ruthie, you're probably back by now, I hope you had a great trip. I've been doing "international" cookies too, LOL, but not because I decided to, just because that's what struck me. I just made cuccidati, a fig filled cookie that a friend sent me and I loved them. I've made Venetian rainbow cookies with almond paste, and I've made good old American toll house cookies and grandma's molasses cookies and peanut butter cookies. Elery and I are making cannoli tomorrow, and I've done the Scottish shortbread and the spritz and the pfefferneuse. I think I'm not going to do any more baking except cut out and frosted sugar cookies with the grandkids! Now, that pannetone. Here is a recipe from King Arthur Flour for a traditional pannetone, it requires an overnight resting of the "biga", which is just the yeast with a bit of water and some of the flour, kind of like a sourdough "starter". The bread is made using the biga the next day. I didn't have orange oil or the special seasoning thing you can only get from King Arthur Flour, LOL, so I used the vanilla and some orange extract. My family loves this recipe and since it uses dried fruit instead of the candied stuff, I like it too. I do not like candied fruit at all. Anyway, it's easier than it looks and the recipe came from King Arthur Flour: Overnight Panettone This traditional Italian holiday bread will stay fresh longer when it's made with an overnight starter. Biga (Overnight Starter) 3/4 cup (3 1/8 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 1/16 teaspoon yeast (just a pinch) 1/3 cup (2 5/8 ounces) water Dough all of the biga (above) 2 1/4 cups (9 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 1/4 cup (2 ounces) water 2 large eggs 1/4 cup (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) unsalted butter 1 1/4 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia flavoring OR 1 teaspoon vanilla + 1/8 teaspoon orange oil 2 1/4 teaspoons SAF Gold instant yeast OR 1 tablespoon instant yeast 1/3 cup (2 1/4 ounces) sugar 1/2 cup (3 ounces) golden raisins 1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) slivered dried apricots 1/2 cup (2 ounces) dried cranberries or flavored fruit bits 1/2 cup (2 1/2 ounces) dried pineapple, chopped 2 tablespoons orange or lemon zest The Biga: Combine the biga ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl, cover, and allow them to rest overnight (8 to 12 hours). Dough: Combine all of the dough ingredients except the fruit, and mix and knead them togetherby hand, mixer or bread machinetill you've made a soft, smooth dough. Allow the dough to rise, covered, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until it's puffy (though not necessarily doubled in bulk). Gently deflate the dough, and knead in the fruits and zest. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a panettone pan or other straight-sided, tall 1 1/2- to 2-quart pan. Cover the pan and let the dough rise till it's just crested over the rim of the pan, about 1 hour. Bake the bread in a preheated 400°F oven for 10 minutes; reduce the oven heat to 375°F and bake an additional 10 minutes; then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for 25 minutes, tenting with aluminum foil if the crust appears to be browning too quickly. Remove the panettone from the oven and cool completely. This recipe reprinted from The Baking Sheet Newsletter, Vol. III, No. 2, December 1991 issue. Annie

Basic New England Style Clam Chowder is extremely easy to make. Ingredients are Potatos ( Well boiled to the point of becoming mashable ) Clams Clam Juice Onions ( Chopped ) Milk or Cream or Sour Cream Black Pepper or Crushed Pepper Corns. Alternate or Additonal Ingredients ... Butter Mixed Veggies ( Peas, Carrots, Corn, Grean Beans ) Now let's get something down about the potatoes. You need to boil the heck out of them so that they start to break down into semi-mashable form, but leaving lumps of potato. You can probably get away with cutting up a couple spuds and boiling them and them supplementing the effort with instant mash potato flakes. It's ok to cheat. Cream is better than milk. Clam Chowder is meant to be a rich warming energy food, suitable for a cold night on the beach. Legend has it that its origins go back to clam diggers who tossed together chowder impromptu on the beach after digging their own clams. As far as spices go, black pepper is typically all and it is added at the table as preferred. But you are free to experiment with spices. To make California Gold chowder, things are somewhat similar. However, substitute cross-cut scallions, including some of the greens, for the onions. I like to use sour cream as it is thicker than cream. Not so Secret addititives ... Melt butter in a separate pot. Add lemon juice Add crushed garlic. Secret additive. Add crushed safflower, enough to yellow, not to orange or redden. When the basic New England Stuff is done cook'n and the butter, lemon juice, garlic, safflower stuff is done cook'n in a separate pot, mix the two parts together, folding the yellow stuff into the white stuff lightly so as to create and not to destroy the visual effect of rivulets or veins of Gold. If you do it right, the yellow stuff should rise and form rivulets that remain separate from the white potato/sour cream stuff ... a very pleasing visual effect and tasty too. The rivulets will ride distinctly upon the basic chowder and will have a rich golden color. Note that you can't preserve this effect by canning or bottling this mixture. You'll ruin it. To get the effect, you gotta do it at the instant. Safflower is a bit expensive, but you don't need much and it is added more for visual effect than flavor. Safflower flavor is very subtle. It's always nice to add a little crab meat or some chopped scallops to California Gold chowder. If you know how to make cheesy bread, it goes good with California Gold Chowder and you can use the secret additive to make a California Gold Cheesy Bread. Get a sour dough loaf and cut evenly top from bottom. Make up a second batch of the yellow mixture and butter the two halves with it. Top with shredded Mozzarella or White Cheddar. Broil until the cheese melts and slightly browns on Aluminum Foil or in a pyrex baking pan. Enjoy. If you have some secret sauce left over, saute' some prawns ( aka scampi or mediumor large shrimps ) in it to complete the meal. Guess what I've go in my cupboard and fridge at this very moment? :)

The only method i found successful for mock panko is to take a fresh day old boule, or half a leftover one, remove the crust with enough "meat' to make some croutons, (for soups)....and cube the white crustless middles and toast low and slow and not brown. When cool and dry, pulse in the cuisinart to a crumb. Then back in the oven at a low 225, turn oven off and let rest in the oven for an hour...very dry but not toasted. A white bread, from a bbq white purchased bun left over, might be better but i rarely have that. (kids like a hot dog white bun)..... Just removing the crust from bread will make a good panko. When i make crab cakes or cod cakes, i don't want the crust flavor. i just want the simple white 'panko'...that does not gives a brown dried crust intrusion. I think of panko as texture and not a flavor. DH bought whole wheat panko by mistake over the holidays and it would have ruined my crab cakes. SO strong and odd. I used a smashed/crushed matzo instead. (always good in a pinch) The panko style works so well because they stick AND stay crisp. Neutral, non-toasted flavor.

Well, it worked GREAT. I made a simple clam chowder with turnip, daikon radish, and rutabaga, all cubed about 1/2", in place of potato. Everything else was as usual for a simple clam chowder. Onion, celery, a little garlic, bacon, clams (some canned, some whole), plenty of butter and heavy cream, milk, salt, pepper, a little flour to thicken (which turned out to be unnecessary, in fact I had to thin it out with more milk), Italian parsley garnish. Served in a boule bread bowl for DD, in plain bowls for SWMBO and me. We all preferred the low carb chowder to the traditional potato based chowder, which I'd made last week. SWMBO liked the way these root vegetables held together in their cubes instead of disintegrating as potatoes are wont to do. She liked the daikon radish best. She did complain about the actual clams with shells. DD pointed out that the shells slow you down and prevent gobbling. I felt the root veg-based clam chowder was a little lighter than a potato chowder, in the sense that it doesn't sit quite as heavy in the belly. But that may have been psychosomatic. (Numbers. Grams of carbohydrate per 100 grams of food: Potato 17, rutabaga 9, turnip 6, daikon radish 4. So next time I'll use more daikon radish. It's low(er) carb than the traditional recipe, but has plenty of fat from the dairy. I'm trying to eat less carb and more fat and protein, so this is perfect for me.) Anyway, this is going on the Christmas eve menu. We are doing a big crab feed. We always do a big crab feed. This year we broke tradition and went away for Thanksgiving, to a friend's house in Port Townsend WA. It was a wonderful trip - ferries, food that I didn't have to cook, a cute coastal town with interesting shops, our favorite cafe and a good bookstore, lots of lounging and napping, and one day I set up my laptop, put my head down, worked for 10 hours and pushed through a task that had me "blocked" for months. But . . . This has made us more determined to spend Christmas and New Years at home, with the kids and a fire, cooking and knitting, working and reading, getting the last college applications submitted (DS), and napping, hopefully a good deal of napping.