Zalleti – New World Style? We had a snow day today and traditionally on a snow day, I bake cookies. Originally, I wanted to make Lemon Semolina cookies from Gina DePalma’s book, Dolce Italiano and while I ensured that I had semolina in the house, I forgot to make sure I had lemons (and limoncello!). So instead I decided on Zalleti, these polenta cookies from Veneto, Italy. One problem, well, two, I still didn’t have lemons for the needed lemon zest, nor did I have currants! I did however have dried blueberries and oranges – so I decided to make some substitutions which I think came out pretty darn good. Ingredients 3/4C dried blueberries (original recipe was currants) 1/4C boiling water 5T brandy, divided (the original recipe uses grappa but I didn’t think Chris would appreciate me using his brand new Nonino grappa) 1 3/4C flour 1C instant or fine polenta 3/4 cup granulated sugar (plus more for sprinkling on – which I totally forgot to do on the first batch) 1t salt 1t baking powder 1 large egg 1 large egg yolk 1 stick (1/2C) unsalted butter, melted and cooled finely grated zest of 1 orange 2T milk Directions Preheat oven to 325F. Mix blueberries, boiling water and 3T brandy. Let them sit until the blueberries plump a bit and cool off. Mix the flour, polenta, sugar, salt and baking powder with the paddle attachment of your electric stand mixer until combined. Whisk egg and egg yolk. Add melted butter and orange zest. Mix this into dry ingredients and beat at medium speed until blended (it may be a bit crumbly). Now here’s where I ran into a snag. You see, using blueberries rather than the currants, resulted in the soaking liquid turning blue. And I needed to incorporate that liquid into the dough. So my fear was that it would turn the dough a funky shade of purple/blue. So here’s what I did instead: Add 2T grappa and 2T milk to dough, mix until incorporated on medium (dough will be less crumbly), about a minute. Drain and stir in blueberries. Form dough into a disk, wrap in saran wrap and stick in the fridge for an hour until it’s easy to work with. When the dough is ready, break off pieces about the size of a tablespoon and roll into a log between your palms, then flatten. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper 1 inch apart and pinch the ends to give them that diamond look. Bake in oven for 15 minutes, turning halfway through for even cooking. Let stand on cookie sheet for a few minutes to cool and then transfer to wire rack with a spatula. Reall y good with a cup of coffee! You Say Macaron; I Say Delicious As some of you are aware, my daughter, Becky, loves to bake (feel free to check out Bites by Becky on Facebook). So, as a birthday present my parents got her a baking class (I got the same for Mother’s Day) and Becky chose Macaron baking (you can read about that here, Macaron 101. The problem with taking a class like that though is if you don’t use the knowledge soon after, it’s lost. And to bake Macarons, you definitely need that knowledge. So yesterday afternoon we cleared the decks, banned Sammi and Chris from the kitchen, and tried to make macarons solo. You might think we made a big deal out of making a simple cookie, but you’d be wrong. And here’s why. Let’s start with the ingredients. I’m giving everything in weight. If you don’t own a scale and you endeavor to make these cookies, tough on you. Buy a scale. ‘Nuff said. Ingredients 165 grams almond flour 165 grams confectioners’ sugar 1 pinch fine sea salt 150 grams granulated sugar 85 grams water (yes, weigh even the water) 115 grams whisked egg whites 1/2t cream of tartar food coloring (about 4 drops gel), if desired Directions To start, know there are two different methodologies for making the meringue, French and Italian. we did the Italian. Also know that we preheated our oven to 200℉ because before you actually bake the cookies, you want a skin on them. Some chefs leave the piped cookies out to form this skin (even overnight), others, like our instructor, Kathryn pre-bake the cookies at the lowest temperature in the oven. More on this later. 1. Put the almond flour, confection sugar and salt into food processor. Pulse four times for four seconds each, with about 10 seconds between each pulse (otherwise you risk creating butter instead of a really fine flour base). Then sift these ingredients so you get a smooth skin later on. The simple syrup cooking – see the dead zone? 2. Put the egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of your electric mixer, fitted with a whisk. Begin to whisk the egg whites on medium speed until soft peaks form. Meanwhile, mix the granulated sugar and water in a small pot and heat on a medium- high heat on the stove. You want this to be boiling all across the pan, no dead zones (i.e., no place where bubbles are not rising to the surface). It should be 235℉ or soft-ball stage for those familiar with the term. For us, we would dip a little spatula into the bubbly liquid and drop it on the edge of the stove, if a little ball formed there twice in a row (no spreading), it was ready. Now, while your bubbling away your syrup, if you get to soft peaks on your meringue, turn down the speed to low until the syrup is ready. Don’t stop moving that meringue around. It’s a lot to keep track of right? This batter is pretty close 3. Now, take that syrup and quickly and steadily pour it into the meringue with the motor back up to medium. You want to do this along the edge of the bowl (rest the lip of the saucepan on the lip of the bowl), so as you don’t get the syrup all over the whisk. Beat the meringue until it’s medium peak, the bowl is lukewarm (no longer hot from the syrup) and it’s kind of glossy. About 4 minutes. Becky filling the bag – gives you an idea as to the consistency 4. Fold the almond flour blend into the meringue, until it’s incorporated. What does that mean? It means that if you think the ingredients are combined, lift the spatula about 1 inch above the bowl, if the meringue holds its shape, you’re not ready. The mixture should fall back into the bowl in one continuous drip. Oh, and by the way, if you’re using food color, you should add it when you’re about 75% done folding (yeah, good luck with that. We did it when everything looked almost combined). Oh and if you over mix or under mix you can end up with cracked cookies. 5. Spoon the batter halfway into a pastry bag. With those industrial bags at class we used two, with the smaller Wilton bags Becky had on hand, three. Twist the top of the bag to close it (we tied ours off with rubber bands after using a bench scraper to make sure the batter was at the bottom). 6. Now for your baking sheets. At the very least double up. We tried all sorts of combinations, two uncushioned jelly roll pans, two cushioned cookie sheets, two cushioned jelly roll. I think the last batch on Becky’s two cushioned, heavy jelly rolls came out the best. Anyway, stack two together (it disperses the heat, and you may want to use three if you have issues) and line with silpat or parchment. 7. Snip the bottom of the pastry bag, leaving a quarter inch opening and pipe the batter into one inch circle rounds about 1.5 inches apart on the sheet. Kathryn has a Piping Guide on her website that you can slide under your sipat or parchment paper to ensure even size cookies. I leave the piping to Becky; she’s the bomb (though sometimes her cookies have “nipples” – that’s when you don’t remove the pressure on the bag before you take it away from the cookie and leave a little bit sticking up). 8. Here’s my favorite part, slam the baking sheet down about 10 times from a height of six inches to remove air. Make sure your fingers are holding the silpat/parchment in place as you slam. This gets rid of the air bubbles and kinds of smooths the cookies out a bit (sometimes it gets rid of small nipples). 9. Now you bake them – first for 15 minutes at 200 degrees to get the skin and raise the oven temp to 350 (we started at 325 with a hot convection) and bake for an additional 9 minutes or until the macarons just come off the parchment paper when you lift them. Can you believe it this is where we ran into our problems. You see Kathryn suggested that we do a test batch of four (we did six) to see how our oven runs. The first batch we cooked a bit too long and we thought the temp too high so we lowered it to 300. The second test batch came out well. Then we started to get lopsided feet (that’s the part that spreads at the bottom of the cookie).