Every Tuesday we'll welcome an Author who will share a foodie type post
with a recipe or two and some book promo !
Today please help me welcome LE Franks...
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Cookies versus Pie.
The debate is raging on over on my Facebook Page. It was an
innocent enough question… I honestly couldn’t decide what recipe to showcase
here. The Beef and Stout pie a little heavier, better for the early spring
weather (though the weather seems to be holding steady on the damp and chilly
side over much of the US, so it could still work well), or my outrageously
popular Espresso Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie. Nothing lowly about that one…
but is it too pedestrian? Dull? Unexciting for a food blog?
Trying to explain why someone might pick the pie over the
cookie – or visa versa – I inadvertently stumbled across parts of my own
history that I’d forgotten about. First, you must understand that if I have a
deep-seated psychological anything, it’s
the need to feed people.
Some of my earliest memories are cooking for my family. At
the age of seven or eight I “invented” chicken cacciatore by covering chicken
breasts in tomato sauce with sliced carrots and black olives (and probably no
other seasoning) and sliding them in a hot oven to bake.
On the weekends I’d hang out in the kitchen with my father and
chew on roasted coffee beans while he cursed at the manual coffee grinder. I’d
wait for the coffee to finish dripping so he could have that first cup before
moving on to the pancake production together.
And by the time I was in high school I was cooking for my
friends.
(There is nothing quite like eating Chicken Chow Mein under
the setting sun, standing around the back of a VW van in the middle of the
Mojave desert.)
So as the discussion continues online, I realize that this
cookie recipe has become more than a bake sale bestseller. It’s been with me
for almost as long as some of my best friends, and by riffing on an old standby
like the oatmeal cookie I’ve inadvertently transformed it into the lubrication
that eases the way to forging new relationships and business opportunities
alike. (After including these cookies in a lunch spread for an Indy film shoot
in Golden Gate Park, I was hired to do the rest of their location catering,
provided the cookies were part of every meal.)
Apparently espresso powder is a magic elixir elevating the
flavors of brown sugar and cinnamon. The fact that I booted raisins from the
recipe, replacing them with chocolate long ago, doesn’t hurt a bit.
On the other hand, the Beef and Stout Pie, while a newer
addition to my repertoire, managed to cement my status as family chef with my stepmother-to-be
and give us something in common—the love of my food… Trust me, that was a
surprise and a gift; and like most of my best recipes, its success comes from
fiddling with what’s already there.
By stripping out all the unnecessary vegetables from what is
essentially a beef stew recipe and replacing the pedestrian mirepoix with
deeply caramelized onions, finely minced rosemary, and enough crushed black
pepper and sea salt to stand up to the intense flavor of the beer that
everything is cooked in, we have a deeply satisfying dish, mellowed with the
addition of extra sharp white cheddar.
Baking it in a pie shell that falls somewhere between a fine
piecrust and puff pastry, you have a filling dish with a siren call capable of
causing many a soul to flirt with disaster from repeated visits to the pie
plate.
So where do we go from here? I’m cutting off the debate
later tonight so I suppose the recipe you see next will tell you which way the
poll went. But as for me, the only advice I can really give is this—go play
with your food. - LE
ESPRESSO OATMEAL
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
Preheat Oven 350 degrees – back 8 – 10 minutes
Creamed Together:
¾ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup granulate sugar
1 to ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 to 2 T. instant espresso powder
1 tsp. salt*
½ tsp. baking soda*
Wet:
1 egg
¼ cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Dry:
1 cup flour
3 cups rolled oats
1 bag chocolate chips
Chopped walnuts (optional)
Directions:
Step One: If you don’t have a stand mixer make sure
your butter is softened to make mixing easier. Otherwise I just toss it in and
let the mixer run for a few minutes until the butter is softened enough to add
the sugar, mixing for several minutes until the mixture is well incorporated
and appears pale and fluffy.
Step Two:*
Frankly I veer off a little at this
point from traditional cookie directions. I prefer to add the salt, sifted
baking soda, cinnamon, and espresso powder in the creamed butter. The butter is
the perfect vehicle to evenly disburse the espresso & spices throughout the
cookie on one hand, and avoid soda clumps and over salting on the other. So
toss them all in now and mix until incorporated.
Step Three: In with the rest of the wet ingredients… first
the egg – make sure it’s well incorporated with the butter sugar mixture before
adding in the liquids (water and vanilla) which will turn this into a slurry.
Butter and water don’t mix any better than oil and water so don’t go crazy… you
just want a fairly consistent mixture in preparation for finishing the cookie
dough.
Step Four: Add in the flour and at the very lowest setting. Incorporate
the flour until barely mixed—6 or 7 short bursts.
This is where you kill your cookie. Water is now slow
dancing with the gluten in the flour and given half a chance it will want to
make bread. In the absence of candles and wine [otherwise known as yeast] it
becomes tense. And a tense gluten is
a tough cookie, which is only appreciated in film noir.
Step Four
continued: Now comes the fun part.
Dump the oatmeal in the mixer a cup at a time using the same short burst method
(3 or 4 bursts between cups). Upend the
chocolate into the bowl next, as well as any nuts, and finish off the mixing
(more short bursts, but you’ve gotten the hang of it now) until it barely hangs
together.
I use a professional spatula to scrape down the sides of the
bowl at each stage (engines off, please) and once everything is incorporated I
try and run it along the bottom to incorporate anything loose down there.
Baking. You’ve made cookies right? These are no
different. Know your oven, watch your cookies…. Put them on a parchment covered
cookie sheet using any method you prefer – ice cream scoop, dual spoons, great
heaping fistfuls… they all work, they all take varying baking times so do a
small test batch first. I prefer a small ice cream scoop, which makes fairly consistent
balls that I flatten slightly with the wetted bottom of a juice glass. I prefer a slightly softer cookie so mine
usually take no more than 8-9 minutes.
This recipe doubles beautifully. Sometimes I dip them in
melted chocolate like I did for the film crew.
You never know what you’ll get offered once you hand these bad boys out.
Good Luck. May The Cookie Be With You. – LE Franks
Bio:
LE
Franks is a author of Gay Romance fiction, living in the SF Bay Area surrounded
by inspiration; and after years of ignoring the voices in her head, she’s now
giving them free reign in the form of her characters.
Bestselling author Published through MLR Press, Dreamspinner
Press, WildeCity Press, finalist for the 2013 Rainbow Awards,
Titles:
Can This Be Real – 2014 MLR Press
Last First Kiss – Grand Adventures Anthology – 2014
Dreamspinner Press
6 Days to Valentine – 2014 WildeCity Press
Snow Globe – 2013 Dreamspinner Press
Prodigal Wolf, co-written with Sara York – 2013 MLR Press
You can find LE Franks here:
Can This Be Real – LE Franks
Release date April 25, 2014 – MLR Press
Blurb:
Chef Christian De Guisse can’t trust a man who doesn’t love
his food, Detective Andrew Simmons won’t let any man close who thinks he’s
broken—somewhere between these two points, love is possible, but only if they
get real.
When Chef Christian De Guisse accidently outs Celebrity Chef
Jordan Slayer during a fight in front of The Times entertainment reporter—it
only gets Christian ex-boyfriend status and a one-way plane ticket to culinary
exile in Oregon. But a fortuitous meeting with Detective Andrew Simmons at the
Portland airport keeps De Guisse and his collection of exotic herbs out of the
hands of homeland security, starting the chemistry simmering between them.
Andy isn’t much of a foodie and for a chef who communicates
love through his cooking this may be one hurdle too high.
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