Groovy Cookies!

A few years ago, I inherited a collection of recipes from my wife's great (and late) aunt. She had amassed an absurd impressive amount of McCall's recipe books, all of which were published in the 1970's. Many of these have since been thrown out, because we try our very very best not to be hoarders around here. I kept my favorites though; here's one of them: 

These are not my hands. These are my wife's un-scarred un-chef-like fingers.
 Gaze upon their untouched flesh. Clearly she should be chopping more things. 

FROSTED "BUTTON" COOKIES

McCall's, 1973

NOTES FROM THE ANGRY CHEF: 

- I'm not sure why they put the quotation marks around "BUTTON." In fact I don't know what buttons have to do with this at all.

- I didn't create this. The 70's did. 

- Do you dig it?

Cookie Ingredients:

3.5 cups sifted all purpose flour (sift before measuring)

1 tsp baking soda

.5 tsp salt 

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

Frosting Ingredients:

4 cups confectioner's sugar

.5 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 to 5 tbsp milk

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted

Assorted colored frosting decorators, with writing tip

(note: this is how you write "groovy" on the cookies, which is an essential step)

Make the cookies!

- Preheat oven to 375 F

- Sift flour with baking soda and salt

- In a large bowl, with an electric mixer at medium speed, beat 1 cup butter until light. Gradually beat in brown sugar. Add eggs and 1 tsp vanilla. Continue beating until light and fluffy. 

- At low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture until smooth. Add nuts. Mix well.

- Drop dough by tablespoonfuls, 3.5 inches apart, onto un-greased cookie sheets. Pat each into round about 3/4 inch thick.

- Bake 10 - 12 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove cookies to wire rack. Cool. Cool, dog.

Make the frosting!

- In a medium bowl, combine confectioner's sugar, butter, vanilla, and milk. With electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy. Remove 1 cup of frosting to small bowl. Add chocolate, and beat until well blended. 

This is what the people from the 1970's want you to do now:

- Spread half of the cookies with white frosting and the other half with chocolate frosting, then write popular sayings on cookies, as pictured. 

- Makes 32 cookies.

 Good job, guys. We did it.

Turn fish into food!

It occurred to me recently that not many people know how to prepare a fish.  I don't mean how to cook a fish, but how to scale, gut, filet, or debone.  I've always believed that you should be able to look your food in the face before it winds up on the your plate, and it only adds about five extra minutes to your cooking time.  So let's get started! Today I grabbed a Striped Bass from a local asian market. It has a single spine running down the center length of the fish. If you can filet this fish, you can filet many others of the same bone structure, such as other Bass species and Red Snappers, Porgys, Mullets, and Salmon.

1) Remove the scales by scraping the sides of the fish (against the grain) with the spine of a butter knife.

Some fish, like this one, have barbs -
 be careful not to catch your fingers on them. 

2) Place the tip of your knife in the fish's asshole and give it a good slice, all the way up to it's gills. Don't be shy. You can remove the guts if you wish but we're just taking the filet so it's not necessary here.

3) Place the blade of the knife horizontally along the top seam of the fish, resting the flat part of the blade against the dorsal spines. Make a shallow cut to mark the line where you will later filet across the spine of the fish. Then place two vertical cuts, one just behind the gills and one more just ahead of the tail. Roll the fish over and make these three cuts again.

4) Gently insert the tip of your knife into your horizontal cut and try to feel your knife make slight contact with the spine bones. Try to do this delicately and feel free to make many smaller cuts as you go because you dont want to lose any meat! When you finish, flip it over and repeat.  It may get slightly more difficult with the second filet because of the missing flesh.

When you feel your blade move past each spine bone you get results like this

5) After removing your filets, trim the white skinned belly portion off and you are ready to bake, sear, fry or whatever!

If I may offer a suggestion:
Pan seared with cajun seasoning and hush puppies.