Bryny's Cookbook

Since then knowing how food is prepared has become my favorite hobby. I find myself sketching out recipes in my head whenever I eat out -- trying to isolate just how they came up with a particular flavor or texture. I'm thrilled when a new kitchen gadget catalog arrives it the mail. (My latest purchases are from PCD - Professional Cutlery Direct. While I am very happy with my Henckle Pro-S knives, the Kyrocera Ceramics intrigue me and the pure stainless style of the Global of Japan knives is tempting me.)

But enough about what I think about cooking. Here's a handful of recipes that I enjoy.

BAKED POTATO SOUP

I like to serve this as a meal just as the first cold snaps occur in the fall. Large steaming bowls of the soup, a huge garden salad and a tart chardonnay with a light oak flavor allows the comfortable warm feeling of "stocking up" for the winter without having to concede that the gaiety of summer is past.

The scaling is simple. For a meal it's a large baking potato per person. As an appetizer, scale back by half. The recipe as written is a meal serving four.

If you want to read up on the techniques, you can read in a cookbook about "blender soups" for the vegetable stock, and under "bechamel sauce" for the cream base. "The Joy of Cooking" is a wonderful reference to have for background techniques.

INGREDIENTS

VEGATABLE STOCK:

Cut potatoes into roughly 1/2 inch cubes with the skin on. I like a lot of variation in the cuts to make it look more hand crafted. Steam the potatoes until they break apart easily with a fork. When done, remove from heat and salt and pepper. While the potatoes are steaming, slice the onions and saute in 4 tablespoons butter with the peeled garlic cloves until transparent. Puree the onions and garlic in a blender, then puree about half of the potatoes and mix with the onions. Push the puree through a large (bowl sized) wire strainer to make smooth and remove larger pieces of potato skin that will make the soup look brown. The strainer is optional, but I think it makes the soup look much better.

GARNISH:

Microwave the bacon until very crispy, chop the green onions and grate the cheddar.

CREAM BASE:

Scald the milk (microwaving until almost boiling is fine). DO NOT SCALD THE SOUR CREAM. In a large double boiler (you can get by with a regular pot on the burner, but it will be very easy to burn the milk as it is added to the butter/flour paste -- be careful) , melt the butter. Dust in the flour slowly while stirring briskly (a gravy stirrer is the easiest) until you have a smooth paste (more flour may be needed). Slowly add the scalded milk stirring vigorously to keep it smooth. Stir in the sour cream and parsley and bring to heat.

FINAL ASSEMBLY:

Stir the puree into cream base. Be careful, it will tend to come out in a big clump and splash the cream on the ceiling. You may add more milk if you want it thinner. Boldly salt and pepper. Simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve in large bowls individually garnished with cheddar, bacon, and green onions in that order so the cheese will melt better. The garnish looks best if applied just before it goes to the table so the diners can see the cheese melt.

DISCLAIMER:

This recipe is *NOT* low fat. I would imagine that only Carl Sagan could adequately express the number of grams of dairy fat in this soup. (I wish I had a .wav of Sagan saying, "Billions and billions..." to insert right here.) Nor is this recipe approved as Heart Healthy by the American Heart Association. Indeed, if they discover that you have this recipe in your possession they'll probably send an AHA SWAT team to kick in your door and drag you off to a low-fat reconditioning clinic. In today's political environment I buy the ingredients one at a time and in separate stores to appear less suspicious.

MALAI SAK

This is similar to the Saag Panir that you find on the lunch buffet of every Indian restaurant in North America. I leave out the panir since I'm usually serving this as a side to other Indian dishes. This recipe already has the increased amount of cream cheese demanded by my close friends (Hi, Debbi!), it can be reduced. I've also substituted yogurt for the cream cheese which changes the taste considerably.

This dish has the strong approval of 2 year old Alex Brennan, who will demand more of it until the pot is empty (I wonder how they say "Popeye the Sailor Man" in Mumbai).

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Place the chiles, ginger and water in a blender or food processor bowl fitted with the metal blade. Process to a smooth puree. Add the coriander, turmeric, cumin and paprika and pulse to blend well. Set aside.

Heat the ghee or oil until it is hot but not smoking. Carefully add the wet spice puree to the hot oil and allow it to sizzle for a minute then pack in the spinach leaves. Reduce the heat slightly, cover and cook for 4 minutes. Using two forks turn the spinach over so that the cooked leaves on the bottom change places with the leaves on top. Cover and cook for another 4 minutes. (If you wanted to take the effort to use fresh spinach, one would use 2 lbs of fresh leaves, washed trimmed and finely chopped and cooked on each side for 8 minutes.)

Add the garam masala, salt and cream cheese. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Stir well before serving.

HALDI CHAVAL

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Wash and/or soak rice according to its variety.

Heat the gee or oil in a heavy 1 1/2 quart sauce pan until it is hot but not smoking. add the cumin seeds, ajwain seeds, whole cloves and cinnamon. Fry until the cumin seeds turn brown.

Pour in the rice and stir fry for about 2 minutes. Add the water and remaining ingredients. Increase the heat to high and bring to a full boil.

Immediately reduce the heat and cover with a tight fitting lid and gently simmer for 20-25 minutes or until the rice it tender. Turn off the heat and allow to cool covered for 5 minutes so the fragile grains will firm up. Just before serving, remove the whole cloves and cinammon stick (convieniently, they float to the top of the rice and are easy to pick out) and fluff the rice with a fork.

BHAGARI JINGA

INGREDIENTS

For the Sauce:

For Stir-Frying the Prawns

DIRECTIONS

The sauce can be made the night before and refrigerated covered until cooking time. The actual cooking takes only a few minutes.

It is important that the cumin be whole seeds, roasted and ground, instead of cumin powder. The resulting toasty flavor adds a great deal. To roast cumin seeds, put a few tablespoons in a cast iron skillet until they turn a few shades darker brown and give off a wonderful aroma. Then allow them to cool and grind them in a spice or coffee grinder.

To prepare the sauce, combine the tomato paste, salt, sugar, garam masala, ground roasted cumin seeds, green chili, lemon juice and water in a bowl. Mix well. Slowly add the coconut milk, stirring as you go. Set aside.

Put the oil in a wok or frying pan and set over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in the mustard seeds. When the seeds begin to pop (in just a few seconds) add the garlic. Stir until the garlic turns medium brown. Add the prawns and stir until they turn opaque about half way through. Add the sauce and reduce the heat to medium and heat it until it starts to simmer. By then the prawns should be cooked completely through. Turn off the heat. I like to retain a little of the cilantro coarsely chopped to sprinkle on top for presentation.

This is best served with rice. I like an aromatic rice like Haldi Chaval . The yellow color of the turmeric in this rice contrasts poorly with the salmony pink of the bhagari on my table setting, so I just leave it out. I think tossing in 4-6 whole green cardamom pods with the pepper goes nicely with this dish.

Canadian Cheese Soup

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Melt the butter in large skillet. Add all the vegetables at once and saute until soft but not brown. Add the flour and stir to combine and cook until it begins to turn a light brown color. Over a medium high heat, add the chicken broth a little at a time. Add the Half & Half being careful not to let it boil. Add cheese to soup stirring until melted. Add the parsley before serving.

Garnish with diced tomatoes and diced prepared jalapenos. Don't skip the jalapenos. Peppers are essential to the flavor of this soup. Subtitute diced green chilies if you don't want it too spicey.

Grilled Red Snapper with Avocado Wasabi Sauce

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Combine the snapper and the wine in a shallow dish. Marinate for 1 hour; drain. Brush the fillets on both sides with 1 tablespoon of butter. Sprinkle with paprika. Grill 4 to 5 minutes, when the top of the fish "foams" it should be done. This can be done directly on the grill, but I find it's easier to handle if the fillets are placed in an aluminum foil "boat" that's been buttered to keep the fillets from sticking.

Saute the onion in the remaining butter in a skillet over medium heat until tender. Whisk in the flour and seasoned salt. Add the water slowly stirring out any lumps. Cook for one minute stirring constantly. Remove the skillet from the heat, stir in sour cream, wasabi, and avacado. Return the skillet to a low heat and warm through. Spoon the sauce ofer the grilled snapper and sprinkel with lemon juice and parsley.

For this the powdered wasabi reconstituted with water is far better than the type that comes in the tube. The tubed wasabi has some sort of preservative bite that is too harsh for the delicate flavor of the snapper. If you can't find the powdered form or sneak some out of a sushi bar, then substitute horseradish. Don't leave it out, it's this little kick that makes the dish.

Paella

Paella is actually the name of the pan that is used to prepare the dish. Most paella pans you will find are flat pans about 13 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep with loop handles on both sides and a close fitting domed lid. A pan this size produces genous servings for 8 people. One can use a large skillet, but it's harder to shake the ingredients into the rice with a single handle. If your pan is smaller, you'll need to scale the ingredients appropriately. A 10 inch pan should serve 5, 12 inch should serve 7, and a 16 inch should serve 12. (I saw an ad for one that is supposed to serve 200 -- my calculations say that should be 6 feet in diameter!)

This is the recipe that Doug and I cook on the float trip. After a day on the river with endless beers, this prepares in one pan over a propane burner and makes about eight adults feel much better. This particular recipe has ingredients that can be prepared ahead of time and stored in a cooler. Making it in a fully equipped kitchen we would probably use real lobster, fish or squid, but the constraints of camping are a good excuse for shortcuts.

I have a strong preference for fish stock over chicken stock, and generally make my own. I'll by whole red snapper and use the fillets to make the Grilled Red Snapper with Avocado Wasabi Sauce and throw the rest of the fish into a pot with water, a couple of carrots, a whole onion, a couple of celery stalks, cloves, bay leaves and maybe a turnip and let it simmer for an hour or so. I strain the resulting stock and freeze it to use in paella or bisque later. A few blue crabs or a lobster shell adds a lot of additonal flavor.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Saute the onions in the olive oil over medium-low heat until tender, not brown. Add half of the garlic and the chicken legs. Brown the chicken on one side before adding the Italian sausage that has been cut into 1 inch sections. (The bone in the chicken causes it to have a longer cooking time.) Finish browning the chicken and the sausage and on the last turn add the diced tomato.

When the meat is brown, add the rice and saute it around the meat to pick up the flavors of the oils. After a couple of minutes add the stock, saffron, salt, pepper, stir it together and bring to a boil. When a boil is achieved, reduce the heat and cover.

The rice will be done in about 20 minutes and the seafood is added while the rice is cooking as per its individual cook times and by how one wants it in the dish. Lobster, squid, and fish pieces should be surrounded by rice so it should be added about five minutes after the lid was put on, while the rice mixture is still liquid. They should be placed on top and then the whole pan shaken to let them sift down into the rice. Shrimp and mussels steam on top of the rice for around five minutes (this is why we use a domed lid). After the mussels have been in for a couple of minutes they should start to open, at this point sprinkle the remaining garlic over the top and finish cooking. Doug likes to pour in a little beer when the mussels are cooking to add to their flavor.

This is a dish that is meant to be served at the table in it's pan. When you see the presentation, you'll understand why this is considered a festival dish in Spain.

Stuffed Whole Squid Braised with Tomatoes and White Wine

The inspiration for cooking this came when I was preparing to make my first Zuppa de Pesce. I was in a little market close to here called "Vietnam Plaza" picking up the fresh fishes to make the stock and I saw these large cleaned squid sacks. If you've ever cleaned squid you understand why this caught my eye. Later, while the stock was simmering, I pulled out all my Italian cook books to compare the soup recipes. While looking through Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking I found the inspiration for this recipe. I went back to the market and got some squid for an appetizer that night.

Two parts of this dish really attract attention. One is the smoothness of the braising stock with the olive oil and the white wine (by the way, use an olive oil labled as Toscano, you'll be glad for the difference). Squid produces a rich, silky seafood taste that blends with the garlic, wine and tomatoes in the long simmer -- few other seafoods can withstand this cooking time without becoming tough, dry or bitter. The other attention factor is how tender the squid is. Most people are expecting the chewyness that you find in ceviche or some fried calamari, but this dish produces a tenderness that actually melts in your mouth. We served this as an appetizer for a New Year's Eve dinner party and it the looks of amazement as people took their first bites is a fond memory. (It was a wonderful dinner party and the requests I received are why I'm posting this.)

I've modified it to fit the ingredients I have available and some of my preferances (notable additions are the prociutto, red pepper flakes and the oregano -- I've added these since New Year's by the way). This makes a meal for two or appetizers for four. If you are needing to scale the stuffing for the various sizes of squid sacks, remember that stuffing scales by a cube rule. For example, if you had 4 inch sacks the amout of stuffing you would need would be (4/6)*(4/6)*(4/6)=0.29 aproximately 1/3 of what you'd need for the same number of 6 inch sacks. (I never said there was no math in cooking!) Squid geometry seems to vary some too, so you may want to make a little extra just in case. Also, if you can't find cleaned squid sacks, save the tentacles, chop them and use them in place of the prociutto.

By the way, if you are looking for a wonderful book on Italian soups, my favorite by far is Anne Bianchi's Zuppa! Soups from the Italian Countryside

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Rinse the squid sacks thouroughly with cold water inside and out to remove any ice and the spine if it is still there. Pat dry.

In a bowl, beat the egg lightly with a fork. Add the other stuffing ingredents: bread crumbs, two tablespoons of olive oil, parmesan, parsley, prosciutto, salt and pepper, and blend until uniform. Stuff the squid sacks with the mixture to about 3/4 full. Do not over stuff as the squid shrinks during cooking and can easily split. Sew the sacks shut, or if you prefer, pin shut with tootpicks. I've found that on the large sacks a bamboo skewer works well.

In a saute pan, pour in olive oil to 1/4 inch depth and heat over a medium high burner. Put in the garlic cloves and red pepper flakes, stirring the garlic until brown then remove the cloves. Add the squid and brown all over. Add the tomatoes with their juice, the chopped garlic and the wine. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to simmer. Cook for 50 minutes or until the squid is tender.

When done trasfer the squid to a cutting board and let settle a few minutes. While it is settling add the oregano to the sauce along with salt and pepper to taste. (A little lemon juice can also perk it up.) Cut away the sewn portion of the squid and then slice the sacks into rounds about 1/2 inch thick, arrange on plates and spoon the sauce over the slices.

Spaghetti and Squid

This is a recipe I derived from the stuffed squid above, and memories I had of spagetti del mare I had while in the Cinque Terra. As noted in the previous recipe there is a smooth seafood richness that a long simmering squid adds to a sauce. I've added large prawns in this particular version but any shellfish could be added in the last minutes of simmering.

With a pound of spaghetti, this is a light, flavorful seafood pasta that should serve as a main course for four. With half a pound of pasta, this becomes a soupy full meal for two. When served as a soupy meal, a tubular pasta such as a penne might be more appropriate than a spaghetti.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

Rinse the squid sacks thouroughly with cold water inside and out to remove any ice and the spine if it is still there. Pat dry. Cut up one side from the opening to the tip so that the sack will open up and lie flat. Having the outer surface up helps to slice cleanly through the squid for the next step. Slice the squid in about 1/2 inch diagonals, and then again in 1/2 inch verticals. The result should be a couple of cups of little squid diamonds about 1 inch long and 1/2 inch wide.

Separate the heads from the tails of the prawns.

In a saute pan, pour in olive oil to 1/4 inch depth and heat over a medium high burner. Put in the red pepper flakes, stirring until they are sizzling. Add the squid and saute until it starts to brown. Add the tomatoes with their juice, the chopped garlic, the prawn heads, and the wine. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to simmer. Cook for 45 minutes or until the squid is tender. Remove the prawn heads and discard. Stir in the organo, salt and pepper to taste, and add the prawn tails and cover until done, the meat should have just turned white -- usually less than 5 minutes

Cook the spaghetti as per directions, timing it where the spaghetti is done at the same time as the prawns. Do not put oil in the boiling water as this inhibits the pasta from soaking up the flavors of the sauce.

Serve portions of the pasta into pasta bowls and liberally spoon the squid, prawns and sauce over it. Sprinkle with parmesan and parsley and serve.

Mom's Pizza

This is a family recipe that Mom has been making for years.  We lived in Poteau, a small town in the mountains of south-east Oklahoma.  As a child, I hadn't heard of pizza until Mom got this recipe from her best friend, whose daughter brought it home from college. We loved it and pizza became the meal of choice for birthdays and other impromtu celebrations.

The country sausage makes this pizza quite different from commercial pizzas. The sausage cooking on top flavors the rest of the ingredients and the thin, crispy crust. Try it as written once, then start playing with the toppings.

INGREDIENTS

For the dough:

For the topping:

DIRECTIONS

Combine the water, salt, sugar, yeast and oil in a food processor with dough blade. Add the flour 1/2 cup at a time and process thoroughly after each addition. This will form a large ball of dough. Place the ball in a bowl covered with a cloth and let rise for 30 minutes.

While the dough is rising, prepare the tomatoe sauce by draining the large can of tomatoes. Chop the tomatoes finely and mix thoroughly with the tomato paste.

The dough will cover 2 - 15 inch or 3 - 12 inch round pans. If you use square pans, you'll have to do the math again to get the square inches (in this case a pizza pi are square and it works out to about 340-350 square inches of pizza). Once you stretch the dough, you'll appreciate round pans.

Separate the dough into equal balls appropriate for your pans. Liberally grease the pans and your hands with olive oil. Spread the dough with your hands until it covers the pan. This sounds easier than it is. The dough is very stretchy and wants to snap back into its original position. I've found that pressing down hard with my hand flattend, then splaying my finger to stretch the dough in several directions at once works pretty good. Flipping the dough a couple of times during the stretching seems to help too. Try not to leave any holes. The cheese will stick to the pan and you'll have a mess.

Have the mozzarella ready before you stretch the dough, as you can use it to help keep the dough in shape. Place the mozarrella in a single layer on top of the dough, trying to cover it completely (which you can't because of the round pan, square cheese problem -- but give it a try).

Spread the tomatoes on the dough and cheese. Pinch the sausage into dime sized bites scatter on tomatoes. If you want to add other toppings, this is the time. We like to add fresh mushrooms, black olives, red onion, and bell peppers. Dust all the toppings with the oregano and liberally coat with parmesan.

Cook at 425 F for 20 minutes or until the bottom of the crust is a toasty brown. Use a spatual to lift it off the pan so you can take a peek.

Malloreddus a Sa Campidanesa

It was a combination of things that lead me to first make this. One was that Deanne's Aunt Carol had given us a bag of tomatoes because she'd bought a case at the farmers market. They were great! Much more flavorful than what we were getting in the stores. I had tomato envy and wanted my own case. I started dreaming and scheming of what I would do if I had my own case of huge flavorful tomatoes.

The second is that in the middle of my scheming, the August '03 issue of Saveur magazine arrived. Their feature article was "Cooking Dinner in Sardina" and the cover had a pot of a thick red tomato sauce. A quick look at the recipe told me that this was the dish to make. Some times events and stars line up just right.

This recipe is the one from Saveur, somewhat tweaked for our tastes. The real beauty of this sauce is the texture and flavor that the long simmered pork and salami give.

INGREDIENTS

For the tomato sauce:

For the pasta:

DIRECTIONS

If you are using fresh tomatoes, peel and seed them. If you dunk the tomatoes in boiling water for 1 minute, the peels will slide right off. To seed them them cut them in half across the middle and use your fingers to pull the seeds out of the cavities. Puree half the tomatoes in a blender, and chop the other half and crush with a masher. If not using fresh, just open the cans.

Heat oil in a pot over meduim heat. Add onions and garlic and cook, stirring often until soft, 8-10 minutes. Add ground pork and pork shoulder and cook, stirirring and breaking up the ground meat with the back of a spoon, until meat is no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Splash in wine, increase heat and bring to boil scraping the bottom of the pan with a metal spatula. Reduce heat and add salami, pureed tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, bay leaves, and 1 cup water. Increase heat to medium and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, partially cover pot, and gently simmer, stirring occasionally, until pork shoulder falls apart and sauce is thick. 2 1/2 - 3 hours. About halfway through the simmer, salt and pepper to taste. Adjust seasonings again at the end and discard bay leaves.

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water over high heat until tender, 12-15 minutes, and drain. Put 1/3 of the pasta in a large bowl, ladle about about a cup of sauce over the pasta, and sprinkle with about 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat the layering twice more.

Save the remaining sauce for other uses. (I made mozzerella and mushroom omlettes the next morning and smothered them with this sauce.)

Fresh Shrimp and Vegetable Soup

Several unrelated occurrences led me to toss together a new soup that worked out nicely. The weather turned spring-like, Joe's faux-birthday had enough wine to have me thinking about a healing soup, and Central Market had one of their coupons for a free pound of pink Key West shrimp.

This started me thinking about a brothy soup with fresh, barely-cooked vegetables and shrimp. I wanted the stock nice and clear like a Mexican sopa del mar, but with some of the zing of a Vietnamese pho.

Here's what I came up with:

INGREDIENTS

Stock:

Fresh morsels:

Garnish:

DIRECTIONS

Place the ginger, lemon grass, bay leaves, onion, celery and chicken broth in a stock pot and bring to a low boil. Partially cover and reduce to a simmer for 1 hour.

Remove heads from and peel the shrimp, cover and reserve in refrigerator. Place the heads and peels in a sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 30 minutes. Strain the liquid out pressing to heads to release more liquid. Discard the heads and shells and add the liquid to the simmering stock. If your shrimp came without heads, add the optional cube of shrimp bullion to the stock.

When the stock is ready, the onions and celery should be transparent and falling apart. Season the stock with salt and pepper to taste.

Immediately prior to serving, divide the garnish into 4 large bowls. Add the zucchini and squash to the stock and increase heat to medium. When it starts to boil (around a minute), add the shrimp and reduce heat to medium-low. Count to 100 and ladle the soup into the waiting bowls. Serve as quickly as possible because the stock continues to cook the vegetables and the shrimp and it's easy to become overcooked.

For us, Sundays are "Soup Night" and we have each have a couple bowls of soup as our meal evening meal. To prevent overcooking I cooked half the shrimp and vegetables for our first bowl, reduced the heat on the stock, then when we were ready for our second serving I repeat the last step.

Christmas Stollen

The only credit I can take for this recipe is that I deciphered some hand scrawled notes that Deanne took while getting verbal directions from her grandmother, and typing them up. (if you've gone through this process with someone else's family recipes you'll appreciate this what it takes -- and I still can't figure oute what "coeext dough means in the notes).

Nana's family immigrated to America when she was a child in the 1930's. Apparently a relative was well placed enough to understand what was about to happen in Germany and urged them to leave. They settled in Milwaukee and contiuned German traditions in their holidays and in their cooking. Stollen is a traditional frosted Christms loaf for snacking at breakfast or at coffee. Typically one person was the stollen baker, making loaves for the family, neighbors, congregation, etc. Deanne remembers Nana making more than 60 loaves a year to give out.

Deanne has taken over this role in her family and only makes about 9 loaves (3 recipes)since it competes with other Cristmas baking and everyone says they are trying to watch thier weight. If Nana were still with us, I know she'd be clucking at this decline. Persoanlly, I could survive the whole Christmas Season on nothing but stollen.

Deanne says she cheats a lot on the cinnamon, easily doubling or tripling the amount. Also the loaf that goes to her Dad will have twice the amount of frosting (but don't tell Becki!).

INGREDIENTS

* Some candied fruit has citrus peel in it. If so the lemon and orange peel cam be left out. If using, stir the grated peel into the candied fruit before adding it to the dough.

DIRECTIONS

Put milk and butter together in a pan and heat at medium low until the butter melts and the mixture starts to simmer. Add the water and bring the temperature down to 120-130 deg F.

Combine flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Stir in beaten eggs, Stir in liquid. Stir fruits and nuts into the dough. Divide the dough into thirds. Put each third into a plastic bag, squeeze all the air out, tie tight and refrigerate while it rises -- at least 3 hours but it can go overnight if you want to break the process into two days (advisable if you are making multiple batches at once).

place a ball of chilled dough on a well floured surface. Roll into a circle that is about as thick as your thumb. Brush rolled dough top with butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. tightly Roll up like a jelly roll, Tuck the ends of the roll in so that dough covers both ends.If any fruit or nuts have come to the surface of the roll. pke them back in and cover them with dough to keep them from burning. Bend roll into a crescent on a greased cookie sheet (ungreased if non-stick). Make 3-5 cuts across the roll that cut 2/3 the way through the roll. The cuts should be 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart. Repeat for each ball of dough. Let rise until doubled.

Preheat oven to 350 Deg F.

Bake 25-30 minutes.

Or 300 Deg F for 45 minutes for convection ovens.

When done a thump on the bottom of the loaf should sound hollow.

Combine the powdered sugar, 3 tbsp milk and the vanilla extract.Drizzle over the hot loaves and allow to cool.

This is Nana's recipe, but is just one of many variations that various German families make. The largest variation seems to come in what kind of nuts to use (almonds vs. walnuts) and what to flavor the frosting with. That can be vanilla, almond, rum, brandy, kirsh, schnapps, bourbon, etc. There's also quite a division in whether to refigerate during rising or not and whether one can use one of the modern fast rising yeasts. I'm wondering if Nana preferred the refigerated method because it let her stretch her stollen marathon over several days. On the other hand it could be to slow down the fermentation and get a finer textrure in the loaves. A trick Deanne is trying this year is to plump the raisins by soaking them in a dry white wine for an hour to make them juicier.

Please note that all the measurements are approximate. As in all bread making, the ratio of floour to liquid varies a lot with the flour. How much liquid it will absorb varies from bag to bag, and season to season. One just has to judge when the right combination has been reached (my Mom always said when working the dough it should feel like a powdered baby's bottom).

If you are interested in making breads and how things vary with different techniques, I recommend Bernard Clayton's "New Complete Book of Breads". I have the prior version and really like it because it gives different instructions for preparing dough depending on whether you are kneading by hand, with a mixer and dough hook or with a food processors dough blade. It also gives different directions by oven type. Recently I've used it for advice on flour type substitiution as we've started using spelt flour in our baking. (The key is gluten content -- which is pretty much the same as the prtien content. Adjust your flour mix to match what is called for and you should get similar results. .

I'm also eyeing some of the seafood recipes that Will Cook has at PCD

There is an excellent tutorial on epicurious.com on the five basic techniques used in cooking.

I'm finding this ingredient substitutionguide to be very handy.

Last modified 1/14/2007.