The Cooking Critic

I love my new air conditioner. Love it love it love it. It is my favorite thing right now (I love it even more than my new white dress that I got from H & M), and it was a long time coming. I ordered my air conditioner online in July of 2005 from evil Wal-Mart, paid far more than I intended once shipping and tax were added, and it didn’t show up until September when summer was over, and I had no use for it. I called Wal-Mart, full of self-righteousness and the knowledge that shipping a seasonal product to a person when the season is over is clearly wrong, and they should make amends.

They felt differently.

They only offered me a measly $20 discount, which they never made good on. And while I’ve heard all sorts of horror tales about Wal-Mart from the book Nickel & Dimed and the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, I felt a little more outraged when it affected me personally. (That’s normal, right?) Therefore, all people should boycott Wal-Mart, if not for their general evilness, then for me and my tale of un-air-conditioned woe and sorrow!

So, anyhoo, the air conditioner was stored in my garage that September and was finally brought out of hiding when its services were needed last month. It should have been released from hibernation earlier, but previously when I opened up the box the air conditioner came in, I found its size and booklet of instructions very intimidating, so I kept putting off its installation. It took an outrageous heat wave and the help of my friend Rob to bring to fruition what should have taken place a year ago when I first ordered the damn thing.

I made Banana Bread after the air conditioner was installed simply because I can (also because I owed Rob an edible thank you, and I needed to make a July breakfast item for my blog.) The oven was on, the air conditioner was pumping, and I felt cool as can be … whenever I was in my bedroom anyways. My air conditioner doesn’t quite pump enough to cool as many square inches as it claims to on its box. But if I strategically place three fans throughout the house to push the cool air into various areas, you can almost feel a difference. And sleeping is way easier in a cool, air-conditioned bedroom than in a hot, muggy one.

Assessment: I’ve made and enjoyed many banana breads in my day, and I’ve determined that this one from the Junior League cookbook is the best. I don’t say that lightly. And since topping always makes bread taste better, I added a Streusel Topping from Family Circle. I blame the heat for the fact may streusel melded and never reached crumbly status when I mixed it together with a fork. My technique could also be at fault, but I prefer to blame the heat (and Wal-Mart too while I’m at it–why not? I’m sure I could think of a way to blame Wal-Mart for my banana bread inadequacies if I thought about it long enough.)

Also, did you know boys love banana bread? I ended up making muffins since my bread pan ran off (the floozy!), but at least this way I got to snag a few muffins for myself and share them with some male friends. Jim said he doesn’t normally care for banana bread, but he devoured mine and especially liked “the stuff on the top.” And Matt, who doesn’t like any food at all, more or less, said the muffin he ate was “like a golden biscuit.” So boys apparently love banana bread. Who knew? And here they are pictured on some hand-me-down plates from your mother.

When Adam told me about the local Atwater Village Cookie Contest, I thought, Cookies? I know cookies. And yes, I do know cookies, but clearly I don’t know people since the cookies I made were deemed by one judge, and I quote: “Definitely not the best cookie overall.” Sigh. My cookies are so misunderstood.

For this contest, I picked a family cookie recipe that I have tentatively named Citrus Clouds–I’ve never seen these cookies elsewhere before, not the grocery store or the cookie stand or in someone else’s repertoire. This is why I decided to enter them in a contest. When I told a friend I was making Citrus Clouds, he said, You don’t expect to win with those, do you? My response, Why, because there’s no chocolate in them? Him: Exactly. But I thought originality was key (I have since realized, it is not), so I stuck with my plan.

The day of the contest, I hastily made the cookies, which are intended to be iced, but instead I thinned out the icing to a glaze and dunked the cookies in it head first. I didn’t bother with finishing touches, no zest curls, no sprigs of thyme. So basically, I completely ignored the “best-looking” component of the competition, even though I know better—people prefer their cookies to be good-looking. Basically, I’m a bad mother to Citrus Cloud (she sounds like she’s related to the Phoenix family: Joaquin Phoenix, Summer Phoenix, River Phoenix, Rain Phoenix, Citrus Cloud Phoenix). The judges might have taken note of her if I had dressed her up in a decent coat of icing—it’s the equivalent of hip clothing. Instead, I send her out in the world in a sheer coat of barely discernable glaze. I just hope she doesn’t grow up and write a book about me….

At least I had the foresight to rename the cookie, referred to as Orange Cookies in my family (though even the renamed name keeps changing, from Citrus Clouds, to Citrus Pillows, to Airy Citrus Cookies—preferences, anyone?) The name change occurred because I’ve discovered that many people think they don’t like orange desserts—I use the word citrus to trick them because then they assume the cookies are lemon-flavored and generally don’t seem to notice the lack of lemon when they taste them. The orange juice in the batter gives just the faintest sweet citrus hint to the cookies, and everybody likes that, whether they know it or not.

So I didn’t win the cookie contest. Instead a peanut butter thumbprint cookie won with a Hershey Kiss pressed into it (why are people such chocolate freaks?), and sadly, the girl who won wasn’t even prancing around in a bikini, so I can’t complain about that.

Still, I beseech you to try these cookies despite their loser status. Think of the cookie contest as a popularity contest where the cutest girl won. My cookie is delicate and unassuming with a light, cakey texture similar to a madeleine. Citrus Cloud is a wallflower who could be hot if she were just a little more socially inclined, and really, we’re lucky she’s not all-out awkward due to her goofy, inept mother.

Vote for Citrus Cloud!

My mother likes to send me forwards. Some of them are adorable (like the old tortoise that adopted the baby hippo left motherless after the tsunami), some addictive (pictures of celebrities as children), some occasionally pointless (sorry, Mom, I still love you!) and some completely invaluable and amazing. Ziploc Omelets fall into the final category.

She timed the omelet forward well since I was looking for something to fulfill my monthly breakfast recipe promise to the world. I’m sure the world would have noticed and been very angry with me if the promise went unfilled….

Ziploc Omelets may sound a little baffling, so a quick explanation: they consist of an egg mixture zipped up in a Ziploc bag then cooked in boiling water for thirteen minutes. And this may lead you to wonder, as I did, why would anyone make omelets that take thirteen minutes when you can make omelets in less amount of time the normal way? My short answer: the novelty of it! Also, maybe you can make omelets the normal human way, but I cannot. I can’t flip them without them falling apart. Inevitably, I give up and make a scramble.

I decided to make a Spinach, Tomato, and Feta Omelet, as described in The Foster’s Market Cookbook, substituting Trader Joe’s Artichoke Jalapeno Dip for the artichoke aioli mentioned in the recipe. Then I fretted about how much spinach to include because I am astounded every. Single. Time. When I see spinach cook and shrink to ridiculously tiny quantities. I threw a large handful (or thereabouts) of chopped spinach into the Ziploc bag along with the ingredients and wrote my name on the bag as instructed. This is recommended if you have a Ziploc Omelet party, as people are apt do sometimes (people are so crazy), so everyone can keep track of their personalized omelets. No one else was at my Ziploc Omelet party, but I wrote my name on my bag anyways:

(Bear with me as my omelet goes through its awkward, ugly stage.) Next, I put it in boiling water and worried about whether or not it would cook through since it was floating. I think I didn’t push all the air out of the bag as instructed.

But it did indeed cook. And as promised, the omelet rolled out of the bag just like the instructions said it would. As a bonus, I was please to see I accidentally used the perfect amount of spinach.

You may notice it resembles a small log. No matter. I slathered on some artichoke dip, topped it with sautéed tomatoes, and had myself a substantial little omelet log.

And here’s the inside:

Color me impressed.

Assessment: Despite my doubts, thirteen minutes in boiling water makes for a perfectly cooked omelet, and Ziploc Omelets get my seal of amazement—they’d be a great activity/conversation piece for a brunch. And I also liked the suggested omelet combination from Foster’s Market as well as Trader Joe’s artichoke dip on this, even if it was a bit of an intense flavor fight between the dip and the feta in the places where the feta had grouped together in the Ziploc bag.

Overall, I highly recommend this. Please let me know what you think of the Ziploc technique if you try it (or even if you don’t.)

I had already started a story in my head about how I called multiple grocery stores in the Los Angeles area asking about red velvet cake mixes, no one knew what I was talking about, and isn’t that strange? But as it turns out, red velvet cake, a mild chocolate cake dyed red and typically served with cream cheese frosting, is a Southern phenomenon, which baffles me since it’s not as if red food coloring and chocolate cake are indigenous to the South. And while I couldn’t find any reason why Southerners are partial to the cake, I did figure out how it came to be: the term “red velvet cake” comes from the fact that the cocoa used in the 30s-40s (or thereabouts as far as I can tell) made the cake reddish-brown. Modern cocoa has more alkaline in it and no longer produces this color, so red dye is added to achieve the hue instead. (Thank you Wikepedia.)

But I doubt my brother cared about the historical and cultural relevance of the red velvet cake when he requested it every year for his birthday growing up. Today he turns 28. I was going to use red velvet cake mix to make some cakey cookies (I’ve done this before with lemon cake mix), and ship them to him. But since California doesn’t carry red velvet cake mix, he got Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies instead, mainly because I’ve been wanting to try them.

Still, I did have Michael in mind. I called Mom and Dad and quizzed them on Michael’s favorite flavors. Their response, “Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe peanut butter?” When I think about it, I realize Michael doesn’t voice his opinion on foods so often. I believe he likes a balsamic vinegar linguine with bacon and goat cheese that I make, but besides that and red velvet cake, nothing else comes to mind. His main concern when we made food in our family was the ease in making it and the ease in cleaning it up. In fact, when we were pre-teens and assigned to make a meal once a week, I’d go about making homemade breadsticks and strawberry chicken. When Michael cooked, he made something along the lines of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. His specialty was baked chicken fingers well-seasoned and doused in butter. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them.

But back to the glories of toffee. The reason cookies with toffee candy appeal to me (and hopefully my brother) is because my family went on a toffee bar craze when we first discovered Skors. I’ve always preferred the Skor to the Heath bar, which is why I used it in this recipe despite the fact the recipe is called “Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies.” Perhaps I like Skor simply because I met it first, and it introduced me to the world of toffee. But I’ve always thought it tasted better too, and I felt vindicated when an examination of the ingredients of the two candy bars revealed Heath had more unpronounceable ingredients than Skor. It also revealed both candy bars are made by Hershey, which I thought was very strange.

I suspected Michael must have the same fondness for the Skor bar that I do since we grew up in the same Skor-obsessed household, so I decided these cookies would be up his alley. And here’s a picture of my brother pretending he can operate machinery. He’s got a bit of a Burt Reynolds thing going on these days.

Happy birthday, Bear!

Assessment (of the cookies, not my brother): When I first tasted a warm Skor Bar Chocolate Chip Cookie, I determined they’re better in theory than in actuality. The toffee distracted rather than added to what is primarily a chocolate chip cookie with oatmeal and walnuts mixed in. But I adjusted my opinion when I tried the cookies cold. The toffee added something more when the Skor bits solidified into a buttery crunch rather than when they were sticky and oozy. So my final verdict is: if you’re bringing cookies somewhere with you, than try out these chewy Skor cookies (an adjustment involving 3/4 cup butter and ¼ cup shortening might have helped the texture of this cookie). But if you’re mixing up a batch to eat out of the oven, stick to the tried and true regular old chocolate chip cookie—they’re hard to beat.

Maggie wants the world to know she isn’t a mooch. If you look over my posts in the last couple of months, it may look like she’s constantly stopping by on the off chance that something just came out of the oven, and why doesn’t she join me for dinner? But I must set the record straight. Not only did Maggie have Shahan and I over for a meal recently, she, in fact, had me over for dinner long before I ever returned the favor.

Maggie planned the meal, set the date and I said I’d bring an appetizer—the Vegetable-Avocado Salsa I made was an easy choice. I’d been eyeing the recipe for a while; the small picture of it in the upper left-hand corner of my Complete Outdoor Living Cookbook has been beckoning to me for a long time what with its festive colors and all. I even tried once to convince my non-avocado
-enamored mother to make it and bring it to a gathering because I wanted her to report back to me on how it tasted. On top of all this, I also had some Trader Joe’s avocados—despite my love for the avocado, I always have a hard time using up the four that come in a bag, and this salsa was a way to check one of my list. The dish required no oven either, a major bonus due to a recent heat wave and lack of air-conditioning in my apartment.

So I chopped and chopped and chopped the vegetables into fine little bits but left out the avocado initially because it makes the dip soupy if it joins the party but then sits around too long. I called Maggie and told her I’d be a little late because I needed to pick up a jicama on the way to her place. Maggie responded, “A jigga-what?” And I said, “It’s a bulbous, root vegetable that has the crunch of an apple but is mostly flavorless.” “Oh,” she replied.

I picked up my jicama and added both it and the avocado to the dip at Maggie’s place. And we happily munched on the dip then happily ate up Maggie’s red wine-themed meal. I’m not sure how I only just recently discovered intimate dinner parties are a great way to spend an evening, but I did. First we had cocktails with the appetizer, next we had wine with our meal served al fresco on the patio—it included a salad topped with blue-cheese stuffed mushrooms, eggplant parmesan and strawberries soaked in red wine sauce served over ice cream. As far as I can tell, the latter is the perfect summer dessert: wonderful, unusual and no stove or oven required (the heat has made me obsessed with the last criteria of late). After the meal, Maggie read our Tarot cards, which determined Shahan will never ever find love or happiness. I fared slightly better, though the multiple reference to “moving houses” made me nervous since there’s a For Sale sign in front of my apartment complex right now that I’m not pleased about at all. But the tarot cards predicted that in the end I’d be happy with the move. Perhaps my new place will have air-conditioning?

Adjustments: I used a jalapeño instead of a serrano chile but will try the spicier latter next time. And I used frozen corn instead of fresh since I’m on a freezer initiative right now. I ignored the instructions to make your own baked tortilla chips and instead bought some blue corn Tostitos.

Assessment: Shahan called this dip “a winner” and declared it a great fancy alternative to traditional salsa or guacamole. The different textures are wonderful: soft avocados, crunchy carrots and crisp jicama (of course, now I’m looking for recipes to help me use up the rest of the jicama). Be sure to salt and pepper the salsa appropriately since the seasonings help the flavors meld. Also, Vegetable-Avocado Dip is very beautiful. And while this dish wasn’t difficult to make, there is a lot of chopping, so I’m going to say it’s relatively easy with an emphasis on the “relatively.”

Until this past Memorial Day, I’ve never attempted to make corn on the cob. There’s really no excuse for it, other than I don’t own a barbecue, so I don’t host barbecues, so I don’t make corn on the cob, which has barbecue associations for me. All the same, I think about making corn on the cob a decent bit—there are a few recipes I’ve often admired from afar, one involving a lemon-chive butter and another with a chile-salt rub. Since many of my past barbecues have involved one boyfriend or another at the helm of the barbecue, I’d run my fancy corn-on-the-cob aspirations by him first. Inevitably I received a stare that seemed to say, why would you make a lemon-chive butter or a chile-salt rub when you can have excellent corn just by throwing it on the grill or tossing it in boiling water? Or maybe the look simply said, please don’t make things more difficult than they need to be. But since boiling or grilling regular old corn doesn’t exactly capture my imagination, I lost interest in the project and couldn’t be counted on to assist with the corn. I typically ended up making dessert.

So when a Memorial Day barbecue was announced with no boyfriend in sight, I went about making the dressed up corn I’ve always contemplated: not one of the recipes mentioned above, but a Cherry Tomato and Corn Salad made from corn on the cob that’s easy to make, easy to transport and easy to eat.

Assessment: Despite the many eases associated with this corn salad and though it pains me to admit it, I have to say I see the old boyfriends point with this one. Fresh corn on the cob is really good, so why make any adjustments to it by adding a dressing that might be best described as faint? The taste of the salad was pleasant enough, but I think I might prefer my corn slathered in butter. (Of course, I also adore butter more than any person should, so you might not want to listen to me on this one.) But corn salad does have some advantages you may want to consider: A) It’s a great portable dish that requires no last minute prep and will keep you out of the host/hostesses’ hair and B) You don’t have to worry about corn all over your face and teeth like you do with corn on the cob, a difficult food to eat gracefully. Also, you could easily substitute frozen corn for the fresh and speed up this already speedy recipe even more.

When I invited Maggie over for dinner, I mentioned very coolly in passing, “Saffron will be there.” “Saffron?” she said, just as coolly back, pretending she didn’t care. Then I mentioned green beans, and her cool veneer slipped just a little because, frankly, nobody worries about being cool in front of green beans, and she admitted that she’s on a green bean kick where she likes to cook them up and then salt the hell out of them. Then the conversation turned back to saffron, and she got all blasé since that’s the thing you do when it comes to the most sought-after spice around and said, “Well, maybe I’ll stop by.” And so she did.

Saffron is effortlessly cool, and he thinks he’s pretty special because, well, he is. According to The New Food Lover’s Companion, he’s the most expensive spice in the world. And unlike some items where the high price seems arbitrary, saffron actually has a good reason for being so expensive. Saffron comes from a flower that produces only three saffron stigmas per flower. On top of this, these stigmas are handpicked. Can you imagine handpicking saffron? I’ve always maintained that the worst job I ever had was a soccer referee—this claim is questionable since I’ve had my share of bad jobs, but between the fact it was my very first job and everybody loves to yell at you when you’re a referee, it doesn’t seem like such an outrageous notion. Still, I imagine being a stigma-picker is worse. At the very least, it sounds extremely tedious.

But we’ll move away from the plight of the stigma-picker, which I have no knowledge of, and on to meals containing said stigmas, of which I have a little more knowledge but not a lot since I can count the number of times I’ve used saffron on one hand. That number is two.

Basically, saffron is an easy way to impress guests since it’s familiar enough not to be scary but still has some exotic shimmer to it. Sure enough, with saffron mixed in, a dish becomes vibrant, and the taste of saffron is its very own and hard to describe. I’d like to think it has a slightly buttery/faintly floral taste. Of course, I like to think all sorts of things—for instance, that eventually I’ll live in one of those gorgeous houses in Los Feliz and not have to fret over purchasing things such as saffron—so who knows how accurate my description is.

For something not terribly planned out, Maggie and I had a nice little feast with our Trader Joe’s appetizer dips, Hearts of Palm Salad, Green Beans and Saffron Pasta and Raspberry Brownies. As a bonus for any host, none of these dishes were labor-intensive, and the meal as a whole was completely feasible to pull off. Yea feasibility!

Adjustments: Instead of garganelli pasta (a ribbed penne, more or less), I used bowtie because I just can’t justify buying other pastas when I have such an assortment (if an incomplete one) in my house.

Assessment: This dish had a nice flavor heigtened by the kicky pecorinio cheese, and I liked it even better the second day, but overall it was subtler than I would have liked. I also didn’t love the instruction to include “2 pinches of saffron threads”; it wasn’t nearly exact enough for me, a Virgo, obviously. I found myself wondering if my pinch would be more or less than the average pinch. At first I blamed my stingy pinches for the low-key flavor, but I have since read that you need to use saffron within six months for optimum flavor, and saffron had been hanging out at my place for far longer than that. What can I say? I enjoy his company.

I’m going to call this dish “relatively easy” though I have some doubts. It’s not hard, but it took longer than 30 minutes. Still, I think the time might have more to do with the fact I haven’t quite mastered the art of chatting with guests while cooking rather than how long the dish actually takes. As for recommending this dish: I think it’s a good base for exploring saffron but feel free to freestyle cook with this one—no need to be a slave to the recipe. And use fresher saffron than I did.

Sooner or later, people begin to expect baked goods of me. My monthly poker game started about a year ago with no such expectations, but some brownies there, a strawberry lemon curd pie here, and suddenly my reputation is sealed, one that has followed me around nearly my entire life. If I show up without food, people are disappointed. And I hate to disappoint.

Since there have been no brownies present at the last few poker games, a fact the guys like to remind me of often, I decided to make the fudgiest brownies known to man in order to make it up to them. Mission accomplished.

Adjustments: I don’t have the 11×13-inch baking pan called for, so I used my 11×9 one and a muffin tin for the extra brownie mixture. Still, it was hard to guess how much of the mixture should go in the pan and how much in the muffin tin. I guessed as best as I could, but when the 30 minutes cooking time was up, I added on 10 more since the brownies were still slightly wobbly in the center. Eventually, the brownies set, but I could never get the toothpick to come out clean–my mother had the same experience with these. That’s just the way things go sometimes when baking super fudgey foods. Still, what I call “fudgey,” others may call “undercooked.”

Assessment: When I made Raspberry Brownies before, Dave Crocco dubbed them the best brownies he’s ever tasted. As far as I know, he doesn’t go around saying that about every brownie he encounters. But they aren’t for the lily-livered—they’re more of a cross between a brownie and a piece of fudge, so be prepared for the dense chocolate intake you’re about to experience when tasting these. A layer of tart raspberry jam helps cut the chocolateness.

There are some recipes that you will glance at and consider every time you thumb through a cookbook, yet they will never make it to your kitchen table. Honestly, I thought that would be the fate of Hearts of Palm Salad. It was interesting, but didn’t seem interesting enough to purchase ingredients I normally don’t. While I like to try new foods, I’m also keenly aware that I don’t know what I’m doing when I work with them, nor do I really know what to expect.

Then came a five-day stint with my family in Mississippi where a kind neighbor with a poultry farm (yes, I know someone who owns a poultry farm) treated us to chicken ‘n dumpling, chicken Tetrazzini and chicken salad sandwiches. I loved indulging in the heavy Southern foods, but by the time I came back to California, I was ready for something light and leafy. Once more, Hearts of Palm Salad caught my eye. Since I bore easily when it comes to salads, the idea of adding of an unusual ingredient like hearts of palm was actually appealing, and really only more so because I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Strangely, it is what it says it is, which is the heart of cabbage palm tree—its edible core that looks not unlike a bamboo shoot. They come canned since fresh is nearly impossible to find, and since they’re soft and perfectly straight, it’s hard not to feel like a pro when chopping them up.

The flavor of hearts of palm is much like an artichoke. In fact, if you can’t find or don’t want to pay for the sometimes pricey hearts of palm, a marinated artichoke makes a good substitute. Still, I prefer the palm’s heart because it’s not as pungent. It’s got the tang without the overkill, and the texture is nice and soft with no worries about chewiness that the marinated artichoke sometimes troubles me with. Not to say the artichoke is generally troublesome. Normally I find him quite sophisticated and charming. But you don’t have to work as hard with hearts of palm who’s always laid back and never fussy. You get all the class but none of the stress of feeling like you’re socializing outside of your bracket.

Adjustments: The recipe calls for “salad herbs,” and I’m not sure if this was a vague suggestion to use whatever herbs you feel go with a salad or if there were a specific set of herbs designated for salads or maybe even a product, like jarred fines herbes. A quick Internet search provided no conclusive evidence, so I used fresh dill, which tasted good.

Assessment: This is a flavorful, spunky salad that’s not substantial enough to be a main dish but is a great accompaniment to just about anything because of both its taste and the ease in assembling it.

The pizza craving is a difficult urge to resist, as I have documented before. On one particular day, visions of pizza danced in my head and then visions of me eating a few slices at Hard Times Pizza soon followed. This didn’t seem like such an unreasonable thought but was a little excessive when my refrigerator was chock-full of goods from a recent grocery store run. So I figured I’d sensibly use what I had on hand while simultaneously fulfilling my pizza craving as best I could. The result? Turkish Pizza Turnover.

Turkish Pizza Turnover is very cleverly named since it really resembles a quesadilla more than a pizza. As much as I like quesadillas, pizza has some sort of primal pull on me—sometimes nothing in the world will do except a big cheesy slice of pizza. Turkish Pizza Turnovers aren’t that cheesy and don’t have an ounce of red sauce. Some might even describe them as healthy. Actually, I don’t know if some would, but I would—my standards for healthy are pretty loose. Still, when the primary ingredient for a dish is a vegetable—in this case spinach—I think I have something resembling a solid argument.

Adjustments: I’m sure the homemade dough described in this recipe is delicious, and it doesn’t look hard. But I was on a quest to use up my lavash, and since the resulting homemade bread in the picture next to the Turkish Pizza Turnover recipe looked identical to the lavash in my refrigerator, there’s was really no question about what to do. So lavash was used and mascarpone cheese omitted since I didn’t have any. In retrospect, I wish I would have thrown in a little mozzarella or Monterey Jack since cheesy pizza was what I was craving, but oh well.

Assessment: This was a nice change from my typical lunch fare. It reminded me of a flat spanakopita. But unlike the other spanakopita taste-alike I made recently–Greek Chicken Strudel, which was so time-consuming that in the end it just wasn’t worth the effort–this dish was an easy thrown-together meal, and so, gets my endorsement. But it’s something more for yourself than a crowd. Stick to the puffy store-bought spanakopita for the latter.