This past week, we celebrated Spring Break. In that spirit, though we never left Chicago, Jacob and I switched our morning coffee routine to strictly stovetop esspresso maker and pulled stools up to the kitchen counter to eat, and felt strikingly "depayses" in our own home. We rode bikes in the drizzly grey city, immersed ourselves in authentic Austrian goodness at Julius Meinl, and spent evenings in book stores dreaming up new schemes, made a string of pizzas with friends, and piled stacks of blueberry pancakes on a cake stand for my sister's college girlfriends post sleepover.

AND, I got a bob, a bicycle, and a new blue dress.
(Surely a triptych of these life-brightening novelties is in order. Stay tuned.)

Meanwhile, I must make note of a couple of the week's lessons.

Wednesday I learned that lemon-glazed madeleines are heaven (I don't know if I'll ever make them any other way but Mr Leibowitz'). The aforementioned college girlfriends ate them all up despite their initial declarations of fullness from a trip to Letizia's Natural Bakery.

On Saturday, I discovered the granola recipe that may put my old recipe out of commission, (thank you once again, Molly.) Step aside wheat-germ.

There, just when you think you know a thing. You make your own neighborhood a getaway and cross off two of your sworn-favorite recipes.

...comme une madeleine.

I know, that was a mean trick, posting those 2 photos all alone with no words and no recipes.


Rediscovering the Madeleine, when I think about it, makes me want to cry. They're a childhood treat I had all but forgotten about until one day, at *$ of all places, there they were, two little ones of them, for a whole two dollars and twenty-five cents. I switched my order from an americano to hot chocolate and lost myself in memories of rainy afternoons in Paris. I must have been pretty cute, actually--as a kid that is--in my navy wool coat and little leather mary janes. I think my hair was usually primly half-ponied (thanks for keeping things classic, Mom), a refreshing sight in the reverse chronology of my hair history. I never had the head shape to pull off that pixie cropped and dyed black look. Anyway, the sweet reminded me of home, and of my current semi-transplantedness, despite being small and dry and not at all like a real Madeleine. It was a mean trick for corporate coffee to play on a girl so susceptible to childhood melancholy, and I fell for it.

Last spring I discovered there had been this reasonably authentic looking Madeleine recipe slumbering in my copy of The Paris Cookbook for, like, three years. It was time to have a madeleine pan imported (never mind their ubiquity in US retail stores). My dear friend Kate was on her way to Paris and I carefully described to her how to find the infamous E. Dehillerin.

Then I got caught up in wedding flurry and forgot all about the pan until one of those delicious August vacation days when I made my first batch, alternating forces with Jacob to beat the eggs and sugar (we didn't have our stand mixer yet). They were perfect, and somehow, now that I have Baby Kitchen Aid (when I got home from the store with the machine, Jacob, who must have been more excited than I thought, had created an impressive "WELCOME HOME BABY KITCHEN AID!" sign.) I still beat the eggs by hand with a whisk. Nostalgia.

This is Patricia Well's recipe with a few mods. You'll get 1 dozen golden goodies the length of my index finger (2 1/2 inches) from this recipe.

2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
zest of 1 lemon
splash of vanilla extract
3/4 cups a-p flour
1/8 tsp salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted & cooled
Butter your madeleine pans, dust them with flour and pop them in the freezer.

Whisk together your eggs and sugar until thick and lemony hued. Add the zest, then flour and sea salt, and finally the butter, stirring.

Chill for an hour, and heat the oven to 375. Fill the madeleine molds to nearly full and bake until they're just browning on the edges and the tops are golden yellow. Tap onto a rack to cool, and make yourself some hot chocolate for reminiscing...

So, the whole story is, that when I made these a couple of weeks ago for my long long time friend Elizabeth's suprise birthday, I also made a lemon meringue tart that was a total fiasco, especially since another friend piped in mid-serve and slicing, as I was chirping away about how I made all these lemon treats because I know how much Beth loves all things lemon, with a terrible, "but Beth, I thought you didn't like lemon!" He was right. I was humiliated. I mean, people get Beth and I confused we're so close (or is that because we supposedly look alike?). Trauma.

I'm back now. I'm going to tell you soon about my other love from the aforementioned cookbook. Walnut bread. But be patient, I'm new to bread.

Chut!

For Emily G.

Snow, Pigs, and Pistachios: A Recipe for Granola

Today is one of those winter days when the safest thing is to keep quiet and stay busy. It's not so much a matter of making the pesky-little-sibling-like sky think you don't care that it's dumping another layer of snow on you, as it is of ignoring it to preserve your dignity because your boyfriend just broke up with you and if you utter a word in protest of this latest precipitation, you'll burst into tears and never stop crying. Today the cold inhospitable outdoors are breaking my heart.

So I prescribed myself a little culinary cure. I really recommend trying this. If you don't work from home like I do, try it on Saturday. If the winter's got you down, trust me, you'll feel better.

My granola recipe is the result of a brief stint as a granola baker for a local Chicago bakery. When I hopped into the job on a whim, they had recently begun receiving orders from area Whole Foods grocery stores and had simultaneously lost their granola baker. It was fine at first, actually it was therapy. I loved stirring the dry oat and nut mixture the feeling of being up to my elbows in simple grains and nuts. I reveled in this new world I'd been plopped into, sharing a kitchen with a hot-to-trot mixologist and a post-comfort food afficionado (they were busy kicking off one of Chicago's latest flocking spots, and the bakery just happened to share their kitchen space), so come 2PM my granola pan found itself sharing a work station with whole piglets being chopped open and prepped for roasting (really, you wouldn't believe it, within inches of my vegan baking, bits of pork were flying everywhere), and I found myself sampling rhubarb infused concoctions. The lessons in animal anatomy and daily aternoon buzzes didn't keep me from tiring of the weird cramps I got in my hands after a day of mixing. I was offered a position as a pastry assistant and moved on.

But in the three weeks I was baking granola, following the same recipe batch after batch after batch, I had time to dream up a lot of my own ideas. So when my initial I'm-never-ever-touching-granola-again-with-a-ten-foot-pole feelings wore away (somehow they had gotten that strong), and my husband was threatening to go out and buy a bag of the stuff I used to make for the bakery, I thunked my favorite new gigantic pottery bowl onto the counter and got to work, magazines and cook books open for my consultation on every available surface, I set out to create my new favorite granola.

It had to be chunky and crunchy. It needed to have a little well-whattta-ya-know to it, and the batch needed to fill my big glass jar. I tried a few versions, with maple, with hazelnuts. They were good, but not great. I got tired of granola, and took a break for awhile.



Having decided to stay busy, today seemed like a day for finishing touches to delinquent projects. Pistachios in granola, for instance. And cardamom . Here's what happened:

Granola
You'll need 2 baking sheets for this, lined with parchment paper. (If you're a newbie at this stuff as it would appear I was an hour ago, don't confuse wax and parchment paper. I knew they weren't the same and now I know why. Enough said.)

Turn your oven to 350.

In a large bowl, toss together:

6 heaping cups old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
3/4 cup raw slivered almonds (coarsely chopped)
1 1/4 cup raw pistachio nutmeats (coarsely chopped)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 /2 cup brown sugar

sprinkle with the following and toss again:
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp salt

pour over the top and mix well:

1/2 cup canola oil (I use expeller pressed)
a little less than 1 cup clover honey (or other mild honey)

Spread onto prepared baking sheets and bake, rotating and stirring every 20 mins or so until the granola is a golden caramelly brown. I think about an hour.

Set the baking sheets on racks until completely cool. Transfer granola to an airtight container, breaking it up a little.

Drop a handful over a little vanilla kefir and let it snow.

I made some edits to cut the sweetness, and corrected the amount of oil, sorry if you tried it and found it too something or other.

More.

I promise you there is nothing better than sitting with your Monday afternoon coffee and the memory of the cinnamon rolls your husband scratched up from the pantry on Sunday. (Never mind that he got to the mailbox and the March issue of bon appetit before you did and claimed the recipe.)

ps. Molly Wizenberg's column has been a hit at our house since it debuted last month-- thanks Molly!

Yes.