Recipes from an Edwardian Country House

Recipes from an Edwardian Country House is a book that was repackaged from an earlier book.  Frankly, I hate it when publishers do this sort of thing, as I often have the first book and then end up with another copy of the same book -- different title!  Well, I don't have the original Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall book entitled, The Good Granny Cookbook.  One can only imagine that that title was a bit on the unfortunate side. 

The idea for the book was simple, to look at old recipes culled from many that were popular in the Edwardian era and present them to today's cook.  Recipes that Granny might have made.  The book was published before the great infatuation with the Edwardian era spawned by Downton Abbey.  Pre-Downton such a book was a quaint look back at granny's old cookbooks.  Post-Downton the book was transformed into recipes from an Edwardian Country House.

Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (yes, Virginia, she is Hugh's mother) spent a lot of time in an old country house.  Her grandparents has a large, yet far from Downton, country house.  They managed with only 8 or 10 people to help them.  At the outbreak of World War II, the women and children of the family gathered together at the country house to ride out the war as husbands were away fighting and Jane spent her first six years there with her mother and grandparents. 

While many of the recipes are gleaned from old cookbooks that were known in the Edwardian era, a good many of the recipes are pulled from friends and family, making it neither Granny's nor Edward's cookbook.  Many of the recipes are pulled from and earlier era yet remain thoroughly modern like Slow Roasted Pork Belly with Cider.  At times the book seems positively southern as there are recipes for Cheese Straws, Pineapple Upside-Down Pudding and Stuffed Eggs with enough variations to keep one busy for days. 

This recipe came from Jane's godmother.  A lovely chocolate sauce and we would eat cardboard with a nice chocolate sauce.

Granny Ray's Chocolate Sauce

1 ½ ounces butter
9 tablespoons soft brown sugar
9 tablespoons best-quality cocoa
3 tablespoons black coffee
Melt the butter over a low heat. Stir in the sugar, then the cocoa and black coffee. Mix well, stirring constantly. Serve the sauce immediately, while warm, over vanilla ice cream.

We are off to get the ice cream as we speak.

Mast Brothers Cookbook

When you look up "hipster" in the dictionary you will find a picture of the Mast Brothers.  They may be the original hipsters, though I am sure there is someone else ready to claim the title.

So here's the story:  Two young boys from Iowa leave to find fortune in the big city.  Tired of working for other people, they look for a creative outlet. They ask a simple question. Where does chocolate come from?  In their spare time they roasted chocolate in there tiny apartment.  They crack the beans by hand and wrapped them in fine papers. The rest is history.

OK, maybe not "history" but surly a moment in hipster history.  The Mast Brothers become obsessed. They immerse themselves in all things chocolate.  The ask more questions.  Why is there no bean-to-bar chocolate available?  How do we get from bean to bar?  Where do we find the folks that grow cacao beans?  After answering these questions, they began selling bars at farmer's markets.

Then one day, while visiting New York, pastry chefs at the French Laundry bought Mast Brothers chocolate.  They were ecstatic and raved to Thomas Keller but it takes more than that to impress Keller.

Keller thought the chefs had found another pair of artisans working at home.  Yes it was good, but could they sustain it.  By the time Keller paid the boys a visit, they had a small factory.  The Midwestern farm boys were strapping, over six feet tall, bearded, looking more like lumberjacks than chocolatiers.
They were no dilettantes, they were the real deal.

And now, they have a cookbook.  Clearly, if you make tons of chocolate, you eat tons of chocolate.  If you eat tons of chocolate, you have good  ideas about how to use that chocolate. The Mast Brothers know how to use their chocolate.

I confess, I adore chocolate.  I also admit that I am not a fan overly sweet chocolate.  I adore chocolate in savory dishes.  I make a winter spice rub with cocoa that makes wonderful chicken and baked squash.  I make squab with a stuffing infused with bits of chocolate.  My favorite bread is made with a chocolate stout and studded with chunks of chocolate.

The average chocolate cookbook has tons to cakes and cookies but few savory elements.   The Mast Brothers Cookbook has the requisite brownies and cakes, but there is a section of savory recipes that make this cookbook special.  Try this vinaigrette.

Cocoa Balsamic Vinaigrette

fresh rosemary                 1/2 sprig
cacao nibs                        1 tablespoon
cocoa powder                   2 teaspoons
sea salt                             2 teaspoons
black pepper                    1 teaspoon
balsamic vinegar              1/4 cup
honey                               2 teaspoons
extra virgin olive oil          1 cup

1. remove rosemary leaves from stem and roughly chop.
2. combine rosemary leaves,nibs, cocoa powder,salt,and pepper and grind in a mortar and pestle.
3. place  ground ingredients in a medium bowl.
4. Add balsamic vinegar and honey and whiskey.
5. Slowly add olive oil while whisking quickly to emulsify.
6. Store in a mason jar in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Who says you can't have your salad and eat chocolate, too?   If there is choco-holic in your house, this is the perfect gift.

The Ethicurean Cookbook

I have no real desire to visit Noma.  The restaurant I would travel across the ocean to visit is The Ethicurean.   After reading their cookbook, I am more convinced than ever that this is my culinary destination.   The Ethicurean is one of those places that seems to be plucked from the mind of writer, a satirical writer at that.


What if the people who produce Portlandia decided to go to England and make it parody of pretentious foodie restaurants.  First you would pick a name -- something that sounds made-up -- let's call it The Ethicurean.  You would set your imaginary restaurant in a very British setting, like Downton Abbey.  Not actually Downton Abbey,  but a decaying country estate.  Not in the actual estate but in the decaying walled garden.  There would be an old orangerie, with missing glass, this would be the restaurant.  The walled garden would be the farm-to-table variety.  The head gardener, unlike his Victorian counterpart, would look like he ambled out of a J. Crew shoot.   The vegetables would be washed, then dusted with organic dirt.   The waitstaff would look exactly like they have walked off the runway in Milan or as one reviewer stated, "it's as if they're putting in a bit of work experience before getting engaged to Prince Harry or something."  The  restaurant would be out-of-the-way so it will be a difficult to get there which would encourage people from all over the world to make a pilgrimage.  You would construct a menu so the gorgeous waitresses would say things like, "Tonight, we have lacto-fermented carrots."  or maybe, "The bar has a lovely hay infused apple cider,"  or, "Do try our goat bacon."  It would all seem so funny and witty, but....

The reviews are in.  They keep coming in and The Ethicurean knocks it out of the park or the walled garden, as it were.  The cookbook follows in this same exquisite vein.  Every time you pick it up, you just can't seem to put it down.  When you do set it aside, you think about it and soon you are leafing through the pages, again.  The Ethicureans are a team consisting of brothers Matthew and Iain Pennington, Paûla Zarate and Jack Adain-Bevan.  This merry band keeps the walled garden humming.

The cookbook leaves you humming with a strange sense of vertigo.   You see a recipe and it seems familiar.  You look at it again and it seems totally original.  The brownies have elderflowers.  The steamed pudding is stuffed with rabbit.  There is goat bacon.  Or this:

Fennel Seed and Ginger Hot Chocolate

400ml milk
100g dark chocolate with 70-73 per cent cocoa solids, grated plus a little extra to finish
1 tsp ground ginger
20g dark muscovado sugar
a pinch of salt
2 tsp fennel sugar
100ml double cream

Gently heat half the milk in a pan and add the grated chocolate, ginger, muscovado sugar, salt, and most of the fennel sugar (save a pinch for sprinkling). Stir until the chocolate has melted into the milk, then whisk in the remaining milk and the cream.  Do not allow the mixture to boil but bring it to a comfortable drinking temperature.  If you have a hand blender, substitute this for the whisk; either way, for a frothy head a good amount of whisking is needed.

Sprinkle with he remaining fennel sugar and a few shards of chocolate.

Needless to say, the cookbook is beautifully photographed by Jason Ingram and in keeping with that ethicureanism, it is printed on certified, forest managed paper.  I love cookbooks and this one is magical.  I love walled gardens, and The Barley Wood Walled Garden is both practical and ever so romantic.  Far from being pretentious, ethicurean is a lovely word, like yo, get out your dictionary every now and then.   In the end, it is always about the food and this food makes you long for a kitchen and a walled garden.  The Ethicurean is my pick for Cookbook of the Year.

The Forager's Kitchen

 I got this cool copy of The Forager's Kitchen as a birthday present.   The book was written by Fiona Bird who was a contestant on the BBC's Masterchef.   She has six kids and her husband is an island doctor on one of the Outer Hebrides. We are already tired and we haven't foraged a thing.

This foraging book offers up many a foraged item, but the items can be successfully replaced with supermarket finds, so even the land-locked city dweller can benefit from this book.  Some city dwellers might even be able to find some of the more exotic items like samphire (AKA sea beans or glasswort).  This forager was once able to find them on occasion at the Whole Foods, but alas, we haven't laid eyes on them in a year or two.  So we are off to the Hebrides!  (Not really, but...)

The book is divided into five sections offering up the different areas one might forage.  There are flowers, woodlands, fruits, herbs and the sea.    Like most forager's, Bird reminds the reader that one should never
dig into anything (in both the literal and culinary way) without the proper research.  Digging plants is not always legal and digging into a plant whose provenance is not scrupulously documented could be dangerous.  So forager beware.

These little firs de crème are a tasty indulgence.  OK, there is a great deal of foraged food and even some cardboard that we might eat enrobed in chocolate.  But the simple addition of the piney fir-infused cream
just punches up these chocolate pots.

Douglas Fir Chocolate Pots

What to forage and find:
Sprig Douglas fir, approximately 2 1/2 to 3 inches (6-8 cm) in length, washed and dried
1 1/2 cups (300ml) light (single) cream
7 oz (200g) bittersweet (dark) chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
1 medium (small UK) egg
2 teaspoons Douglas Fir syrup (or pine sugar)

What to do:
1. Put the Douglas fir sprig and cream into a pan and scald it over a low heat. Do not allow the cream to boil. Set aside for an hour to allow the flavor to infuse and then remove the sprig.

2. Put the chocolate into a food processor and pulse to break it into small pieces. Take care: the machine may need to be held in place.

3. Reheat the cream (do not allow it to boil). Slowly pour the hot cream into the food processor and pulse, ensuring that the chocolate doesn't overflow down the sides of the machine. If you don't chop the chocolate first,  it may do this. So slowly does it.

4. Add the egg to the hot chocolate cream, blend and then add the Douglas fir syrup or pine sugar. Pour into pots and refrigerate until set

OK fine, infuse the cream with rosemary!  Grab you little pot of chocolate and snuggle in on the couch and read about being a forager.  Of course, you could throw on your muck boots and head out to the wild.   Either way, The Forager's Kitchen is a spiffy birthday idea.

 We forgot to tell our readers that one can follow the foraging exploits of Fiona Bird on her blog.  On to the hedgerow!

Hominy Grill Recipes

Yes boys and girls, vacation made me stupid.  So I have been lax in my postings and I apologize.  But I did get some cool offerings as I ate my way across Charleston and Savannah.  So let us begin.   Stopped in at the fabulous Hominy Grill.   (If you did not see my posting at Lucindaville, I left on my vacation with a bunch of newfangled photo apps that I did not make the best of.  Like old Polaroids, most every picture I took sucked.  But since one no longer has the limitation of the cost of printing actual film... there are a plethora of BAD pictures to go around.)

The Hominy Grill is known for its Big Ugly Biscuit.  It involves a large biscuit, a large piece of fried chicken stuffed into the biscuit.  A scoop of cheese on top of the chicken.  Finally and ladle of sausage gravy to add a certain lightness to the mix!   How good is that!

Pretty darn good.  Along with the food one can get t-shirts, mugs and a small cookbook.   While the Big Ugly Biscuit is not in the cookbook, the actual biscuit recipe is included.    But the best thing in the cookbook is their chocolate pudding recipe.

It seems that Alton Brown showed up about a year ago and no one noticed him.  Then the Food Network did one of their "Best Thing I Ever Ate" shows about chocolate and Brown said the best chocolate he ever ate was the chocolate pudding at Hominy Grill.  It tasted he said, "like sucking the soul out of a little chocolate Easter bunny."

Chocolate Pudding

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate

1/2 cup sugar

6 egg yolks

4 cups heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Chop chocolate, reserve in bowl.

Whisk 1/4 cup sugar into egg yolks. Mix rest of sugar with cream & vanilla in saucepan, bring to a boil. Pour a little hot cream into bowl with egg yolks for smoothness and then pour the remainder over chocolate, stir with spatula until smooth. Add egg mixture and salt, then train into a pitcher.

Refrigerate until cool.

Pour into 2/3 cup ramekins, place ramekins into a shallow baking pan half filled with water & cook for about an hour.

Chill for at least 3 hours before serving.

I was told, the chef's secret is using not just any bittersweet chocolate but using Callebaut chocolate.  Well, it was quite the experience.  Here's Alton with a bit of extraneous stuff from the show.

Chocolate

As Easter approaches, we dragged out one of our favorite Easter recipes from Linda Collister's Chocolate. Collister has written a series of small books on chocolate. Several of them published by Ryland Peters. We have spoken before of our devotion to books by Ryland Peters. They are small and beautiful books that make food look its most seductive.

Truly, however, it may just be time to grab up all of Collister's "chocolate" books and make one big book. Until then, here is a favorite treat from just plain, Chocolate.

Surprise Eggs

6 very fresh eggs with pretty shells
5 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon heavy cream

Praline

1/3 cup whole unblanched almonds
1/3 cup whole skinned hazelnuts
1/2 cup sugar

Using the tip of a small, sharp knife, gently cut a small hole in the pointed end of each egg, then carefully snip away the shell with shearers to cut off the top, leaving a hole about 3/4 inch diameter. Empty out the eggs by shaking them over a bowl -- the contents can be saved for omelets or scrambled eggs. Wash out the empty shells thoroughly, then set them on apiece of wax paper in a baking dish and dry them in a preheated oven at 300 F for about 15 minutes. Let cool.

Meanwhile, to make the praline, put the nuts and sugar into a small, heavy saucepan and heat gently on top of the stove. Stir frequently with a wooden spoon until the sugar melts, then watch carefully, stirring frequently, as it cooks and turns chestnut brown, ant the nuts start to pop. Take care with hot caramel, because splashes can burn.

Lift the saucepan off the heat, g quickly pour the mixture onto the oiled baking tray and, using a wooden spoon, spread it out evenly. Leave until completely cold and set, then coarsely break up the praline with a rolling pin or grind it in a food processor.

Put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Put the cream into a heavy saucepan, heat until hot but not boiling, then pour it over the chocolate. Leave for 1 minute, then stir gently. Let cool for 5-10 minutes until thick, then stir in the praline. Stand the egg shells upright in an egg carton or rack and carefully spoon the chocolate mixture into the shells. Chill overnight until firm, then remove from the refrigerator 2 hours before serving.

First, we just love recipes that say "1/2 cup minus 1 tablespoon" it is just so confusingly obtuse. Secondly, after one has procured lovely egg shells, spooning chocolate into them will not only make them a mess but well... let's just leave it at that. Grab a Ziplock bag, scrape the chocolate and praline mixture into it and clip off one corner and use that to add the chocolate. It may seem messy at first, but try spooning chocolate into eggs shells and you will see the wisdom.

Cooking With Colleen McCullough

People often joke that EVERYONE has a a book in them, well it is not a far stretch (especially if you read Famous Food Friday) to assume that EVERYONE has a cookbook in them. Today we are... Cooking With Colleen McCullough.

McCullough was a literary sensation in the late 1970's and 1980's after producing an rather large and rambling novel about Australia entitled: The Thorn Birds. It was ostensibly about a priest waging battle between his love of God and his love of all things female. It was all the rage and in 1983 it was turned into a rambling mini-series.



I came to write about this cookbook, not because of Colleen McCullough but because of Barbara Stanwyck .



Recently I saw an interview with the new "IT" girl, Brit Marling,


who said the actress she most wanted to be like was Barbara Stanwyck . A few days later, I saw Barbara Stanwyck in Annie Oakley.



Then, I was moving something in a desk and I ran across the Barbara Stanwyck Christmas Ornament, my BFF, Beverly gave me. Then I remembered The Thorn Birds, largely because of Barbara Stanwyck, who had a hot sex scene with a naked Richard Chamberlain. It was quite scandalous at the time. And that, my dear readers, is how we got to to Colleen McCullough's cookbook but, as always, I digress...



Colleen McCullough set out to be a doctor, but dermatitis kept her from scrubbing in as a physician, so she turned her interests to neurophysiology. While studying, she had a professor, Jean Easthope. The pair became friends and quickly began cooking together. They proved to be an unlikely, yet interesting mix. McCullough was raised in a meat-and-potatoes household while Easthope was raised by vegetarian parents.

The book is filled with archival prints, drawings and photographs, including a rather lovely kangaroo hunt (unless, of course, you are the kangaroo).


I was quite dismayed that the book failed to include a single kangaroo recipe. Since humans are a bit on the squeamish side and would rather eat pork than pig, venison than deer, so, an attempt was made recently to develop a "people" friendly culinary term for kangaroo. The winner is... "Australus." If you see"Australus" steak on the menu, you will no longer be in the dark.

Since we had no kangaroo, we immediately went to the chocolate. Even kangaroo, sorry, Australus, would be great if just smothered it in this lovely sauce.

Chocolate Rum Sauce

225 g (8 oz) dark chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons rum

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the top of a double boiler, stir well, and add the rum, stirring again.

As long as we are rambling...

The joy (as well as the curse) of our new technology may well be that we never lose anything. When you snort milk out your nose in the junior high lunch room, chances are it will end up on YouTube. Forever. FOREVER. Every dumbass thing one does, things that used to be forgotten, are now immortalized for better or worse.

The good news is, one no longer has to watch 8 hours of The Thorn Birds to see the naughty bit with Richard Chamberlain and Barbara Stanwyck .

Sunday's Kitchen: Food & Living at Heide

Let me preface this by saying that Australia has never held any great thrall with me. I suppose if Oprah paid my way to go and visit I might board the plane. That being said, I love Donna Hay and Stephanie Alexander. It was because of Alexander that I ran across Sunday's Kitchen: Food & Living at Heide as she wrote the foreword.

I knew nothing about Sunday Reed but it seems she and her husband, John, we big art patrons in Australia. They purchased a house they called Heide, short for "Heidleberg" and began inviting artist friends to stay there. They wanted a self-sustaining farm with gardens and animals and orchards and they worked for years to make their house magical.

Agnes Goodsir, Portrait of Sunday Baillieu Quinn, Paris 1929

Along the way, Sunday Reed cooked for friends and family and few people who sat at her table forgot the event. Stephanie Alexander met the Reeds once and always remembered the encounter. Heide was made a museum after the Reed's deaths (Sunday died ten days after John). Two curators at the museum, Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan produced an exhibition that looked at life at Heide when Sunday was running the house and cooking. They found recipes that Sunday used and several of her annotated cookbooks and produced a book that is part cookbook, part biography, part art history and all fun. It is both warn and scholarly, not always an easy feat. Here is their description of the exhibition:

This exhibition explores life behind-the-scenes at Heide, the celebrated haven for progressive modernist artist and writers. Heide was the home and personal Eden of John and Sunday Reed, two of Australia's most significant art benefactors. Settling on the fifteen acre property in 1935, the Reeds transformed it from a run-down dairy farm into a fertile creative space. They extended their hospitality and resources to now-famous artists such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman and developed a culture of collaboration, eclecticism and idealism which helped change the course of Australian art.

At the centre of activity was Sunday Reed, a passionate cook and gardener, who ensured the artists she championed received sustenance for the body, not just the mind. Drawing on her experiences in the south of France, she established two abundant kitchen gardens and developed a ‘garden to table’ approach to cooking, enhanced by fresh milk, cream, butter and eggs all produced at Heide. This emphasis on subsistence living, coupled with a self-styled domestic aesthetic, became an inspirational model for those in the Reeds’ wider circle.

Sunday Reed was greatly influenced by the time she spent in France. Much of her cooking came with a French influence. One of her specialities was chocolate mousse. It is an extremely simple recipe but the finished product is lovely.

Chocolate Mousse

115g chocolate
4 eggs, separated

Melt the chocolate, allow to cool a little, then work egg yolks in well. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the chocolate mixture a little at a time. Pour into a glass dish and chill.

Well, I admit, I knew nothing about the Reed's or Heide but I am convinced that really need to visit. Oprah, are you listening?

Easy Italian

The River Café Cookbooks are among my favorites. In sharp contrast to the tangled recipes of Eric Ripert, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers prove that simple food can be wonderful, accessible and wildly complex at the same time.

Their book, Easy Italian is always coming off the shelf for general ideas and for one signature recipe that seems to come straight from the gods, the Chocolate Nemesis Cake.

This recipe is deceptively easy, four ingredients and some water. The, “easiest recipe in the world” is one of the hardest to actually get to work. I make it often and it is either, beautiful and exquisite or a total mess. I never know which it will be! Over time, however, I become quite adept at making it, so it hasn’t failed in quite some time. Frankly, even if it is not “beautiful” it is luscious.

I make it so often, it has its own baking pan and the baking pan has its own bain-marie pan!

This recipe has been dissected and re-worked and written about ad infinitum on the web.

Go ahead, give it a try!

Easy Small Nemesis

Chocolate 70% 12 oz
Unsalted butter 2 sticks
Eggs, organic 5
Superfine sugar 1 cup

Heat the oven to 300F

Using extra butter, grease a 10-inch round cake pan and line with baking parchment

Break the chocolate into pieces and melt with the butter in a bowl over simmering water. Beat the eggs and 5 tbsp of the sugar in an electric mixer until the volume quadruples.

Heat the remaining sugar with 7 tbsp water until dissolved into a light syrup. Pour the hot syrup into the melted chocolate and cool slightly.

Add the chocolate to the eggs and beat slowly until the mixture is combined. Pour into the pan.

Put a folded dish towel in the bottom of the roasting pan. Put in the cake and add enough hot water to come three-quarters of the way up the side of the cake pan.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour until set. Leave the cake in the water before unmolding.

There is really nothing else quite as divine as this cake. But if you are not convinced, there are several other chocolate cakes in this cookbook. Please give one of them a try.

Jack Daniels The Spirit Of Tennessee Cookbook

In my kitchen there is salt, sea and kosher, and there is pepper, black and red and then there is Jack Daniel’s. In addition to my favorite libation, Old No. 7 is one of my favorite seasonings. So you can imagine how much I might like a cookbook filled with Jack Daniel’s recipes.


Jack Daniel's Spirit of Tennessee Cookbook by Lynne Tolley and Pat Mitchamore is a “twofer” both Southern and Jack Daniel’s. There is often a problem with cookbooks that features a single ingredient, such as Jack Daniel’s. With this type of cookbook the recipes tend to fall into three types -- well thought out recipes that use the ingredient as an integral part, recipes that tend to simply have the ingredient thrown into the recipes as an after thought and recipes that don’t include the ingredient at all.

Whiskey Sour Salad and Soused Onions feature Jack Daniel’s as defined part of the recipe. There is no Whiskey Sour Salad without Old No. 7.

Onion Soup with a shot of Jack Daniel’s is just that, onion soup with a dash of whiskey. Then there is Jack’s Black Bean Soup that is nothing more than canned soup with a shot! Actually, if you are going to cook canned soup, nothing might make it better than a little Jack. If you are going to eat canned soup, several shots of Jack Daniel’s BEFORE the soup would do more to improve it than adding it to the can. Finally, there are just filer recipes to round out the cookbook, like Potato Salad. There is really no way to add Jack Daniel’s to potato salad, well there is a way, but not in this cookbook.



The downfall of books like this are the second type of recipes. Seasoning black beans soup with Jack Daniel’s is a fine idea, but only if you actually cook the black bean soup. The best recipes in the book are for the sauces and desserts. Here is a dessert sauce and one of the best uses for Jack Daniel’s outside of a glass.

Plastered Hot Fudge Sauce

1 cup of sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, sifted
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
Dash of salt
2 tablespoons Jack Daniel’s Whiskey
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup butter

Combine sugar, cocoa, coffee and salt in saucepan. Mix Jack Daniel’s whiskey with the cream; add to sauce and stir until smooth. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. When sugar has dissolved, add butter and cook until thickened, about 5 minutes. Serve warm.

Once you have a big bowl of fudge sauce, you can make any dessert a Jack Daniel’s dessert! Ignore what I said about those recipes that just have some whiskey thrown in. While I wouldn’t recommend adding this sauce to black bean soup, feel free to grab Twinkies and cover them in sauce!

Luscious Chocolate Desserts

I love chocolate. Not a shocking revelation. I am pretty sure I would eat cardboard if it was coated in a 60% Valharona. I am always hunting for chocolate cookbooks.

Ironically, the best book on chocolate is not a cookbook at all, but Sophie Coe’s, The True History of Chocolate. Coe died of cancer before finishing her book on chocolate which was eventually completed by her husband, Michael. Coe was a brilliant food historian whose legacy lives on at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies' Arthur & Elisabeth Schlesinger Library, which holds her extensive culinary library.



For a great general chocolate cookbook, you can’t stray too far from Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Chocolate Desserts. The book is full of great photos and general recipes for every kind of chocolate desert from drinks to brownies, ice cream to cakes, cookies and candies and sauces and pies oh my! The recipes are good, they are easy and they appear accomplished. All you need is a kitchen and great chocolate. A few utensils are needed but nothing you don’t have.

Katharine Hepburn loved chocolate. She often contributed recipes to magazines with her favorite confections. On different occasions, Hepburn gave different recipes for her brownies. These brownies appeared in Family Circle.

Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup walnuts, chopped

Position rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 325 F. butter and flour an 8-inch square baking pan

Melt the butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of about 1 1/2 inches of nearly simmering water, whisking until smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat, add the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and whisk until well blended. Stir in the walnuts. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out sticky, with just a few crumbs clinging to it, but is not wet; do not overbake.

Cool completely in the pan or on a wire rack. Chill if you have the time, then cut into 9 brownies.

Years ago, Katharine Hepburn intervened in the life of Heather Henderson. Henderson wanted to quit her studies at Bryn Mawr. Hepburn invited both the young woman and her father to tea for brownies and a lecture on the importance of education. Years later, Ms. Henderson reminisced about the actress, sharing Hepburn rules for living:

1. Never quit

2. Be yourself

3. Don't put too much flour in your brownies