boiling!), salted water, submerge the ravioli and cook for five minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drizzle with olive oil, cheese and parsley to serve.

Note: If you are preparing the ravioli much earlier than you care to cook them, do this:  store them in the freezer on a baking sheet lined with parchment and sprinkled with semolina.

Huzzah! These giant ravioli are so impressive. A runny egg yolk comes busting forth from the pasta, melding with the warmed cheese and olive oil to create an unctuous sauce. Delicious. It takes some time and a deft hand, but I have no doubt that if I can do it, so can you.

In an effort to ease ourselves slowly back out of Buffalo wing eating season, as well as use up all those leftovers, we engineered this chicken salad sandwich. It captures all the flavor of the classic Buffalo wing, in a cool, surprisingly well-balanced sandwich that never overdoes it, in spite of all those competing strong flavors.

I like to poach the chicken for chicken salad sandwiches, mainly because I like the tender texture it gives the chicken. In this case, I also didn’t want to add too many additional flavors, since the sandwich already has so much going on; I imagine, though, that it would be equally delicious using grilled chicken breasts, or even leftover roast chicken parts. Use what you’ve got. You can’t lose with this sandwich.

Buffalo Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Makes 3 or 4 sandwiches

Ingredients:

• 6-8 slices of fresh bread, sliced
• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 32 oz. box low-sodium chicken broth
• 3 stalks celery, finely chopped
• 1-2 carrots, peeled and grated
• 2-3 tablespoons bleu cheese dressing
• 2 tablespoons bleu cheese, crumbled
• 2 tablespoons prepared buffalo wing sauce, or Frank’s Red Hot brand hot sauce
• 3-4 leaves of lettuce (Bibb or romaine work well here)

Method:

In a medium saucepan over high heat, cover whole chicken breasts with chicken stock. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low. You want to keep the water just below a simmer, or at about 190 degrees, if you have a candy thermometer. Cook, covered, about 20 minutes.

Remove chicken from broth, and let rest for five minutes. Chop chicken into chunks, and combine in large bowl with celery, carrots, bleu cheese dressing, crumbled bleu cheese, and buffalo wing sauce. If chicken salad seems to dry, supplement the dressing with a little more mayonnaise, a teaspoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached. Stir to combine, and chill in refrigerator at least 30 minutes before serving.

To assemble sandwiches: Place 3-4 tablespoons of chicken salad on three or four slices of bread. Top with lettuce and top-half of bread slices.