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Herbert Hoover’s Sour Cream Cookies

07.31.2017 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

In the opening scene of the musical Oliver!, the orphan boys are served a meal of gruel, then watch hungrily as the well-fed gentlemen who administer the workhouse tuck into a luxurious repast of Food, Glorious Food. I love that movie, and all the songs in it, as much as I love a good meal – possibly more, given that good movies, unlike good meals, have no calories.

I haven’t watched Oliver! in years, but I thought of it recently, when I made Richard Nixon’s Chicken Casserole. Good food was not unknown in 1968, the year in which Nixon was elected, and though I can’t attest to this fact from personal knowledge – I was born in 1968, and not yet able to eat even my mother’s notoriously terrible food –  I submit the Food Glorious Food movie sequence as evidence. Good food existed, and was being paraded in front of movie orphans that year.

Why, then, was Nixon eating that casserole?

What is the point of being leader of the free world if you’re stuck eating bad food?

As leader of the free world, wouldn’t Nixon have had both knowledge of what might be considered good food, as well as the ability to arrange some for himself?

It occurred to me that perhaps there was some correlation between the quality of leadership, and the quality of the food they ate – you know, garbage in, garbage out. With this in mind, I sought out a recipe from another notoriously bad president, and U.S. history being what it is, had no difficulty finding one.

Herbert Hoover, to the best of my recollection, was the president who promised voters a chicken in every pot if elected, and delivered instead the Great Depression (oops). The Depression was hardly his fault – he was elected in 1928 and the stock market collapse occurred the following year – but it occurred on his watch, and to describe his handling of the crisis as poor is to be generous. He rejected the idea that government intervention could help, and some of the steps he did take, such as signing the Smoot-Hawley Act, only served to make matters worse.

I thought I knew it all about Hoover, but after a bit more research, I uncovered a far more complex picture. Hoover’s World War One record was probably the most interesting and unexpected reading:  As chairman of the Commission for Relief of Belgium, he obtained and distributed millions of tons of food, negotiating with the Germans to allow food shipments. When the United States entered the war, he became head of the U.S. Food Administration, securing the nation’s food supply, and when the war ended, the USFA became the American Relief Administration, which Hoover continued to head, and which provided food to millions in central and eastern Europe. He headed a similar program after the second World War, providing food to school children in post-war Germany.

It is no small irony that the man who is today remembered for failing to put a chicken in every pot was, in his day, widely known for securing a food supply for millions of people.

My book of historical and presidential recipes – Eating with Uncle Sam – contains a number of chicken recipes, but rather disappointingly, there isn’t a Herbert Hoover chicken recipe among them. Instead, the book contains a cookie recipe from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library – for the rather unusual-sounding Sour Cream Cookies. So, I gave them a try.

The recipe is a bit oddly written, in that it doesn’t actually tell the cook when the key ingredient, sour cream, should be added. I resolved that by simply adding it in the order listed in the ingredients, which worked out fine. I expected a slight sourness to the cookies, but there was none at all. The cookies turned out soft and moist, almost like little cakes, with a delicate flavor of vanilla and brown sugar. They could be frosted, as the recipe suggests, with a bit of vanilla frosting, or anything, really – but they are lovely on their own, simple and the perfect complement to any beverage they are served with.

It’s a nice recipe, easy to make on a moment’s notice, requiring no unusual ingredients, no significant effort, and no pre-planning from the cook. In that sense, it’s similar to the Nixon recipe, which also relies on ingredients the average cook would have on hand. But the Hoover recipe stands apart, in using fresh ingredients – and the resulting cookie is one that I liked enough to make several times, for different occasions, and for just having around the house when someone wants a cookie.


Herbert Hoover's Sour Cream Cookies
 
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Author: From the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum
Ingredients
  • ½ lb unsalted butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
Instructions
  1. Preheat over to 375° F.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until light, then add the eggs and beat another two minutes on medium speed. Add vanilla and sour cream, and mix until thoroughly incorporated.
  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Add to the other ingredients in the mixing bowl, beating another minute or two, until incorporated.
  4. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until cookies are lightly golden on the top and spring back when touched.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // cookies, presidential recipes, vintage recipes

Rhubarb Shortbread Bars

05.22.2016 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day arrives, and with it, a tray full of breakfast and gifts: Coffee, an egg sandwich, and a set of oval measuring spoons, the kind that fit into tiny spice jars. The coffee is very strong, the egg sandwich is mostly ham, but the measuring spoons are just right – something I mentioned a long time ago would be nice to have, then promptly forgot about.

The Child wants to know what I want to do for Mother’s Day, and my answer is simple. Nothing. After months of meetings with doctors and therapists and school administrators and social workers, I want a day filled with nothing.

I receive one, and, eventually, find my way into the back yard, where the untended garden overflows with weeds and whatever chard the slugs and leaf miners have left behind, but also a large, healthy rosemary plant, strawberry plants covered with blossoms, and a vast, leafy rhubarb plant offering an abundance of green stalks.

I don’t want muffins, and definitely not cake or pie. I want little nibbles, cookies, while The Child announces she will be happy with anything I make from the rhubarb.

A bit of looking turns up several recipes involving rhubarb and cardamom, which supposedly  complement each other as nicely as rhubarb and strawberry. One recipe in particular intrigues me, for a cardamom-spiced shortbread with a layer of strawberry-rhubarb jam in the middle. The rhubarb and cardamom combination is intriguing, as is the technique for making the shortbread; the dough is frozen for a half hour, then grated into the pan.

I was looking forward to using my new measuring spoons, but they were not the new tool I needed at that particular moment. The recipe calls for ground cardamom, and although I had three – yes, three – jars of cardamom, each one was filled with whole green pods.

I set about laying cardamom pods on a cutting board, and smashing them under the flat end of a knife, then prying little black seeds loose with the tip of the knife. I don’t own a spice grinder, but I do own a coffee grinder, which seemed like it should serve the same function, so I cleaned it out by using one of the rare internet hacks that actually works. I ran a slice of sandwich bread through it, which picked up all the residual coffee grounds, then wiped it clean with a paper towel and ran the cardamom seeds through.

It worked like a champ. I used my new spoons to scoop the ground cardamom into the dough.

It smelled lovely. It tasted lovely.

The jam neatly solves the issue I have with my rhubarb, which is a green variety – very tasty, but not all that pretty to look at, which turns out to be somewhat of a limiting factor in using it. Here, though, a small amount of strawberries are used, enough to turn the rhubarb a pretty shade of pink, but not enough to overwhelm its tart, sprightly flavor. I made the jam while the dough was in the freezer, then cooled the jam quickly in the freezer while I grated the dough into the pan.

I made a couple of major changes to the recipe. First, I omitted vanilla from the jam. I think it would be a nice addition, but the filling is just perfect without it, too. (I left it out accidentally.) Second, the original recipe uses spelt flour, which I didn’t have, so I substituted an equivalent amount of all-purpose flour. It worked fine.

The Child and I both loved these cookies, and the entire tray of them was gone within a day.

The original recipe came from PBS recipes, which credits Dorie Greenspan, who adapted it from Julia Child’s Baking With Julia.

rhubarb shortbread bars

Rhubarb Shortbread Bars
 
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Author: adapted from Dorie Greenspan via Julia Child
Ingredients
Dough
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground cardamom
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 egg yolks
Filling
  • 2 cups chopped rhubarb
  • ½ cup chopped strawberries
  • ⅓ cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp water
Instructions
  1. Make the dough: Sift all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, cream the butter until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs yolks and sugar and mix well.
  2. Add the dry ingredients mixture and combine the two until a soft dough has formed.
  3. Shape the dough into two balls, one slightly smaller than the other. Wrap in plastic and freeze for at least 30 minutes. (You can also make the dough well ahead of time, and keep it in the freezer until you're ready to bake.)
  4. Make the filling: Bring the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, and water to a slow simmer over low heat, stirring frequently. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the rhubarb softens and a pretty, somewhat thick jam forms. Remove from heat and allow the filling to cool completely.
  5. Make the cookies: Preheat oven to 350 F.
  6. Remove the largest of the two balls of dough from the freezer and using the larger holes of a box grate, grate the dough directly into a greased 10 inch springform pan. Gently pat the dough into the pan.
  7. Spread the rhubarb filling evenly over the dough, leaving a little half inch gap around the edge.
  8. Remove the second ball of dough from the freezer and grate evenly over the top. The rhubarb should be evenly covered, but you will still see bits of filling. Lightly pat the top layer down.
  9. Bake until golden, about 30 minutes.
  10. Allow the cookies to cool completely in the pan before slicing into wedges.
Notes
The original dough recipe calls for one cup of white flour and one cup of spelt flour. The original jam recipe calls for a tablespoon of red wine and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // cardamom, cookies, rhubarb

Orange-Walnut Blondies

08.01.2015 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I’ve learned a lot about gardening in the past three years. Things like this: Neem oil applied with a sprayer is infinitely superior to every homemade concoction that has been dreamed up and posted on the internet, and it’s organic, too.

This is the reason I have zucchini, basil, and tomatoes, instead of aphids, whiteflies, and leaf miners.

Here’s another thing: The internet will tell you not to harvest your rhubarb the first year you plant it, but if you have stalks that appear harvestable, by all means, do so.

On the other hand, if you have an early spring, and see a large flower-bearing stalk emerging from your rhubarb plant, don’t go outside to admire it daily, and don’t take pictures of it to post on Instagram.

Yes, it’s pretty. Hack it off fast, if you want rhubarb any thicker than a pencil.

Water your plants as often as seems prudent.

Apply slug bait liberally.

If you do all of these things, I have discovered, vegetables will appear, and you will need to learn other things – mostly, what to do with them.

It is possible to have too many green beans, and if you somehow manage to grow an eggplant, you are going to have to think of a way to use it. If it takes you three years to learn how to grow zucchini – by which I mean, be overrun with zucchini – you will find it very disheartening to watch it go bad because your freezer is full and your neighbors are stocked up on zucchini, but thanks anyway.

It’s as disheartening as the realization that you like the idea of organic vegetables much more than you enjoy actually eating them.

Gardening is much like summer itself: I look forward to it, earnestly and hourly, starting in early February, when it dawns on me that the only holiday coming up to break the oppressive Seattle gloom is Valentine’s Day. It’s the one holiday I hate.  I hate it when I’m single, and hate it even more when I’m married.

Then summer actually arrives, and I remember that I actually do need the air conditioning that everyone says you don’t need in Seattle. I remember the beehive in the wall that neither the handyman nor a professional beeslayer could find. I remember that I don’t have a swimsuit and that even if I did venture onto a beach, I wouldn’t tan, I’d burn.

What I really like, more than I care to admit, is a nice rainy Sunday, one that allows me the luxury of not having to go anywhere. The perfect rainy Sunday would ideally follow a Saturday in which, in a burst of enthusiasm, I’ve run all the errands and folded the laundry and even crossed a few minor tasks off the to-do list. A Sunday on which I have nothing to do, and no place to go, and if the stars are aligned correctly, enough butter in the freezer that I can bake something that I shouldn’t really be eating.

And then I had one such rainy Sunday.

Truthfully, I had plans, but they involved being outdoors. There was a backup plan that didn’t involve getting wet – I live in Seattle, after all – but The Child came downstairs with stomach pains that were bad enough that she didn’t want to spend the day with her friends, which meant I could, with a clear conscience, stay in.

The universe gave me one last gift: a review copy of The Messy Baker cookbook. I spent some time perusing it, and it’s a nice cookbook, with some good ideas for scones and savory tarts. It reminds me a bit of The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, a cookbook that seems quite ordinary and unexceptional and that you own for many years without much thought until the day you realize that it’s been your go-to book whenever you want to bake something comforting and reliable.

I tried out the recipe for Orange-Walnut Blondies, because it’s filled with things I love, butter and orange zest and vanilla and nuts. The original recipe includes a caramel sauce, which is fine if you’re serving it for a formal occasion. I didn’t consider a Netflix marathon of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to be such an occasion, so I skipped the sauce.

The blondies were superb, perfectly gooey, and buttery, with an orange-vanilla flavor reminiscent of an orange creamsicle – which as it happens, is one of the things I truly love about summer.

The Child devoured these right out of the pan, and they were all gone within a day.

IMG_0093.JPG

Orange-Walnut Blondies
 
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Author: adapted from Charmian Christie, The Messy Baker Cookbook
Ingredients
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1½ cups lightly packed brown sugar
  • zest of one orange
  • 1½ tsp vanilla
  • 1 tbsp orange juice
  • 2 eggs, at room temperature
  • 1½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13"x9" baking dish.
  2. Scatter the walnuts on a cookie sheet and toast until fragrant, about 8-10 minutes.
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, brown sugar, and orange zest until light. Add the vanilla and orange juice, stirring to combine, followed by the eggs, one at a time.
  4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour slowly to the butter mixture, while mixing on the low speed. Stir in the toasted walnuts by hand.
  5. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and smooth the top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until your house smells so good you can't stand any more waiting, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
  6. Cool the blondies in the pan, set on a cooling rack, and cut into squares of any size that makes you happy.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // cookies, orange, walnuts

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