Well, that sounds exciting, I thought. This year has been pretty boring – work, work, work, triathlon, work, work, triathlon, work, work, WORK – and total disaster cookies might just liven it up a little.

I made some modifications to the original recipe, mainly in the way the dough is mixed and then worked with. For the first batch, I used both Jolly Ranchers and Life Savers to get a broad range of colors. I abandoned the Life Savers in the second batch because they tended not to melt as evenly and, when they did melt, the colors were muddy and uneven. The Jolly Ranchers, while harder to smash, melted into lovely panes of brilliantly colored transparent candy “glass.” For the second batch, I also substituted Crisco for the butter and didn’t notice any change in the dough quality so if you want to make these without using any dairy products, you can!

Color Notes: A sack of “regular” Jolly Ranchers will give you green (apple), blue (blue raspberry), purple (grape), a pinky-red (watermelon), and red (cherry). If you get the “Passion Mix” Jolly Rancher bag, you’ll get two shades of pinky-red (fruit punch & strawberry), orange (orange), pinky-orange (peach) and a redder purple (raspberry).

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3 tbsps unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup dark molasses
• 1/3 cup water
• 12 oz bag of Jolly Rancher candies

Preparation

1. To crush the Jolly Ranchers, segregate them first by color and then place each color group in a Ziploc bag. Close the bag and lay it on a dish towel with a cutting board underneath. Get a hammer and smash away until you have nice little crystals. In my experience, the Ziploc bag does end up tearing some so try not to completely pulverize the candy or you won’t be able to pour it out of the bag and into a little bowl. I generally got 2-3 rounds of pounding out of one small size freezer bag. Crush your candies and put them in little bowls separated by color.

2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugar and molasses and beat for 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients in thirds. After the first third, add the water. Beat on medium or knead with your hands until a dough forms. Divide the dough into three balls. Flatten into discs, wrap in wax paper, place in a plastic bag and refrigerate for several hours. In my experience, the dough was still good after 5 days in the refrigerator but too dried out after 2 weeks.

3. Break off a ball of dough about the size below.

4. Roll it out into a rope about 1/4″ thick. I rolled the dough out on wax paper with just my hands – I didn’t feel a need to use flour.

5. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper. The original recipe suggested creating a template that you could lay the cookies on but I just played around with the rope until I made shapes I liked. Pretend you’re back in art class in 2nd grade and your teacher had just given you carte blanche to make whatever you want with clay. You can create a loop to hang ornaments by pinching it off a tiny piece of dough and rolling it out and then attaching it in it a hoop. Or you can work the loop into the actual shape of the ornament (as you can see in the blue heart below). Lay your ornaments on the parchment paper.

6. Once you’ve filled up the cookie sheet with ornaments, fill in the outlines with candy pieces. Don’t be skimpy with the candy – put it enough to thoroughly fill in the outlines (Resist the urge to heap it high though – it will flow over the gingerbread and you’ll have to break the hardened overflow edges off the final cookie.) Place the cookie sheet in the center rack in the oven. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until all the candy has melted.

Candy-Melting Note: If you have created a small shape (say, one 1/2″ in diameter or less), there is a good chance that the candy will get too hot and bubble out/evaporate. I’m not sure why this is but it happened several times when I made small or narrow spaces.

6. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet until the candy has hardened enough to be moved easily, about 10 minutes. Transfer to racks or a cutting board to cool completely. Be sure the cool the cookies on a flat surface or they will cool curved.

7. Don’t eat them! Thread a ribbon or string through the cookies and hang them in a window or on the tree. Or from the nearest light fixture.

And if you happen to break any, they make swell ears:

It’s so good that we made it twice in one week and devoured it each time voraciously.

Ingredients

• a little cooking oil
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 jalapeños
• 1 good-sized eggplant*
• 8oz mushrooms
• 1/2 pd ground beef (optional)
• 1 32-oz can of diced tomatoes (or fresh equivalent)
• heaping 1/2 tsp of cumin
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Chop the onion coarsely. Chop the eggplant in 1/2″ cubes – if you’re an engineer, you might have a tendency to really obsess about this but really you just want to make sure the eggplant is cut into cubes small enough to choose.
2. Slice the mushrooms. Chop the garlic and the jalapeños finely. If you desire a spicier chili, leave the seeds and the ribs on the jalapeños.
3. Put a little cooking oil into a sauté pan and heat over a medium flame. Sauté onions, garlic and jalapeños and sauté until onions are translucent. Add ground beef, cumin, and as much salt and pepper as you think you’ll like. (The idea here is to let the cook the salt, pepper, and cumin flavors into the ground beef.)
4. Add tomatoes, eggplant, and mushrooms. Simmer gently until eggplant is well-cooked and cumin have mixed well, about 1 hour. Taste and adjust seasonings to preference.

Postprandial Notes: Mwfwfffmmmmwwha.. oh, sorry, can’t talk now… eating the best chili I’ve had all year.

*”Good-sized” being such a relative term, I’ll attempt to qualify what a “good-sized” eggplant is: Imagine a regulation-size football and shrink it about 30%. Sort of kids’ size but about twice the size as one of those happy-fun squeezy footballs and about three times the size of the tiny stress relief squeezy footballs. Roughly the size of a mens’ size 9 running shoe or a small butternut squash or a Cornish game hen.

Photographer’s Note: Love the way the chocolate’s all melty at the edges.

Imagine for a moment, that my two cowhorn plants are a pair of pretty, young adult lovers. They stumble out of their shabby chic New York apartment in search of late brunch after softly lit and brilliantly filmed session of enthusiastic Sunday morning lovemaking. In a rustle of hastily thrown on jackets and tousled hair, they brush past an elderly, disapproving neighbor who glares at them over her +2 reading glasses. In return, they throw her a pair of happily sheepish grins as they turn down the stairwell.

In the movie of my life, however, the cowhorns just looked at me like, “What? This is what we do.” Or at least, I imagined they did. I also imagined that one of them looked at me, winked and said, “Just keeping the ‘horn’ in cowhorn.” before he spat a nice wad of ‘baccy on the ground.

Ahem.

My first thought was to make a ristra with all the peppers but it occurred to me that, despite the drought we’ve had this summer, DC’s weather may not be dry enough for them to fully dry out before mold sets in. Peppers don’t have to be dried outside – if I had a dehydrator, I could have used that. Or I could have built a custom drying screen for the hood of our white Jeep Cherokee and waited for a sunny day (or several). Or I could stick them in the oven.

Drying anything in the oven is pretty straightforward – just set the oven to 150° and walk away for some time. Depending on the size and variety of peppers, drying time will vary (for example, jalapeños will dry faster than cowhorns which will dry faster than larger cayenne varieties. In the case of cowhorns, I left the oven on for 12 hours, turned it off when I went to bed, and left the peppers in the oven overnight.

Preparation

1. Discard any peppers with bad spots or peppers that have started to go soft. Wash and dry the good ones.
2. Lay the peppers on the oven racks. Place them however you wish but try to keep them from overlapping or touching one another. You can also lay the peppers on a screen or cheesecloth but resist the urge to put them on a cookie sheet as this will prevent even airflow.
3. Set the oven at 150° and leave them in until dried, checking occasionally for brittleness. When done, turn off the oven and let them cool completely in the oven before removing. If you’re paranoid (as I tend to be), leave them in overnight just to be sure they are thoroughly dried.
4. The peppers are fully dried when they are hard and brittle to the touch. They should not be flexible at all – if they are, leave them in until they aren’t. Flexibility means water and water means mold, which means you’ll be throwing your peppers out in a few weeks when you go to crumble them over something and find they’ve turned into something from Where the Wild Things Are.
5. Remove from oven and use however you like. Crush into red pepper flakes and store in a bag or jar. Store whole peppers in a dry place and use for seasoning in chilies, soups, and stews.

PLEASE NOTE: During and for a period after drying, your house will be filled with the most wonderfully deep, smoky aroma of roasted peppers. It’s possible you might be the sort of person who doesn’t like this. It’s also possible you might also be the sort of person who doesn’t think kids slippers can make your cleaning life easier. Either way, I bet you clicked on that link.

And they’re usually the first ones I turn to when making something up. My usual approach to eggplant is either to turn it into baba ghanoush or to just grill it and serve it with a curry-flavored mayonnaise. But today, I not only harvested two lovely eggplants off the bush, but a nice handful of green beans and I wanted to use them both while they were super-fresh from the backyard. I did a little Googling and came across a few recipes for Thai eggplant curry with green beans and a recipe for Bangain Bharta (an Indian curry with eggplant).

So I combined them. To be honest, this is much closer to an Indian curry than a Thai curry – it’s richly layered, warming, and a perfect fall dish. I chose to eat it plain with some leftover meatballs from a few nights before but you could easily adapt it however you like.

The Dragon’s Tongue beans are still going strong despite the cooling weather. These are near-perfect specimens, showing off their characteristic purple stripes.

Ingredients

• 1 good-sized eggplant
• 1/2 cup of green beans
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 jalapeños
• 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger (or 1 tsp dry ginger)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 cup water
• cooking oil

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Rub the eggplants lightly with oil and bake for 15 minutes on each side, turning halfway through. Remove after 30 minutes and let cool.
2. Chop the onion coarsely. Chop the garlic and the jalapeños finely. (For maximum heat, leave seeds and ribs on before chopping or, if you prefer a milder curry, de-seed and rib the jalapeños before chopping.)
3. Chop the eggplant into large chunks. Top and tail the green beans and cut them into 1″ long pieces.
4. Heat oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add cumin, onions, garlic, ginger and jalapeños and saute for about 7 minutes.
5. Add eggplant, green beans, curry powder, chili powder, and water and cook covered for about 20 minutes. Serve warm, over rice or by itself

Postprandial Notes: I mainly threw this recipe together to use vegetables picked from the garden this morning but the fundamental recipe could be easily adapted to cabbage instead of eggplant and bell peppers or cauliflower could easily be substituted for the green beans. You could also add chicken or tofu for some more protein or tomatoes for a more acidic curry.

It’s not curry unless it’s bright yellow. Sadly, time has proven that I’m a terrible cooked food stylist. But I will take this opportunity to point out that beans have completely lost their purple stripes – nifty, no?

She tilted the microphone towards my face and inquired, “So, if you had to choose an animal that best represented the cowhorn pepper, which would you choose?”

Fortunately, I had pondered this question before and had an animal handy.

“Why, a naked mole rat.” I said. OK, that’s not entirely true. What I actually said was “A rabbit.”

Because cowhorns are incredibly prolific. If biologists were really interested in boosting the number of pandas or tigers or any other endangered species, they’d figure out a way to splice the cowhorn’s reproductive rate DNA into them through gene therapy.

There’d be an added bonus as well as predators would be much less likely to chow down on a spicy panda than a non-spicy one. Or, at the very least, between successful gene-splicing and evolution of their predators’ tolerance for capsaicin, there’d be plenty of time for the pandas to get it on and on and on.

But I digress…

So, what do I do with all those peppers?

Well, I’ve been throwing them into stir-fries all summer. Two months ago, I harvested most of the peppers and turned them into a green sauce that sits exactly on the thin line between just enough kick and NO JOKE I WILL MELT YOUR FACE CLEAN OFF. Two weeks ago, I harvested all the red cowhorns and pickled them along with red and green jalapeños.

For the recipe, I largely used this one from Michael Ruhlman’s website. The original recipe called for sherry vinegar and I used white wine. I also omitted the sugar.

And now for some pickled peppers..

Here’s where I usually dive in with the recipe but this one requires a little forethought. You’ll need to first figure out your total liquid volume first – for example, if you’ve got 6 quart-size jars, then you need 6 qts of liquid. Half of this should be water and the other half vinegar.

Next you’ll need to figure out how many cups this is. Here’s a handy trick: there’s 2 cups in a pint and 4 in a quart. Now, you’ll need to add 2 tbsp of salt for every 3 cups of liquid. With that in mind, on to the recipe:

Ingredients

• white vinegar
• water
• salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp coriander
• 1 tsp cumin
• 4 sprigs of marjoram
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons black peppercorns
• 1 to 2 pounds of chillis (or enough to fill whatever containers you’re using)

Preparation

1. Mix enough vinegar and water in equal parts in a pot. Stir in salt and sugar until dissolved. Add spices and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, then let cool slightly.
2. Pour the pickling liquid over the peppers, screw the lid on and refrigerate. To use, slice into rings, chop or mince depending how you want to use them.

1. I want eggs for breakfast.
2. Those tomatillos are gonna go bad if I don’t use them soon.

I even spoke these thoughts aloud. It was quite nearly the perfect time for He-who-lived-in-Santa-Fe-for-three-years to say something helpful like “Hey! That sounds like huevos rancheros!” but what he actually said was SCHNOOORRRRRRrrrrrrmmmmmmMMMMMMWHAAA?.

Fortunately, I found this recipe right away. I followed it pretty faithfully, which one exception: instead of frying the tortillas, I brushed them with oil and put them under the broiler, flipping them over halfway through.

I won’t bother you with all the boring stuff about the eggs and the tortillas though – it’s the tangy, spicy salsa that really shines. The hardest part of the recipe was husking the tomatillos. And, and if you’re happy that tomato season is over because, for some reason you can’t quite recall, you thought it would be a good idea to plant 8 tomato plants this year and they all went forth and prospered, this is definitely a salsa that will see you through to winter.

When, of course, you’ll start craving tomatoes again.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 pint tomatillos
• 1/4 cup finely chopped yellow onion
• 1 jalapeno chile
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves
• 1 tsp salt, preferably non-iodized

Preparation

1. Husk and rinse the tomatillos. Cut into 1/4 thick slices. Cut the jalapeño in slices as well – if you like salsa with some kick, leave the ribs and seeds on; if kick is not your thing, remove the ribs and seeds before chopping. Chop the garlic coarsely
2. Heat oil in saute pan. Add onions, jalapeño, garlic, tomatillos and saute until onions are tender. Remove from heat and place in a blender or food processor.
3. Add cilantro and salt and pulse to desired chunkiness.

Postprandial Notes: The recipe I first referenced called for 2 tsps of vinegar. I’ve made this recipe both with vinegar and without and I definitely prefer it without the additional vinegar. If you’re using ripe, quality tomatillos, adding vinegar will skew the overall flavor too far into sour territory. That said, if you’re using tired or out-of-season tomatillos, you may want to add a splash of vinegar after tasting the finished salsa first.

I even bumped into old friends – Jeff Wolfram, an architectural photographer that I’ve assisted from time to time and Ed Bruske, auteur of The Slow Cook and the man to talk about school food around here. I also made some new friends, including Jessica Sidman, who publishes a blog about frozen desserts called The Frozen Fix. I will totally be making her Coconut Ginger Sorbet next summer.

But you don’t care about that. What you really want are pictures of the fooooooood. Very well – I give you little, fat cubes of pork belly.

The ingredients Chef Aaron put together are all local, including the pickled tomatoes he used as garnish. They were made from tomatoes grown right in the restaurant’s garden. This, obviously, is totally rad and completely in line with my thinking about food.

While Aaron prepped the pork belly offsite, there was an incredible amount of onsite preparation that went into the final presentation. It starts here with the pork belly being friend in a skillet with some of the ketchup and then being transferred to a plate to await garnishes as below.

The garnishes included the aforementioned pickled tomatoes, micro cress (I had never seen these before – adorable! And actually quite tasty.), and a pepper cracker. Crackers and pork belly, I hear you ask? As my grandmother would say, “Just eat it!*”

This is a horrible photograph, I know. But it tasted really good, I promise! I know it to be true but I can’t take decent photographs while doing anything else and I was really preoccupied with yakking with folks about my recipe and how awesome Aaron had made it.

Chef Aaron explaining the dish to one of the judges. It probably went something like this:

“Green tomatoes tend to be acidic. To balance that, we add a fatty piece of sheer goodness (AKA pork belly). Then, we pickle some green tomatoes to add some more acidity/sweetness while pairing the ketchup components. Then, we need a little textural crunch element to cut through the mostly soft components. So, we add a little salad of micro pepper cress. This has a very crisp, peppery bite to it. Then, we add a flat bread cracker that will be full of pepper to add more texture and add a classic tomato pairing like black pepper.”

I might be a little biased but I thought it was delicious. It was not only really popular with the East Asian contingent – two different woman told me nearly word-for-word: “You can never go wrong with pork belly.” – but also very popular with the male contingent of the evening’s festivities. One guy, stated very seriously, “This is the best thing here. If the announcers ever give me the microphone, this is all I’m talking about.” Another guy, after hearing the judges’ final results, said, “You guys were robbed. Yours is the best stuff here.”

And then they had to pop my head to get it out of the Pavilion Hall. Heh.

Actually what she would say was “You don’t have to like it, you just have to eat it.” Which I could never come back with a witty retort for, honestly. Hopefully my kids will show me the way.

Of course, I’m still vacillating between chuckling inwardly that my green fruit recipe won a final spot at the Red Fruit Fest and OHMYGODIMGONNABEONSTAGEWITHAFAMOUSCHEF!!!!!1111.

Heh. Wow.