Sweet Sipping

Grammercy Park, NYC, outside my daughter's dorm.

My daughter heads home today, and in honor of her return from the cold we'll have a celebratory cocktail and nosh.

Drink recipe via the glamorous and ebullient Nigella Lawson

The Poinsettia:

Per champagne glass--
a splash of Cointreau or Grand Marnier
Fill halfway with cranberry juice
Top with sparkling wine.

This, and my daughter, will be sure to make the evening sparkle.

Sweet Potatoes are Your Friends

To many of us, these weird looking tubers make an appearance once a year or so, filling pie shells, or topped with mini marshmallows.  I used them on Thanksgiving for a wonderful casserole, mixed with butter, brown sugar and topped with pecans.  Pie filling posing as a side dish.

Afterwards there were unused sweet potatoes left in my fridge.  Not up for a brown sugar binge, I searched, and I found.

Thank you, Chicagolist.

Heat your oven to 375 degrees.  As it warms, scrub clean your tubers, then cube (skins, warts and all).
Toss them in a baking dish, add a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil per potato, and toss again til they are well-coated. 

(You can add pepper and a dash of cayenne--but this way the subtle sweetness is more pronounced)

Roast for 20 minutes, remove from oven, mix them up, return to oven for another 10-20 minutes until a bit crusty on the exterior and meltingly tender on the interior. 

Divine. I promise you, too, will thank Chicagolist.

Buttermilk Biscuits

This happened because I couldn't bear to throw away the buttermilk, again.  I usually keep it around for pancakes, because it's better than milk.  But there was that quart, staring at me accusingly.

Biscuits, it whispered to me, suggestively.  Buttermilk biscuits with melting butter and apricot jam.  Buttermilk biscuits with any leftover gravy. Biiisssscuuuuiiiiits--

All right already!
Heat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix 2 cups flour with 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt and 6 tablespoons unsalted very cold butter, cut into small pieces.

If you have a food processor, combine the dry ingredients then add the butter, and pulse into course meal.

Otherwise cut the butter in by hand.  Mix in one cup buttermilk until just combined.

Pat the dough out gently onto a floured surface, cut into rounds.  Repeat with scraps (handle the dough as briefly as possible, for best results).

Bake for 10-12 minutes- until light golden brown on top. 

What, too many for one person?  Freeze them on a cookie sheet, repackage, then bake at your leisure, again at 450 this time for 20 minutes.

Coffee, apricot jam and biscuits.  Perfect for a winter morning.

December?!?

Holy smokes, it's that time of year again--the end of the year.  Perhaps I think not blogging will slow things down, but it hasn't worked, not yet.

I hope your Thanksgiving festivities were tastefully rollicking, and that the following days were filled with pie and more pie for breakfast. It was a sad morning for me when I realized I had already eaten the last of the pie.

Sigh.

In between cooking and eating and cleaning up there are thoughts of Christmas and Hannukah gifts.  I think I have found one that really out does itself in a stunning lack of self-awareness.  More in a moment.
Cut to--The Hunger Games, which, however way you slice your turkey IS all about class warfare--no more glaring than the contrast between Katniss's home town of District 12--and the gleeful gaudy carnival atmosphere of the capitol. Each and every resident a preening Louis XVI or a gloating Marie Antoinette. 

The gift I was talking about?
You can find it right here.  What is it?
The New Hunger Games Capitol Truffle Collection.
A mere $225.