My First Time With a Blondie

Anyone who knows me knows I love a tasty homemade baked good. Scones, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cakes infused with Guinness — these are a few of my favorite things. The thing is, I like making treats almost as much I like consuming them. I like to believe it's because I'm a Cancer and we love food and we love to nurture, therefore, nurturing with food is like the perfect storm of deliciousness. Sick? Chicken soup with dill and parsnips, pronto! Tired? Something chocolately, quick! Cold? Some sort of cheesy carbohydrate, stat! Heartbroken? Xanax Pie! Just kidding. Ish.

Anyway, last night I was freezing and under a slew of comforters reading a great book (review to come soon!) and I could just not get tired. Eleven PM rolled around and I felt I could still turn cartwheels around my abode. The frigidity of my apartment conjured in my brain images of warm things: Hot chocolate. Fires. S'mores. I needed to bake!

Now the thing about my kitchen (and two great bakers live chez moi) is that we are always lacking one of the ingredients needed for whichever recipe we're trying to make. We're always short just one tablespoon of butter (and lord knows you can skimp on the beurre), or our eggs just expired last week, or the only milk we've got around is organic triple soy delight (this does not lend itself to the sort of decadent delicacies I desire.) But last night? Friends, we had it all. The stars had aligned, and so had our chocolate chips. I prepared to make my staple: Cookies with three types of chips — white chocolate, butterscotch and milk chocolate. But visions of swapping trays and juggling various batches of dough pained me. I wanted, if possible, to make ONE BIG COOKIE so I didn't have to scoop out five-dozen little diddies.

And then it hit me: BLONDIES! I LOVE Blondies, but I've never made them. And I've always wanted to! And they are basically one big cookie! One big, buttery brick of cookieness. By the way, I just adore biting into Blondies: the firm, sweet coolness and occasional texture of chocolate chip really does it for me. Thank you, Google Gods, and thank you, foodnetwork.com for this fabulous recipe. They turned out well (see above).

This morning, I had two of the suckers for breakfast. I figured they're basically muffins, just more square and flat.

The Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
  
• 1 cup unsalted butter [this is two sticks]
  
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• About 1 1/2 cups butterscotch, semisweet chocolate, peanut butter, or white chocolate chips, optional [I used butterscotch and both white and milk chocolate chips]
  

The Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish.

Put the sugar in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a small skillet or in the microwave in a glass measuring cup. Stir the butter into the sugar until smooth, cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, in another medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

Beat the eggs and vanilla into the sugar mixture. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time and mix until a smooth thick batter forms. Fold in the chips, as desired.

Spoon the batter to the prepared dish and spread to evenly fill the dish. Bake until the blondies are light brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Invert onto a rack and cool completely. Cut into squares and serve. Eat for breakfast, with a glass of milk.

Risottos Are Red

This weekend I visited my dearest Alison in our nation's capital. She and I are both social and foodie sorts, so as often as possible we combine these two passions for fêtes avec food. True to form, this weekend we threw a small dinner party. For company, we had what Alison's adorable 15-year-old brother deemed "a smart group." And it's true that the conversation never disappointed (especially when we went around the room and each announced how many times we'd been in love. Try that the next time you're in a group that includes some perfect strangers and some newish couples.)

As for the FOOD: Alison whipped up a succulent concoction of chicken legs, prunes, white wine, olives, and almonds. She'd let those bird gams marinate for hours and hours and oh my, were they delicious for it. We also put out several types of cheese (thanks Prateek!), numerous bottles of wine, Alison's Glorious Chocolate Chip Cookies, and an impromptu Swiss Chard Bruschetta (again, thanks Prateek!). Given my proclivity for all things red and all things carbohydrate and all things vino, I found a nice little Red Wine Risotto With Peas recipe, courtesy of she-of-the-heaving-bosom, Giada De Laurentiss. The crowd seemed to love the dish (owing, perhaps, to the rainy weather, the wine they had already consumed, and the few extra shakes of Syrah and fromage I added to the serving bowl at the last minute.) Anyway, fellow rice-lovers, you can find the recipe below [with my comments]. It works with white wine, as well. We're also considering a version with mushrooms and Guinness. You want an invite to that gathering, now don't you?

(It's also important to note that we managed to consume as many bottles of wine as there were people in attendance. I now think this is a great formula to use when judging the success of a dinner party.)








The Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups canned low-salt chicken broth [we used organic vegetable broth, in case vegetarians arrived]
  
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
  
• 1 cup finely chopped onion [this is about one onion]
  
• 2 garlic cloves, minced [we chopped them roughly and by hand, as Alison's garlic press failed to press garlic but succeeded in resembling an 18th century torture device]
  
• 1 cup arborio rice, or medium-grain white rice
• 1/2 cup dry red wine [slosh on some extra at the end, for good measure — what good's a recipe when all the alcohol's been cooked off?]
  
• 1/3 cup frozen peas, defrosted, optional
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, plus additional for garnish
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

The Directions

Bring the broth to a simmer over medium-high heat. Cover the broth and keep it warm over very low heat.

Melt the butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Stir in the rice and cook for about 2 minutes until the rice is toasted. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed, about 1 minute. Add 3/4 cup of hot broth; simmer over medium-low heat until the liquid is absorbed, stirring often, about 6 minutes. Repeat, adding 3/4 cup of hot broth 2 more times, stirring often, about 12 minutes longer. At this point, the risotto can be made 4 hours ahead. Refrigerate the risotto (the rice will still be firm) and remaining broth, uncovered, until cool, then cover and keep them refrigerated until ready to proceed.

[I recommend that you DON'T leave the risotto to "simmer" while you enjoy a glass of red and some cheese in the other room. Get a good friend to keep you company while you stir, and do stir constantly.]

Bring the remaining broth to a simmer, then cover and keep it warm over very low heat. Stir 3/4 cup of hot broth into the partially cooked risotto over medium heat until the broth is absorbed and the risotto is hot, about 3 minutes. Add the remaining broth and simmer until the rice is just tender and the mixture is creamy, about 5 minutes longer. Stir in the peas and parsley. Add the 1/2 cup of Parmesan. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Spoon the risotto into bowls. Sprinkle [loads of] additional cheese over and serve.

Lighting a Literary Spark Under Your Derrières

I have always wanted to write a novel. In college, I even bought myself a greeting card that read, "You are fabulous! One day you will write a novel!" (Totes pathetic?) Well, I did crank out a 100-page novella senior year, but since then the only fiction I've written is a bunch of love letters that my ex unceremoniously sent back to me in a shoe box (to my office, on his company's dime, but that's neither here nor there.) The point of all this is rambling is that I've found something wonderful: It turns out November is National Novel Writing Month, and there is a whole web-site dedicated to getting you, YES YOU, to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight on November 30th. Sign up at NaNoWriMo, and take the next week to brainstorm some loose ideas. Then, log in regularly to update your word-count. I did the math (amazing, I know) and 50,000 words is about 175 pages, which breaks down to 5.83(repeating) pages per day. You can totes do that! I know I'm gonna....

Bonjour!

I've decided to jump on the blog bandwagon. Nevermind that I might be, literally, the last lass on Earth to creative a blog for herself. I've decided to call mine Too Many Truffles, after a lovely Colette quote: “If I can’t have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles." Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, a slightly trollopy French femme (she managed to have an affair with her stepson, not to mention a slew of women), wrote sexy, feminist tomes in the early 1900s. Besides the numerous love affairs, she's best known for Gigi and The Vagabond. I dig her sass, her joie de vivre, and her devil-may-care rakishness. Excess — in books, travel, food, love or expression — can't be all that bad. So my motto for this site? Never be afraid to eat too many truffles (as long as you're willing to do too many sit-ups!)