It was supposed to be a simple Sunday supper, nothing much. “Come on over around 7, no 6:30,” I told my sister Lisa nonchalantly.

But you see, I have been trying to win my next-oldest-to-me-but-still-younger sister’s heart since she entered high school, and got too cool for me. And she was bringing a new yet serious-sounding Boyfriend, who worked at her hand doctor’s office (in our family, most accidents are kitchen-related, and Lisa had damaged a finger a year or so back when she was concocting an apres-bar snack, some sort of deconstructed toad-in-the-hole).

Lisa recently moved to go to school in nearby Greensboro, so she came over on Sunday, and poor girl, I don’t believe we finished eating until 9:30. We - well, Kelly, Lisa and the Boyfriend - nibbled on olives and crostini capped with garlic, rosemary and mashed cannelli beans, or cremini and shitake mushrooms sauteed with sage. I was frantically sauteing, chopping, deglazing, etc., etc. all the while trying not to get too giggly on the emptying 1.5 liter bottle of nothing-fancy Shiraz and unveil all our family gossip in one go to the newcomer.

I talked too much. I asked too many questions. I got distracted, and I was way behind.

Finally - 8? - we worked our way through a platter of chicken and parsnips braised in hard cider, then a red cabbage and fennel salad, the vegetables sliced almost translucently thin, then delicately dressed with hazelnut oil, sea salt, pepper and thick peels of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Woah. Then, dessert. It was really, truly 9 p.m.

Sometimes simple is best - particularly after a meal that goes on for hours and centers around chicken, no matter how redemeaningly free-range and organic, sauteed in thick market-cut bacon (did I leave that part out earlier?).

Enter, amaretti.

These cookies don’t look like much, no?

Listen: When you are tempted to go all out for a rib-sticking dinner, do it, but for the grand finale, whip these babies out. Light, crispy and chewy, they are intensely almond on top of almond because two of their four ingredients are almond-related. More importantly, they are drop-dead easy and won’t leave you walking away from the table feeling heavy and exhausted. Amaretti are irresistible on their own, but even better with a dish of vanilla bean affogato. This is how you treat family.

Almond Macaroons, or Amaretti, adapted from Patricia Wells’ Trattoria

Patricia Wells is known more for her Francophile’s take on bistros and Paris. However, it’s her cookbook of small, family restaurant dishes from Italy that gets a lot of use in our kitchen, chock full of comforting and deceptively simple recipes, all more than equal the sum of their short ingredient lists.

Bake them on parchment paper, and really watch them in the oven. They will only need 10, maybe 12 minutes.

3/4 cup of blanched almonds, ground in a food processor to a fine powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup egg whites, about two, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract

Yield: about 36 cookies

Preheat the oven to 350. Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.

Stir together the almonds and sugar in a large bowl.

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites and almond extract until the egg whites form soft peaks. Add the egg whites to the almond and sugar mixture until just combined (mix gently with a spatula). The batter will be airy, soft and sticky.

Using a teaspoon, drop about 1/2 a teaspoon of batter on the baking sheets, spacing each cookie slightly apart to make about 12 cookies per sheet. The cookies that make it into the oven right away will likely be puffier and chewier than flatter, crunchier ones made from batter that sits out longer - both are equally good.

Bake in the center oven rack and bake until slightly browned around the edges. Slide the parchment paper with the cookie on it onto a cookie rack to cool, then transfer from the paper after about five minutes.

The cookies can be stored in an airtight box in a cool, dry place for about 10 days.

It’s not been a good food week around our house, these gloomy mid-February days. Each time I reach into the fridge I seem to find yet another shriveled lemon, or a browned lime lurking under some faded leeks. Nothing is really, truly in season here. Spring still seems like a long time away, and I’m bored with all my sweaters. My long-awaited Zuni Cafe cookbook experiment - a roasted chicken that requires salting a full 24 hours ahead of time, or more - fell flat, the breast meat juicy but oddly sweet and the dark meat ’round the bones dry as jerky. Maybe we’ll try it again, but I have to say, after the glory of last week, dinner time is tough.

This is what happens when you don’t have leftovers. And you never have leftovers when you make a cheese soufflé .

I suppose that should be considered part of its success, but the real reason is that soufflés are ephemeral, finicky creatures. They won’t stand for a little warm up in the microwave, no sir, let alone being shoved into Tupperware or wrapped with plastic wrap, only to mold in the back of the refrigerator behind the 2 percent milk and your jam collection. A soufflé demands attention. It is a show and a spectacle, and once the airy cloud of cheese, egg and butter is done, it won’t wait for you or anyone else to get to the dinner table. I think soufflés are also some of the most romantic, heartfelt food. When you make someone a soufflé, you are chucking practicality and common sense and reason out of the window.

I know it’s the season for Valentine’s Day, gas station foiled-wrapped chocolate roses and those terrible, chalky-tasting little hearts, and yes, part of me still thinks it is a capitalist trick. But a soufflé for two, I guarantee it, should make any heart beat faster. And you won’t have anything as mundane as leftovers to deal with.

Cheese Soufflé, adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
Yield: about four servings

I thought I had made the cardinal soufflé faux pas when I accidentally, over-eagerly opened the oven about midway through baking time. Yet it didn’t fall, perhaps by just dumb luck, and it tasted as fluffy as I had hoped when it was done. But I’ll tie the oven shut next time so I don’t make the same mistake because I suspect I might have lost some height. We ate this soufflé on a chilly Sunday night accompanied by a soft, pale green salad of butter lettuce doused in a shallot vinaigrette, and lots of red wine.

Use a classic, tall soufflé mold if you have it. You can tie a two-inch high strip of buttered parchment paper around the rim to boost the height, and remove it before serving it. And it is best not to attempt a soufflé in the middle of August - go for days with lower humidity. Told you they are picky.

3 tablespoons, plus 1 teaspoon soft unsalted butter
3/4 to 1 cup coarsely grated good Parmigiano-Reggiano or an aged Gruyere, plus another 1 tablespoon of cheese, finely grated (buy the best you can find and afford)
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup boiling whole milk
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/8 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch nutmeg
pinch cream of tartar
4 egg yolks
5 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Measure out all the ingredients. Butter inside of soufflé mold with 1 teaspoon butter and sprinkle with finely grated cheese, coating well.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Stir in the flour with a wooden spatula or spoon and cook over moderate heat until butter and flour foam together for two minutes without browning. Remove from heat. When the mixture has stopped bubbling, pour in all the boiling milk at once. Beat vigorously with a whisk until blended. Beat in the seasonings. Return over moderately high heat and bring to a boil, stirring with the whisk for one minute. The sauce will be very thick.

Remove from heat. Start to separate the eggs. Drop the egg whites into a bowl and the yolk into the center of the hot sauce. Whisk the sauce after adding each yolk. Adjust seasoning. Add the extra egg white to the egg white bowl and whip until stiff with an electric mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add cream of tartar and a pinch of salt as the egg whites mix. Stir about one quarter of the egg whites into the sauce. Stir in all but one tablespoon of the cheese. Delicately fold in the rest of the egg whites. Be careful not to overfold - it’s better to have a few unblended patches than deflate the egg whites, Julia says. Using a spatula, nudge the soufflé mixture into the prepared mold, then smooth with the flat of a knife and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.

Set the soufflé on the middle rack of the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 375 degrees (Julia is very firm about this: “A soufflé will always perform as it should if it is placed on a rack in the middle level of a preheated 400-degree oven and the temperature is immediately reduced to 375 degrees.”). Do not open the door for 20 minutes. In 25 to 30 minutes, the soufflé will be puffy and golden, and hopefully will have grown two inches above the rim of the mold. Bake another 4 to 5 minutes to firm it up, and then serve tout de suite!

For months now, a group of friends and I have schemed about a potluck dinner of our fantasties, an occasional gathering of amateurish cooks all obsessed with making one another sigh “Mmmm…” (we all win that way). Life’s gotten in the way, many times, but I am so happy to say that we had our first installment this weekend.

As hostess, Mary K. had dibs on the theme. She choose Sweden, and we planned a Nordic Thanksgiving of salmon and schnapps, ABBA washed down with lots of red wine.

So Saturday night found us feasting on a salmon and potato bake, a Swedish grandmother’s sexy version of tuna casserole; fingerling potatoes; baked beans napped with vinegar; an orange and red onion salad dressed with allspice, star anise, salt and brown sugar; strawberries, mint and cream fraiche. One neighbor actually ground lamb himself for Lihamurekepiiras, a meat and pastry centerpiece that we later discovered was of Finnish origins - no matter. We stuffed ourselves silly with Mary K.’s meatballs, pork and beef swimming in a creamy sea and woken up with a jolt of garnet-colored ligonberry jam. It was chilly outside, but around the dining room table, we patted our lips with silly paper Swedish napkins with a rainbow pattern of robots, and dined on a heart-speckled Swedish tablecloth as a blaze burned away in the living room fireplace.

Brad (who lived in Sweden with his smart and beautiful wife Clare, of the potato bake) taught us how to toast - you must, must look at everyone in the room before you down your shooter of schnapps and yell “Skol!” A custom that dates from the Vikings, the eyeballing-tradition is so you know your drinking buddies won’t stab you in the back, or at least feel more reassured about those chances being slim.

My contribution was dessert. Semlor are found all over Sweden any time between New Year’s and Easter. They are the Swedish version of King Cake, that Shrove Tuesday treat that is meant to fatten you up before Lent’s long fast.

On their own, these small, unassuming buns are rather homely, and even dull. Flavored with cardamon and just a touch of sugar, they are plain Janes compared to other desserts. But pump them up with almond paste and whipped cream and a generous drift of powdered sugar, and you’ll understand why King Frederick ate a more than dozen after a meal of lobster, smoked herring, sour cabbage, Champagne and caviar. Soon after, the story goes, he keeled over and died, and the buns were banned, blamed for his greedy Highness’ death.

I like them because they are really the sum of their parts, not too sweet but a lovely, dreamy ending to an evening of good food and friends.

Brad and Clare said they never heard of any of their Swedish friends making semlor at home, but don’t let that intimidate you. Give them patience and time to let them rise. Eat them soon after you fill them, or put them in an airtight container unfilled until you’re ready.

Special thanks to Anne of Anne’s Food for the inspiration.

Semlor, adapted from Swedish Kitchen.com

Preparation Time: 1 and 1/2 hours
Yield: about 12 buns

5 tablespoons butter
1 cup whole milk
3 packages dried activated yeast (about 21 grams)
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamon

Glaze:
1 egg white, beaten

Filling:
7 ounces almond paste (not marzipan)
1/3 cup whole milk, approximately
whipping cream
powdered sugar

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the cold milk and let cool until 97 degrees Fahrenheit - tested with a finger, the mixture
should be feel warm but not hot, but use a thermometer if you really want to be sure. If the milk is too hot, it will kill the yeast. Pour the butter and milk mixture into a large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast on top, along with about a teaspoon of sugar. Allow yeast to proof about five minutes in a warm, draft-free place.

When yeast has formed little bubbles in the liquid, add the rest of the sugar, one egg, the salt, cardamon, and the flour. Mix well with a fork. Knead dough on a lightly-floured surface for a couple of minutes. Form dough into a ball and place in a bowl, covered with a cloth, and let dough rise for 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the bowl and knead on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes. Divide dough first into two parts. Divide
each part into about 5 smaller pieces and roll into balls that are slightly smaller than a tennis ball. Place these balls of dough on a
greased baking sheet, cover with a cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 20-30 minutes (you can turn on your oven at this point to pre-heat, and setting the bowl on top isn’t a bad place to let the dough rise). Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Brush the top of each bun with the beaten egg. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until tops of the buns are golden brown.
Remove from baking sheet and let cool on a rack.

Filling:

When cool, cut a small slice off the top of each bun and set aside (a triangle is supposed to be traditional). Using a fork, scrape out the center of each bun and put in a medium bowl. Crumble about half of the bun filling into a bowl. Mix with almond paste and milk unless a paste forms, using an electric or stand mixer. Spoon this paste back into the buns. Whip the cream until stiff. Using a spoon or a pastry tube, put the whipped cream on top of the filling. Place the lid back on each bun and, using a sieve or tea strainer, sprinkle the top of each bun liberally with powdered sugar. Semlor can be served at room temperature or, more traditionally, in a bowl with hot milk.

 When Kelly and I bought our first house together last August, I can’t say it was the kitchen that sold me. Sure, it is spacious, chock-a-block with wide drawers and deep cabinets and tall windows. The ceiling is high, wonderfully high in that old house way, but I can’t reach the smoke alarm even when I clamber onto a chair and stretch, dangerously, waving a dish towel wildly to stop the piercing screeching. There is a niche in one wall, handy for cookbooks, assorted tequilas and my growing collection of cake stands.

 The wallpaper, though, is terrible. Friends, it is textured. Scattered with drawings of herbs, their genus and species listed in script, which is why I suppose our bungalow’s previous owners thought made it oh-so-appropriate for a kitchen.

And then there was this oven.

A grayish green electric Frigidaire DeLuxe RDG-20S behemoth, circa 1970-something or other, this super-sized appliance in many ways is my kitchen. You can’t ignore it. You can’t pretend it’s not there. It’s prepetually too hot, a good 50 degrees warmer than what I turn to on the temperature dial. Despite its girth, the oven is narrow, so cookie sheets and roasting pans must go in vertically (that tempting section on the left is not, most unfortunately, another oven. It’s a storage drawer). The rear, right burner doesn’t work. Neither does the clock. If you baking nerds are curious, a month-long flurry of Christmas cookies, 20-plus pounds of butter and much cursing taught me that it will burn the beejesus out of anything on a darkish sheet unless I am careful to use parchment paper and make a few sacrifies to the Frigidaire gods.

But the color…it makes me so happy. And there is wood-paneling, I suppose to match your 1970s station wagon.

You can’t see it very well in the photo, but our house’s previous owners painted the kitchen trim the exact same shade as the oven. So you see I’m not the only one fascinated with it. They also left behind the instruction booklet, yellowed and faded and with a deep fat frying chart that includes suggested temperatures for croquettes and fritters. I suspect my five-year warrenty has expired, but this thing was constructed by General Motors. They build cars, friends!

So, we have grown to love each other. It’s probably entirely one-sided. But, maybe, just maybe, we are ready for bigger commitments. Like bread.

This blog is more an outlet, you see, for my food prattlings, rather than the constant in person ear-bending you get from me about what is honestly just dinner.

Just dinner, right.

Welcome to the beginning. We’re off!