Sweet Amandine

Cook it up right

2012-04-12T18:12:00.002-04:00

There’s something I have to get off my chest, today. I hope you’ll bear with me. It’s small, and round, and edible, of course. It’s my favorite grain that’s not a grain at all. Yes, I’m talking about quinoa.

I’m not usually one to make demands about what one must or mustn’t do in the kitchen. At least not in your kitchen. Food is personal, and you’ve got to do with it what you want. You’re the decider! So go ahead and eat your steak as bloody or as burnt as you please. Douse it in ketchup, or mayo, or grape jelly, for all I care. Cook and let cook! Eat and let eat! Except for when it comes to quinoa. This, for the simple reason that I have been enjoying the heck out of quinoa lately, and I think you will, too, if you cook it up right.

For a long time, I made quinoa much like I make rice. (I also have some things to say about the way we’re all taught to cook rice, by the way, but that’s a story for another day.) Anyway, you know how it goes: some measure of quinoa and about twice as much water, simmered down until it has either evaporated or absorbed. There’s a reason I used to do it this way. The box told me to. And so did any number of reputable print and on-line sources. It seemed obvious enough, and depending on how I timed the cooking and calibrated the boil (what does a true “simmer” look like, anyway?), the result was more or less fine. But somewhere along the way, after at least half a dozen times of more-or-less-fine, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the stuff. The flavor was borderline nice, I suppose. There was something faintly nutty there, but it was muted, bogged down. And the texture. Was this how it was supposed to be? Mildly soggy at best, mushy at worst? I nearly typed the word “swampy” in that last sentence, which leads me to wonder just how “fine” my early days of quinoa really were.

Then, in the late summer of 2006, the August issue of Gourmet turned up in my mailbox with a recipe for quinoa with corn, scallions, and mint. I could stop right there, or maybe with the fact that the recipe also includes fresh lemon zest and juice, and a touch of honey, and you’d already know that this recipe had a lot going for it. But what really got me was the cooking method. You start the quinoa on the boil, as I’d come to expect, but carry on only until it’s just coming around to tender. Then, you drain it, and set it in a sieve over an inch of simmering water to steam the rest of the way through to done. The technique is brilliant, and so is the quinoa that comes out in the end. It’s soft without the sog, breaks between the teeth with the lightest pop, and when you fluff it with a fork, you actually fluff it with a fork. Fluff it, not smoosh it. Because the individual seeds remain individual seeds, clump-free, lump-free, and every bit as delicious as all the quinoa you’ve ever eaten has let on it might be, given the proper circumstances.

So there you go. Thanks. I feel much better now.

Lemon-Scented Quinoa with Scallions and Mint
Adapted from Gourmet

The original recipe includes four ears worth of fresh corn kernels, boiled on the cob for five minutes, then removed, or simply raw. It’s wonderful that way in the summer. This time of year, I make it without the corn, and it’s still excellent. Make the dressing with butter or, for a something different, olive oil. I like it both ways.

1 Tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
½ stick (¼ c.) unsalted butter, or ¼ c. olive oil
1 Tbsp. mild honey
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 c. (about 10 oz.) quinoa
4 scallions, thinly sliced
½ c. chopped fresh mint

Rinse the quinoa in three changes of cold water to remove any bitter coating. Bring a 4- to 5- quart pot of salted water to a boil, add the quinoa, and cook for about 7-8 minutes, until just slightly tender. (Think al dente pasta.)

Drain the quinoa in a sieve, then set the sieve over an inch of simmering water in the same pot. (Make sure that the water doesn't touch the bottom of the sieve.) Cover the quinoa with a folded kitchen towel and cover the whole thing with a lid. Steam until the quinoa is tender, fluffy, and dry, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, still covered, for another 3-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the dressing: Whisk together the lemon zest and juice, butter or oil, honey, salt, and pepper. Gently fold the quinoa into the dressing with a rubber spatula, then fold in the scallions and mint. Taste, and add more salt and pepper, if you'd like. Serve at any temperature.

Makes enough for eight.

A flying leap

2012-04-03T20:21:00.018-04:00

The newspaper told me to make corn bread yesterday. Yes, again. In my defense, this corn bread is really its own thing, so one might argue that it’s not “again” at all. Also in my defense, it’s hard to say no to a newspaper, especially when that newspaper is The New York Times, and especially, especially when it’s speaking in the voice of Sam Sifton. There’s talk of sopping, and stuffing and, (I love this part) “powerful croutons.” Then, the following statement: “There is really no reason not to make corn bread right away.” Including, I assumed, the alarming rate of corn bread production and consumption already underway in my kitchen. “No reason” means no reason, after all. So I got up, oiled a cast-iron skillet, and put it in the oven to warm.

And here we are, another corn bread before us. The funny part isn’t actually the two-corn-breads-in-as-many-posts thing. I mean, corn bread is good. Bring on the corn bread, right? It’s that the two corn breads in as many posts both hail from my very own Cambridge, Massachusetts: a yeasted sandwich-style loaf from Hi-Rise Bread Company and, today, a skillet quick-bread from a restaurant called the East Coast Grill. Now that, 180 miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line, is unexpected.

I’ve got a few things I’d like to say about today’s corn bread, but having just scrolled through the comments posted beneath the article on the New York Times site, I continue with trepidation. (Do not, I repeat, DO NOT mess with people’s corn bread.) Hopefully, with a loaf of corny sandwich bread as our starting point, it’s safe to say that today’s version is at least closer to what many of us imagine when we hear the words, “corn bread.” (Or the word, “cornbread,” depending on whom you ask.) It’s baked in a skillet, for one thing, and it’s leavened with baking powder, not yeast. Plus, it just plain looks like corn bread. It smells like corn bread, too, as it bakes and browns and crisps up around the edges, which is why I was surprised to discover that it didn’t quite taste like corn bread. At least not the corn bread I had in mind. Don’t get me wrong. Some people will tell you that with the presence of eggs, flour, yellow cornmeal, and sugar, this is no corn bread, but an abomination. I am not one of those people. I am a person, though, who once upon a time, circa 1989 in Cleveland, Ohio, slid squares of corn bread from the school lunch line onto my tray, and got something dense and crumbly, not unappealingly dry, and with a one-note, corn-only flavor. That I measure my corn bread by the yardstick of my grade school cafeteria should tell you that I have not a lick of authority in the corn bread department. All I’m trying to say is that I guess I was expecting something like that. And yet, despite what I thought today’s corn bread might be, and what it actually is, my message to you is that I like it very much.

This corn bread, as you can plainly see, is many energetic strides away from the upright loaf of Hi-Rise Bread Company fame. But as it approaches (what I consider to be) the land of classic corn bread, it takes a flying leap into full-blown cake territory. Here, like in the Hi-Rise recipe, the single cup of cornmeal never truly grabs you, mingling as it does with twice that amount of white flour. Even with the added corn kernels, what we have here is not the corniest of corn breads. Sifton does, by the way, suggest playing with the balance of corn meal and white flour to suit your taste, and I plan on changing things up the next time around, just to see what happens. Still, there’s no denying that cake territory is a lovely, lovely place. Things are sweet there, and if you’re lucky, light and moist, and we could all do worse than a corn bread that is all of these things.

The only trick is figuring out just what to do with this cake-like bread. First, there is the matter of temperature. I have always operated under the general rule that warm-from-the-oven bread, left to cool just long enough to finish pulling itself together, is always preferable to room temperature bread. Cakes, though, are best fully cooled. Breads, warm. Cakes, cool. Then along comes this cake-like bread... See the problem, here? The beauty of a skillet-baked corn bread is that you can bring it in the skillet from oven to table, and cut into it while it is still warm. That's what we did with this skillet-baked corn bread, only to discover that still warm, it's actually kind of weird. (A case of, ahem, cast iron-y, perhaps??) (Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.) It tastes, for lack of a better word, rare. As in, not quite cooked. This, despite it being, by every measure, baked through. The flavor and feel are what I would imagine classic birthday cake might be if you were to eat it straight from the oven. Too sweet, very white, in need of salt, and a little, I don’t know… batter-y.

It was the strangest thing. So strange that I remained on the fence for a while about whether I would share the recipe with you at all. Then, a few hours later, when the bread was cool, I tried it again, and found that it had ripened into serious deliciousness. The white flour did its job, adding stature and spring, but had stepped back a bit behind the corn. What was once too sweet was now perfectly in balance, and upping the salt no longer felt necessary. It just needed some time to settle, I guess. As for how I’ve been eating it: with soft, salted butter, with raspberry jam, and, of course, with the killer hot pepper honey that the newspaper also, in its supreme and clear-eyed bossiness, insisted I make.

So. Another corn bread for you, friends. And now that I’m officially collecting them, it seems, I think I’d like to find one more. Something corn meal-heavy so that the corn really sings. Do you have a favorite recipe you’d be willing to share? I hope so. I’d really love to know.

East Coast Grill Corn Bread
(and Honey with Red Pepper flakes)
Adapted from The New York Times Magazine, where Sam Sifton adapted it from the East Coast Grill

If you managed to read all the way down to the end of this post, you already know that I advocate for the complete cooling of this bread before eating. Leave it uncovered in the skillet so that you don’t lose the crunchy bits on top and around the edges. One other quick note: I like my corn bread gritty, so I use medium-grind cornmeal.

2 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. stone-ground yellow cornmeal, medium grind
¾ c. white sugar
½ tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. baking powder
2 large eggs
1½ c. whole milk
1½ Tbsp. vegetable oil
¼ c. melted butter
2 c. fresh or frozen corn kernels

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9-inch cast-iron skillet and put it in the oven to heat up.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, and baking powder. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, add the melted butter and the corn, and stir until just mixed.

Take the hot cast-iron pan from the oven and pour in the batter. Use a spatula to even it out, if necessary. Put the pan back into the oven and bake for approximately 1 hour (start checking at 50 minutes), until the bread is browned on top and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Serves 6-8.

::

Honey with Red Pepper Flakes

Spoon some honey, however much you’d like, into a bowl. Sprinkle with red-pepper flakes, to taste. Wonder why you’ve never thought of this before.

For your toasting pleasure

2012-03-16T02:35:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, Mia had her First Sick. It was of the fever and tummy trouble variety. Through the worst of it one night, we set a timer and fed her milk with a dropper every twenty, then fifteen, then ten minutes, a few ccs at a time, only as much as she could keep down. When I finally felt her head plop against my shoulder and her body drop into sleep, I said to Eli, “I think we’ve been initiated.” We were real parents now.

By the time I sat down to write that last post, the one about celery, Mia was feeling quite well again. I was feeling well, too. It was Monday; the week was still mine! I was here with all of you, gearing up to talk celery! But as I typed, I began to wish a little bit that I were talking about something else, because celery, well, suddenly it didn’t sound so good. It wasn’t the celery, of course, but me. No sooner did I hit “Publish,” I was struck down. “Grown-ups can’t catch a bug like this from a baby,” Eli had (wishfully) surmised. Famous last words. He too was felled. Two healthy parents and a sick kid is one thing. Two sick parents – welcome to our real initiation.

When the fever lifted and standing in a fully upright position no longer seemed like a task for the mighty, I took myself on a tour of the apartment and surveyed the wreckage. There, on the coffee table, on the kitchen counter, on the floor by the sofa, on a plate in the bed, was forty-eight hours’ worth of evidence of my feeble attempts at solid food consumption: Toast. It was everywhere. At some point, I must have decided that getting bread to toaster, to plate, to bed, was victory enough, since one day-old specimen was not a crumb short of a fully formed slice. The remaining pieces were also whole to varying degrees, with just a corner, maybe two, missing from each one. From the looks of my apartment, this was no illness, but some kind of odd life experiment in which I had repeatedly tried, and failed, to eat toast.

Since we last spoke, I’ve been doing my best to make up for it.

It’s been a lot to get caught up on, all that toast. Loaf by loaf, though, I’ve been closing the gap.

That I have a thing for toast is no secret. Did you know that toast was the subject of the second post that I ever wrote on this site? That feels like a lifetime ago (technically, I guess it was, and then some), but what can I say? I will never get over toast. I must talk about it more than I even realize, because back at the end of January, when I mentioned on Twitter that “day-old corn bread from Hi-Rise Bread Company makes terrific cinnamon toast” (a public service announcement, really), my friend Nishta replied, “Jess, you think everything makes terrific cinnamon toast.” She has a point.

Between you and me, you can leave off the cinnamon, and her statement still holds.

I am proud to have delivered some prime toasting material to your computer screens over the life of this blog. You might recall this soda bread, the stuff of my friend Eitan’s “ideal toast” and, once upon a time, these buttermilk biscuits, which become different creatures completely when toasted. Today, I bring you something new for your toasting pleasure: a corn bread-cum-sandwich loaf from my neighborhood bakery.

I’ve been a fan of Hi-Rise corn bread for years, but these things go in cycles for me, which means that a favorite thing will often slip my mind for months, until one day, out of nowhere, hell-OOO, corn bread. It's not half bad, getting to rediscover my favorite things on a fairly regular basis. (Does this happen to you?)

Anyway, I rediscovered Hi-Rise corn bread just after the first of the year and started bringing home a loaf a week. Then, I found the recipe. It makes a couple of loaves at a time, so we’ve now been going through two loaves a week. (Closing the gap, I tell you, closing the gap.) What gets me about this corn bread is how unexpected it is. I don’t think I’ve ever used the words “corn bread” and “loaf” in the same sentence, but today, I get to. This is no skillet-baked, soda-leavened snacking cake, but an honest to goodness bread. It’s got yeast, and bread flour, and at first glance, looks like standard sandwich bread (if particularly golden-crusted). It is so far removed from what we typically think of when we hear the words “corn bread” that some might say it isn’t corn bread at all. It is, though, with a cup each of corn meal and whole corn kernels to prove it.

You can see here that the first time I baked this bread, it came out with a giant hump. I’m not sure what caused it – it hasn’t happened since – but in any case, it didn’t do any harm. I actually think it’s kind of cute. Here’s that hump from the other side, and a peek at the inside of the loaf to give you a better sense of the thing:

(If you click on that photo, you can see it big.)

This bread has a lot in common with other toast-worthy breads: the slightly moist crumb that’s somehow dense and airy at the same time, the crust that is already on its way to crisp just out of the oven and, once toasted, shatters and flakes when you bite into it. (One end piece for me, please. Two, if no one else wants.) These estimable qualities mean a piece of toast that is 100% toast on the surface – brown, stiff, crumbly; you know, typical toast stuff – but only about 75% toast within, where the bread is warm but still slightly springy to the touch. And that’s before we even get to the corn factor. If you’ve ever taken a corn muffin or a square of traditional corn bread, a corn scone or a glorious wedge of custard-filled corn bread, yes, if you’ve ever taken a corn anything at all, and stuck it in the toaster oven, you know that the corn factor is a very real, very wonderful thing. Cornmeal, toasted, is special. It’s its own flavor, really, and hard to describe. The words “buttery” and “round” come to mind. To me, toasted corn bread tastes sort of like how corn smells when it’s popping, if that makes any sense, only sweeter, in a way that makes me want to drop everything (except for the toast; I’ll finish eating first, thanks) and bake a full-on cornmeal cake. Toasting does nice things to the texture of cornmeal, too, making the grains feel more like crunchy seeds than crumbs.

I bet this bread would be great in a panade, or as the base of a stuffing or a summer bread salad. I'll let you know. If I ever get past the toast.

Hi-Rise Corn Bread
Adapted from Artisan Baking, by Maggie Glezer

If yeasted breads make you nervous, this corn bread is an excellent starting point. It’s rated as a “beginner” recipe in the cookbook where I found it, and I want to tell you a few things here to encourage you to give it a go:

:: This dough is one of the most agreeable I’ve ever worked with, in part because if you have a stand mixer, you barely have to work with it at all. It’s a fairly soft, wet dough, but not overly sticky. Just keep your surfaces floured, and when you dump it out on the counter and start rolling and folding it, you won’t have a problem.

:: Let’s talk about poolish. I feel like that word might scare some people off, but it’s really just a fancy word for a starter, and a very low-maintenance one, at that. You just stir together some flour, water, and instant yeast, and leave it alone for a couple of hours. Ta da! Poolish.

:: A word about timing. The original recipe has you make the bread from poolish, to dough, to fully-baked loaves on a single day. I prefer to break up the steps between two days with an overnight rise in the fridge. I feel it’s simpler this way, so that’s how I suggest you do it in my version of the recipe. If you want to make the bread all in one day, then instead of putting the dough in the fridge for the first rise, let it rise at room temperature until it triples in size (or comes close). That should take between 1½ and 3 hours, depending on how warm your room is. Watch the dough, not the clock.

:: It will be a while until corn season here, so I use (thawed) frozen corn, and it works just fine.

:: The recipe calls for stone-ground white corn meal, but I used Bob’s Red Mill stone-ground yellow corn meal, medium grind. My bread flour is King Arthur’s.

Finally: With so much fuss over toast, I want to be clear that even thoroughly untoasted, this bread is as nice as can be. And how about this for a happy medium: Pop the entire cooled loaf into a 300-degree oven for 7-10 minutes before serving. The crust doesn’t get quite toasted, but it does become something wonderful. Flakey, crunchy, delicious.

For the poolish:
1¼ c. (190 g) bread flour
1½ tsp. instant yeast
¾ c. (190 g) + 2/3 c. lukewarm water (160 g), divided

For the dough:
Fermented poolish
2½ c. (375 g) bread flour
1 c. plus 2 Tbsps. (140g) stone-ground cornmeal, medium grind
Fresh corn kernels from one large ear, or about ¾ c. (115 g) frozen corn kernels
2 large eggs
2 Tbsps. honey
1½ Tbsps. olive or vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. salt

For the glaze:
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Make the poolish:
The evening before you want to bake the bread, whisk together the flour and the yeast in a mixing bowl, then beat in the ¾ c. water. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and leave it alone until it’s quite bubbly, about 2 hours. I usually do this step in the early evening, before dinner.

Make the dough:
When the poolish is nice and bubbly, add the remaining 2/3 c. water, and stir to loosen it from the bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, and corn. Add the poolish, and all of the remaining ingredients except for the salt, and stir with your hand or a wooden spoon to make a rough dough. Mix with a dough hook on medium speed until the dough is smooth, about 5 minutes. Add the salt, then continue mixing with the hook for another 1-2 minutes. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.*

The next morning (12-18 hours later), take the dough out of the fridge and leave it (in the bowl, still covered) on the counter for an hour or two.

Generously butter or oil two 9 x 5-inch loaf pans, and dust your counter with flour. Scoop out about a third of a cup of flour to keep by your work area in case your dough starts to stick.

When the dough is about three times larger than what you started out with the night before, dump it onto your floured surface and cut it in half with a pastry scraper. Dust the first half with flour, and roll it out into a square-ish sheet that’s about ¼-inch thick. Press out the air bubbles as you go. Fold the left and right sides of the dough into the center, letting them overlap by about an inch. I use a pastry scraper to coax the dough up from the counter, and I find it very helpful.

Roll out the dough again from folded edge to folded edge (that is, left to right, parallel to the edge of your counter) until you have a rectangle of dough that’s as long as your loaf pans. Then, starting with the long edge of dough that’s closest to you, roll it up like a carpet. Lay the cylinder seam-side down in one of the prepared pans. (It will look small in there; it will grow.)

Repeat with the second piece of dough.

Cover the loaves with plastic wrap, and let rise until the dough is about an inch above the pans, about 2-3 hours.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the loaves with the remaining egg and bake for 50-60 minutes. Remove the breads from the pans – they should be a deep, glowy brown, and sound hollow when you thump them on the bottom – and let them cool on a rack.

Yield: Two loaves.

*I’ve only made the dough in my stand mixer, but you can also knead it entirely by hand. It will just take longer. Try to use as little extra flour as possible. The original recipe suggests using your pastry scraper to help you crush the corn kernels as you knead. You can also make this dough in a food processor: combine the dry ingredients in the bowl and pulse a few times. Add the poolish, eggs, honey, and oil, and process the dough until the bowl fogs, about 30 seconds. Remove the dough from the bowl and hand knead it for a few turns to cool it down and redistribute the heat. Return the dough to the bowl, add the salt, and process it for 3 or 4 more 30-second intervals, hand kneading it between intervals, until it is tighter and very smooth.

:: :: ::

p.s.

A whole new celery

2012-02-06T11:45:00.001-05:00

There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I haven’t been sure how to say it. I was worried for a while that you’d think it’s weird or, worse, boring. Then I remembered that you guys dig this kind of thing as much as I do (I love you, internet friends!), so really, what am I waiting for?

Friends, meet celery.

I know. You think you’ve met before. At that lunch, or that picnic, or that party, or most likely all of the above. You’ve been bumping into celery your whole life long. The celery I have for you today, though, is not that celery. It’s not the celery that’s chopped into egg salad or the mirepoix on its way to soup. It’s not the stalk sticking out of your Bloody Mary (though that doesn’t sound half bad on this Monday morning), and it is emphatically not the celery of ants on a log (which does sound bad on this and every morning). This celery is Jane Grigson’s celery with butter and salt. It’s a whole new celery.

I found this celery in a book that I picked up for $1.25 at a library sale last year. The book, by English cookery writer Jane Grigson, is called Good Things. (One of which, I might add, is the use of the word “cookery” throughout.) The library was overrun with some seriously aggressive book seekers that day. People swarmed the tables and snatched at books left and right. It was all very Supermarket Sweep, at once entirely uncivilized and entirely fun, and left no time for standing around flipping pages. I read only the first line of this promising title: “This is not a manual of cooking, but a book about enjoying food.” Sold.

In her introduction, Grigson warns against forgetting “the true worth of the past, the long labouring struggle to learn to survive as well and as gracefully as possible.” To help us with the remembering, she loads up her pages with all manner of good things, from “Kippers for breakfast,” to “Mrs. Beeton’s carrot jam to imitate apricot preserve,” to “How to make the most of asparagus.” Grigson is smart and succinct, warm and quietly funny, and has me utterly in her grips.

I’ve never felt particularly strongly one way or another about celery, but she describes so winningly the “fine pleasure of buying celery in earthy heads,” its “high and grateful taste” (she’s quoting the 17th-century diarist, John Evelyn, there), that I immediately felt the need to indulge in some “first-class celery.” I peeled away the outer ribs and set them aside for soup and went right for the hearts. I slipped some butter into the “channel” (as she calls it) of each rib, then added the salt flakes. The softened butter tasted positively warm against the celery, crisp, sweet, and cold. I eyed the new food in my hand. That's how it felt: new. So this is celery! Celery enthusiasts of the world, show yourselves! I walk among you, now.

More good things of late:

:: An artist who creates stuffed animals out of children’s drawings. (via Dad)

:: An interview with Joan Didion.

:: A photo by my friend Lecia from last summer. I keep coming back to it.

:: Brioches filled with apricot preserves at Hi-Rise Bakery.

:: An e-mail from my dad with something Wendell Berry once wrote: “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” (From his essay, Poetry and Marriage)

:: This.

:: Her.

Celery hearts with butter and salt
Adapted from Good Things by Jane Grigson

That I have anything further to say about this simple combination of celery, butter, and salt may seem ridiculous, but the details really do matter here.

About the celery: The outer ribs can be stringy, bitter, and tough. Peel them away and use only the hearts. That’s where you’ll find the sweetest, most tender ribs. You’ll want your celery cold, so use it straight from the fridge, or soak it in ice water for 10 minutes (then thoroughly dry) before serving.

About the butter and salt: “Care must be taken with butter and salt,” Jane Grigson writes in this recipe, and she’s right. You’re really going to taste the butter and salt here, so choose what tastes best to you. I like the flavor of Kerrygold butter and Maldon salt flakes, so that’s what I used. Let the butter warm to room temperature before spreading.

There you have it

2012-01-16T13:05:00.000-05:00

On December 31st, 2011, I sent my friend Molly a text: I’m having a salad vision.

It looked like this:

(Minus the feet.)

Butter lettuce, toasted walnuts, fresh ricotta, and sautéed dates for our New Year’s Eve dinner that night. The list of ingredients is more or less the recipe today, so there you have it, but I do want to talk to you for just a moment about the dates. I can’t stop thinking about them.

The dates are where my salad vision began. Specifically, with the sautéed dates and yogurt that I ate for breakfast at Sitka and Spruce in Seattle last May. I’d been meaning to recreate the dish, but I hadn’t yet gotten around to it, and it suddenly occurred to me that sautéed dates might be equally at home at dinner, maybe with cheese instead of yogurt, and some greens on the side. It would be a plated salad. We'd toss the lettuce with a vinegary dressing, sauté the dates in olive oil, and lay them over small heaps of ricotta. Molly was in, and in typical Molly fashion, she upped the ante. With butter. We should sauté the dates in butter. Sing it, Molly.

Sautéing dates is a beautiful, beautiful thing. You roll them in a pan of hot, foaming butter and, once coated, leave them alone. The skin against the pan starts to caramelize, and after about a minute or so, you flip them, and let the other side do the same. Just out of the pan, they gleam. They're deep mahogany where they’ve taken the most heat, more candy in places than fruit. Like toffee-in-the-making at the hard-ball stage.

Dress the greens, top with walnuts; spoon the ricotta, top with dates. A vision. Yep.

Sautéed Dates with Ricotta and Butter Lettuce
Inspired by breakfast at Sitka and Spruce, with help from the one and only Molly B.

I’ve called out butter lettuce in the title of this recipe since that was my original plan, but in the end I used part butter lettuce and part red leaf lettuce. Get whatever looks good. Just steer clear of the boxed and bagged lettuces and you’ll be fine. You’re welcome to use your own favorite vinaigrette for the dressing. You want something with enough of a vinegary bite to balance the sweetness on the other side of the plate. Simple is best. I went with oil and vinegar with a squirt of Dijon mustard and a few grinds of black pepper – no herbs or spices.

2 c. fresh ricotta (store bought – go for the good stuff – or make your own)
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
12 Medjool dates
Maldon salt (optional)
2 medium heads of butter lettuce (or butter lettuce and red leaf lettuce, one head each)
1 c. walnuts

For the vinaigrette:
6 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil (plus a little more if you decide to tone down the vinegar)
3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 squirt (about ¼ tsp.) Dijon mustard (you can add more, if you want)
A few grinds of black pepper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the walnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them for about 7 minutes, until fragrant. Set aside.

Remove the lettuce leaves from the heads, gently wash them in cold water, spin dry, then lay them out on towels and leave them to finish drying. (If your kitchen is very hot, it’s best to lay them out somewhere else to prevent the leaves from wilting.)

Shake up the vinaigrette in an empty jar, or whisk it together in a bowl. Start with 6 tablespoons of olive oil, then taste it. If it’s too vinegary for you, add more oil, one teaspoon at a time, until you get something you like.

Spoon about a third of a cup of ricotta onto each plate. You’ll want to put it over to one side to leave room for the lettuce.

Slice the ends off of the dates and pull out their pits. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter foams, add the dates. Let them sit undisturbed for about a minute, until their bottoms begin to caramelize and turn deep brown. Flip them, and leave them for another minute to do the same. Remove the dates to a plate when they’re done.

Toss the lettuce with the vinaigrette (less is more; you will most likely have extra dressing), and place a pile of leaves next to each heap of ricotta. Top the lettuce with the toasted walnuts and the cheese with the sautéed dates, two per plate. If you think of it, sprinkle a few flakes of Maldon salt on the dates. I meant to, but I forgot. Next time.

Serves 6.

Three

2012-01-07T23:58:00.004-05:00

Today is January 7th, 2012, which means that Sweet Amandine is three. It’s been kind of insane, hasn’t it? There was the brain thing, the baby thing, a summer in Berlin, a new apartment and construction projects galore, so(!) much(!) butter and sugar and flour. Whew. I’m so glad I’m here. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you.

January feels like an honest to goodness starting line this year. I’ve got a couple of new projects on the drawing board, and while I’m not exactly sure what comes next, I’m excited. 2012 will be a year for working hard on things I care about. I’m really looking forward to that.

We had some friends over on New Year’s Eve to cook and to eat. That’s Steph up there grinding the pepper for the fennel and Molly working on the gnocchi. The blur all the way on the right is me. I’m making ricotta. We started the evening at 5pm, and instead of putting together the entire meal at once, we prepared one course at a time, gathering around the table to eat whenever the next round was up. It’s my new favorite way to do dinner.

Molly and I figured out the menu over e-mail and texts all week long. We decided to keep it simple, and I’m glad. The salad was butter lettuce in a mustardy vinaigrette, toasted walnuts, ricotta, and sautéed dates. Then, while Molly dropped her gnocchi into the pot and prepared a brown butter sage sauce, I caramelized the fennel and tossed it with the dill and garlic that Steph had chopped.

It was the best night.

We finished with bourbon balls, pear tarte Tatin, and a dance party in the living room.

(Champagne, too, of course.)

And then we found out that on New Year’s Eve, we can see fireworks from our living room. 2012, you're full of surprises already.

No shortage of recipes to share with you tonight, as you can see, but it’s late, so I’m going to sign off for now. I’ll be back soon with one or two from this meal.

Happy 2012.

2-0-1-1

2011-12-30T15:12:00.003-05:00

Ahhh, 2011, you’ve treated us well. A new apartment! A new human! And for the first year since 2007, no one cut open my head! Yahooooo! 2-0-1-1, you thought of everything. Then, to top it all off, you squeezed in some fudgy bourbon balls just under the wire. That’s bourbon and chocolate together in one boozy confection.

It’s been a very good year.

The recipe comes from Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, the same cookbook that brought us that special snacking cake and rosemary-laced lemon bars, which practically makes these bourbon balls delicious by association. I added them to our Chanukah party spread last week, sent some off to my family in Ohio, then hurried right back into the kitchen to prepare a batch for New Year’s Eve. I thought you might want to make them for New Year’s Eve, too, though to be perfectly honest, I’m kicking myself for sharing the recipe with you only this afternoon. You can start these bourbon balls the night before, or even the day you plan to serve them if you can get the dough together with enough time to let it rest before rolling. The one- to two-day old balls will be very good. But I’ve found that they don’t really arrive until day four or five. That’s when their fudginess peaks. (The bourbon in these little buggers sneaks up on you, by the way, so watch out.)

A couple of things about this recipe surprised me. First, there’s the fact that you crunch up store-bought chocolate cookies in a food processor and use the crumbs as the base for the balls. In other words, you’re making what amounts to a cookie out of cookies. It's cookie cannibalism, people. Then comes the part where you have to leave the dough (can I even call it “dough?”) uncovered for hours to dry it out. That also felt strange, and especially so when I realized that the finished balls also do best when left out in the open. For days. But then you have yourself a plate of bourbon balls so dense and rich – almost chewy – that suddenly, the whole thing feels perfectly natural. Of course, that could be the bourbon talking.

I’m going to unplug next week to wrap up a work project and get some ducks in a row, but I’ll be back on January 7th with a recipe and some thoughts for 2012. Until then, Happy New Year, friends.

[Oh, and p.s. – When we moved last spring, we did so with the help of some good friends. No boxes, if you recall. We just picked up our stuff and carried it over to the apartment next door. Eli captured the whole apartment take-down on camera and stitched the shots together into a stop-action video. It’s a fun piece, and I thought you might like to see it… if only to see poor Eli trot across our empty living room with a 19-weeks-pregnant Jess on his back!]

Music: "Cripple Creek," Mike Seeger.

Fudgy Bourbon Balls
Adapted from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, by Melissa Clark

Melissa Clark recommends using Nabisco Famous wafers for the cookie crumbs, but any crisp chocolate cookie will do. Think Oreo cookie (minus the cream) or crisper. I used Mi-Del Chocolate Snaps. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen has a recipe for chocolate wafers that would work beautifully, if you’re into the whole bake a cookie to make a cookie routine.

2½ c. chocolate cookie crumbs
1¼ c. pecans
½ c. good bourbon or rum (I used Woodford Reserve)
1 c. confectioners’ sugar, plus additional for rolling
3 Tbsps. unsweetened cocoa powder, plus additional for rolling
1½ Tbsps. honey

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the cookie crumbs and the pecans until the nuts are finely ground.

In a separate bowl, stir together the bourbon and the rum, 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, 3 tablespoons cocoa powder, and honey. Add the mixture to the food processor and pulse until just combined. Transfer the dough to a bowl, preferably a wide, shallow one to maximize air exposure, and let it rest, uncovered, at room temperature for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. You want the dough to try out a bit before rolling the balls.

Using one level teaspoonful of dough per ball, use your fingers to roll into balls. Roll some of the balls in confectioners’ sugar, and some of them in cocoa powder. The coatings will absorb into the balls over time, so if you want, you can sprinkle or re-roll in the sugar and cocoa just before serving.

Yield: A zillion bourbon balls, by which I mean about 100.

She made soup

2011-12-26T10:43:00.000-05:00

The first few weeks after Mia was born were the soupiest weeks of my life. My mother made mushroom barley soup, my friends dropped by with lentil soup, more lentil soup, and minestrone, and when we ran out of all that, Eli defrosted a container of his mother’s chicken soup. We ate it with matzo balls, parsnips, carrots, and celery and then, when Mia was five and a half weeks old, my stepmother, Amy, came to town.

I wish I could remember more about that visit. According to my journal, that was the week when Mia started crying actual tears, and the week she first looked me straight in the eye and beamed, so that’s something. Amy did laundry – I remember that – and she hung out with Mia early one morning so that I could sleep for an hour or two. She cooked, of course: a pumpkin stuffed with everything good, some kind of chicken in wine, maybe a pasta dish. And because Amy knows what you want to eat most of all when you’ve just made a human, she made soup.

Soups, I should say. Four in the not even five days she was here. She started with pea soup, I think, then moved on to beef stew, which isn’t exactly soup, but I’m counting it anyway, then to kale and bean soup, which we’ll come back to in a second. On Amy’s last morning here, Eli, Mia, my father, and I drove up to the Newburyport Half Marathon (Eli ran, we cheered), and when we got back, she was gone. In her place, a tomato-based vegetable soup, still warm, sat waiting to be sealed and stowed. Poof! Amy knows how to make an exit.

I like soup, and this specific cluster of soups was especially good. I hate to play favorites, but -- as you've probably already guessed -- the kale and bean soup was a standout, for me. Amy sent me the recipe when she got home, and I’ve been making it on repeat ever since. Kale and bean soup is a homely soup with just a few simple ingredients: an onion, two garlic cloves, kale, a couple of cans of beans, and vegetable stock. You can toss in a Parmesan rind, too, if you have one. What got me excited about this soup is the way you lightly mash some of the beans when you add them to the pot so that they give their guts over to the broth. Now that I have an eye out for it, I realize that partial bean mashing is standard operating procedure for a lot of bean soups, but I had never done it before. One recipe that I came across last week says that mashing the beans “thickens” the soup, but I would describe the effect more as a “texturizing.” It reminds me a little of miso soup, the way the mashed beans cloud the broth.

I took a break from this soup over the last few days to focus my attention on latkes and all manner of sweets, but today, it’s making a comeback. I’m guessing that in these last days of 2011, we could all use a little soup. Enjoy.

Kale and Bean Soup
Adapted from The Columbus Dispatch

I’ve made a few changes to the recipe that Amy sent along. Instead of two cans of cannellini beans, I use one can of cannellini, and one can of chickpeas. I tried the chickpeas at Eli’s suggestion, and he was right. They make the soup feel richer. I’m not sure why. Are chickpea guts richer than cannellini guts? Maybe. At any rate, I think chickpeas have a more distinctive flavor than cannellini beans, so that might be it. I also added garlic into the mix. As for the kale, I usually prefer dinosaur kale (a.k.a. Lacinato kale, the kind with flat, dark leaves), but for this soup, I go with curly. It stands up better to the twenty-minute soak and steam in the pot. (Though if all you have is dinosaur, use it. It will be fine.)

1 lb. kale
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 14.5 oz. can each cannellini beans and chickpeas, drained and rinsed
4 c. water
2 c. vegetable broth
A Parmesan rind, if you have one
Shaved Parmesan for serving (I use a vegetable peeler to shave nice, wide ribbons.)
Salt and pepper

Rinse the kale and tear the leaves away from the stems. The original recipe says to cut the leaves into ½-inch strips, but I just tear them into small-ish pieces with my hands.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the sliced garlic, and push it around a little with the onions. When the aroma rises, add half of the beans, and mash them lightly in the pot. I find that a potato masher works best, but a fork will also do. Either way, hold onto the side of the pot with one (oven-mitted) hand while you mash to make sure that the pot doesn’t slide.

Add the water, the broth, and the Parmesan rind, if using, and bring to a boil. Stir in the kale and the remaining beans, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer, partially covered, until the kale is tender, about 20 minutes.

Ladle the soup into bowls, and drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil. Top with the shaved Parmesan and plenty of black pepper.

Serves 4.

Hi

2011-12-14T18:13:00.003-05:00

We're having kale and bean soup for dinner, and my favorite squash salad from Plenty. How about you?

The good stuff

2011-12-09T17:11:00.006-05:00

My friend, Mathias, knows a thing or two about coffee. When I found out that he was coming to stay with us for a few days in August, I bought a Chemex coffee maker in the hope that he would teach me how to use it. He did, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

I’m not much of a coffee drinker – probably why I never learned how to brew a proper cup – but I am a breakfast maker and eater, and when I have people over for pancakes or custard-filled corn bread, it’s nice to be able to offer them a cup of the good stuff. Much better than my previous modus operandi, which consisted of me apologetically nudging a French press and a bag of (cover your eyes, Mathias) pre-ground coffee in the direction of my guests, and having them make it themselves.

Earlier this week, Mathias published a coffee gear guide on his blog. It’s a great resource if, like me, you’re just starting out, so I wanted to share it with you.

Some other things to kick off the weekend:

:: Karrah Kwasnik’s photography. I met Karrah last night at a PechKucha Night in Portsmouth, where she presented her work. This woman does amazing things with ~~film~~. Correction: Not film! She shoots in digital, prints the negatives on transparency paper, and makes the images using the Van Dyke Brown printing process. In other words, Karrah is even cooler than I thought.

:: Mr. W. Poor guy. (Thanks for this, Kasey.)

:: This beautiful essay by Marisa about her “imaginary mentor.” I think it’s important to have those.

See you next week.

PechaKucha Night: Everybody Eats

2011-12-08T14:22:00.006-05:00

Hi, all.

I wanted to stop in today to tell you about a PechaKucha event happening tonight in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The theme of the event is food, and here’s how it works: Nine people who care about food will present for a few minutes about what they do. Each presenter is allowed 20 slides, and 20 seconds per slide to tell his or her story. (The slides advance automatically.) Tonight’s presenters are a fisherman, a sculptor, a photographer, a chef, an activist, a writer, a restaurant owner, a local food organizer, oh, and ME!

The story that I’ll be telling tonight is ours. It’s the story of this blog: how I got sick, lost my everyday, and how this space helped me find it again. How Sweet Amandine helped me find me again. I’ve never talked about this stuff out loud in public before, so I’m pretty nervous. Also, excited!

For the uninitiated: PechaKucha means “chit-chat” in Japanese, and events take place all over the world. The idea behind them is simply to get creative people together and talking. I’ve only ever been to one, but I can tell you that I left feeling inspired.

Tonight’s event will be held at Street 360, 801 Islington St. in Portsmouth, NH. Doors open at 6:00pm, and we’ll begin at 7:00pm. You can find more information about the event and my fellow presenters here.

I know it’s short notice, but if you happen to live in the area, it would be great to see you out there.

What the cookie tin wants

2011-12-07T10:38:00.015-05:00

All right, enough with the parsnip and cabbage. Let’s have dessert.

Around this time every year, I go cookie hunting. (In fact, I just noticed that it was exactly one year ago to the day that I posted last year’s find. What are the chances of that?) I know I’m not the only one. We all have our tried and trues, but the cookie tin wants what the cookie tin wants, and come December, what it wants is something new. So we take to our cookbooks, our magazines, our piles of recipes, printed and clipped, and armed with sticky tabs, off we go. We’re never sure exactly what we’re looking for. We’ll know it when we see it.

The December cookie once traveled in packs (sometimes, it still does). Today, it most often flies solo, like the one I spotted yesterday among the beasts and fowl, vegetation, and other edibles of a new, already-beloved cookbook. There, in the glorious habitat of Dorie Greenspan’s Paris kitchen, I discovered a whole new species.

It’s called a croquant, and its identifying characteristics are difficult to describe. Imagine a cross between a macaroon (this variety) and a meringue. It’s sort of like that. Croquant means crunchy, and crunchy it is, though not in the typical way. To me, crunchy cookies mean sugar cookies, buttery slabs that snap when you bite in. The croquant takes crunchy in a different direction. “Airy” is not a word that I usually associate with cookies, especially not the crisp kind, but here, it works. That’s because of the way this cookie crumbles, which is not like a cookie at all. It crumbles more like a cracker, specifically, like those rice crackers with practically no ingredients. You know the ones. Croquants are similarly simple, with just four ingredients to speak of. When I was chopping the nuts, then stirring them in with the sugar, then the egg whites, then the flour, I had trouble picturing what a cookie empty of butter, and oil, and extracts, and leavening, would even look like. Well, it looks like this, people:

And it’s worth every bit of its nonexistent salt. The croquant is a rare bird, indeed.

::

p.s. If you're reading this via RSS or e-mail, I hope you'll click over to the site today. I've made some changes that I'm excited to share with you.

Croquants
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table

One teaspoon of dough per cookie will look like a pitifully small amount, but don’t be alarmed. The dough spreads and puffs into a perfect two-to-three-bite cookie as it bakes. As you might imagine from the ingredient list, these cookies are quite sweet. That makes them very nice with a cup of unsweetened coffee or tea or, my favorite, warm milk.

About the nuts: I used a combination of unskinned hazelnuts and almonds, which Dorie Greenspan says is the most popular in these croquants. She also notes that the version she makes with salted cashews is her "house favorite." I'm thinking of making a batch with pecans or walnuts the next time around.

3½ ounces (about a cup) of nuts, barely chopped
1¼ c. sugar
2 large egg whites
½ c. plus 1 Tbsp. flour, sifted

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Put the nuts and the sugar in a medium mixing bowl and stir together with a rubber spatula. Stir in the egg whites, then the flour, to form a loose dough. Don’t worry if it looks more like a grainy batter than any cookie dough you’ve ever seen. It’s supposed to look that way.

Drop the dough by the teaspoonful onto the parchment-lined baking sheets. The dough will spread, so be sure to leave about 2 inches between each mound of dough. You can use your finger to round the edges of each one.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through, until they puff up, and the tops crackle and brown. I baked these cookies one sheet at a time. If you want to bake two sheets at once, swap the upper and lower sheets after the first 4-5 minutes so that your cookies will brown evenly.

Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack, and let the cookies stand for about 10 minutes, until you can easily peel them away from the parchment. Transfer the cookies to the cooling rack, and allow them to cool to room temperature. Repeat with the remaining dough. Use a cool baking sheet each time, or your dough will start to melt and spread before you even make it to the oven.

Store in a dry, covered container – not in a plastic bag or plastic wrap – or they will lose their crunch.

Dorie Greenspan says that this recipe makes 34 cookies. Using a level teaspoon of dough for each cookie and rather large bits of nuts, I had closer to 50.

I’m talking about parsnip

2011-11-29T14:05:00.010-05:00

When I was a little girl, “Friday night dinner” was a thing, an event that began each week in the lobby of my grandparents’ apartment building. I got to find the buzzer on the board, number 815, and press it with my finger. Then, there was an elevator ride up, and my grandfather standing in the doorway of the last apartment on the left. My sister and I would charge down the long hallway. I haven’t thought about that for a long time, and it surprises me how clearly I remember the sound of our footfall on the carpet. “When I was a little girl” means something different to me now that Mia’s here.

My grandmother’s name was Marion. The last time I was home in Cleveland, I found a photo of her that was taken in the house where my mother grew up.

I never saw her kitchen like that, so cluttered with dishes, and pots, and appliances (and, uh, Grape Ade?), but I wish I had. She looks happy.

My grandmother was beautiful and liked to make herself more beautiful. Most days, she smelled faintly of hairspray and makeup, but on Friday nights, when I loved her most, she smelled like soup, brothy, salted, and sweet. I’m not sure if she would have appreciated my saying a thing like that. If she were here, I hope she would know what I mean. For those Friday night meals, my grandmother would sometimes make pea soup, and sometimes mushroom barley, but her fallback position was chicken soup. She made it almost every week.

I’m not going to tell you about my grandmother’s chicken soup today, though someday, I’d like to. Instead, I want to tell you about just one special component of it. At least I thought it was, when I was a kid. Special, and also a little bit weird. I’m talking about parsnip. By now, I’ve eaten parsnip every which way – roasted and braised, steamed and stewed – but back then, the only parsnip I’d ever met was the parsnip that turned up each week in that soup. It looked like carrot floating there in the pot, only white, and that felt exotic, to me. It tasted exotic, too, richer and greener and more fragrant than the other root vegetables I knew. I always asked for extra parsnip in my bowl.

The soup I have for us today features parsnip, along with more fresh parsley than I’ve ever seen in a single recipe. I’m used to measuring parsley by the tablespoon, or by the handful, at most. So if you’re like me, the sight of two cups of chopped parsley on your cutting board will mildly terrify you. You may even decide that, the first time around, you’ll add just a cup, and see how it goes, because two cups, two cups – that can’t be right. Like me, you’d be wrong. I’m not sure how it works, but in there with the parsnips and leeks (Oh, did I mention? There are also leeks.), two cups of parsley is perfect. All of that parsley has an added benefit, too: it turns the soup the loveliest shade of green. You’ll have to trust me on this one, since I’ve gone black and white on you, today. Or, you can click over to Elise’s site, where I found the recipe. She’s posted a gorgeous green glamour shot right here.

I made this soup twice the week before Thanksgiving to use up the last of the parsnips and leeks from this year’s farm share, and I’ll be making it again, soon. It takes only a few minutes to get everything into the pot, and just another few later on to purée it. It’s 100% vegetables, which means it's quite light, but rich enough that a friend of mine asked if it had any cream in it. All of which makes it a nice soup to have in your back pocket this time of year. You know, when your front pockets are full of cookies.

Parsnip Soup with Leeks and Parsley
Adapted from Simply Recipes

I mentioned the pretty green color of this soup, so I should warn you that it holds onto its green for only so long. It will still taste perfectly delicious on the second or third day after you make it, but it will lose some of its vibrance. Also, a word about parsnip prep: If the cores are hard and fibrous, remove them before chopping the rest of the parsnip. If the cores seem okay to you, you can leave them in.

2 Tbsp. butter
3 leeks, white and pale green parts only, sliced lengthwise, and then crosswise into ¼-inch slices
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1½-2 pounds parsnips, peeled and chopped
4 strips lemon peel, 1” x 2” each
1-2 tsp. salt
4 c. vegetable stock
2 c. water
2 c. finely chopped fresh Italian (flat leaf) parsley (plus a little more, if you want some for garnish)
1-2 Tbsp. lemon juice
Black pepper, to taste

Heat the butter in a 4 to 6 quart pot over a medium flame. When the butter foams, add the leeks, and toss to coat them with the butter. Once the leeks are sizzling, lower the heat and cover the pan. Cook until soft. Don’t let the leeks brown.

Add the parsnips and olive oil, and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt, then add the stock, the water, and lemon peel. Bring to a boil, uncovered, then lower the heat, cover the pot, and cook at a low simmer until the parsnips are completely tender. It should take about 30 minutes.

Remove and discard the lemon peels. Add the parsley, and purée the soup until smooth with an immersion or stand blender. If using a stand blender, be careful! When blending hot liquids, never fill the blender more than halfway. I like to hold the cover of the blender closed with a dish towel, just to be safe.

Return the puréed soup to the pot, and stir in the lemon juice. Taste, and add more salt or black pepper, if needed. Garnish with the rest of the chopped parsley, a little olive oil, and freshly ground black pepper. Elise also suggests chopped chives. That sounds good, to me.

Serves 6.

How we gather

2011-11-23T21:44:00.015-05:00

A baby lives with us now, which means that I get less sleeping time. Less sleeping time, though, means more thinking time, and that feels like a fair trade. Today, I’ve been thinking about how we gather.

My parents are divorced, so how we gather, the “we” that gathers, changes each year.

Last year, we joined my step-mom Amy’s family for Thanksgiving in Toledo, Ohio. These photos are from that trip. With guitars, and buckeyes, and elbows on the table is how we gathered there.

With borrowed sweatshirts, a football, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (he’s back!), and three kinds of pie.

Before the meal, we joined hands around the table. Each of us had to say out loud why we were thankful for the person on our left. I like that we gather that way. A person who loves me very much was standing on my right, and when her turn came, she said simply that she was thankful that I was here. I had had my fourth and final surgery five and a half months earlier, a surgery that we hadn’t expected, but that had felt like a finish line, of sorts. That’s why she said it, I know, because my being almost gone, but then here, was still on everyone’s mind. The thing is, it had only just recently stopped being always on my mind, so being thanked for being “here” felt hard. “Is that the bar, for me? Not dead?” I asked Eli before bed that night. I want to be more than just “here.”

We’re staying put in Cambridge this year for Thanksgiving. My mother is with us, and we’re going to my friend Julia’s parents’ house tomorrow. I’m bringing apple cake. Maybe something chocolate, too.

Happy Thanksgiving. See you next week, with soup.

A greater slaw

2011-11-16T05:57:00.001-05:00

I was on the phone with a friend the other day, when she mentioned something that occurred “last summer.” I happened to know for a fact that that something could not have occurred “last summer,” by which, I assumed, she meant the summer of 2010, summer of Schoko-Reiswaffeln, and pelmeni, and exceedingly kind Dutch waiters. But of course, by “last summer” she meant last summer, the one that began and ended a few months ago in our very own 2011. This year’s last summer. That this year already has a “last summer” to speak of blew my mind. How did that happen? It’s November, friends! Halfway to December, even. Yet I somehow missed the part where summer slipped so far into our past that we have to glance back over our shoulders to get a good look at it.

There were signs: the darker days, the stuffed pumpkin for dinner, the return of the scarves and, not least, the September baby – so tiny that I thought she might pop at the lightest touch – now nine weeks old. And then, this week, there was cabbage. I’m not talking about the white-ish green Arrowhead cabbages that have been manning the markets now for months. I mean the purple kind, huge, heavy, and sweet. One turned up in our farm share box last week. I was thinking about what to do with it, heading in the direction of braise, when Yotam Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Plenty, arrived at my door with a game-changing page 102. The recipe is called “Sweet winter slaw” and, after momentarily panicking that the purple cabbage in my fridge meant I’d missed the end of autumn, too, I realized that this past summer was not only a slippery one, but a slaw-less one. I’ll say it again, this time with feeling: How did that happen? Cue the compensatory slaw, a winter slaw made mid-autumn to make up for a slaw-less summer.

Ottolenghi’s slaw, the one in the book, is rather more involved than the one you see here. The “sweet” in the title is not just red cabbage-sweet, but papaya-sweet, mango-sweet and, above all, caramelized macadamias-sweet. Ottolenghi calls for a fresh red chile. And cilantro! And mint! And lemongrass in the dressing! I would like to eat that slaw. If I ever find myself in a kitchen with all said items present, I will. In the meantime, I’ll eat it the way I made it last week (three times!), with what I had on hand: cabbage and more cabbage. I threw in some peanuts and sesame seeds, too. Eli and I first ate it for dinner alongside scrambled eggs last week, and he immediately insisted that it’s more of a salad than a slaw. I thought it was because, for him, slaw means coleslaw, and coleslaw means mayo. (“The only slaw I ever knew,” he said.) But today he tells me it’s because this slaw feels like something more than slaw. It’s a greater slaw, as slaws go, a slaw that requires very little, if anything, else on the plate to make it a meal. So call it salad, or call it slaw. With a couple of rye crackers and a bit of cheese, I call it lunch.

Red Cabbage Slaw
Adapted from Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi’s as-written recipes are perfectly tuned. I know because I’ve had the chance to eat several dishes from this book at the table of my friend, Molly. I was fairly certain at first that paring down this recipe to the barest of bones made me a bad person. Then, I tasted my version, and I felt better. It’s delicious this way, too.

For the dressing:

6½ Tbsp. lime juice
3 Tbsp. maple syrup
2 Tbsp. toasted (or just plain old) sesame oil
1 tsp. soy sauce
¼ tsp. chile flakes
4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

For the salad:

½ a red cabbage (10 oz.), finely shredded
7 inner leaves of a Savoy cabbage (6 oz.), finely shredded (Any green cabbage will do if you don’t have a Savoy.)
½ tsp. chile flakes
A few pinches of salt
¾ c. peanuts
2 Tbsp. sesame seeds
1 c. loosely packed cilantro, roughly chopped (optional; I know how some of you out there feel about cilantro.)

Make the dressing: In a small saucepan, heat all of the ingredients but the oils. Reduce over high heat for 5-10 minutes, or until thick and syrupy. Remove from the heat, let cool, and whisk in the oils.

Pile the shredded cabbage in a large mixing bowl, season with the salt ad ½ teaspoon chile flakes, and toss with the dressing. Add the peanuts and sesame seeds, a little more salt, if necessary, toss again, and serve.

Serves four hungry people who will eat it as a main dish, and six not-so-hungry people who will eat it on the side.

P.S.

2011-11-07T07:20:00.000-05:00

I know what you’re thinking: that couldn’t possibly be a photo of an apple cake. Especially not an apple cake that looks so strikingly similar to a certain Teddie’s Apple Cake that I described to you not one week ago. What can I say? That cake and I weren’t through.

It’s nothing new. I’ve never been good at leaving well enough alone. One day last week, I spent so much time penning over a “1” that looked suspiciously seven-ish on an outgoing piece of mail that I had to tear up the envelope and start over. And back in September, I couldn’t help but swoop down with my spatula to smooth a tiny blip in the frosting on my father’s birthday cake, thereby creating a new tiny blip, which I fixed, but then blip, fixed, but then blip, and so on, until I had resurfaced the entire thing. I’m working on it. At least I was. But then along came a cake that confirms what I’ve always suspected: sometimes “well enough,” even very, very well enough, could be, should be better.

My friend, Molly, came over for some baby squishing the day that I first made Teddie’s. I had prepared enough batter to fill a giant tube pan, but since I don’t own a tube pan, I had divided it into two 9-inch cake pans, which meant that I had an extra cake parked on my counter when Molly arrived. We ate from the first, and she took the second cake home to serve at a dinner party that evening. I had told her about my niggly plans for a browner, wheatier Teddie’s, and the next morning, I got an e-mail. The cake had been a hit:

“if you improve upon it in the ways you were saying, i think it will be unstoppable. an apple cake to take over the world.”

Friends, meet your new world leader.

Everything I told you about last week’s Teddie’s is true of this week’s too, only it’s darker, on account of the brown sugar, heartier, on account of the whole wheat, and bolder by the degree of an additional half a teaspoon each vanilla and cinnamon. The whole wheat flour is on its best behavior, here. Like in these cookies and this snacking cake, it does its thing quietly, adding a nutty warmth to the cake without weighing the whole thing down. Meanwhile, the brown sugar makes the cake taste rounder, fuller, richer, as if you’ve sneaked an invisible something caramelized into the batter. There’s an earthy sweetness to this version, and I like that a lot.

So, about last week’s cake: P.S. – Make this one, too.

Jess’s Teddie’s
Adapted (again) from The New York Times, November 4, 2007 (Originally published, September 30, 1973)

1 c. whole wheat flour
½ c. all purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. baking soda
¾ c. vegetable oil
1 lightly packed c. dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. peeled, cored, and thickly sliced apples (I used a combination of Jonagold and Cortland.)
Heaped ½ c. walnuts, chopped
1 Tbsp. Demarara sugar (optional)

Oil and flour a 9-inch round cake pan and heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Dump the packed brown sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and unpack it with a fork. Add the oil, and use the fork to moisten all of the sugar. (If you skip these first steps, the brown sugar will get pressed up against the sides of the bowl instead of mixing with the oil.) Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Meanwhile, sift together the flours, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda in a medium bowl. After five minutes, add the eggs and then the vanilla to the oil and sugar, and continue beating until the mixture is creamy.

Add the dry ingredients into the sugar, egg, and oil mixture and stir by hand until just combined. Fold in the apple slices and walnuts. It will look like a lot of apple and not enough batter, but it all works out in the end.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, sprinkle with Demarara sugar if you'd like, and bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out.

Serves 8-10.

I recommend Teddie's

2011-11-02T06:57:00.005-04:00

Some things I’ve learned since Mia’s come on the scene:

1. The following things I can do with one hand: Eat cereal. Unwrap popsicles. Put on shoes and socks. The following things I cannot: Pull my hair back into a ponytail that stays. Floss.

2. Cucumbers dissolve. When left to their own devices in the crisper drawer for six weeks, they dissolve.

3. I’ve learned what moms are for. You might think that, having had a mom for a few decades now, I’d have figured it out a long time ago. But until mine showed up just minutes after Mia was born and, for the next two weeks, left no meal uncooked, no pile of laundry unwashed, I had no idea. Not really. I’ve never needed my mother more than I did those first couple of weeks home. And not just for the steady supply of perfect scrambled eggs and clean underwear. It’s hard for me to put into words the kind of care and compassion I needed, and how she so quietly, carefully made sure that I got it. Suffice it to say that without her, Eli and I would have been very different parents in those early days. About a week into her stay, I heard my mother say to Eli that she was worried about being in the way. “Laurie, you are the way,” Eli said. Amen. It’s no wonder I cried when she left.

4. Breastfeeding: Not as straightforward as one might think. And that, I promise you, is all I will say about that.

5. It is very important to have friends who cook. Friends who do cook, I should say, who show up at your door with trays of meatballs, all manner of soups, one quiche for supper, and one for the freezer, too.

6. When the tiny creature who has come to live with you is three weeks old, it’s time to bake an apple cake. The simplest one you can find, preferably. It should also be delicious. I recommend Teddie’s.

The recipe for Teddie’s Apple Cake first appeared in a New York Times article by Jean Hewitt in 1973. Amanda Hesser published it again in the Times in 2007, and again when it made the cut for The Essential New York Times Cookbook that came out last year. The recipe is, of course, Teddie’s. And while we don’t know anything about this Teddie, not even a last name, one thing is clear: whoever Teddie was, Teddie knew her (his?) cake.

There is nothing surprising about this cake. Apple meets cinnamon, meets walnut, meets sugar, eggs, and flour. An obvious combination, if ever there was one. Classic is classic for a reason, though. Teddie must have gotten that. The cake is made with oil, not butter, which caught my attention because I like the texture of most oil-based cakes: the way the crumbs cling to each other only lightly, as if trying not to touch at all, how when you mash your fork with the slightest pressure into the last bits on the plate, they stick. In some ways, it’s a delicate cake, but thanks to so much apple and a craggy upper crust, it feels hearty, too.

Teddie’s cake is an everyday cake, which is to say that it’s simple enough that you don’t need a special occasion to make it. It’s icing-less, and not too sweet and, in this case, so packed with fruit, it’s practically health food. But my favorite thing about everyday cakes is that, almost without fail, they are also anytime cakes. This one is, for sure. Eat it for dessert with loosely whipped cream, for breakfast, for second breakfast, or for those unnamed meals between pages written, or phone calls returned, when a quick stroll through the kitchen is only civilized. Yes, when it’s time to bake an apple cake, I recommend Teddie’s.

Teddie’s Apple Cake
Adapted from The New York Times, November 4, 2007 (Originally published, September 30, 1973)

The original recipe is for a large amount of batter that bakes in a 9-inch tube pan. I shied away from that for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t have a tube pan. But moreover, tube cakes are huge. I’m all for everyday cake, but if I’m going to eat a cake every day (and, as we’ve also established, anytime), I need to be able to slice off a wedge every now and then that’s significantly smaller than the state of Texas. Plus, there are only two of us here – two cake eaters, anyway – and this cake would be a terrible thing to waste. If you’d prefer to make the original whopper of a tube cake, double this recipe, use 3 eggs instead of two, and increase the bake time to 1 hour and 15 minutes. The recipe here is for one 9-inch round cake. Finally, the original recipe calls for 1 cup of raisins, but I omitted them because I thought that they might make the cake too sweet. If you decide to include raisins, add them when you add the walnuts.

1½ c. flour
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. baking soda
¾ c. vegetable oil
1 c. sugar
2 large eggs
½ tsp. vanilla
2 c. peeled, cored, and thickly sliced apples (I used a combination of Jonagold and Cortland.)
Heaped ½ c. walnuts, chopped
1 Tbsp. Demerara sugar (optional)

Oil and flour a 9-inch round cake pan and heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Meanwhile, sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda in a medium bowl. After five minutes, add the eggs and then the vanilla to the oil and sugar, and continue beating until the mixture is creamy.

Add the dry ingredients into the sugar, egg, and oil mixture and stir by hand until just combined. Fold in the apple slices and walnuts. It will look like a lot of apple and not enough batter, but it all works out in the end.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, sprinkle with Demarara sugar if you'd like, and bake for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out.

Serves 8-10.

My way back in

2011-10-26T21:24:00.002-04:00

Many moons ago, in a far off land called my kitchen, I once baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies. Remember that? I do. I think. Sort of.

Anyway, in the comments section of that post, a couple of you asked how the pregnancy was going, which made me realize that, except for confessing to a stronger than usual commitment to the art and practice of snacking, I hadn’t said much about it here. So, I clicked over to a clean white screen, typed a few sentences about how I was feeling great, really great, that no, I hadn’t experienced any cravings, though my fondness for vinegar had reached new and towering heights, and that the one food – the sight of it, the smell of it, sometimes the mere thought of it – that had me sweaty-palmed and heaving right up until the day I delivered was c-h-i-c-k-e-n. (We’re back on now, chicken and me.) I put up this photo that Eli took twenty days before Mia was born:

Then, I went to bed with the plan to finish up the next morning. The next morning, though – thirty six weeks and two days into my pregnancy – things got weird. And by weird, I mean contractions weird. Also weird: Eli, as in, that guy I’m married to, as in, the father of the baby on the other side of those contractions, was in Australia. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. AUSTRALIA.* I called the doctor, who said that the contractions could progress to full-on labor within the hour, or could carry on intermittently all the way up through my fortieth week. Eli’s plane would touch down 48 hours later, and he suggested that, to maximize the chance that Eli would be present for his daughter’s birth, I stay as horizontal as possible until then. No problem. Except for that my family was in town to guard the belly while Eli was away, and my father was turning 60, and I had planned a surprise birthday party to be executed within those 48 hours. No problem. Because it was a party at a movie house, with a screening of The Wizard of Oz (Blu-ray! 70th anniversary edition!), since it’s common knowledge that if my dad “could see only one movie for the rest of his life” that’s what it would be. I could put my feet up and be more or less horizontal the whole time. So no problem. No problem at all – but for the single step down into the projection room that my full-term belly obscured. Owwww. I didn’t realize how bad it was until a few hours later, when my right ankle went from really quite painful to REALLY QUITE PAINFUL, and suddenly it’s midnight, and I’m sitting on a bed pillow on the floor, trying (unsuccessfully) to scooch my way to the bathroom. And that, friends, is how Eli, after 28 hours in the air from Brisbane to Sydney to San Francisco to Boston, found me, swollen-ankled, contracting, and crying (but hey, still pregnant!) when he walked through the door. Then came an ambulance, and a stretcher, and an x-ray (sprained, not broken), and an air cast, and crutches, and a 9-months-pregnant Jess crutching around with as much grace as a 9-months-pregnant Jess.

Suddenly, whatever I was saying in that original post about my no-big-deal-I’ll-go-run-a-few-miles-just-please-don’t-feed-me-chicken pregnancy felt like yesterday’s news. I almost let the whole thing go, since I was afraid that the recipe I wanted to share with you, Julia Child’s ratatouille, was also yesterday’s news. (October, October, where did you go? Oh, right.) But my sources tell me that there are still a few decent tomatoes to be found at the farmers’ markets, and we’ve still got green peppers, eggplant, and parsley sneaking into our weekly farm share box, so if you act fast, maybe it’s not too late, after all.

So, how was my pregnancy, you ask? It was great. Really great. The oddest thing though: throughout it, I wasn’t very hungry at all. Oh, I ate plenty, never fear, not only because I took the business of growing a tiny human inside of me very seriously, but also because, if I didn’t, the world would go all spinny and a little bit grey. But lightheadedness is very much not the same thing as hunger, and grabbing a cluster of grapes and a few spoonsful of yogurt to stay upright and conscious is very much not the same thing as chewing and swallowing to satisfy an honest to goodness desire to eat. It’s much less fun. I missed the urge to reach for seconds, to walk the long way home past the bakery so that I could grab a pecan-raisin roll, or order the tasting menu at my favorite Cambridge restaurant and take it down, every last bite. A tiny, squished up appetite together with a constant supply of produce that requires only a sharp knife, a trickle of olive oil, and a splash (okay, a river) of vinegar, meant that I wasn’t spending much time in the kitchen. I missed that, too.

Julia Child’s ratatouille was my way back in. It is, in Ms. Child’s words, “not one of the quicker dishes to make,” and one day in late July, after so many meals of assembled raw things on a plate with crackers and a bit of cheese, that sounded just about perfect to me.

Assembled cooked things on a plate with crackers and a bit of cheese may sound like more of the same, but that afternoon, it felt like a breakthrough.

I first tried ratatouille when I was in college, where they sold it in plastic containers at the University Food Mart. It was a little sad and shelf-weary, but because it was my first, it was, in my mind, what ratatouille was supposed to be: summer vegetables buried in a thick, very red, mildly sweet sauce. For years, I never followed a recipe. I just modeled the ratatouille in my own kitchen after that one. I never made it the same way twice, but it was always saucy and rich, leaning heavily on the glorious summer tomato (and sometimes on a tablespoon of tomato paste, too). Over a steaming pillow of polenta, ratatouille was dinner. Heaped on thick slices of garlic-rubbed toast, it was lunch. Julia Child’s ratatouille is dryer, more of a relish than a sauce, more pepper-, parsley-, and zucchini-green than tomato-red. It’s the kind of thing you eat on the side, or for a snack, or a snack-like meal, as the case may be. According to Ms. Child, what makes this ratatouille is that “each element is cooked separately before it is arranged in the casserole to partake of a brief communal simmer.” That way, “each vegetable retains its own shape and character.” If it sounds as if this recipe will tether you to the kitchen for a while, that’s because it will. Feels good, sometimes.

*For his brother’s wedding! The best possible reason. Happy, happy day, Katie and Jonathan.

p.s. -- Thank you for your cheers on the last post, friends. It was so fun, so special, to share the news with you here.

Julia Child’s Ratatouille
Adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking

1 pound firm, ripe, red tomatoes
½ pound eggplant
½ pound zucchini
½ pound (about 1½ c.) thinly sliced yellow onions
2 (about 1 c.) sliced green bell peppers
2 cloves mashed garlic
3 T. minced parsley
Olive oil
Salt
Black pepper

Peel, seed, and juice the tomatoes. I use Julia Child’s method:

Drop the tomatoes into a pot of boiling water and boil for 10 seconds. Remove, and cut out the stems. The skins will slip right off. Cut the peeled tomatoes in half crosswise, not through the stem. Gently squeeze the seeds and juices from each half.

Peel the eggplant and slice it lengthwise (“3/8 inch thick, about 3 inches long, and 1 inch wide,” says Julia Child; I didn’t measure). Scrub the zucchini, slice off the two ends, and cut it into slices about the same size as the eggplant pieces. Place the sliced eggplant in a bowl, and the sliced zucchini in another, and toss with a few pinches of salt. Let stand for 30 minutes. Drain. Dry each slice (!), or do as I did, and spread the slices out on a towel, lay a second towel on top, and press gently to absorb any excess liquid.

Heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a 10- or 12-inch skillet. Sauté the eggplant and then the zucchini in batches, a single layer at a time, until lightly brown. It should take about a minute on each side. Transfer to a dish and set aside.

In the same skillet, cook the sliced onions and peppers for about 10 minutes, until tender but not browned. Stir in the mashed garlic and season to taste.

Slice the peeled, seeded, and juiced tomatoes into 3/8-inch strips. Lay them over the onions and peppers, and season with salt and pepper. Cover, and cook over low heat for 5 minutes, or until tomatoes have begun to render their juice. Uncover, baste the tomatoes with the juices, raise the heat, and boil for several minutes, until the juice has almost entirely evaporated.

Place a third of the tomato mixture in the bottom of a casserole or Dutch oven and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the minced parsley. Arrange half of the eggplant and zucchini on top, then repeat: tomatoes, parsley, eggplant and zucchini, and finish with the remaining tomatoes and parsley.

Cover the casserole or Dutch oven and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Uncover, and baste with the rendered juices. Add salt and pepper, to taste. Raise the heat slightly and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes, basting several times, until the juices have evaporated, leaving a spoonful or two of flavored olive oil.

Serve warm, cold, or room temperature. It’s all good.

Serves 6-8.

She's here

2011-09-23T10:16:00.011-04:00

I baked you something special today.

Her name is Mia Louise.

She came screaming out into the world on September 9, 2011, at 8:56pm, three weeks early, but healthy and strong. She weighed 6 lbs. 7.7 oz. and was 18 inches long.

Mia likes to eat in the nude, hiccup like it's going out of style, then settle in for a nice long cuddle.

She's also really into this guy.

Over the last two weeks, we've been doing a lot of this:

and this:

and, of course, this:

I already feel so privileged just to know her. So unspeakably glad. She's the best.

Back soon.

xo.

p.s. -- You can get a closer look at Mia in all her tininess if you click on any one of the photos here.

I call them at home

2011-08-31T23:46:00.024-04:00

These cookies.

These cookies.

For almost two months now, I’ve been mixing the dough, scooping it into mounds, parking it in the fridge, baking off a cookie or so at a time and, when the dough runs out, starting all over again. These cookies are from Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain, which came out in the spring of 2010. In the year or so since, they’ve exploded onto the scene. (We’re a “scene,” right, we who hang around the interwebs swapping recipes and telling stories? I like to think so.) Some very smart people have already said some very smart things about these cookies, so I didn’t plan on mentioning them here. I’d just keep mixing, and scooping, and chilling, and baking, quietly enjoying my cookies and kicking myself between bites for having taken so long to make them in the first place.

But over the last couple of months, it has come to my attention that there are people out there, good, salt of the earth, chocolate-chip-cookie-loving people who, like me, are only now awakening to the glory of Kim Boyce’s cookies. I know some of these people. I call them at home. In fact, anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that there is an entire sub-population on this planet that is just now trying them, just now turning on ovens and baking first batches. Not that I’m implying a class system of chocolate chip cookie eaters based on who has, and who has not, experienced these cookies. (Or am I?) In any case, it has finally dawned on me that maybe, just maybe one of you reading today has never heard of them. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

I first made these cookies with my sister, Anna, who came to visit in early July. We prepared the dough on a Friday morning, and left it in the fridge until the following night, when we – Anna, Eli, and I – piled onto our (new! pink!) sofa to watch The Adjustment Bureau (a movie that, incidentally, features more Jason Bourne-style running scenes than all three Bourne films combined). We baked off three cookies, one for each of us, and once they were cool enough for consumption, we ferried them over to the coffee table in front of the television. We were about a half an hour into the movie, and we kept right on watching while we took our first bites. What happened next I can only describe as silent pandemonium. We looked down at our plates, and said, “!!!!” We looked up at each other, and said, “????” Down. Up. Down. Up. “!!!!” “????” “!!!!” “????” Eli and I were already scrambling for the remote when Anna yelled, “PAUSE!” and we spent the next few minutes in deep discussion over what, what?, I ask you, makes this cookie so very, very good. (We didn’t come up with a single satisfying answer, by the way. We tried out words like “nubby,” “textured,” “pebbly,” and “thick,” all of which make it sound as though eating this cookie is like taking a bite out of your favorite sweater. I promise you, it’s nothing like that at all.) Anna asked for the recipe so that she could, and I quote, “blow people’s minds.” The following week, back home in Columbus, Ohio, that’s what she did.

And so it began: A few days after Anna left, I baked off one of the remaining cookies for a friend. She asked for the recipe. Then, my mother came to visit. She wanted it, too. Eli had a birthday at the beginning of this month and asked for these cookies in lieu of a cake. His brothers were in town, and a few friends came by, and I was so busy chatting with everyone (the perils of an open kitchen!) that I lost track of what my hands were doing, namely, pressing double, maybe triple, the usual amount of salt flakes into those poor lumps of dough. The cookies turned out so salty that no one even tried to pretend otherwise. Still, they ate them. And asked for the recipe. I tell you, these cookies can do no wrong.

The defining feature of this cookie is that it’s made exclusively with whole wheat flour, which does all sorts of terrific things for its flavor and texture. You might wonder at first what else is in there, maybe ground walnuts or oats, or some kind of earthy mystery spice. But that’s just the whole wheat talking. Whole wheat, it turns out, has some important things to say. These cookies bake up fat and tall, with a crisp, almost crust-like exterior. On the inside, they’re soft, even borderline flakey. They remind me a little of scones or buttermilk biscuits in that way. Eli told me not to tell you that, since he thinks it might give you the wrong idea about these cookies, but I decided to toss it out there, anyway. When you taste them, maybe you’ll see what I mean.

Most interesting to me about these cookies is the One Cookie Phenomenon (OCP) they seem to inspire. It’s a phenomenon that I never knew existed in the land of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, where the insatiable desire for cookie after cookie after cookie reigns supreme. You’ve been there, right? All cookied out, and maybe even mildly sick? This cookie gets how that can happen, and it has your back. Yes, you spend your whole time with this cookie wishing it would never end. But then it does, and you realize you’re okay. You’re filled with precisely the right amount of cookie, and you are done. And very, very happy.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce

Boyce writes that “this dough is made to go straight from the bowl into the oven” (just be sure to use cold butter), but I followed a tip from Molly and chilled the pre-scooped dough. I’ve let the dough age anywhere from 18 hours to a whole week. I really like the way these mature dough balls bake up, fat, and tall, and rich in flavor, so I prepare the dough, scoop it into individual cookies, and store them in the fridge on a baking sheet wrapped in plastic. Then, when the mood strikes, I bake them off a cookie or two at a time. Boyce breaks down her ingredient list into two categories, “dry mix” and “wet mix.” I like that, since it helps me organize my brain and my bowls before I get started. A note about the dry ingredients: Boyce has you sift them into a bowl, but I whisk them together, instead.

Dry ingredients:
3 c. whole wheat flour
1½ tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1½ tsp. kosher salt

Wet ingredients:
2 sticks (8 oz.) cold, unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
1 c. dark brown sugar
1 c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (I use Scharffen Berger, 62%), roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces

Sea salt flakes for finishing. (I use Maldon.)

[If you plan on baking these cookies right away, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment.]

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and mix on low speed until just blended. (It should take about 2 minutes.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until each one is incorporated. Mix in the vanilla.

Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and blend on low speed until the flour is just incorporated. If there are any small pockets of flour lurking in the dough, rub them in with your fingers. (Much better, Boyce says, than over-mixing.)

Scoop the dough – about 3 tablespoons per cookie – onto the baking sheets. I use a 1½-tablespoon ice cream scoop and pile one level scoop on top of another for added height. If you’re going the chill-now-bake-later-route, you can crowd them all onto a single sheet so that they’ll take up less room in the fridge. (You’ll remove the two or three or however many cookies to a separate sheet when you’re ready to bake them.) If you’ll be baking the cookies right away, you’ll need about 3 inches between them.

Just before baking, press a few flakes of salt into each dough ball. Boyce suggests a baking time of 16-20 minutes at 350 degrees. My chilled dough takes an even 20. If you’re baking up a bunch at a time, rotate the baking sheets halfway through. Transfer the cookies, still on the parchment, to the counter to cool. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Yield: a little over 20 cookies

He wanted trifle

2011-07-22T18:22:00.019-04:00

What I’m about to do might be considered cheating. Somehow, though, I don’t think you’re going to mind.

Back at the end of May, I mentioned a triumph in trifle. It was beautiful, but we were hungry, so we skipped the photographing and went straight to the eating. It’s important to do that, sometimes. I made that trifle again a few weeks ago, and this time, I decided to snap a few shots before digging in, just in case I’d want to share it with you. The thing is, this trifle is not exactly new. Or, the trifle’s new, but the recipe is, shall we say, “gently used,” an old workhorse from the archives that I nipped and tucked into its current form. And wait. I just remembered something. I’ve cribbed from that recipe not once, but twice. C-h-e-a-t-e-r. One who keeps her eyes a little too focused on her own paper, I guess, but a cheater nonetheless.

This trifle came about in precisely the same way as the cloth from which it was cut: by the special request of my friend, Eitan, who prefers to celebrate his birthday with an abundance of strawberries, custard, and cream. (I choose the best friends.) Two years ago, that meant a cake, a strawberry custard cassata cake inspired by the version I grew up with in Cleveland. Eitan will be the first to tell you that there was nothing wrong with that cake, but this year what he really wanted was – how do I put this? – a cake with less cake. Something that you scoop instead of slice, that calls for bowls and spoons over plates and forks. He wanted trifle. It’s that same cassata cake, more or less, only soaked in berry purée and stuffed into a bowl.

Strawberries are on their way out in these parts, but if you hurry to the market, maybe you can snag a few lingering baskets. This trifle makes a fine finale.

Strawberry Trifle
Adapted from this recipe for Strawberry Custard Cassata Cake (or, Cleveland Cassata) and the Trifle of Summer Fruit in Tartine, by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson

You can make this trifle with any génoise, chiffon, or sponge cake. If you have a favorite, feel free to swap it in. I went with a lemony version of the sponge cake from my cassata recipe. It never gives me any trouble. I like to make the custard and bake the cakes in advance so that all I have to do is slice the berries, zhizh the purée, whip the cream, and assemble the thing on the day I want to serve it. My recipe reflects this process, but you can do it in one day, as long as you give the custard 3-4 hours to chill, and the assembled trifle at least 3-4 hours in the fridge before you serve it.

Note: You will need 2-3 pounds of strawberries, total, some for the fruit purée and some for layering between the cake and the custard.

For the cake:
2¼ c. cake flour
1¼ c. plus ¼ c. sugar, divided
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
¼ c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ c. cold water
½ c. vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. vanilla extract
5 large egg yolks at room temperature
8 large egg whites at room temperature
½ tsp. cream of tartar

For the custard:
6 large egg yolks
½ c. sugar
2 c. half and half
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbsps. cornstarch

For the fruit purée:
3 c. sliced strawberries
1/3 c. sugar (you can add up to ½ c. if you prefer a sweet purée)
You can also add a pour of Chambord, Grand Marnier, sweet sherry, white wine, or kirsch, if you’d like.

For the whipped cream:
1 2/3 c. very cold heavy cream
3 Tbsp. sugar

4-5 c. sliced strawberries for layering

Make the custard (I do this step one or two days ahead):
Whisk together all of the custard ingredients in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-low heat, whisking constantly. Turn down the heat so that the mixture just simmers. Keep whisking until thick, about 2 minutes. Transfer the custard to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a round of wax paper, and cool. Then, chill the custard, covered, for at least 3 hours.

Bake the cakes (I do this step the night before I want to serve the trifle):
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and line the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans with lightly oiled parchment paper. Otherwise, leave the pans ungreased.

Sift the flour, 1¼ c. sugar, baking powder, and salt twice into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer on high speed to beat together the yolks, lemon juice, water, oil, zest, and vanilla until smooth. Stir into the flour mixture.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Add the remaining ¼ c. sugar, and beat on high until the peaks are stiff but not dry.

Using a rubber spatula and a very light touch, fold about a quarter of the fluffy egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Then, fold in the remaining whites. Be gentle. The goal here is to incorporate the egg whites without allowing them to deflate significantly. As soon as the egg whites are no longer visible, stop folding.

Scrape the batter into the two prepared pans and spread evenly. Bake for approximately 35 minutes, until the tops spring back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool in their pans on a cooling rack for at least an hour. When completely cool, run a knife around the sides to release the cakes, and carefully flip them out of their pans. Wrap the cakes in wax paper, then plastic wrap, and chill until you’re ready to use them. I find that a sponge cake chilled overnight splits more easily than a just-baked room temperature cake.

Make the strawberry purée and whip the cream (I do this the morning of):

Slice the strawberries for between the cake and custard layers and set aside.

Slice the strawberries for the fruit purée, combine them in a blender with the sugar (and the wine or liqueur, if using) and blend on high speed until very smooth. Set aside.

Whip the cream until it begins to thicken, then add the 3 Tbsps. sugar and whisk until the cream holds soft peaks. (I use my stand mixer, but you can also do it by hand. It will just take longer.) Set aside.

Assemble the trifle!

Remove the chilled cakes from the fridge, unwrap, and carefully saw them in two using a long serrated bread knife. I typically use just three of the four resulting layers for this trifle. (You can freeze the remaining layer, double wrapped in plastic.) Trim your cake rounds so that they will fit inside of the trifle bowl (or whatever glass bowl you’re using). I do this by placing my trifle bowl upside down over each layer and slicing off the excess cake that sticks out from underneath.

Press one cake layer into the trifle bowl. Pour 2/3 c. of the strawberry purée over top and spread evenly across the cake with a spatula. It may look like a lot of purée, but it will soak into the cake over time. Top the purée with a third of the berries. Place some of the berries with their cut sides up against the glass for a presentation's sake, if you want.

Give the chilled custard a good stir. Spoon half of it over the fruit, then half of the whipped cream over the custard.

And repeat: a second cake layer, 1 c. of strawberry purée, half of the remaining strawberries, the rest of the custard, then the rest of the whipped cream.

Place your last cake layer on top, and press gently. Top with the rest of the purée, then the last of the sliced strawberries.

Chill for at least 3 hours, up to 1 day, before serving. Serve cold, straight from the refrigerator.

Serves 8-10.

My middle name

2011-07-07T18:07:00.001-04:00

There’s a new cake in town, and its name is Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake. I’m going to pause right there for a moment so you can take that in: Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake. Whole. Wheat. Cinnamon. Snacking. Cake. WholeWheatCinnamonSnackingCake. What a name, eh? Don’t you just want to sing it? You think I’m kidding, but seriously, think fiddle, or maybe banjo, get Pony Boy going in your head, finesse the final cadence a little, and toss in the name of this cake for the last lyric: Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, whoa!... Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake. Do you hear it? Yes? No? Are you, as I fear, backing slowly away from your computer screen and the girl who sings cake names? Oh dear.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake has been following me around now for almost a month. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to tell you about it. I’ve never needed any help figuring out that some cakes are meant for snacking (“and that’s just what I’ll do…” Oh lord. Send help.), but it made my day to stumble upon a cake that comes right out and says it. A cake with a built-in directive. I like that. Its middle name is “Snacking,” for heaven’s sake! That alone sold me on this recipe, not least because, lately, that’s my middle name, too.

As of last week, I’m officially in my third trimester, which means that my growing belly is now quite intent on squeezing my stomach out of its prime real estate. That leaves me with limited options – precisely two, by my count – for packing away those all-important calories in a manner that does not immediately set my chest and throat on fire. The first: long, leisurely, pause-and-digest-as-you-go meals that laze on for two or three hours and involve, say, a wild mushroom salad that tastes of the forest and makes your body go all quiet and still between bites. It helps to take these meals with friends, so that you have several extra mouths at the ready when you need help cleaning your plate. I’m very fond of this strategy. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly compatible with the everyday life I find myself living most days of the week. Hence, the second option, my fallback position, which is to give up altogether on the traditional notion of “meals” and, instead, to eat more or less constantly, a handful of walnuts here, a few spoonfuls of yogurt there, throughout the day. In other words, I have become a diehard snacker, thoroughly committed to the art and practice of snacking. So when a cake like Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake announces itself, I switch on the oven, grease up a pan, and get right down to business.

I discovered this cake one morning at breakfast, while paging through Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. I mentioned this book last week – it’s the same one that brought us those lemon curd squares with rosemary – and I’ve been looking forward to telling you more about it, despite the fact that it came out a while ago, now. You’ve probably already read all kinds of nice things about Melissa Clark, her recipes, and her writing, but I can’t help but add my voice to the chorus. What I appreciate most is how she invites you not only into her kitchen, but into her workshop of a brain. She tells you what went wrong and what went right (and what went wrong that turned out so very right!) on her way to the recipe you’re about to prepare. She explains what she was aiming for and what was on her mind when she, for example, replaces the corn syrup with honey and lemon in one recipe (she was inspired by a Luden’s cough drop), or nudges tarte Tatin over into cake territory. Reading this cookbook makes me feel bold and creative in the kitchen, willing to make a mess of things and see where it takes me. Above all, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite reminds me to be on the lookout for inspiration at all times. Because, as Melissa Clark shows us, it’s everywhere.

This cake is actually a variation on another cake from Clark’s book, something called Chocolate Chip Pecan Loaf Cake, which Clark says is “almost like a big, soft chocolate chip cookie in sliceable form.” I keep meaning to try the original, but every time I open my book to the recipe, I get distracted by this snacking cake and make it instead. That a humble snacking cake trumps a recipe rumored to produce a big, soft chocolate chip cookie in sliceable form just about says it all.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake is yet another specimen that lives at the intersection of quick bread and pound cake. It’s rich like a pound cake, but not heavy like one which, I’m guessing, might have something to do with the fact that you melt the butter and then fold it into the well-whisked batter (as opposed to creaming room-temperature butter and beating it in). The word that keeps popping into my mind when I think about the texture of this cake is “hearty.” That sounds like some kind of euphemism for describing a cake that’s heavy or overly dense (it’s not fat, it’s big boned!), but that’s not how I mean it at all. With almost a one-to-one ratio of white to whole wheat flour and the mellow, earthy flavor of a full cup of brown sugar, it is hearty. And yet, despite all of that whole wheat flour, there’s a lightness to it, too. More like a bread is light than a cake is light, but a lightness just the same.

The caramel-like flavor resembles nothing more closely than a Biscoff cookie. Remember those? The cracker-like cookies in flat, red packets that Delta flight attendants hand out? I’m not sure I would have recognized it if I hadn’t just flown back to Boston on a Delta flight a few days before I discovered this cake, but there it was: that magic combination of vanilla, cinnamon, and brown sugar that tricks you into thinking that there must be something else in there (oats? nuts?), something more complicated going on, when in both cookie and cake, there's nothing of the kind. Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake. It’s supple, and warm, and everything good. And as it bakes, a mahogany lip of a crust creeps up along the perimeter of the loaf. I should warn you right now that I will fight you for an end piece with its crisp, perfect edges.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake, people. You’ve got to try this one.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Snacking Cake
Adapted from Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

I like to eat this cake plain, or with a thin layer of raspberry jam, but you can dress it up if you want, maybe with some fresh berries and loosely whipped cream.

1 c. brown sugar (the original recipe calls for light brown; it’s great with dark brown, too)
2/3 c. plain yogurt or buttermilk (I’ve only tried it with buttermilk)
1 T. vanilla extract
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 large eggs
1 c. all-purpose flour
¾ c. whole wheat flour
1½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
2/3 c. unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over the lowest possible flame. Meanwhile:

In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, buttermilk (or yogurt), vanilla, and cinnamon. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition.

In a separate, smaller bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk the dry ingredients into the egg mixture until smooth.

Use a spatula to fold the melted butter into the batter in 3 additions. The batter will look very slick and oily at first, and you might wonder whether you’ve made a mistake somewhere along the way. Keep folding. It will be okay.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50-55 minutes, until the cake is a deep golden brown, and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in its pan for 5 minutes. Then, run a knife around the perimeter of the loaf, and turn it out onto a wire rack to cool to room temperature.

Season to Taste

2011-06-27T14:36:00.006-04:00

Hello, friends, and happy Monday to you!

Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night at 7pm? I’ll be at the Harvard Book Store listening to my friend, Molly Birnbaum, read from her first book, Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way. If you live in the Boston area, I hope you’ll join me.

Some of you might know Molly from her blog, My Madeleine. If you do, then you already know that she’s a beautiful writer. Molly once compared writing to grasping at sentences that burrow into your brain like worms, which must mean that she, like the rest of us, occasionally struggles to get the words down on the page. To read her prose, you’d never know it. Sometimes, when I’m all jammed up and feeling the urge to hurl my stupid, stupid computer and its stupid, blinky cursor out the window, I click over to her site and read a couple of posts, instead. I always feel much better. Molly’s writing reminds me of what words can do when you just chill the heck out and let them do it. That may not sound like much in the way of epiphanies, but some days, it feels like everything.

I can’t remember exactly when or how I found Molly. I’m pretty sure that it was sometime during those first few months of my recovery back in 2008, when things were still touch and go. I’ve never mentioned it here before, but when the surgeons went in to scrape out the infection that had set in around my brain (memories!), my olfactory nerves were damaged. For a while, I could smell nothing. Someone must have mentioned an article that Molly had written in The New York Times about the loss of her own sense of smell following a terrible accident, and her gradual recovery. I don’t think I read it then, but months later, I somehow discovered her blog, remembered her story, and dug into her archives to learn more: how she had graduated from college planning to enroll at the Culinary Institute of America; how she sweated it out in one of the finest kitchens around, up to her elbows in pork fat, washing dishes, deveining shrimp; and how, just a few months before starting culinary school, she was hit by a car, lost her sense of smell, and with it, her ability to taste. Suddenly, she had to rethink everything.

Season to Taste is the story of all this and more. It came out just last week, and it’s been so much fun watching the world grab hold of it. Today, Molly can smell just about everything, and in her book she tells us how she got here. It’s a memoir, but it’s also a brilliant and moving piece of science writing about the sense of smell, the psychology of it, and what’s actually going on up there in that tangle of nerves that allows us to breathe in and register something about the world that would otherwise remain invisible. Best of all, whether she’s writing about love and loss, or the discovery of elephant sex pheromones, Molly sounds like Molly. I know, because last summer, Molly moved to Cambridge, and quickly became one of my truest friends. I get to hear her voice all the time, and I love the thought that all of you get to hear it now, too.

In honor of the release, I want to share a recipe for lemon curd squares with rosemary. Rosemary was the first thing that Molly smelled when her nerves began to recover, so it feels only natural to include it here, today. I found the recipe in Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, a book I can’t wait to tell you more about, and I didn’t change a thing. I noticed last night that, in a strange coincidence, Molly also just posted about lemon bars on her blog! Oh well. We’re celebrating, right? Bring on the dessert. Lemon bars for everyone!

Congratulations, M. I’m so thrilled for you.

Lemon Curd Squares with Rosemary
Adapted from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

For the shortbread:
3 c. all-purpose flour
1½ c. (3 sticks) unsalted butter
½ c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. confectioners’ sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary (just to be clear, measure after you’ve chopped)
1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest

For the lemon curd:
6 large eggs
1½ c. granulated sugar
2/3 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
¼ c. all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
A pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 325 and lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

Make the shortbread:
Combine the 3 c. flour, butter, ½ c. granulated sugar, confectioners’ sugar, rosemary, and 1 tsp. lemon zest in a food processor, and pulse until a crumbly dough forms. Don’t be alarmed if the dough is very, very crumbly, indeed. That’s just how it is. It will come together beautifully as it bakes.

Press the dough into the prepared pan and bake until the shortbread is golden around the edges, about 40 minutes.

While the shortbread is baking, make the lemon curd:
In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then add the 1½ c. granulated sugar, lemon juice, flour, ¼ c. flour, 1 Tbsp. lemon zest, and salt, and whisk until smooth.

When the shortbread is ready, take it out of the oven and increase the temperature to 350. Pour the lemon curd onto the shortbread and return the pan to the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes more, until the topping is just set. Allow to cool to room temperature before cutting into squares. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar right before serving.

The bars will keep, covered and refrigerated, for up to 3 days.

Yield: 24 squares.

A little bit of news

2011-06-14T09:06:00.008-04:00

I am no fortune teller, no reader of palms. This blog is no crystal ball. But a funny thing happened back in January when I mentioned some changes afoot around here. I was referring to our move, as far as I knew, but perhaps this site knew better. Because a few days later, I learned there was a tiny something stirring, a something else, that is, that spelled a different kind of change:

Eli and I are expecting. I still can’t believe that I get to say that. I’m due at the end of September, and we’re over the moon. If my profile of late is any indication, it is also quite possible that I’ve swallowed the moon. It’s wild. I’m loving every minute.

At our big ultrasound in April, we asked the technician to write the baby’s sex on a card and seal it up. We thought it might be nice to find out a thing like that somewhere other than a doctor’s office, preferably in the presence of dessert. When my dad came to visit a couple of weeks later, we decided to let him tell us the news.

With ice cream.

We went to Toscanini’s and chose two flavors, one for a boy, and one for a girl. Then, we handed over the envelope to my dad. He opened it and, once he pulled himself together, ordered a scoop of the designated flavor. Eli and I sat and waited with our backs turned away from the counter. It went down a little something like this:

Then, up came the napkin, and we knew. It’s a…

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM CONE! Meaningless information, I realize, until I explain that the other designated flavor was bananas Foster. (Banana - get it?) (And yes, Toscanini’s makes bananas Foster ice cream.)

Oh baby.

We can’t wait to meet her.

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

Today I’d like to share a recipe for a very special strawberry ice cream. It’s a Philadelphia-style ice cream which, unlike the French-style that’s made from an egg-rich custard, involves only cream. Without the egg yolks, Philadelphia-style ice cream is lighter and brighter than its French counterpart. That’s great news for the strawberries in this recipe. While a French-style ice cream can weigh down the flavor of the berries, here they get to shine. We had a couple of friends over for dessert when I made my first batch, and it was that berry flavor, they said, that blew them away. Eli was disappointed at first by the texture – it’s not as smooth as the French-style ice creams he’s used to – but I caught him with a bowl of two scoops today. I think he’s getting over it.

1 pound (450 grams) fresh strawberries, rinsed, dried, and hulled
¾ c. (150 grams) sugar
1 Tbsp. vodka or kirsch (I use vodka.)
1 c. (240 grams) full fat sour cream
1 c. (250 ml) heavy cream
½ tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Slice the strawberries and toss them in a bowl with the sugar and the vodka. Stir until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover the bowl and let stand at room temperature for about an hour. Every now and then, give the berries a stir.

In a blender or food processor, pulse the macerated strawberries and their liquid with the remaining ingredients. You’re not aiming for a completely smooth purée, so go easy. You want a slightly chunky consistency.

Refrigerate for 1 hour (or longer), then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ice cream will be quite soft when you first scrape it from the ice cream maker, but will firm up significantly in the freezer.

Makes about 1¼ quarts (1¼ liters).

All about the bits

2011-06-10T07:31:00.004-04:00

Notice anything special about this rhubarb?

Wait, let me give you a closer look.

Too close? Sorry. How about this:

Better?

What we have here, friends, is an unusual specimen, indeed: a rhubarb sauce that manages to hold onto its bits. Rhubarb sauce, the one that I make, anyway, is typically a stovetop affair. The chopped rhubarb bits soften over a medium flame and, little by little, give themselves over to a dense, rosy sauce. Rhubarb sauce – the making of it, the eating of it – is lovely, through and through. But things get tricky if you’re after a sauce with a little chunk and heft to it. Those bits slipping away into nothing is how rhubarb sauce comes to be. Stop them from doing their thing, and all you have is a pot of mushy rhubarb. I’ve heard stories of rhubarb sauce yanked from the heat in time to preserve some semblance of bits, but by the time my sauce looks like the sauce I want it to be, all I ever have left are a few stubborn strands, at best.

Now, technically speaking, this sauce we’re discussing is no sauce at all. It’s actually roasted rhubarb. Unlike rhubarb sauce, roasted rhubarb is all about the bits. They remain more or less intact even as they stew in a shallow bath of water or wine and release their juices. I love roasted rhubarb, don’t get me wrong, but it can look awfully swimmy there in its puddle of thin cooking liquid. You can probably see where I’m going with this. What rhubarb sauce lacks in bits it makes up for in, well, sauce; roasted rhubarb, vice versa.

That’s where today’s recipe comes in. It’s a hybrid creature bred from rhubarb sauce and roasted rhubarb, a rare species that inherits the best from the both of them. It’s like a sturdy rhubarb sauce. Or maybe a saucy roasted rhubarb. Call it what you will. I call it roasted rhubarb compote.

Roasted rhubarb compote begins like many a roasted rhubarb, with sugared, thickly sliced stalks and a vanilla bean, splashed with citrus and tucked into an oven bound baking dish. You leave it alone to roast for a while, as you might expect. But about thirty minutes later, things get interesting. You pull the rhubarb from the oven mid-roast, and lift half of it into a sieve that you’ve placed over a small pot. Then, you return the untouched rhubarb to the oven and let it roast some more. When it has flushed a shade or two deeper and broken down considerably into a pulpy, almost-but-not-quite sauce, you strain it into your pot, too, and reduce the juices you’ve gathered into a brilliant pink syrup. Finally, you reassemble all of the pieces – the bits, the pulp, the syrup – in the baking dish. It’s funny business, to be sure, but it pays off.

A few Sundays ago, when I told you about that custard-filled corn bread, I threatened to bake it again the following weekend for some visiting friends, and to serve it with this rhubarb. That happened. We were so busy eating (custard-filled corn bread with roasted rhubarb compote is very, very good) and talking about hunter-gatherers’ gazelle hunting techniques (you know, typical breakfast conversation) that I forgot to take a photograph. I guess you’re going to have to trust me. Between the rhubarb photos here, and the corn bread photos there, you should be able to assemble the thing in your mind easily enough. And if your mind doesn’t feel like playing, I suppose you’ll just have to make up one batch each of corn bread and compote, and assemble the dish with your spoon, instead. Poor you.

Roasted Rhubarb Compote

In place of the orange zest and juice in this recipe, you might try ¼ to ½ a cup of fruity white wine. Brandi, whose rhubarb shortcake with mascarpone cream at Delancey last month made me gasp so loudly, I think I freaked out our server, makes a similar compote. She uses Grand Marnier instead of the citrus.

3 pounds rhubarb
Zest and juice from 1 orange (about ¼ c. of juice)
1 vanilla bean (when I’m without a bean, I substitute 1½ tsps. pure vanilla extract)
¾ c. sugar
3 Tbsps. butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the rhubarb into ½ inch – 1 inch thick pieces. If the stalks are particularly thick, I sometimes slice them in half vertically first. Slide the rhubarb into a deep baking dish, and toss with the sugar, orange juice, and zest. Slice open the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds, add them and the split pod to the dish, and stir. Let sit for 30 minutes, until the sugar has more or less dissolved, then give it a gentle stir.

Thinly slice the butter and scatter the pats over the top of the dish. Roast the rhubarb for 25-30 minutes, until the bits go soft, but still retain their shape. How soft is up to you. I like my rhubarb bits pretty firm, just a notch or two down from an actual crunch. If you prefer softer bits, leave them to roast for an additional 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, set up a fine-mesh strainer over a small saucepan. (A colander will also work, in a pinch.) When your bits have reached the desired consistency, remove the dish from the oven, and lift half of the rhubarb into the strainer. Press lightly on the rhubarb with the back of a spoon to encourage the juices to drain in the pot. (Be gentle. You don’t want to mash the rhubarb.)

Return the baking dish to the oven, and continue roasting the other half of the rhubarb for 15 minutes. The rhubarb will begin to break down and get saucy. Strain the second half of the rhubarb into the saucepan, fish out the vanilla bean, and return all of the strained rhubarb to the baking dish.

Bring the rhubarb juice to a boil and, stirring frequently, reduce it to a light syrup. Pour the syrup back over the waiting rhubarb, and stir.

Serve warm, room temperature, or cold. Anything goes.
Serves 6.