I love a coffee cake for breakfast. Or a piece of pie. And if there are any homemade cookies in the house, I can’t think of anything better to have with my morning cup of coffee. (If these cookies happen to be oatmeal, all the better. I rationalize it away as eating a breakfast grain first thing in the morning.)

Growing up my mom would occasionally make a coffee cake from the back of the box of Bisquick. I would wake up to the warm smell of cinnamon wafting through the air. Rolling out of bed, I sleepily made my way down the hall. On a cooling rack my breakfast would sit, its craggy streusel topping with lumps of shredded coconut peeking out. This is what probably gave me my very first sweet tooth in the morning.

As I was looking through Carole Walter’s book, Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins and More, I thought to myself, “Fantastic, an entire book of foods that are bad for you, yet taste so good.” And then I spotted the crumb bun, which was reminiscent of those streusel coffee cakes of yore. So what exactly is a crumb bun, you may be asking? They are a yeasted roll, slightly sweet, with a topping of sumptuous, crunchy streusel. They are good.

And they are time-consuming. The dough must be made the night before, and then needs to come to room temperature (about 1 1/2 hours). They need to be kneaded, formed, allowed to rise again, and then finally, baked. So these buns may not be the most ideal morning treat; they are clearly not a quick bread.

But if you are anything like me, and slightly neurotic, you will make the dough the night before and as it sits, hibernating in the refrigerator, you will go to sleep. Let me rephrase that, you will try to go to sleep. I tossed and turned all night waiting, and wanting to make those crumbs buns. Finally I just got up. At 7 o’clock AM. On a Sunday. The dough had rested nicely. I had not.

But the buns were great. Warm from the oven, yeasty, with a rich crumb, streusel abounded (although I did not use the entire recipe’s worth), and if you’re neurotic like me, they make the perfect breakfast treat.

The recipe is a bit long, but it does make a double recipe for Rich Sour Cream Dough, suitable for yeasted coffee cakes, sweet rolls, or more crumb buns. The streusel recipe makes a large serving of streusel as well. I only used half of the recipe for streusel as well, and froze the rest for other morning time treats.

Crumb Buns
adapted from Great Coffee Cakes

Rich Sour Cream Dough

4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 package active dry yeast
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Add one tablespoon of sugar and warm water to a small bowl. Sprinkle yeast over the water, do not stir, and cover the bowl with a saucer for 5 minutes. This allows the yeast to proof. Stir briefly, cover again, and let stand an additional 2-3 minutes, or until bubbly.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the flour, remaining sugar, and salt, on low speed,. Add the slightly firm butter, and mix until meal-size crumbs form. Using a fork, mix the eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and dissolved yeast. Mix on low speed until a rough dough is formed. This is a soft dough.

Place dough in a buttered bowl, lightly butter the top of the dough. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and store overnight in the refrigerator.

Streusel Topping

6-7 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts or pecans

Melt butter, and cool to tepid.

Whisk together dry ingredients, add butter. Stir with fork until mixture begins to form crumbs. Gently squeeze mixture with hand, to form larger chunks, then break them apart with with your fingertips. Before using let stand for 10-15 minutes.

Crumb Buns

1/2 recipe Rich Sour Cream Dough
1 recipe (or less) Streusel Topping
1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon water

Remove the dough from the refrigerator 1 to 1 1/2 hours before shaping.

Generously butter at 9 inch square pan. On a lightly floured surface, knead dough until smooth, 6-10 times. Divide the dough evenly into 9 pieces. Cupping your hand over each piece, continuously roll until a ball is formed. Continue doing with all the pieces.

Place the balls in the pan, evenly spaced, 3 across, and 3 down. Flatten balls slightly, they do not have to touch. Cover pan with a cloth, and let rise for an additional 45 minutes.

15 minutes before baking, position the oven rack to the bottom third of the oven, and preheat to 350 degrees.

Gently brush the top of the buns with egg wash. Sprinkle the streusel topping, lightly pressing streusel into the top of the dough. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven, placing on a rack to cool.

There are times when going out to eat can inspire great cooking at home. I went out for tapas with some friends recently. We had plates of serrano ham, thick fried potatoes with a garlicky aioli, roasted baby brussels sprouts swimming in earthy olive oil, and chewy baguettes filled with spicy tuna, and hard-cooked egg. What can I say, we feasted.

We also had a plate of roasted grapes. A fruity side dish that was definitely not my favorite dish of the evening, and I will tell you why. They were beautiful and plump, wrinkled slightly like a sigh, sitting tightly in clusters– these grapes were begging me to try them. So I did, plucking one from the bunch. And you know what? They were cold! I’m not talking slightly cool, these grapes had been sitting in the fridge for hours. Now I beg the question, if one goes through all of the trouble to roast a bunch of grapes to wrinkled perfection, wouldn’t you serve them at least slightly warm?

I am a bit finicky. I will admit to preferring my fruit unchilled. A cold apple hurts my teeth, and a melon when set to languish in the fridge, loses its summertime perfume. Having a piece of fruit that is cold is like putting a juicy snack on mute. I was irked, not enough to abandon my glass of Rioja, nor enough to decline ordering the churros (with a velvety chocolate dipping sauce) but irked none the less.

But from dissatisfaction comes resolve. I did not forget those grapes, I wanted to try them again– this time unchilled. So I purchased a bunch, doused them in olive oil, gave them a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and then roasted them in a hot oven (450 degrees) for 15-20 minutes. They were delightfully dessicated, like a raisin but better. Withered and juicy they popped in your mouth. I continued my savory experiment by using my new grape/raisins in a winter salad.

Fried capers, curls of Parmesan cheese, torn and toasted bits of bread were nestled cozily in a bed of sprightly arugula and topped with roasted grapes. It was the perfect mix of salty and sweet. And the grapes were just as I wanted them to be– wrinkled and warm.

Sometimes you just get a certain food stuck in your head, or maybe it is more apt to say, stuck in your stomach. Like a nagging craving, the flavor is gnawing at you like a dog gnaws on a prized bone. I have always been one to give into these cravings. I figure, if your body is crying out for precious food– give it what it wants! This is of course assuming that what your body is crying out for is not an entire pint of Fudge Ripple ice cream or a large, oozy pizza, extra anchovies.

I have been thinking a lot about beets lately, in all of their many incarnations. Roasted, steamed, boiled, sauteed, or shredded. Beets have become my Fudge Ripple ice cream. I know, I know, you’re probably saying, “Beets? Beets? Come on, you have got to be kidding me. Now this girl is going to wax poetic about the beauty of beets?” And to this I have only one comment to make– wax on.

I was at the farmers’ market recently, with a few moments to kill before I had to be at work. The day was blustery, the trees barren, the ground damp from the chilling rain of the night before. The market was dead. Many of the vendors had taken the morning off, due to the inclement weather. There was a table of the requisite apples/apple stuff (cider, dried apple rings, apple cake), a pathetic table of onions, a few winter squash, and the largest head of cabbage, with the droopiest leaves I had seen in quite some time. There was honey, lots of honey, and there was a lone table of fresh pasta. Amidst piles of durum wheat penne, and semolina angel hair, there were a few containers of beet fettucine.

Now I’m not usually big on colored pasta. They can be so… 80′s. I can still taste the tri-color pasta corkscrew salad, with sundried tomatoes, sliced black olives, drenched in Wishbone dressing. Come on, I know that you remember them too. But this fresh fettucine was lovely to look at, a dusty magenta, smooth, and soft. And besides, it was beet, how bad could it be?

I bought some, and brought it home for dinner that night. When boiled it shirked the fine coating of dusty flour, and turned deeply garnet. I grated a few beets (and have the finger-stained evidence to prove it), and sauteed slowly until tender with a few sprigs of fragrant rosemary. I browned a few tablespoon of butter in a separate pan, and added a small handful of poppyseeds, then added the butter to the beets. A quick toss with the pasta, and a very pink dinner was ready.

Eating this pasta, was rather like eating in the dark. Pink on pink, I couldn’t really see what I was eating, but I surely could taste and feel it. The sweetness of the fresh beets, the crunchy nuttiness of the poppy seeds, and the piney scent of the rosemary–my all pink supper did just the trick to satisfy a relentless craving.

Did everyone have a pleasant, gluttonous holiday? Good. I don’t know about you, but each year come January, I am so ready to get back to my real life. I am ready to kiss those candy canes goodbye. Ready to extinguish those chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Ready to blow off those powdered sugar cookies. Is anyone with me?

As excited as I become to ring in the holiday season, I think that if I see another Bûche de Noël I just might have to toss it into the fireplace. (She says with a bah-humbug!) I am ready to go back to the daily, winter grind: obsessively checking the weather forecast for signs of snow, piling on layer after layer of woolen winter clothes, and slowly exhaling warm air hoping to catch a glimpse of my breath. And the food– there is always the food.

This year, I just might have a new favorite– the polenta fry. Or maybe I should call it, the polenta bake, since there really is no frying to speak of…but fry is somehow a catchier word. I have never much been one for New Year’s resolutions. But for many, after an indulgent holiday season eating a fried anything is too much to bear. So…enter these lovelies.

They couldn’t be more delicious. Simply make a recipe of polenta, then pour the molten carbohydrate into a pan, either 8-inch square, or slightly larger, to cool. When polenta is cool, what you will have is one giant mass, ready to cut. Slice this into manageable fry-size portions, place on a Silpat, or parchment-lined baking sheet, brush with olive oil, then bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.

If you are anything like me, and have difficulty leaving well enough alone, pile the fries high, and dust with Parmesan cheese and fried sage leaves. So I guess I made a baked fry, then slathered my “healthy” alternative with a fried herb. Well, we can’t be good all the time, can we?

Before Brian became my husband, he was my forever boyfriend. No, he was not my high school sweetheart, but I did meet him when I was still in college. So, he robbed/saved me from regaling you with horrific dating stories, of scrambling around trying to find a date for some holiday party or another. But I do have one.

I was 18, had just moved out from under my parents roof, and I had my first real, honest-to-goodness boyfriend. A Frenchmen we’ll call M. With a penchant for fast-talking, heavy black framed glasses, and a haircut like Tin Tin, M was the man of my post-adolescent dreams. We met on the subway, and a romance was quickly born. We lasted a handful of months, one of which was December, that month of candy canes, egg nog, and holiday parties.

I brought M home with me to attend a family holiday party. He got out of the car, snuffing out his Gauloises cigarette, in skinny, scuffed suede pants, and smelling faintly of sweat (although I’m not sure why, he was not in the slightest bit athletic). My parents were gracious enough, and welcoming of course, but I think they were shocked to see their youngest’s paramour.

Now watch this segue…

Yes, dates (the non-edible kind) can be tough around the holidays, while dates (the edible sort this time around) can be a perfect holiday match made in buffet heaven. The dulcet sweetness of an innocent-looking, knobby, brown fruit pairs so well with salty foods. I have eaten them all sorts of ways: stuffed with goat cheese, or wrapped in bacon, or stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in bacon. But I had never eaten them prepared in these perfect little holiday packages.

A few simple ingredients: salted roast peanuts, paper thin prosciutto slices, and plump dates, all rolled into a savory packet. Pit the dates, then stuff them with a few salty peanuts. Roll each date in a portion of prosciutto, securing them with a toothpick. Then into a lightly greased pan they go, to crisp up the ham. When finished the prosciutto crackles, the dates are warm and sumptuous, and the peanut offers the slightest bit of salty resistance. Now that is what I call a fine holiday hors d’oeuvres!

Go ahead and bring these dates, along with your date to your next holiday party. (Suede pants optional.) Have a lovely holiday season!

Do you remember eating grapefruit as the starter at a savory dinner party? I do. It must have been an early 80′s things to do. Or maybe it was a late 70′s thing, and my mom was simply holding on to a remnant of the past (sorry, mom!). Anyhow, I loved it. It seemed so grown-up and glamorous, to eat a grapefruit instead of a standard old green salad in preparation for the rest of the meal.

To my young palate eating a piece of fruit for the first course was equivalent to the excitement that I felt when a small dish of sorbet was set down in front of me as a palate cleanser during my first dinner at French restaurant. Ice cream! In the middle of my meal? I could get used to this whole fine dining thing! Well, it’s been years since I ate a grapefruit as a first course, but come winter, I eat a grapefruit virtually everyday.

The Ruby Red is my favorite. That shock of pink flesh, the sweet-tart pungency, it gets me salivating every time. Usually I eat it simply, with just a touch of brown sugar crystals melting ever so slightly on the top. But when I have a moment to spare on a blustery weekend, it becomes all about the brulee.

So easy, it’s hardly a recipe; but I have to share anyway. Cut your grapefruit anyway you like, I use my handy-dandy, dual-sided grapefruit knife, with the curved blade (whew, how’s that for a mouthful). Then encrust the surface of the fruit with brown sugar, a bit more than a sprinkling. Pop the halves under the broiler for a few minutes, just until the grapefruit is beginning to brown. And there you have it.

The sugar seeps into the fruit, making a perfume-y, subtly sweet concoction. The grapefruit is warm and juicy, the perfect accent to a weekend breakfast, to be enjoyed while lazing around in you warmest pajamas. They may not be the grapefruits of yore, accented with bright maraschino cherries, and served chilled, in a cut-glass bowl, but somehow I think that this will still do the trick.

Who has eaten a real pumpkin? Not the kind that come already pureed in a can, and not the pre-made, pumpkin pie filling. Well, I hadn’t. Pumpkin seeds, I was all over. Butternut squash I can roast with the best of them. And let’s just say, I get a kick out of kabocha. But pumpkin, I had never had the joy of making.

Pumpkins had always been too round, too cumbersome, too heavy to negotiate all on their own. I would have visions of me as Sweeney Todd, wielding my kitchen cleaver to hack a whole pumpkin to smithereens, in the hopes of obtaining one salvageable wedge to roast. I read a lot of British cookbooks, and thumb through the occasional British food magazine, and they are always using pumpkin in its various forms. But do they expect me to hack up the whole squash as well? I might be into the Slow Food Movement, but come on, even I require some amount of accessibility in the foods that I prepare.

But then I saw them at a produce market. Like someone’s busted Jack O’Lantern, shrink wrapped, and piled high, just in time for the holiday season– wedges of pumpkin, ready for roasting. So I brought one home.

Roasted very simply until soft, with pinches of salt and pepper, and a glug of olive oil, this pumpkin was an altogether different sort of squash. I drizzled the roasted wedge with a balsamic reduction, and gave it a healthy sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds. It was delicious! The pumpkin was unlike any other squash, as it had a soft webbing, like spaghetti, of intricate flesh. It was subtle and sweet, warm and delightful.

Who’s to say if I would ever get violent with my own complete pumpkin in order to cut it into wedges, but I will definitely keep on the lookout for sizable pieces at my produce market again. I hope you will too.

Awhile back I bought this book. At the time, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I was at The Strand, which in my opinion, does not have 18 miles of books. It seems to me they might have 1 mile of books, and what makes up the other 17 miles are repeats and remainders. But 1 mile of books is still a hefty sum. So Brian and I went to the bookstore and split up accordingly– he goes to philosophy and music, and I go to cooking and fiction. So I’m browsing, and I pick up The Big Book of Casseroles.

I thought to myself, as I thumbed through the recipes, I’m American, I should know a thing or two about casseroles. I have a Pyrex pan, an oven. I like rice; I’ve been known to eat elbow macaroni. I don’t really come from casserole people, my family is Jewish, but there is no reason not to give this casserole thing a try. And the book is quite large, 310 pages of rib-sticking recipes. I am bound to find something that I like.

So I brought this book home, and it just sat there, occupying precious shelf space. I would look at is occasionally and wonder: what was I thinking? Beef Strips with Mushroom and Artichokes just doesn’t sound that appetizing. And no, I am not tempted by Salmon Loaf. I had made an impulse purchase. But determined to give this book a shot, I finally decided on this recipe.

New Potato and Blue Cheese Pie. Sounds simple and wholesome, and it was, but the recipe definitely needed tweaking. Made in a pie plate (hence the name) this dish was like a potato gratin sprinkled with blue cheese. If the recipe was followed exactly, I would have had my warm and bubbly potato pie in 45 minutes using just 1/2 cup of chicken stock and baking at 350 degrees. What I got was neither warm not bubbly; it was pale and crunchy. The potatoes didn’t brown, they remained crisp, and the cheese had hardly melted.

To save my dinner side dish I had to raise the heat to 400 degrees, add about 1/3 cup more chicken broth, and wait another 20 minutes. And then the dish was okay, not terrific, but fine. The cheese that had been nestled under the top layer of potatoes had melted to a pleasant blue mess, and the potatoes baked into a dense, crisp mass. Weren’t casseroles supposed to be easy, not stress inducing? Maybe the Beef Strips with Mushroom and Artichokes is the way to go after all.

Dear readers, I’m sure you are getting ready, as am I, for a holiday full of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. But let’s not forget about Thanksgiving’s most maligned side dish, the jello salad. Probably not eaten at Plymouth Rock, but neither were those bubbling casseroles of yams topped with marshmallows, the jello salad is worthy of inclusion in this festive meal. Here’s a post from 2005, detailing one unique variety of the dish. Happy Thanksgiving!

I am a Thanksgiving traditionalist. I don’t like anything fantastical at my feasts, and I come from a long line of traditionalists. Parsnip-Potato Puree may be scrumptious any other day of the year, but on Turkey Day it has to be pure– Russet Potatoes mashed with milk and butter and slathered in homemade turkey gravy. For me a ginger-lime rub on the turkey would be sacrilege, I’ll take butter anyday, and I’m getting racy if I add some bourbon to the sweet potatoes. For one day a year I forget about haute cuisine, and it’s true Americana at my house.

But this year I borrowed from another family’s tradition and made the weird and wonderful Layered Raspberry Jello Salad. Salty, sweet, and pungent, this is a bizarre trio of flavors– raspberry jello with whole raspberries, Cool Whip, mixed with cream cheese, all plunked on top of a crust of salted, crushed pretzel sticks and butter. Mmmm.

First let me say, I am not one of those people who is ga-ga for jello. It all seems a little strange to me; a clear concoction of sweetened fruit is an alien invention– just eat a piece of fruit. Mixing the cream cheese with the confectioner’s sugar, and blending it with the whipped topping, made my stomach turn, but the layering process was a thing of beauty. Neatly wedged into a clear Pyrex baking dish, then plunked in the refrigerator to set, this quivering mass of white trash goodness came out only hours later and made me giggle with glee. The holiday season had arrived!

What makes this “salad” even more of an anomaly, is that the recipe doesn’t even come from a typical American family. My sister had a roommate in college who was first generation American, much of her family is still in Italy, and scattered around the world. They had a huge Thanksgiving feast, replete with an American-style turkey, and many Italian side dishes. They always ate early in the day, and my sister and I would stop by to wish them a happy Thanksgiving before our own feast began. We would bring some fudge that my mother had made the night before, and in return we would get a plate of Italian cookies, and a little dish of Raspberry Layer Salad for my sister and I to share. We loved the stuff!

Those Thanksgivings have passed. It had been years since I had tasted the jello salad, but I thought of it each November, as I was buying up my yams, and sorting through mounds of brussel sprouts. So this year I decided to make it, and it was almost as good as I remembered. It was a little too strange for some people at our Thanksgiving dinner, and that’s fine. They don’t know what they are missing.

At the market last week, I just about stopped dead in my tracks. There each one was, assembled in such close proximity that I almost couldn’t bear it. Check out the loveliness of the following: Fuyu persimmons, Satsuma mandarins, and Belgian endive.

If I were Martha Stewart, hostess extraordinaire, queen of all good things, CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire, and owner of several palatial estates along the East Coast, I know what I would have done. I would have bought a basket full of these stunning edibles, arranged them beautifully on one of my 12 foot long, maple dining tables, careful to hide all of their bruises and imperfections, and had a stunning centerpiece to enjoy for the few days that the produce remained rosy.

But let’s get real. Martha may be great, but she can also be a tad, well… unrealistic. I live in New York City, in a tiny one bedroom apartment, with a three foot square Ikea dining table, and as lofty as my aspirations may be for autumnal, perishable centerpieces, my stomach always gets the best of me. I guess I am just too human to be a marvelous homemaker.

I bought a handful of Satsumas, a few crisp, ripe persimmons, and an endive that went solemnly into the fridge. Sure I enjoyed the fruit for a day, sitting in my fruit bowl, I glanced at their day-glo beauty as I carried on with my days activities. But soon the fruit beckoned to me, and it told me it wanted to play with that lonely endive in the fridge.

And play they did, quite beautifully, together on the chartreuse salad plate. I love a salad with fruit, not a fruit salad mind you (though they are stupendous as well), but a salad that has the mystical interplay between sweet and savory, and that is what this salad had. Crisp leaves of endive were plucked, but left intact; puckery, first-of-the-season mandarins; and smooth, slippery, peeled persimmons; were assembled on a plate. Sprinkled with crumbles of salty blue cheese, then drizzled with a simple vinaigrette to heighten the salty-sweet advantage, and my salad was ready.

For the moments that the salad sat resting while I tore off a hunk of bread to go with my meal, it was truly lovely. I could even imagine Martha saying it was, “Bee-yoo-tiful!” But then I ate it, my stomach gurgled pleasantly, and I have to say, my lunch was pretty beautiful too.