Does anyone actually follow a recipe?

Or is it just me.

I picked up some cashew butter from the Lehman's Orchard booth in the Marketplace at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show yesterday (along with dried fruits and INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS dried, deep fried green bean crisps. Not kidding. These things are so good we had an 8 year old eating them.)

So this morning I decided to try cashew-butter cookies. I don't like things baked with peanut butter, for some reason, or peanut butter candy. Love peanut sauce, love peanut butter sandwiches. Spoonfuls of plain peanut butter are one of my go-to snacks. But somehow sweetened peanut butter treats make me gag.

So I started hunting around on line for a recipe. Martha Stewart has one. Epicurious has one. All-recipes has one, but all of those use vegetable oil, which just sounded nasty. Orangette did not have one (!) and neither did Coconut and Lime (No way. She steals all my ideas, and then publishes them years before I have them), but Chocolate and Zucchini has a recipe for the cashew butter itself. Most of the recipe I found were for butter cookies with finely ground nuts in them.

So I pulled out my trusty Woman's Home Companion Cook Book and adapted the peanut butter cookies. (I guess that makes this an original recipe.)

And as I was doing this I realized how much cooking "on line" is like cooking with a friend, or trying your mother's old recipe for the first time, solo. You follow the recipe, up to a point, and then realize you don't have some ingredient that's listed, or you never really liked that flavor in there, or that your mother (caution, heresy follows), never really got those noodles right.

So you start to tweak.

And that's what recipes are like on the web. You'll find the same recipe a dozen times (sometimes clearly cut-and-paste; Epicurious recipes in particular show up all over the place), but with a little tweak here and there. Honey instead of sugar, or sugar cut back. More chocolate, less chocolate, more yeast or substitute whole wheat for white flour. The most common phrase on one-off recipe sites is "adapted from Better Known Blog."

Here are my cashew butter cookies with dried cinnamon apple pieces (also from Lehman Orchards). Adapted from the Woman's Home Companion Cookbook.

Cashew-butter cookies with dried fruit
1 cup white flour
1/4 + 3 T cup whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup cashew butter
1 cup granulated sugar + 1 Tablespoon molasses
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 dried apples or other non-acidic fruit, chopped fine (acidic ones like berries will overwhelm the delicate cashew flavor. I also think these would be delicious with white chocolate or caramel chips.)

Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the dry ingredients with a whisk. Mix the sugar and molasses with a fork until it resembles light brown sugar. Cream shortening and nut butter; slowly beat in the sugar until thoroughly combined. Add the beaten egg. Combine the dry ingredients one third at a time; dough will be very dense and soft. If dough is too crumbly, add a tablespoon of heavy cream or cashew oil. Mix in the dried fruit.

Chill for about 10 minutes, then form into 1-inch balls and flatten with two fingers (sorry, can't use the fork-crisscross, that's for peanut butter!). Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 3 to 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

You can substitute almond or hazelnut butter, and substitute honey for the sugar. If you use honey, increase the flour by about 1/4 cup and add more fruit, because you'll have a little more dough.

What recipes have you adapted? And how guilty do you feel when the recipe is from your mother?

Socializing

There is, at last, some glimmer of recognition at my day job that people spend a lot of time at this place called "the internet." So yesterday I got to meet with a consultant who sets up small businesses with social media. We met at a local Wifi cafe where every single table was populated by someone with a lap top, a smart phone, and a (live) friend.

I catch a lot of flack from my uninitiated friends about how "superficial" and "vacuous" and "seventh grade" the web is. On the other hand, the web has made me a better gardener, a more creative and active cook, and a thoughtful coach. And I've met some amazing people, that I have to call friends, although I've never met them and likely never will.

Well, one of the things that Liz the social media expert mentioned is that, apparently, February 5 is World Nutella Day. Who knew. Mark it in your calendars. I was running around all day yesterday and wasn't able to get this post in, so I'm a day late. But here you go. I didn't actually make this yesterday, so no pictures (I'll make some and post them later.) Never be without nutella again:

Chocolate-hazelnut spread (homemade Nutella)
2 cups whole raw hazelnuts
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
up to 1/4 cup vegetable or nut oil
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place hazelnuts in a single layer on a shallow baking pan. Toast until the skins are almost black and the meat is dark brown, about 15 minutes. Stir the nuts halfway through baking so ensure an even color.

Since the skin is bitter, you'll want to discard them. Wrap the cooled hazelnuts in a clean kitchen towel or paper towel, and rub until most of the skins have come off. Don't fret if you can't get off all the skins.

Process nuts in a food processor, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally, until they have liquefied, about 5 minutes. At first, you will get coarsely chopped nuts, and then it will turn into a fine meal. After a little while, the nuts will form a ball around the blade, and it will seem like you only have a solid mass. Keep processing. The heat and friction will extract the natural oils, and you will get hazelnut butter!

When the nuts are liquified, add in the sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Slowly drizzle in enough oil to make a spreadable consistency. Since the mixture is warm, it will be more liquidy now than at room temperature.

Transfer the spread to an airtight container, and store refrigerated for up to 1 month. For best results, stir the chocolate-hazelnut spread before using.

Everything but the cheese was home grown

Practiced a little "kitchen archeology" a couple of days ago and unearthed a jar of homegrown walnuts from my "uncle of the heart" Lajos, who lives on a small farm in Hungary and brings produce a couple of times a year.

So I went out into the garden and deadheaded my five sweet basil plants (if it bolts, i.e. develops flowers, the flavor changes, so you have to pinch off the flowers at this time of year). Pulled up 5 enormous cherry belle radishes and made a pesto, using walnut oil instead of olive oil. Sauteed some new snow peas from the oregon sugar pods that just started to fruit, a couple of large mustard greens and the radish greens. Added all to a lovely fettucini from World Market (they have really good fettucini), crumbled some more walnuts on top.

As my previous post averred, this is one of the joys of backyard gardening, joined to a fearless approach to cooking. I had never heard of a pesto made with radishes, but I know that pesto is just a "paste" (literal translation) made of vegetables, oil, hard cheese, and nuts. So why NOT a radish pesto?

Radish Basil Pesto Sauce

* 5 medium radishes, diced
* 1/4 cup walnuts
* 2-3 cloves garlic
* 1 cup fresh basil
* 1/4 cup olive or nut oil
* 1/4 cup grated fresh Parmesan

Toast the walnuts and garlic (200F/90C for 5 to 8 minutes).

Place the radishes, walnuts, garlic and basil in the food processor and pulse about 7 to 10 times, until the ingredients are grated, not pureed. Add enough oil to moisten the ingredients and pulse again until blended. My food processor is one of those 3-cup ones, so at this point I moved the pesto into a bowl, but you can mix the cheese right in the food processor if there's room. Add the freshly grated Parmesan and mix it by hand. Taste and season the pesto with kosher salt, as necessary. Don't use pepper with this recipe, as it will mask the peppery flavor of the radishes.

Makes about 2 cups.

Spoon onto fresh, hot pasta to taste. Important that the pasta is hot, because it will soften the pesto. If the pasta is too cool, the pesto will just be in nasty lumps. For additional culinary and aesthetic interest, add sauteed greens and or green beans, diced roasted or sauteed squash, or a diced fresh tomato (or all of them!).

The pesto also makes a terrific condiment for sandwiches.