What’s that, dear reader...you want some more recipes from your good friend, The Fork? Well, we’ve got ‘em, but we ain’t got new-’em. Ooooh! Can any linguistic fans out there find out if “new-’em” is a regional slang thing? If not, we’d like it known that we’re coining it here and now. But moving on, we’re really just here to impart popular recipes from previous SFR pieces (that’s the “from the vault” part, though it’s not a vault so much as a server).
Anyway, we know folks are cooking a lot because it’s cold and holidays and all that, so why not try out one of these three recipes?
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We can think of no more seasonally appropriate cookie than the noble biscochito, for example.
Biscochitos
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Zest of one orange
- 1 cup vegetable shortening
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 tablespoons brandy or whiskey
- 2 tablespoons orange juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons anise extract
Topping:
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in orange zest.
- Combine cinnamon and sugar for topping in a small bowl and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, beat vegetable shortening with a mixer, gradually adding sugar, until light and fluffy. Add egg, brandy, orange juice, vanilla extract and anise extract and beat well.
- Add dry ingredients to the shortening mixture gradually, stopping when mixture is combined. Do not overwork—dough will have consistency similar to pie crust.
- Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes.
- Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon dough into cookie press, and press shapes onto lined baking sheets. *Alternately: roll out dough to ¼-inch thickness between two sheets of parchment paper, using about 1/2 to 1/3 of the dough at a time. Cut out cookies and place on lined baking sheets.
- Bake cookies 10 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
- Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture immediately. Cool one minute and loosen cookies from parchment paper. Allow to cool completely.
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How would you feel about some hot cocoa, with booze or no booze?
Spiked—Or Not—Hot Cocoa (Yields 2-3 Servings)
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
- 4 tablespoons sugar
- Dash cinnamon
- Pinch salt
- Pinch cayenne pepper (optional)
- 2 cups whole milk
- 2 to 4 ounces coffee liqueur (may substitute 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
- Topping of choice (marshmallows, whipped cream or chocolate or caramel sauce)
Directions:
- Stir together sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, salt and cayenne pepper in a small saucepan.
- Over medium heat, slowly add milk, stirring to dissolve cocoa mixture.
- Stir constantly, until cocoa is completely dissolved and mixture is piping hot, but not boiling.
- Remove from heat; stir in coffee liqueur (or vanilla). Top with your fave sweet addition.
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Maybe you just wanna go straight to the boozy goodness? If so, try out this bad boy:
Coffee Liquer
Ingredients:
- 8 cups sugar
- 4 cups water
- 1 1/2 cups instant coffee crystals
- 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon extract to taste (optional)
- 4 cups vodka
Directions:
- In a large saucepan, combine sugar and water over medium heat. Stir until dissolved and bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat, stir in coffee crystals and allow to cool.
- When cool, stir in vanilla extract and vodka. Bottle and store in a cool, dark place.
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If you make any of this stuff, send us a photo. And stick around for next week when we announce the winner of our Y’all Donated to The Food Depot and That’s Pretty Cool contest.
Right?
Also
-Good news from the folks at Back Road Pizza, who tell SFR they’ll reopen for indoor dining after more than two years of pandemic-driven caution. Ah, Back Road...early adopters of the Detroit-style pizza, place with a pool table and pretty nice patio, lovers of cornmeal crusts. Welcome back, friends! If’n you didn’t know, Back Road also became a lifesaver grocery outpost during the early days of COVID-19, and we’re honestly just suckers for long-running local businesses, especially when there’s pizza.
-Bittersweet news from perennial SFR favorite and pastry chef Jessica Brewer, who, after three years crafting incredible desserts at Paloma, is off to take over as executive pastry chef at Canyon Road fine dining institution, The Compound. We wish Brewer well in her future exploits.
-We hear that Houston-based fast-casual chain Salata Salad Kitchen is planning on putting down roots in Santa Fe, though no word as to when that’ll happen exactly. As always, we’re pretty sure you can get a better salad from a place owned by someone who cares about the community, but you do whatever you want, baby. Anyway, this would join the growing company’s ranks of more than 80 locations across the land, and maybe there are already some Salatas in New Mexico? We’ve never seen one, though, so whatever.
-Don’t forget that the Santa Fe Farmers Market is about more than veggies and getting up super early to get the good tomato. We tell you this because you can also find gifts there (like big-ass candles, big-ass bags of tea and coffee and big-ass bottles of fancy oils for cookin’, for example), and you might wanna get on that because of the whole Christmas thing coming up.
-According to a new study from DrugGenius.com (which was also our nickname in the 1980s), one-fifth of New Mexicans’ daily fluid intake is caffeine and alcohol. C’mon now, ours is way higher alone, so...yeah. Anyway, you can check it out here.
-In New Mexico wine news, the NM Wine and Grape Growers Association, in partnership with Noisy Water Winery, announced a $15,000 donation to the National Forest Foundation to restore and improve National Forests in New Mexico after all those horrible fires out near Las Vegas decimated so much.
Speaking of wine, have you seen these old Orson Welles outtakes from a commercial shoot? Oh, God, you’re in for a treat if you have not.
More Tidbits
-We don’t know what powerful witch our grandfather hit with his car, thereby cursing us with a never-ending slew of emails about weird swag items, but the folks from Miller Light seem to have made a toned-down version of the Christmas Story leg lamp just in time for people without personalities to act like owning it means anything. This one does not come with coming-of-age sexual angst, but it...well, it just kind of sucks. Take a look here. If that’s not depressing enough for you, know that Super 8 (the motel chain) just released a line of candles. We know that’s not food-related, but if we’re living in this hellscape, you’re coming with us.
-Speaking even more about wine, do you know about the nonprofit Roots of Peace? Well, it seems they’d like to turn the minefields in Ukraine into farmable vineyard land once they get a sec. Seems Ukrainian winemakers are into the plan, according to Food & Wine-dot-com.
-Eater-dot-com, a website we generally love, has released its foodie gift guide for aspiring influencers. We think that’s gross, but if you have some weirdo person in your life who wants to be a piece of shit for a living and also likes food, here’s the thing for them, we guess.
-In news you can use from Eater, turns out pretty much nobody is sad that pretty-racist Great British Baking Show co-host Matt Lucas has left the show. He reportedly has other commitments, but according to writer Amy McCarthy, no one is sad about the exit.
-Thrillist-dot-com has compiled a list of its favorite American pizza joints for the year, and New Mexico is nowhere to be seen. “Quelle surprise!” shrieks no one.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
In the print edition of SFR this week, a couple SFR staffers headed slightly out of town to dine at NOSA. Was it any good? You’ll have to read the piece to find out.
Number of Letters Received
43
*And so many nice compliments from longtime readers. Love y’all!
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
“Have you ever had any good beers?”
*Sure.
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
A couple readers fairly and rightly pointed out that our list of comfort foods shirked important information about New Mexican and Mexican foods, and that we should spend more time eating on the Southside.
*Y’all are 1,00000000000000000% right, and we are gonna try to do better.
Soft yet grainy, kind of like a biscochito,
The Fork
BONUS VID ALERT: That time we made a mini-documentary on pastry chef Jessica Brewer.
