Is it cheating to post a variation on an already-posted recipe? Maybe. But you see, I am so enamored of these cookies that I feel it’s my duty to inspire you to try them. I went on and on about Soft Almond Cookies a few weeks ago. But if almonds aren’t your thing, you’ll be hugely relieved to learn that you can spin the soft butter cookie into lemon cookies. (I know you’ve been losing sleep over this…)

This recipe was inspired by my friend Claire, who went to all the trouble to email me when my site was malfunctioning to tell me her idea for a lemon riff on the almond cookie.  Claire is a true appreciator of, as she put it, “the peerless lemon.” (In the same email, she also endeared herself to me forever by telling me she’d bought a jar of preserved lemon a year ago just to look at. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my penchant for buying food just because it’s pretty.)  

I’ve already gushed about citrus enough on this site, so I won’t embarrass myself by rehashing my unrequited love. Suffice it to say that this bright idea of Claire’s brings the “peerless lemon” and the “best cookies ever to cross these lips” together to form the penultimate, pitch-perfect, peerlessly-citrusy, buttery, soft, glazed cookie.  Whew.

You know you want one. Go on. Make a batch. Want help dispensing with your excuses? If it’s your waistline you’re worried about, give some cookies away to your neighbors, colleagues, hairdresser, letter-carrier, etc. Make new friends, or mend some fences. Everyone loves a cookie. If it’s finding the time you’re worried about, just put off the raking for half an hour. The leaves will wait. There. If you ever need help rationalizing, don’t hesitate to call.

SOFT BUTTER COOKIES WITH LEMON

1 ¼ cup sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks), room temperature
1 tablespoon lemon curd (with the jam in most grocery stores)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 heaping teaspoon grated lemon zest
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, lemon curd, lemon zest, vanilla and eggs until creamy. 

Add flour and baking soda and mix on low until combined.

Scoop by round tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. (I lined mine with parchment paper, but I’m sure that’s not necessary. It just makes the clean-up easier.)  

Bake for 8-10 minutes – they’ll be very soft, but brown on the bottom. Cool for five minutes on the cookie sheet, then move to a rack or a flat surface to cool completely before glazing. 

LEMON GLAZE

1 cup powdered sugar
2 ½ tablespoons lemon juice

Place ingredients in a small bowl and stir with a spoon until smooth. If it seems too thick, add more lemon juice. If it’s too thin, add more sugar. The glaze should be smooth and spreadable.

This recipe comes from the Sopranos. As in Tony and Carmela. As in the blockbuster HBO series which I sort of missed, I’m afraid. But never mind. Apparently there was a cookbook inspired by the food on the show. (If I’d known food featured so prominently, I might’ve watched it.)

This baked ziti is classic Italian-American cheesy-tomatoey-starchy fare. It’s hearty and warming in all the right ways. So much so that an Oregonian might just wish for a cold, rainy day to set the mood for tucking into a steaming plate of this creamy, sausage-laden goodness. If you live in Oregon, you realize just how pathological that is.

Would you believe I’ve never eaten baked ziti before last night? Lasagna? I’ve made hundreds. Penne tossed with just about everything under the sun? Yes. I’ve eaten enough spaghetti noodles to wrap twice around the equator. But somehow baked ziti never once made it onto my radar until I read this recipe on The Hungry Dog and started drooling.

I made a 9 x 13 pan of baked ziti weighing about thirty pounds. That’s for two of us, so it looks like we’ll be eating it for awhile, which works for me. (Yes, there are three in my family. But my child doesn’t like cheese. How is this possible?)

So, if you want to pretend you’re Tony Soprano, go ahead and tuck a napkin into your collar. Now imagine savoring your baked ziti after a long, tiring day of drinking in strip joints and brutally murdering people who crossed you. (I did see a few episodes…) No one appreciates how hard it is to be a mob boss. It’s a thankless job. But surely this much ricotta and mozzarella and parmesan can smooth your ruffled mobster feathers. Or at least weigh them down for awhile. Mangia.

BAKED ZITI WITH ITALIAN SAUSAGE
serves six

1/4 c. olive oil
1 lb. Italian sausage (I used half sweet and half spicy)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 c. dry red wine
35 ounces canned tomatoes, chopped with their juices
1/4 c. fresh oregano OR 2 T. dried oregano
1 c. fresh ricotta (I used whole milk ricotta, oh yeah…)
1 c. grated parmesan
1/3 c. chopped Italian parsley
1 lb ziti
1/2 lb fresh mozzarella sliced thin

Preheat the oven to 425. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish with about 1 T. olive oil. Remove sausage from its casing and crumble. Set aside.

Heat remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent. Turn up heat to medium high and add sausage; brown for about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper.

Add wine and let it reduce for about 6 minutes or until it is almost gone.

Add tomatoes and their juices and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. When the sauce begins to thicken, add the oregano and stir well. Remove from heat.

Cook pasta until just barely al dente. (Do not cook completely). Drain. Toss pasta with ricotta, parmesan, and parsley. Add tomato and sausage sauce and toss again.

Pour the mixture into the baking dish, sprinkle with remaining parmesan, and dot with mozzarella. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned.

You know how some foods hold you hostage? You eat bite after bite, all the while wondering:  What is that flavor? What makes this so irresistible? Why am I taking yet another serving? Well this is one of those recipes. I hate to ruin the surprise, but the hostage-taker is preserved lemon. It looks innocent enough, all slumped and yellow in the jar, floating in its pool of lemony brine. But preserved lemon takes what would be an ordinary pasta salad (yawn) and makes into one of those stellar, memorable, “I can’t stop eating this” dishes.

Sure, there are other great things going on in this mix. Israeli couscous and toasted nuts. Roasted butternut squash and sautéed onion.  But the hostage drama all hinges on the lemon. If you haven’t tried preserved lemon, now’s the time. You don’t have to make your own. You can buy some. But don’t miss out. How often do you get to welcome a whole new hostage-taking, non-negotiating ingredient into the fold? Preserving lemons takes their sourness away, leaving a sweet, flowery and salty bit of heaven behind. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this transformation, but I prefer to think of it as magic.

The only thing that gave me pause about trying this recipe was the number of pans involved. (Three.) But it’s worth it. I wouldn’t steer you wrong on such a substantive matter. The fact that this recipe makes the unfussy cut despite the high pan count is a true testament to its tastiness.

We ate this as a side dish with grilled pork chops. But it would make an impressive vegetarian main course. It’s also a notable potluck dish, as its served room at temperature. Hey, it’s even vegan! How about that?

ISRAELI COUSCOUS WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND PRESERVED LEMON 
adapted from this recipe in Gourmet, makes eight generous servings

1 preserved lemon (available at Whole Foods, gourmet shops, and middle-eastern markets)
1 ½ pound butternut squash, peeled and seeded, and cut into 1/4-inch dice*
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 pound Israeli couscous
1 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 cup roasted salted pecans, chopped**
¾  cup golden raisins
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Toss squash with one tablespoon olive oil on a large, rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for about twelve minutes, stirring once. Put roasted squash in a large bowl.

Heat two tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Saute onions in oil until they are just golden, about seven minutes. Add onions to large bowl with squash.

Cook Israeli couscous in a large pan of boiling water until tender, about ten minutes. Drain but don’t rinse. Add couscous to squash and onion mixture. Salt generously, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and toss.

Scrape the pulp out of the preserved lemon and dice the peel finely. Add diced peel to the couscous and vegetables. Add a tablespoon of the brine from the jar of lemons.

Add nuts, parsley, raisins, and cinnamon to the bowl. Toss. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, cinnamon, or lemon to taste.

*Butternut squash poses a challenge to the lazy cook. The peel is thick and hard, making a vegetable peeler too slow for my money. So here’s my speedier method: With a big knife, I cut the long skinny neck from the bulbous, seed-filled end of the squash. I cut off the stem end, leaving a big cylinder of squash. Then I stand it on a cut end, and cut the peel off from top to bottom using my big knife. I lose some meat, since the knife is straight and the squash is round. But I gain precious serenity not wrestling the squash peel. Once I have a big skinned length of squash neck, I turn it on its side and cut across it forming “rounds.” (They look more like stop signs.) Then I chop them. Unless I need more squash, I don’t even use the bulbous seeded part. I’m not proud of this wasteful practice. I’m just not a patient person.

**The recipe called for pine nuts. But have you heard of “pine mouth?” It’s a weird affliction caused by eating some pine nuts. I don’t think it’s been determined exactly which pine nuts. It makes everything you eat taste like metal, and it can last for weeks. My husband suffered a bout of it, making us a little gun-shy about pine nuts for the time being. The pecans were delicious, but next time around I think I’ll take my chances and try toasted pine nuts.

My friend Lisa, the tall blond with the sparkling wit, seems to be good at everything she does, which is reason enough not to like her. But difficult though it may be to overlook her myriad talents and good looks, I can’t help myself. We go back. In our Colorado girlhoods we walked to school together through crunching leaves and snowstorms and warm spring breezes. We climbed countless trees. We saw our first concerts together (Barry Manilow and Andy Gibb. Cool, right?) At home, we choreographed dances complete with with hula hoops and trash can lids. See, the trash can lids keeps things in perspective for me. Once you’ve seen someone dance to Barry Manilow wielding a trash-can lid, you can’t really hate her for her relative perfection.

We’ve known each other since we still had our baby teeth. You feel a certain connection once you’ve soldiered through the gap-toothed first-grade smile, the indignity of braces, and the first root canal. (That would be me. Miss Perfect probably has no cavities.) If dental benchmarks are the measure of a friendship, then we’ll be guffawing through our dentures one of these days. She’ll probably look great in dentures, too.

I credit Lisa with shining a light on home cooking for me. When I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1998, I wasn’t much of a cook. I followed recipes to the letter. (Funny, that…) I had reasonable success in the kitchen. But I had little confidence and even less inspiration.  All that changed once I settled in Portland, thanks in part to Lisa, who had years of experience working in sophisticated restaurants, and who is a natural in the kitchen (of course).

The first time my soon-to-be-husband and I went to her house in Portland, Lisa whipped up a savory bread pudding with gruyere and rosemary for lunch. I thought it was amazing. She shrugged and said it was missing something. Soon afterward, she and her husband had us to dinner and served gingered braised lamb shanks. I was duly impressed, and also inspired. She wrote down the recipe. I made it at home. And it worked! I, too, could make delicious food in my own kitchen! There was nothing to stop me from keeping fresh ginger and balsamic vinegar on hand at all times! It was a revelation. I was off and running. Watching Lisa in the kitchen helped me recognize that good home cooking was within my reach. The countless hours I’ve since spent happily chopping and stirring have anchored me through good times and bad. Along the way, Portland became home, and cooking became a touchstone.

Sunday dinner with Lisa and her husband has been an almost-weekly event for over a decade now.  We’ve taken turns cooking for each other through celebrations and sorrows and lots of regular old Sundays. The men cook, too. It’s a family affair. The food remains good, even now that there are three young boys and an assortment of toys underfoot. Over hundreds of meals we’ve cut fingers and burned a few things and watched our kids melt down and bickered with our spouses. We’ve also eaten well and laughed a lot and shared all the generous affection an enduring friendship can offer.

For all the meals Lisa has cooked us, it’s seems odd that the first Lisa-inspired dish I’m posting is a humble side dish. But that’s okay. It’s worthy.  She made it up herself when she was in a hurry and didn’t have enough Brussels sprouts. So she stretched them with kale, slicing the whole lot into thin ribbons, chiffonade style.  Mine are probably different than hers. We never had an actual recipe exchange here. She made up the recipe, and told me what was in it. I took a stab at it.

Words cannot express how much I love this stuff. When I was down with flu and pneumonia last week, this was all I wanted to eat. I think I made it three times in one week. Maybe four. I’m not sure what it says about me that Brussels sprouts and kale are my comfort food, but that’s not important. What’s important is that you get to try yet another recipe involving Brussels sprouts. (Sorry, Jud.)

I have tried sprinkling these greens with balsamic vinegar, or a squeeze of lemon juice. Both were good. I’ve added some red pepper flakes. Also tasty. But really this dish stands on its own. It tastes like the essence of deep good greenness. It makes a great side for just about anything. Or, if you’re me, you can just eat a big bowl of it and call it dinner. Lisa reports it’s also great with radicchio.

SAUTEED KALE AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH BACON
serves four as a side dish

¼ pound thick bacon
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ pound kale (one bunch)
1 pound Brussels sprouts
1 clove garlic, minced
½ teaspoon kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
½ cup pine nuts

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook bacon, turning once, until done (about ten minutes total). Drain and chop the bacon. Pour off the bacon fat, but don’t wash the pan.

While your bacon cooks, trim the thick stems off the kale and Brussels sprouts, and chop them into strips 1/8 inch wide. You can use the chiffonade technique to speed your chopping along.

Heat olive oil in the bacon pan over medium-high heat. Add the greens and sauté, stirring occasionally, until the greens are slightly wilted, about five minutes. Add the bacon and garlic and sauté for another two minutes.

While the greens are cooking, brown the pine nuts over medium-high heat in a small, dry skillet, tossing frequently.

Salt and pepper the greens to taste, and sprinkle them with toasted pine nuts.