Locked in the kitchen with a luscious Italian

Tonight, I made white pizza with roasted peppers and black olives. Heating the oven to 475 degrees means smoke which means a shrieking smoke alarm. I tried to avert the shrieking by closing the kitchen door. Wrong move--it stuck fast! Nothing I could do would budge it. Imaginging I'd have to spend the night in there and all morning tomorrow until Chuck got back from Rumson, I had an "aha!" moment--my cell phone was in my purse. I tried "information" for three neighbors' phone numbers--no luck. Then I got Shirley Lipsky who got the super John who has our keys and could come up to give the door one good whack. Here I am, with a swollen hand, yet free to sleep in my own bed and thankful to Philip for something! Last August's visit to Aspen required I buy this modern--and oh so valuable--convenience!

P.S. I had had NOTHING to drink; the Martini & Rossi beside the martini glass was there as a prop for a Good Cook Facebook photo. That's water in there, I swear!

When the cheese stands alone...

I had a little bit of Irish cheddar left after a couple of weeks of using it on sandwiches. Lauren Chattman's recipe for cornbread-cheddar muffins used it up perfectly this gray-ish Saturday morning. Buttered for breakfast--eh. With jalapeno jelly or spicy tomato jam and chili, now you're talking!

Goodness Gracious!

In honor of the new episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs," which debuted on PBS "Masterpiece Theatre" Sunday, April 10, I made a Victoria sponge for tea. Poor Victorians! The cake is dry and flavorless; the best part is absolutely the strawberry jam, fresh strawberries, and whipped cream sandwiched in the middle. Not fit for a queen, but certainly good enough for the Queen's corgi!

Say "no" to a cookie?!

In the annals of innocence, the home-baked cookie is way up there with Ivory soap and newborn kittens. Unless you’re gluten-intolerant, in which case, the cookie compares to barbed wire and Idi Amin. Luane Kohnke, a lifelong baker, recaptures the cookie’s essential goodness for all of us with GLUTEN-FREE COOKIES (Sellers Publishing, March 2011).

Luane and I, her editor and publicist, had lunch last week at Candle 79 here in Manhattan, a vegan restaurant that proves vegan chefs know what they’re doing when it comes to satisfying, delicious food. Over "live" avocado tartare (a redundancy, but it assures raw foodies no heat has changed the avocado's enzymes), vegetable and quinoa nori rolls, a black-bean-pumpkin-seed burger with polenta fries, and grilled-vegetable-wild-mushroom-stuffed tempeh, she told me the story of how GLUTEN-FREE COOKIES, her first book, came into print. Seven unsolicited submissions of a completely different cookbook resulted in three responses: two nays and a “how about a book on…?” query from Megan Hiller at Sellers which re-directed Luane to create the 50 recipes in this book.

Think of the sheets and sheets of test cookies it must take to create 50 publishable recipes. Who are her testers? She herself takes a bite, puts a couple aside to test later for freshness, and takes the rest to her office (yes, she’s still employed full-time). She says her colleagues are opinionated and appreciative, a creative bunch, some of whom even volunteered their talents to start her blog and take her author photo.

Luane made every cookie in the book herself and shipped them from New York to the book’s photographer, Stacey Cramp, in Maine. Yes, the gingerbread men arrived decapitated and the meringues melted in the summer heat (note to aspiring cookie-book-writers: do the meringues in the winter and spring!), but disasters were corrected and the photos in the book show off each cookie’s unique charms.

With its recipe for a gluten-free flour mix you can keep in the fridge, GLUTEN-FREE COOKIES puts this simple pleasure back on everyone’s plate.