Sweet and Salty Cream Cheese Tart by Alison Roman

Wow, the final dessert. It’s hard to wrap my head around it all. My first dessert of the project was Alison’s Cocoa Banana Bread. I chose it because it sounded familiar and safe. Obviously, Alison wouldn’t include an ordinary banana bread in her cookbook; it had plenty of flare like crystallized Demerara sugar and mascarpone. It was delicious and I felt really proud of crossing it off the list. 

33 desserts later and I’ve felt great moments of pride — like when my upside-down apricot tart held perfectly together when I flipped it onto a plate, or when my salted-butter chocolate chip cookies looked just like the picture in the book. I’ve failed too — my coconut banana pudding took multiple tries to become pudding and I was certainly too hasty about the task of cutting out circles of dough for the top of my cherry and sesame galette. I am still nowhere near any sort of expert-level baker, but I’m more confident than before. 

The cream cheese tart is as close as I’ve ever been to baking a cheesecake (which I know little to nothing about). It starts with assembling and baking the crust. Given the option of Nilla Wafers and Ritz Crackers, I went with the Ritz. My reason being that I assumed that the filling would lean more heavily on the “sweet” than the “salty,” and I was really craving a 50/50 split. 

I chose to break up the crackers by hand instead of with a food processor, but it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I got the crumbs down to a small size just fine, but some of them were just a bit too big — like the size of a pea — and it was difficult to break them down further. These slightly larger crumbs didn’t absorb the melted butter as easily, which meant the crust resisted staying together in some places. If you can tolerate the task of washing your food processor bowl and blade, then take it from me — use it with gusto. (But not too much gusto; you don’t want the crackers to become a powder either.) 

As the crust baked in the oven, I prepared the filling with my food processor by blending cream cheese, Greek yogurt, and sugar. Going against instructions, I chose almond milk cream cheese instead of full-fat, and frankly didn’t notice a possible difference in richness or quality. Then I added the eggs and grapefruit juice, forgoing the pinch of salt because I was starting to catch onto the fact that the filling might already taste saltier than I anticipated. 

I poured the filling into the crust and very slowly transferred it to the oven. After my first key lime pie experience, I knew to let the “jiggle test” not completely determine when the tart is ready to leave the oven. There’s liquid in the middle. Of course it’s going to have the slightest jiggle when you rattle it. But if it just barely moves when you give the tart tin a solid tap, then it’s ready to go. I followed Alison’s advice, turned off the oven and opened the door a bit in order to cool the tart more slowly. The point is to avoid any cracks forming on the filling’s surface. I’d never heard of this technique before. I bet it works if you are in a more temperature controlled environment than a Chicago apartment kitchen in the dead of winter. Cracks showed up sure enough — especially after the first 5 minutes passed. I’m not sure how else to avoid this. 

Once my tart was fully cooled and ready to eat, I sprinkled it with a bit of flaky salt and a slice of grapefruit (really just for the pictures, to be honest). The tart sure is tasty, but more of a 60/40 salt to sugar ratio. If I make this again, I’ll definitely go for Nilla wafers, or even a mix of Ritz and Nilla in the crust. The texture of the filling was so smooth and the structure held pretty well. Overall, I was pleased with the outcome. 

Soon I’ll post a ranking of my favorite Alison desserts — the ones I’ve dreamt about since eating then.

224 recipes cooked, 1 to go.

Celery & Fennel Salad, Cantaloupe & Arugula Salad, and a Baked Potato Bar by Alison Roman

“IT’S THE FI-NAL SAL-LAAAAADS!” (And some baked potatoes!) 

The ones I waited longest to enjoy. Eating these two salads revealed two new discoveries: 1) Hard blue cheese actually isn’t so bad. 2) Black olives are the most inferior kind of olive. Those two ingredients are the sole reasons I waited so long to make these salads. They also confirmed one fact that I already knew by heart: 1) olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper are all you need to dress a fantastic salad. 

I just spent the last few days celebrating a dear college friend who’s getting married soon. A small group of us drove or flew to Sawyer, Michigan where several inches of snow and a cozy cabin by Lake Michigan awaited. Weekends like these remind me just how blessed by community I am. I’ve been gifted friendships with some of the most authentic, kind, goofy, thoughtful women. Perhaps what’s most impressive about them is that they are the same kind of people in friendship as they are in the world every day, towards friends and strangers alike. We don’t see one another more than maybe once a year, which makes our time together all the richer. 

Those who flew, came in through Chicago airports, so they needed a ride to the cabin and back. We had some time to spend before their flights home, so I decided to involve them in making three of my final six recipes for a fancier-than-usual lunch. 

We gathered around my kitchen island and assumed our positions…

Megan: She owns Dining In, and thus has cooked a good number of Alison’s recipes herself. So she took charge of making Alison’s Skillet Chicken with Crushed Olives and Sumac. We’ve both made this several times in the last year because it’s that good. (It’s also the recipe used for the cover of the book). 

Molly: Standing at the corner of the counter, she expertly sliced and seeded a cantaloupe into half-inch thick rounds, then removed the outer skin. Alison says nothing about removing the rind, but we figured it’d be easier to eat that way (duh). Molly also took charge of thinly slicing the celery stalks — like a boss. 

Anne: Standing in the middle, Anne eagerly volunteered to stab the russet potatoes all over with a fork to prep them for the oven. Post-oil, she sprinkled them with salt and pepper. She helped Molly remove the cantaloupe rinds. She coarsely chopped the walnuts and pistachios. She tossed the cantaloupe and arugula together and squeezed a whole lemon all over it. She topped the bowl with the chopped black olives and a handful of chopped chives. 

Caroline: God bless her. At the far end of the counter, she oiled the potatoes by hand. After, she expertly sliced a fennel bulb into thin strips and a shallot into thin rings. She tossed the celery, fennel, lemon juice, shallot, toasted nuts, salt, pepper, and olive oil together. She crumbled the hard blue cheese on top and sprinkled the bowl with celery leaves. Anne and Molly helped with the celery leaves too. She finely chopped the black olives (I used a tiny can of pitted ones from Whole Foods.) 

Yours truly: I played quarterback -- giving each teammate instructions at regular intervals. My few tasks included toasting the nuts in a skillet (I didn’t have enough walnuts to fill half a cup so I added pistachio meats into the mix— a great call), testing each dish and adding salt and pepper to taste, and setting out the baked potato toppings - sour cream, Greek yogurt, butter, flaky salt, pepper, and chopped chives. 

This meal obviously consisted of dishes chosen by necessity. I didn’t consider a cantaloupe and black olive salad to be the first choice pairing for a baked potato bar. But much to my surprise, all four dishes felt surprisingly cohesive as a meal, with the celery and fennel salad as the strongest outlier.

Someone recently asked me what my favorite part has been about this project. My answer? The people I enjoyed the meals with. Every dish created an opportunity to invite people into my home, or bring the food to them, and commune together. Share an experience, talk about what we’re eating, the flavors we’re tasting. A chance to encourage and nourish the people I love. Yes, that is what brings me the most joy. 

221, 222, and 223 recipes cooked, 2 to go.

Overnight Focaccia, Tonight

(This is the third installment of the “Life is often a lot like” series. The other two installments are here and here.)

Life is often a lot like making focaccia bread. From the very beginning, you’re full of doubt. For one thing, the ingredients seem insufficient for the task. You struggle to imagine how tiny grains of yeast, water, oil, and flour can possibly form a pillowy dough large enough to fill a baking sheet. The tools before you feel lacking, which sometimes translates to the lie that you yourself are lacking. The lie is so potent, you consider forgoing bread for dinner altogether. I mean, think of the carbs. But also, think of all those delicious carbs…

Remember what Jill said, failure is where character is formed. Make the bread, learn the lesson, let the yeast do what it was created to do. With a heart divided between doubt and hope, you begin to whisk. Whisking water, yeast, and oil until well combined, nothing you haven’t done before.

Now to add the flour. Five cups of bread flour. You scoop one half cup at a time, feigning carefulness. When really one large dumping of flour would yield the same result. Doubt creeps in again. That’s a lot of dry flour for that amount of liquid. You struggle to incorporate it all with your wooden spoon. You put your whole body to work, leaning into the stirring, the scraping up of dry bits of flour, the combining of a craggy mess. Everything’s a mess. Where’s my apron? Now for a big decision: follow your instinct to add a teaspoon of water for those last grains of flour or forgo your idea for the sake of following instructions. What happens when the rules go against your sense of right and wrong? Which do you discard? Worry about the moral implications of that question later. You’re making focaccia, remember? You add the teaspoon of water before you can face more doubt, and move onto what you, and the bread, require: rest.

Rest for a whole hour. Cover it with plastic and let time carry the weight of the process. Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive decision of all. Funny how often you forget that truth. An hour later, and the dough has indeed doubled in size. You sprinkle your counter with flour and knead the dough, pushing it with your palm and letting it fold onto itself. Over and over, and quickly, until the surface appears smooth and elastic. You coat the bowl with olive oil and put the dough back down for another nap. You’re still surprised that the dough doubles in size, though it’s only because yeast keeps doing it’s job. Me of little faith.

Light, airy, and sticky, you turn the dough out on a well-oiled baking sheet, pushing it out to the edges, so it can rest for one final hour. If there’s one lesson to learn from bread, it’s that good things happen to those who nap.

Turn on the oven, slice an onion, have flaky salt and more oil at the ready. You play the risen dough like a piano, plucking keys, pressing your fingertips to dimple the surface. Scatter the remaining ingredients and watch as the bread turns a golden brown. You spy on the baking bread and wonder why you ever doubted those tiny grains of yeast. After all, you’ve been told your whole life that, “though she be little, she is fierce.” 

146 recipes cooked, 79 to go.

Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread, or Why Would I Make Another Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever Again? by Alison Roman

(^That right there, folks, is the longest recipe title known to humankind.)

Everyone has an opinion on what makes for the best chocolate chip cookie. Be it chewiness, sweetness, saltiness, thickness, thinness, just out of the oven or next-day. I believe every human has the inalienable right to personal cookie preferences, so I won’t claim a universally accepted premiere chocolate chip cookie quality. However, I will tell you what I think makes the best chocolate chip cookie: a balanced ratio of sugar to salt. A cookie without salt is simply uninteresting to me. 

Because of this, I have a predisposition to not only love Alison’s shortbread chocolate chunk cookie, but to echo her question: why would I make another kind again? (My answer is: I’d make a different kind if I find myself craving a more layered, soft, but dense version of said cookie. But the shortbread will scratch the itch 9/10 times.) 

These cookies take some planning, requiring at least 2 hours of chill time in the fridge. The dough assembly, if you have a stand mixer to do the heavy-lifting, is easy. It starts with beating two and a quarter stick of butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Then slowly adding the flour and salt (if you use unsalted butter) and chocolate chunks (I chopped mine from some Whole Foods branded dark chocolate bars) until they’re all combined. I divided the dough onto two sheets of plastic wrap, and rolled them into logs that are 2.25 inches thick. Oftentimes, I wing this sort of thing. But when it comes to thinly sliced cookie dough, the last thing you want is for them to fall apart. It felt important to be exact in the circumference measurements for this reason. 

I prepared my dough on a Saturday afternoon, just before leaving for a party called The Great Midwestern Cornhole Tournament. And yes, it was exactly like it sounds. Great, full of midwestern experiences like college football, beer, and friendly people, and there was a verifiable cornhole tournament. Jordan and I placed 8th out of 16 teams, for those wondering. We’ll take it. 

On Sunday I was ready to bake. I took out one log at a time -- painting it with egg and rolling it in Turbinado sugar, then slicing it into rounds and topping the cookies with flaky sea salt. The baking time averaged to 16 minutes for me. 

I’ve had plenty of shortbread cookies in the past, but what makes these stand out is the crunchy sugar on the edges. I brought the cookies to work on Monday, and by 2pm, they were all gone. The most frequent comment I heard, besides “those cookies were amazing,” was “the sugar on the edges - oh my!”  

145 recipes cooked, 80 to go.

Salted Citrus with Fennel, Radishes, and Olive by Alison Roman

I’ve mentioned before that at the beginning of this project, I hated olives. So when I first perused Alison’s two cookbooks to evaluate all that would lie ahead of me, I made no less than an “ew, gross” face when I flipped the page to this recipe. 

But eight months and one much expanded palette later, I couldn’t wait to make this. And the last summer-weather days of October seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. This recipe is simple: thinly sliced tangerines, covered in salt, honey, and lemon juice. Layered with thinly sliced fennel and radishes, also mixed with lemon juice and salt. Sprinkled with crushed olives of the Frescatrano variety. 

Crunchy, juicy, briny, acidic, salty, and sweet. A salad that encompasses all six of those traits can only be described as excellent. 

144 recipes cooked, 81 to go.