smitten kitchen

Lest you think my running of at the mouth about the evils of dieting meant that I was going to spend this month in the pursuit of only earnest foods, let me set that straight right now: all weekend, I craved a cookie and by Sunday, I’d had enough. No, I wasn’t going to break out the piping bags or the heavy cream ganaches, but when I need something sweet, I have learned that it’s better to have one and move on than to snack on twent-five other odd ends instead, oh, and still crave a cookie.

As far as my cookie demands went, biscotti seemed a perfect compromise. A little less rich, sweet and heavy than most cookies, they go better with tea, coffee or your morning yogurt (guilty as charged) than they do wtih a platter of even more indulgent desserts. I’d had this recipe from Gina DePalma, pastry chef at Babbo, bookmarked for years, and seeing as I am still wading through pounds of nuts and had some sorry-looking figs in the pantry, it seemed like perfect timing.

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Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes eating “healthy” or at the very least, in a manner that diametrically opposes the Thanksgiving through New Years gluttony. Some people eschew meat, for others its just read meat, some give up cheese or bread or fat or potatoes — I mean, you name it, there’s a diet out there that promises that swearing it off is the answer to Thin Thighs in Thirty Days or You in a White Bikini in the Bahamas in 56 Days. …You know, just to throw out a totally arbitrary example.

I am realizing increasingly that I belong to no dieting camp whatsoever. I mean, I consider things like portion size all of the time, and if I had meat in one meal, making sure the next one avoids it but I don’t think that there is a Magical Evil Food that when crossed off your menu will make pounds vanish from your hips.

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I am, without a better way to put it, swimming in nuts.* Appalled by the price of nuts everywhere around here but insisting that it wasn’t going to keep me from baking with them, I asked my mother out in the ‘burbs — a place where people are less confident they can get away with swindling $9.99 for 1.25 cups of pecans — to see if she could do better. She came back with fifteen pounds for about $30 from Costco, five of walnuts, five of pecan and five of almonds. It is, in a word, awesome.

And yet, despite the fact that many of my favorite recipes involve them in one way or another, I had not made even the slightest dent in the almonds and only a paltry one in the pecans as of last week, and they’re taking up a lot of space in the pantry and freezer. (I believe this is called The Costco Effect.) Obviously it was time to break out the big guns, a recipe sure to be so addictive, pounds would disappear (from the pantry, not our guts, that is) at a breakneck pace and the only thing left to do (besides sit-ups) would be to ask my mother to go back to Costco again.

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I have this thing about… no wait, that’s not fair. I have a lot of “things” — like the one about not liking warm, oozy chocolate desserts, sugar rimmed drinks or those waxy cubes of cheese you always see at corporate catering events — but for today, let us just pretend that I have one, and that one is about passed hors d’œuvres and amuse bouches that are too cumbersome to be easily eaten, standing up at a party.

Party foods should come in one-bite servings. How many times have you been at a wedding’s cocktail hour and you were somehow supposed to be eating something from a plate (cue your tiny violins, please) that was way too messy to be eaten while wearing a nice dress, carrying a cocktail and mingling with distant cousins? Wouldn’t this all work a little better if things were the size they should be?

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It’s not even January 1st yet and I’m already feeling the tug of healthier eating… or perhaps, more likely, a rejection of the butter and braise bender I’ve been on since Thanksgiving. Wait long enough to step up to the healthier plate and I think your body will do it for you; in my days off, I have only craved three things: greens, carrots and oranges. Okay, four if you count French toast from LeGrainne Cafe. But in my defense, they serve it with toasted almonds and a slice of orange and that’s healthy right? Right? [A pin drops.]

Well then. I think of homemade pizza as one of those perfect bridge foods, not excruciatingly unhealthy and yet it can be downright earnest if you do it right. We made Alice Waters’s Pizza with Broccoli Raab, Roasted Onion and Olives for dinner on Friday and it was delightful — chock full of greens with just enough indulgence (half a cup of cheese and a thin pizza crust) to have me vowing I would make it again, like this week, before we’d even finished our first slice.

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