My cell phone rang on Friday as I was sitting at my desk, in my office.  I looked over at the buzzing black device and saw that it was my mother calling.  It’s unusual for her to call in the middle of a work day and a knot of worry immediately formed in my gut. 

And, it turns out, it was an emergency.

A cooking emergency, that is.  She had the afternoon off from work and was busily preparing to cook dinner for a bunch of my parents’ friends that night.  She’d laid out her menu and was ticking items off her to do list, but when the time came to get started on dessert, the apple crisp she had planned no longer seemed right.  The cooler days earlier that week had given way to a return of summer temperatures.  A hot dessert—one starring autumn’s favorite fruit, no less—would not do.

Happily, I had just the solution.  She could stay in the crisp category, but I advised her to leave the apples in the crisper drawer and instead undergird the oaty topping with jammy, tart, and—importantly—summery blueberries.  The recipe was at the tip of my tongue because I’ve made it a handful of times this summer.  I surprised myself by knowing the ingredients and steps by heart.  I hadn’t realized that over the course of the summer, the recipe had become a staple.  I think it’s only at the end of a season that you take stock of the new recipes that you relied on over and over that year, that will become part of your repertoire for years to come.

And it’s true.  Summer is slipping away.  The signs are everywhere: back-to-school ads, scarves and sweaters lining the shelves at shops, the first apples at the farmers’ markets, wilting hydrangea bushes, earlier sunsets, a gradual loosening of humidity’s vicegrip on this city.

But it’s not gone yet.  There’s still time for this blueberry crisp.  My mom imformed me that the crisp was a hit at her Friday night dinner party (and, truth be told, on Saturday morning, when she had a scoop of the leftovers for breakfast—just don’t tell her I told you about this).  Maybe there’s even time for it to become one of my mom’s summer staples, too, before the summer is up.

Blueberry Crisp
Martha Stewart

Serves 8

This is perfect served slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  As for the leftovers, I think a splash of cold cream or a dollop of thick yogurt would be lovely—especially for breakfast.

For the filling:

6 cups (3 pints) blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

For the topping:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rolled oats (or chopped nuts, such as almonds)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make the filling: Mix blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and salt in a bowl. Transfer to an 8-inch square baking dish.

Make the topping: Stir together flour, oats, baking powder, and salt. Cream butter and sugar in a mixer until pale and fluffy. Stir dry ingredients into butter. Using your hands, squeeze topping pieces together into clumps.

Sprinkle topping evenly over filling. Bake until bubbling in center and brown on top, about 1 hour. Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool for 30 minutes before serving.

We spent last weekend at Kevin’s grandmother’s house in Grand Beach—a little lakeside town just over the Indiana-Michigan border.  Grand Beach is only an hour’s drive or so from the Loop and it sits along the coastline of the same lake, but its tall, swishy, sunburned prairie grasses and its rolling hills and its fleet of golf carts, which commingle easily with cars on the roads, and its turreted vacation homes, many wrapped with wide porches, make it feel like it’s a world away from Chicago.

We’ve been going to the house for one weekend a summer for a while now—long enough to develop patterns and traditions.  Kevin’s parents usually drive out on Thursday or Friday, settling in and stocking the house with groceries.  Kevin and I usually jump in the car after work on Friday, arriving just in time for a quick cocktail on the deck as the big sun sends a brilliant twinkle across Lake Michigan as it dips below the horizon.  Then, it’s off to Timothy’s, a restaurant with screened windows and a piano player.  It’s always packed on summer weekend nights.

Dinner is followed by a visit to Oink’s, the local ice cream parlor, where the kitch-factor is very high (my favorite parking spot is called “Boss Hog,” while Kevin favors “Ham Radio”) and the ice cream is very good.  A scoop of butter pecan for me, please.  And by the time I pop the pointy tip of the sugar cone into my mouth, the work week feels miles away.

Saturday, everyone wanders into the kitchen as they wake up.  We cup mugs of coffee, discuss just how delicious Oink’s was, and—eventually—lace up our shoes and head out for a long walk.  Breakfast—this year, bagels picked up from Max & Benny’s on the way out of town the day before, along with a bowl of fruit, fresh from a Michigan fruit stand—is next and then it’s out to the pool.  A taxing afternoon ensues: reading, dozing, possibly sipping a beer, playing a few hands of cards.

After a day in the sun, there is nothing better than showering up and getting beautiful for dinner—and that’s what happens next.  This year, just before dinner, we took a walk down to the beach, which was basking in a lovely golden light.

Next up is dinner—probably my favorite part of the whole weekend.  The menu has been the same for a few years—and  that’s a good  thing.  Kevin’s dad ties a tenderloin of beef, into which he tucks thin slices of garlic just before putting it on the grill.  To the grill, he adds a wheel of brie, a brilliant idea that Kevin and I have adopted as our own, and foil-wrapped ears of sweet corn.

The rest of us set the table, pour  the wine, slice the bread, and pull the tomato-feta salad, assembled earlier that day, from the fridge.  Like the brie and the beef and the corn, the salad is a staple.  It also happens to be the perfect summer side—light and flavorful and colorful, each tiny tomato bursting with the taste of summer.  The sweetness of those tomatoes, alongside the sour of the vinegar and the salt of the feta, gives every bite a perfect balance of flavors.  I’m tempted to make it all the time at home, but you know what?  I think it’s best saved for that special weekend in Michigan.

More photos of the weekend here.

Tomato-Feta Salad
Ina Garten

Serves 12

4 pints grape tomatoes, red or mixed colors
1 1/2 cups small-diced red onion (2 onions)
1/4 cup good white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons good olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 1/2 pounds feta cheese

Cut the tomatoes in half and place them in a large bowl. Add the onion, vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, and parsley and toss well. Dice the feta in 1/2 to 3/4-inch cubes, crumbling it as little as possible. Gently fold it into the salad and serve at room temperature.

Oof.

Now that was a week.  Or two weeks?!  No, it can’t be!  But, I guess it has been.  After posting on July 15, the midpoint of the month, the balance of July proceeded to swallow me whole.  There was a lot of time at the office and then waning hours of daylight spent soaking up the warm, un-air conditioned air.  There was a trip to Cleveland for work, which involved a mediocre hotel and less-than-mediocre food.  But then, oh then, there was a trip to the mountains, to Park City in particular, for some dear friends’ wedding.

It was a weekend for the ages (photos here!) and, miracle of miracles, I didn’t even die in the middle of my maid of honor toast.  The bride was beautiful, the groom was dashing and it was a much, much needed get-away.  But, before that, there was a weekend that involved not one but TWO parties at our house.  A weekend that was sandwiched by fairly insane work weeks.  So, um, right—see above re: much-needed get-away.

First, on that Friday night, we threw a going away party for Maggie and Matt, the bride and groom who are not only just married, not only honeymoon-bound, but who are also headed to a new home in Minnesota later this month.  I’m not exactly thrilled with the moving-away-from-Chicago state of affairs but, as far as new homes go, I think Minnesota will suit them just fine.  The party was rained out, but no one seemed to mind.  We sipped cold beers and dined on a decadent chocolate cake and implored Matt and Maggie not to go.

Then, on that Sunday morning, because I am clearly crazy, I hosted a brunch for my sister’s best friend Taylor, who is getting married in a couple weeks and who was in Chicago for her bachelorette party.  Time was tight and these cinnamon rolls—Ina Garten’s Easy Sticky Buns—were just the thing.  Really, they should be called Dead Easy Sticky Buns.  Or, Sticky Buns So Easy You Can Make Them In No Time, Which You’ll Need When You’re Having A Month Like This.

And I should work into that title that they’re delicious—because they are that too.   And pretty—little spirals of puffed down, lacquered with a shiny caramel. And, with that, I’m turning my sights on August, which I’m hoping will take a turn toward the slow and lazy.

Easy Sticky Buns
Ina Garten

Yield: 12 buns (or 24 mini-buns, as pictured in this post)

As is the case with many Ina Garten recipes, I suggest you ignore the indecent amounts of butter and sugar that follow.  Trust me, you won’t be sorry.  Also, I made this recipe in a mini-muffin tin.  If you do so, be sure to place the muffin tin on a rimmed baking sheet, as the recipe advises, because there is likely to be a bit of overflowing, molten caramel goodness (which, of course, becomes the opposite of goodness when soldered to the bottom of your oven).

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus 2 tablespoons melted/cooled butter
1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed and divided
1/2 cup pecans, chopped in very large pieces
1 package (17.3-ounces/ 2-sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place a 12-cup standard muffin tin on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the 12 tablespoons butter and 1/3 cup brown sugar. Place 1 rounded tablespoon of the mixture in each of the 12 muffin cups. Distribute the pecans evenly among the 12 muffin cups on top of the butter and sugar mixture.

Lightly flour a wooden board or stone surface. Unfold 1 sheet of puff pastry with the folds going left to right. Brush the whole sheet with the melted butter. Leaving a 1-inch border on the puff pastry, sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup of the brown sugar, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the cinnamon. Starting with the end nearest you, roll the pastry up snugly like a jelly roll around the filling, finishing the roll with the seam side down. Trim the ends of the roll about 1/2-inch and discard. Slice the roll in 6 equal pieces, each about 1 1/2 inches wide. Place each piece, spiral side up, in 6 of the muffin cups. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry to make 12 sticky buns.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the sticky buns are golden to dark brown on top and firm to the touch. Be careful – they’re hot! Allow to cool for 5 minutes only, invert the buns onto the parchment paper (ease the filling and pecans out onto the buns with a spoon) and cool completely.

We’ve reached the point of the summer where I feel absolutely lavished by the season—its hot air and its sweeping, sun-singed blue skies and its meals taken outside and its swooping fireflies and its suddenly-full hydrangea bushes and its slow-paced strolls and its thwacking flip-flops and its long nights and its melting scoops of ice cream.

And then, as if this all weren’t enough, summer, as it stands now, has this: CORN.  The corn is here!  Man, I love corn.  It’s very possibly my favorite piece of summer produce—eaten straight off the cob (conjuring, every single time, that fantastic scene in What About Bob, where Bob mmmmmmm’s his way through Fay’s corn), shaved off the cob and eaten straight up, charred by the grill, toasted in a skillet, decadently drenched in cream.  You could say that as Bubba is to shrimp, I am to corn.  That’s quite a claim, I know—but I think it fits.

And, really, corn’s the only the thing that drew me into the kitchen this week, when work has been crazy (which means my time for cooking adventures is limited) and when Kevin has been out of town (which means my normal (and favorite) dining partner is out of the mix).  I had a couple of ears, courtesy of Nichols Farm, in the bottom drawer of the fridge, rumbling around every time I opened the drawer, like a couple of fallen bowling pins.  With each clattering drawer-opening, I wondered what fate the corn would meet.

I found out on Wednesday night, when I got home too late, exhausted and hungry.  Without thinking much about it, I threw the dregs of a bag of farro into a deep skillet with some water.  Meanwhile, I cubed a couple of gorgeous tomatoes into our big wooden salad bowl.  Onto those I shaved the corn from the cobs, before tipping in a good amount of champagne vinegar, a few healthy grinds of pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  There was something un-green about the whole thing, so, at the last minute, I tossed in a couple of handfuls of baby arugula.  When the farro had soaked up the water, becoming toothsome, I scraped it into the bowl, where its heat gently warmed the corn and wilted the arugula.

With a big bowl of the salad, I climbed the stairs to the roof, sank into my favorite deck chair and ate in the summer night—hot and still, quiet and glowy.  And, lo, was it ever good—all of it.  Summer, you spoil me.

Like I said, time was tight on Wednesday night, when I made this salad, so I don’t have any of the usual process photos.  But I loved the dish and wanted to share it with you even without the typical bevy of photos.  I threw in a few summer photos (from my Project 365 endeavor, which continues to chug along), for good measure.  To counter-balance his absence from the actual eating of this post’s recipe, you’ll notice that most of these photos feature Kevin.  It’s sappy, I know, but—hey—I like the guy.

Summer Farro Salad

Serves 1, generously (i.e., with leftovers)

As I said, I didn’t give this salad much thought when I was making it.  So the recipe that follows is loose and absolutely suited to my tastes; you should adjust it to fit your own.  In retrospect, I think I was drawing on this recipe, which I’ve made before, and this recipe, which caught my eye a while back, both of which were lodged somewhere in the subconscious, culinary corner of my brain.

olive oil, to taste
1/2 onion, diced finely
coarse salt, to taste
freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup farro
1 cup water
2 small, ripe tomatoes, chopped in large chunks
2 ears corn, husks removed and kernels shaved from the cob
2 handfuls baby arugula or other delicate green (alternatively, I bet a bunch of fresh herbs would be great)
a glug or so of champagne vinegar

Heat a couple teaspoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat.  Add the onion, season with salt and pepper, and cook for several minutes, until the onions have softened and are becoming translucent.  Add the farro, stirring for a minute or so.  Add the water, cover the pan, and cook at a very gentle simmer, until the water is absorbed and the farro is soft (about 30 minutes).

Meanwhile, add the chopped tomatoes, shaved corn kernels and arugula to a large bowl.   Dress with vinegar and oil, using a bit more vinegar and oil than you would use for the tomatoes, corn and greens alone (so the farro can soak up the excess).

When the farro is cooked, scrape it into the bowl with the dressed tomato-corn mixture.  Toss to combine.  Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

This recipe had me at first glance, which occured on my early morning commute last Wednesday, while I sat bleary eyed in one of El train’s carpeted plastic scoop seats, iPhone in hand.  As is my Wednesday morning ritual (a real midweek treat, actually), I pulled up the New York Times dining section on my phone.  I quickly spotted a link for Melissa Clark’s recipe for a twice-baked sour cherry pie.  I opened the link, swooned over the recipe and its accompanying photo, and passed the phone across the aisle to Kevin.  I took his resulting wriggling eye brows and broad grin as assent.

The pie would be ours.

If my initial interaction with the pie was new-fangled and high-tech, the experience of actually making the pie took a turn for the old-fashioned.  Which is fitting, I think, because what’s more old-fashioned than homemade fruit pie?  I’ve yammered on about my love of pie making in the past (ahem) and you were patient then, so I won’t put you through it again now.  Instead, I’ll just note that standing at your floured kitchen counter, sleeves rolled to the elbow, apron knotted at your back and rolling pin gripped in your hands, with only a humble disk of dough and bowl of fruit sitting before you, knowing that the two will, in no time, become a glorious pie is something that is fantastically nostalgic and old-timey.

And, then there’s this: we picked the cherries ourselves.  We woke up on Saturday, hopped in the car and, after fueling up with a bagel, traced the shore of Lake Michigan, first southbound out of Chicago and then curving northward up into Michigan, until we reached cherry country.  We arrived at the orchard and, armed with buckets, we wandered the rows of squat tart cherry trees, eyes peeled for the glassy red orbs dotting the branches.  We plucked and plucked until the buckets were full.  Then, we headed to the barn near the orchard, where we stemmed and cleaned the cherries before sending them through a big, antique cherry pitter.  I’d say this all qualifies as old school, no?

With a sack of pitted cherries in tow, all that stood between us and a pie was a quick stop for ice cream and a drive back to Chicago.  Oh, and a lack of instant tapioca, which brings this story back to the information age.  On the drive back home, I tapped a query into Google: instant tapioca replacement cherry pie.  Well, whaddayaknow: another cook had the same question just last week—with regard to the very same pie—and had raised it on Chowhound, where the answer (corn starch) came back in a jiffy.

I love the days that lead up to a holiday.  There is the last minute shopping, the many cocktail parties, the cookie-baking bonanzas, and the hall-decking that precedes Christmas.  And then you have the menu planning, the pie crust stashing, the gourd shopping that portend Thanksgiving.  And don’t forget the dress-shopping, ham procuring and jelly-bean-popping that mark the days before Easter.  But, given the date, it’s the build up to the Fourth of July that I’ve got on the brain at the moment.

Can you feel it?

It’s almost an electric excitement in the air.  There’s a three-day weekend coming and people are ready.  They’ve stocked up on charcoal, sunscreen and ice.  The frequency of the unsponsored fireworks displays has already increased.  The grocery stores are bracing for a run on strawberries and blueberries, knowing full well that the people demand flag cakes on this holiday.  Plans for the weekend, for firework-viewing and beer-guzzling and porch-sitting, have been laid.

Heck, I know I’m ready.  We’ll be home for the holiday and I can’t wait to indulge in a three-day weekend in my own city.  It’s been a while.  We’re planning to pick cherries, catch up on Friday Night Lights, walk a lot, soak up the sun.  We’ll also be spending a fair amount of time at the grill.  It’s the Fourth of July weekend, after all — and if there’s ever a time to get grilling, it’s now.

I’m guessing many of you already have your weekend menus assembled.  In the off-chance that you’re looking for suggestions—the kind that involve the grill—I’ve got just the thing for you: grilled soy-glazed chicken and scallions.  Now, I’m not the biggest fan of your everyday barbecue chicken.  But this? Sticky and charred, with a tingle of spice and the smoky bite of grilled scallions, this is a barbecue chicken recipe I can get behind.  I suggest you do the same.

Grilled Soy-Glazed Chicken & Scallions
Adapted from Fine Cooking

Serves 4

Cherries and I having a bit of a moment.  They showed up at the markets, suddenly, unexpectedly.  I remember them coming much later last year, but such memories are a tricky thing—they’re hard to trust.  In any event, the cherries have been here in abundance for the past couple weeks and I just can’t seem to get enough.  I’ve been happily eating them out of hand.  Firm, glossy and garnet, I’ll pluck one, stem pinched between my fingers, from the bowl, pop it into my mouth, revel in the tart, summery, juicy flesh and then, lips pursed and with a phwoottt! I’ll spit the pit into a cupped palm.  Discard the pit and stem; repeat as necessary.  I’ve spent several recent evenings repeating until my heart, and belly, were content.

But why stop there?  The cherries have me dreaming up baked goods.  They conjured a simple yogurt cake in my mind, a recipe born in a split second, in a dreamy thought.  I tinkered with the idea two Sundays in a row until I had a recipe, right there on paper, and a perfect cake, right there in the pan.

This tale alone is testament to the cherries.  I haven’t developed a cake recipe in a very long time.  It’s something I had time to do as a student, and then in the leisurely months after I took the bar exam and hadn’t yet started working.  Now, though, it’s a luxury that I can scarcely afford.  Instead, I rely on already-existing recipes, preferably those that come from trusted sources or those that come along with ringing endorsements.  These cherries, though, demanded an almond-yogurt cake.  Specifically, the one in my mind’s eye—almondy and ever so slightly sweet, cherries suspended in the nubbly crumb, more cherries still scattered atop the cake.  And, on my second attempt, that’s what the cherries got.

Then, just when I thought I was nearing the point of satiation, our waiter placed a slip of paper on the table before us after our meals were cleared on Friday night—a short list of desserts, no more than five.  Kevin was hoping to see a wedge of chocolate pie listed among them and I expected my eye to go no further than the migas bark, slabs of dark chocolate speckled with bread crumbs, of all things, that dependably anchor this restaurant’s dessert list.  Instead, we both zeroed in a chocolate marquise topped with roasted cherries.

Roasted cherries!  Why hadn’t I thought of that?  We ordered it, of course, and spooned up the thick, rich chocolate and the soft winey cherries.  The next night, as if I even have to tell you, I was sliding a tray of cherries into the oven in my own kitchen.  Once roasted, their transformation is not unlike that which a roasted cherry tomato undergoes: their flesh relaxes under the oven’s heat, their skins barely contain the jammy insides, their sweetness deepens, their tartness rounds out.  Atop sour cream ice cream, atop my morning yogurt, eaten hot straight from the pan, eaten chilled straight from the fridge, they are a wonder.

Had the roasted cherries sealed the deal?, I wondered.  Perhaps I’d finally had enough.  But then, on Sunday, the sour cherries had arrived at our market.  Which clearly means that this business with the cherries is far from over.

Happy summer all!  To ring in the first day of summer, I posted a new Summer Recipe Index, which you can access by a link over on the lefthand column.  It’s got recipes for BBQ’s and picnics, recipes featuring corn (quite possibly my favorite type of summer produce), and recipes for fruit desserts and (obviously) ice cream.  Check it out here!

I have the most intensely wonderful memories of summer evenings at my parents’ house.  The sun sank, the porch lights flicked on, the smell of hot charcoals scented the air, the crickets built to a slow crescendo.  Hours earlier, the action was in the front yards that lined the winding street, where kids pranced through sprinklers, pedaled down the sidewalk and played game after game, while their parents mowed the grass and weeded the flower beds.  When night fell, though, the action shifted to the backyards, where families had retreated for dinner on their patios and decks.  Burgers, grilled chicken, kabobs, corn on the cob, salt-and-peppered slices of tomatoes, steamed green beans: simple food, most of it cooked fast on the hot grill.

I can’t point to any real connection between this strawberry shortcake and those summer nights.  I don’t remember ever eating strawberry shortcake like this growing up and I happen to know that my mother harbors a deep fear of biscuit baking due to an unfortunate omission of baking powder in her maiden attempt, which scars her still, decades later.  So I’m quite certain that none of those evenings involved strawberry shortcake.  The aforementioned bowls of ice cream, sure.  Or maybe a root beer float, fresh split peaches, or, if we were very lucky, a trip to the Dairy Queen.

But, even so, this strawberry shortcake conjures those evenings.  Just like those summer night memories, there’s something nostalgic about this recipe, something happy and comforting, something almost too all-American.  Does this make any sense?  Do you ever connect a food with a memory, to a time or a place, even though you never actually ate the food in that time or place?  You do, right?  It’s not just me, is it?

Or maybe I’m just strange.  Either way, a few days ago, I did my very best to establish a link—a real, historically accurate link—between this shortcake and those suburban summer nights.  I made a platter of the shortcakes last Saturday, when Kevin and I were in Minnesota visiting my family.  The weather was cold, so we were huddled around the dining table, rather than out on the back deck, but we hardly cared because there were still burgers and these strawberry shortcakes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.  Pat chilled dough into a round about an inch thick.  Using a lightly-floured 3-inch biscuit cutter, stamp out rounds.  Repeat with scraps.  Place rounds on prepared sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool completely.

Make strawberries: Combine strawberries, 1/2 cup sugar and balsamic vinegar.  Set aside, allowing the flavors to develop for at least 1 hour.

Make mascarone cream: Whisk together sour cream, mascarone, remaining sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and remaining salt in a medium bowl.  Chill.

Assemble:  Slice the biscuits in half horizontally.  Divide the strawberries and mascarpone creams among the biscuit bottoms.  Top with the biscuit tops and serve.

There are a number of criteria for selecting a perfect party food, don’t you think?  For starters, it should require only one hand to eat it and, relatedly, should not require a plate.  In most cases, this rule applies because your other hand is occupied by a beverage.  I could also see one employing her second hand to wield a camera, hold a kid, shake a stranger’s hand, high five a friend’s hand, flash a thumbs up across the room (I do this; I say goodness and whoopsie and you don’t say, too—now you know), hold a hand of cards, gesture wildly.  You get the picture — party food, at its best, is one-handed (and plate-less).

Second, and almost as important as the uni-hand feature, a perfect party food should be pretty.  Beautiful, breathtaking, stunning, even.  This is not the time for your favorite slap-dash dinner (which, incidentally, very likely requires two hands and a plate, or a bowl at the very least).  This is not the time for a monotone palette of brown and beige (ahem, I should really follow my own rules).  This is the time for color and flair.

Third, it should be delicious.  Of course.

These cheese straws easily satisfy all three criteria.  (1) One handed: check.  In fact, you really only need two fingers—a thumb and an index finger, pinched together.  (2)  Pretty: why I should say so!  Standing on end in a variety of drinking glasses—a juice glass, a tumbler, a stemless flute, and  the list goes on—you’ve got a spiky bouquet that catches the eye.  (3)  Delicious: oh, yes.  I hope I’m not doing these straws a disservice by likening them to Cheese-Its (or is it Cheez-Its?), but I can’t help myself.  They’re so much more honest though: all that’s going on here is flour, butter, salt, milk, cheddar (the sharper the better) and a healthy pinch of cayenne.  Simply put, they hit all the right notes: savory, salty, rich and spicy.  They’ve got a delicate crunch and you can’t help but reach for another.

I made these on Saturday for my friend Maggie’s bridal shower.  My friend Brynn and I did all the cooking (you can see some of the other things we made here!) and, of the things I made, these straws were my favorite.  So long as we can discount the tiny strawberry shortcakes, that is.  More about those very soon.

Cheese Straws
Adapted from Gourmet

Perfect party food should also be plentiful.  I suggest you double the batch — you won’t be sorry.

Yield: about 2 dozen straws

1/4 pound coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (1 1/2 cups)
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
1/2 teaspoon salt
Rounded 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350°F with racks in upper and lower thirds.

Pulse cheese, flour, butter, salt, and cayenne in a food processor until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add about half of the milk and pulse until dough forms a ball.  Add additional milk, if needed (I used almost the entire 1/4 cup).

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into a 12- by 10-inch rectangle (1/8 inch thick). Cut dough with a lightly floured pizza wheel or lightly floured sharp knife into 1/3-inch-wide strips. Carefully transfer to 2 ungreased baking sheets, arranging strips 1/4 inch apart. (If strips tear, pinch back together.)

Bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until pale golden, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool completely on baking sheets on racks, about 15 minutes.