A quick recipe

This weekend M. and I did a bit of entertaining: we had my officemate and his wife over for dinner, reciprocating their invitation to us from a few months ago. Finding a good time for a get-together with them can be rather difficult, as she is working on her PhD at UC Merced and spends most of her time there. (Unfortunate for us, really, as they are a lovely couple to hang out with.)

They had served up a very tasty and somewhat fancy dinner when we ate at their apartment, and we wanted to match up to their offering, but we also weren't up to anything too complex or too expensive. We settled on a classic American country menu of salad, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and peach cobbler (a la mode), but all gussied up by Cook's Illustrated. (CI is our only food-related subscription currently, and we heartily recommend it. Almost every recipe we've tried is quite delicious; it does have the downsides of occasionally requesting fairly expensive ingredients and usually requiring quite a bit of prep time the first time we try a recipe. It doesn't take long to get the hang of them, though, and they can make excellent 'staple' dishes. (Sorry for the linked recipes being hidden behind a pay wall. Email us if you want instructions.))



The dinner was a lot of fun, though the preparation and cooking took about three hours (managing to cook everything with two chefs splitting between them prep bowls, measuring spoons, a chopping block, a three burner stove and a somewhat cranky oven takes some coordination!)

All of the ingredients came from the Brookline Farmers Market, which boosted the tastiness as well. I think everyone had a great time, and the only entertaining snafu was pretty humorous: we inadvertently created a modern art sculpture worthy of a low-budget poseur gallery when the wax walls of our trusty bathroom candle finally gave way.

But what about the recipe? It's one I ran across while digging through our CI collection. My dad sent it to me when I was a grad student as a suggestion for CAM's weekly coffee hour. It was quite a hit the second time I made it; the first time I think I might have eaten it all.

Fully cover a baking sheet (1/4" sides) with saltine crackers. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt 2 sticks of butter together with 1/2 cup light brown sugar. Heat to rolling boil for 3 minutes to thicken. Pour this mixture over the crackers.

Bake for 10-18 minutes, until brown. Remove from oven and cover with 1 bag of semisweet chocolate chips and one bag of regular chocolate chips. The chips should melt and cover the crackers smoothly; you can return the crackers to the oven briefly to help this along.

Finally, cover with pecans or your favorite nuts and refrigerate to set. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Enjoy!