Consolation Prize S’mores, or the Second-Best Cookies You’ll Ever Eat

Now that it’s mid-October, summer might feel like a distant memory (or possibly not, since temperatures are in the 80s today…). Halloween decorations are going up, it gets dark early, and the sweaters have been stacked in the closet. So it’s not so surprising that I’m waxing nostalgic about the last great hurrah weekend of summer.

Our annual trip to a friend’s cottage in East Tawas is both the high point and the official end of summer. You might think this makes me feel ambivalent about the weekend, but it’s one of the best things that happens all year. And after 80 days of togetherness, the start of the school year is wholeheartedly embraced around here, I can tell you. We approach the weekend with varying degrees of ambition; some years we’re gung-ho to canoe and make fabulous dinners, and other years we eat potato chips for lunch and spend all our time drinking on the beach. The very best years have elements of both, and now that the kids are old enough to not want to spend all their time with us we need to find ways to lure them back to the house often enough to reapply bug screen and make sure they haven’t floated off to Canada while we weren’t watching.

S’mores are excellent child bait. Unfortunately, gluten-free graham crackers are more of a punishment than a treat, and this year wasn’t one of the let-me-make-homemade-graham-crackers-to-go-with-these-homemade-marshmallows kinds of years. And so we improvise. One year we used Symphony bars as the chocolate to compensate for the horror of the graham crackers; but this year we had plain old chocolate. Using these cookies to corral the melty sugary goodness was nothing short of inspired, and I highly recommend using them for your next s’mores adventure.

Many thanks to the fine folks at Trader Joe’s for printing this recipe on the back of the bag of oatmeal. The recipe is adapted to make more sense – I’ve listed the ingredients in the order in which they’re used.

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Graham Crackers Substitute Cookies

• ¼ cup butter (or fake butter or Crisco, if you’re DF)
• ¾ c. sugar
• ¾ c. brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 c. peanut butter (use the cheap sugary stuff. Natural is way better for eating but this cookie really wants to be a sugar bomb.)
• 3 c. rolled oats
• 6 oz. chocolate chips (OK, call it half a bag or roughly ¾ cup. I don’t know why the original recipe writers put everything else in imperial measurements and then called for ounces here. And I’d go measure out 6 ounces and figure out what size cup it fits into but the Teen Queen has eaten all the chocolate chips in the house so I’m going to ballpark it.)
• ½ c. sunflower seeds or chopped walnuts, if you must

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar and beat until creamy. Add the eggs, vanilla, and baking soda and mix well. Add the peanut butter and mix well, then add the oats and chocolate chips (and nuts or seeds, if you must).

Drop the dough by teaspoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges.

Tasty on their own, but really very marvelous with gooey toasted marshmallows and a hunk of chocolate sandwiched in between. You’re welcome. 

Lobster Risotto

This is a meal that can get pulled together from randomness in my house. We had wine study group this week so there is way too much Chardonnay in the fridge, and we hit a great sale on lobster a couple of months ago. It seemed as good a reason as any to make this dish, which sounds luxurious and is delicious but comes together in the the half an hour between arriving home from school and David heading off to class. Also, it contains absolutely no dairy but is still rich and luxurious. Nom nom.

Lobster Risotto 

(I wish I could remember where I found this recipe. Ah, Internet....) 

1/2 lb. lobster  meat

4 Tbsp. olive oil

2 shallots, chopped
2 tsp garlic, minced
1/4 cup white wine
large pinch of saffron
1 quart stock (lobster if you have it, chicken if you don't)
salt and pepper 

2 cups Arborio rice

If your lobster is not cooked, pop it into a pot of the boiling stock, then chop it finely. Keep the stock warm.

Put the saffron into the wine.

Heat the oil over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until they start to soften but do not brown.

Add the rice and garlic and stir to coat the rice with oil, about a minute. Add the chopped lobster meat, a big pinch of salt, and the wine/saffron mixture and stir to combine.

Add the stock, 1/2 cup at a time, and stir until the liquid is absorbed. When the rice is done but still a little al dente, check the seasoning and add a little salt and pepper. Add some water if the rice is not quite done.

Mom's Crabby Cakes

Yeah, really, read that title any way you want.

Last week was rough. January has just been goddamn awful, and all the stress and grief and everything else caught up with me and I had a complete mofo of a cold. This, of course, calls for comfort food - not wimpy chicken soup, not as heavy as mac and cheese, not as much work as pastitsio (and if someone will make that for me, I will love you forever and ever). This calls for crab cakes, which I have not made in ages but fit the bill perfectly.

These are, admittedly, an absolute princess of a recipe. You have to use the expensive fresh crab, which requires a trip to a different store. You have to make them really small so they don't fall apart, which means it's 18 times as many little fussy patties that have to be shaped and coddled into the pan.

Still. Totally. Worth. It.

These are good cold, the next day, eaten standing up during a busy shift at work. They're delicious heated up in the toaster oven and plucked onto toast with a fried egg. Like grapeleaves, you can pop one into your mouth every time you pass the fridge - wait, who does that? Surely no-one in this house. They are utterly, fantastically good, and you will love them, and next time you're sick some dear person should make them for you.

Crab Cakes

From Shellfish by Michele Scicolone. (This is only recipe I've ever made from this cookbook and it has been well worth the purchase price; it's also one of the cookbooks I've had the longest, so I can't imagine why I haven't made more recipes from it. I was delighted to see that she has many more cookbooks, according to Amazon.)

1/2 lb. fresh crabmeat (under NO circumstances can you use anything canned - get the real deal)
2 1/2 cups (or more) fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup minced celery
1/4 cup minced onion
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard

Vegetable oil for frying (if you're doing dairy, use half butter and half oil)

In a bowl, mix the crab, 1 cup of bread crumbs, and all the remaining ingredients. Divide this mixture into 8-10 fussy little patties, making sure you flatten them, and coat with the rest of the bread crumbs.

Put the crab cakes on a rack and let them rest for at least an hour. This helps them hold together better - you really don't want to skip it.

Heat the oil (and butter, if you're using it) in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry the crab cakes until lightly browned on both sides, 6-8 minutes. Serve with tartar sauce and/or lemon wedges (and Tater Tots. OMG. Comfort food.)

Sick Soup #2: Shorbat Adas

Sometimes you’re too sick to want to cook. Sometimes the required trip to the grocery store is just too much to face, even if you think you could possibly muster the energy to cook (you may or may not be sick – let’s face it, we all have days/weeks/months like this). And you might still be hungry, in spite of being sick, but because of the aforementioned grocery non-trip you have nothing in the house. Except ingredients for this. 

You can always, always have ingredients for this soup in the house; and it’s delicious and filling and hardly any work at all, so you can ignore it on the stove while you take a little nap on the couch. And if your little nap turns into a big nap, you’re not going to ruin the soup; it keeps well and reheats beautifully; you can double and triple it as long as you have a big enough pot; and it makes it to the table in just over half an hour, which is about the same amount of time it would take you to drive to the store to buy soup that someone else has made. 

Shorbat Adas (Middle Eastern Lentil Soup)

4 cups water

4 cups chicken broth

1 1/2 cups small red lentils

1/2 cup finely diced onion (or substitute onion powder if you don’t have fresh onions in the house)

1 garlic clove, grated or minced (or substitute garlic powder if you’re really serious about the not-shopping)

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh parsley (but only if you have it, because it’s totally optional)

3/4 teaspoon cumin

1/2-1 teaspoon turmeric

Lemon wedges, for serving

Rinse and drain the lentils. Combine all the ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for about 35 minutes. Stir the soup whenever you think about it so that the lentils don’t stick to the bottom of the pot (more important at the very beginning and the very end).

Serve with lemon wedges – they really make a difference in brightening up the flavor of the soup, and you can use the leftover lemon to make hot toddies for your cold. 

(You can add diced veggies to this if you'd like to make it a more substantive soup, but I like it as-is.)