Little Compton Mornings

Prickly Pear and Pignon: Native Foods for Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T22:08:00.001-05:00

I had planned to write a detailed story of my first prickly pear harvest and preparation, but I find myself yet again with too little time and a conviction that it is more important to get this to you in time for everyone’s favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. It is odd for us New Englanders to think that cactus and pignon trees are the source of Thanksgiving holiday foods, but yes: they are as native as wild turkeys and corn. So here I am, recommending these desert natives as foods at home on your Thanksgiving table as cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie.

Actually, I’m in Connecticut as I write this and tomorrow expect to have just about as Yankee a Thanksgiving meal as any Plymouth Pilgrim. But do try to enter into the idea that the fruit, or “tunas,”
of a paddle cactus (nopales or opuntia) is tantamount to maize. The Indians here in the Southwestern desert rely on it much as their East Coast counterparts do corn, and it is just about as versatile.

Preparation, however, is a little trickier, as I found out. The tunas need to be removed with a pair of tongs (ironically, corn tongs do very well) so you do not come into contact with the fine spines directly. Or at least, that is the idea. (Cut to two months after I harvested, when one of my fingers swelled and blackened to the point that emergency physicians thought I’d had a “vascular event” and might lose my finger, only to have that very finger, swollen and black to bursting, push out a tiny, hairlike cactus spine in an amazing example of the body rejecting what is not good for it, after which all returned to fleshy normal after a few days).

Bizarre, yes, but to continue the story back in the kitchen: after removing the tunas from the cactus, they need to be smashed/pureed, and then sieved, sieved, sieved to a smooth puree. A lot of work, sort of like dealing with rose hips, but then one has a thick juice of many proclivities. Margaritas are nice. Jelly. Sauces, from barbecue to reductions. And this ice cream, which I paired with another native item, pine nuts. Slightly candied, they complemented the watermelon-like taste of the prickly pear, and added a crunchy brown contrast to the prickly pear’s pink presence. Different, and nice.

Wishing you all a Thanksgiving that, whether through succotash or cornmeal or maple syrup, recognizes, in gratitude, the native foods that keep us all alive, and happy.

Prickly Pear Pinon Ice Cream

I used a base from Jeni’s ice cream book, and an adaptation of her praline recipe. Makes 1 qt.

2 c whole milk

1 T + 1 tea cornstarch

1.5 oz cream cheese, softened

¼ tea fine sea salt

1 ¼ c heavy cream

2/3 c sugar

2 T light corn syrup

1/3 c prickly pear puree

1/3-1/2 cup pignon praline (see below)

Place the bowl of an ice cream maker into the freezer about 8 hrs before you plan to make ice cream, or overnight.

Whisk 2 T of the milk with the cornstarch. In a small bowl, whisk the cream cheese until smooth.

In a large saucepan, combine the remaining milk with the heavy cream, sugar, and corn syrup. Bring to a boil and cook over moderate for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Return to a boil and cook over moderately high heat until the mixture is slightly thickened, about 1 minute.

Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture and salt into the cream cheese until smooth. Stir in the prickly pear puree, adding enough to make a vivid pink, Pepto-Bismol-like color. Refrigerate til cold, or overnight. Place the chilled bowl into the ice cream maker; burn it on and add the ice cream base into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. It will take about 20 minutes for the ice cream to being pulling away from the aides, at which point it is done. Pack the ice cream into containers, alternating with the pignon praline (below), and press a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment directly onto the surface of the ice cream. Seal with a lid and freeze until firm, about 4 hours.

Pignon Praline

Makes about 1 cup.

1 scant cup pignon/pine nuts

1 T unsalted butter

1 T maple syrup

1 T sugar

2 T natural local honey (I used raspberry honey)

¼ tea fine sea salt

Dusting of cayenne, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Melt the butter with the sugar and maple surup; add the salt and cayenne, and stir. Put the nuts into a small bowl and stir in the butter-sugar-spice mixture. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes; stir, and bake another 5 minutes. Remove and let cool completely, stirring occasionally to break them up. Store in a tin or freeze.

Dates: Luscious and Local

2011-11-05T17:13:00.000-04:00

When I saw the big boxes of slightly dusty, fresh picked dates at the farmer's market, I had to buy some. At $10 per pound, they were not cheap—although I don’t know, maybe that is not too bad for dates. But they were beautiful. There were two varieties, Hadrawi and Halawi. The Halawi is golden-brown, plump and fleshy, soft and caramel-y sweet; the larger Hadrawi is darker, almost mahogany in color, an oblong, rich, smokey-sweet fruit.

I don’t usually eat dates out of hand; to me, they are for putting into things like date-nut bread. But the farmer offered me to taste them so I could decide which of the varieties to buy, and I was really surprised by how wonderful they were: luxurious, rich, luscious are words that come to mind. Here, clearly, was a case—as in so many other foods from fish to potatoes—where local really makes a difference, even the difference between whether you eat it or not.

I ended up buying half Hadrawi and half Halawi dates, and that is the combination I used in this cake. It is an adaptation of a recipe from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, adjusted to accommodate what I had on hand.

Chocolate Date Pistachio Cake

You can substitute 1 oz of unsweetened chocolate for the cocoa and eliminate the 2 T water, and walnuts or pecans for the pistachios. Serves 9.

6 oz very fresh dates

1/3 tea baking soda

¼ boiling water

1 oz semisweet chocolate

2 T unsweetened cocoa

2 T water

4 oz (1 stick) butter, softened

¼ tea salt

2/3 cup sugar

½ tea vanilla

1 large egg

¾ cup sifted a-p flour

1/3 c sour cream

½ cup unsalted, shelled roasted pistachios

Line an 8” square pan with foil and butter it generously. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Pit the dates (I use my fingers). With a very sharp knife, slice the dates thinly, then cut them crosswise into small pieces. Sprinkle the baking soda and water over; stir and set aside.

Combine the chocolate, cocoa, and water in a small bowl or cup, and microwave for a minute or two, til the chocolate is melted. Stir to combine; add more water if needed to make a smooth paste.

Cream the butter with the salt and sugar. Add the vanilla, chocolate, and egg and beat until just combined. Add the flour and sour cream, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in the dates with their liquid and the pistachios.

Pour/spoon into the prepared pan and spread it evenly with the back of a spoon. Bake in the center of the oven for about 45 minutes. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes; turn out and remove the foil. Let cool completely before cutting into squares or thick slices. Serve plain or with a little butter.

Hatch Chile Fever

2011-10-23T13:00:00.001-04:00

I’m a Poblano and Serrano girl myself, but the Hatch chile has an amazing number of aficionados out here. Not sure why. I mean, the Hatch is OK, if you need a mild and somewhat neutral, or at least very understated, chile flavor. It is similar to, although somewhat meatier and richer than, the widely available Anaheim, a close relative to the Hatch. Much of its popularity may be that it is, in fact, a mild chile, with a Scoville rating for the traditional variety around 1000 or even lower (a Serrano is 10-15 times hotter). This makes it palatable both to a lot of sensitivities to “hot,” and easy to incorporate into a wide range of dishes without making a particular statement. But really, I think its popularity is a lot about it being “local.” Hatch chiles hail from the area in and around Hatch, New Mexico, and their brief season from late August until a week or two ago makes them special to those who live within striking (or fast direct shipping) distance. Similar varieties are grown in Texas and other southwestern states.

I did not get into the genuine frenzy that is Hatch season, but as it waned, I did feel as if perhaps I was wanting in local spirit if I didn’t buy any and show a little enthusiasm. So I bought the very last bag of roasted hatch chiles—the very last of the season, it turned out—from the chile roasters at the farmer’s market. As I paid for them, I was told that I had gotten the last ones, and there would be no more until next year. I tried to exhibit a suitable combination of gratitude and regret, but was secretly more pleased that I had also picked up the last bag of roasted roma tomatoes.

Many people use Hatch chiles to make chiles rellenos, but I neither like their shape for that—too long and skinny—nor their flavor (remember: only Poblano for chile rellenos!). At the farmer’s market I had also bought a gigantic bag of freshly made tortilla chips, so decided to use my tomatoes and chiles to make a super-quick, rustic salsa. All the roasting work had been done, so it took about 3 minutes including the peeling and deseeding. Feel free, as I did, to add a little heat with a hotter chile of your choice in the privacy of your own home; it will retain the round smoothness of the Hatch while satisfying your conception of “chile.”

Hatch Chile Salsa

1 lb roasted Hatch chiles

1 lb roasted Roma or other tomatoes

2 tea, generous, salt

3 whole peeled cloves garlic

1 small Serrano chile, minced (optional) or even a little hot sauce of your choice

Chopped coriander for garnish (optional)

Rub the skin from the chiles and gently pull away the stem and seed pod; rinse out. Pull the skin from the tomatoes, but leave a little; I like some charred skin in a rustic salsa. Put all the ingredients except the Serrano into the food processor. Process for about 45 seconds until it is a kind of thick, slightly chunky puree that resembles a fine relish. For a little heat, stir in some Serrano or hot sauce to taste. Serve with chips, to garnish meats, or stir into soups, stews, eggs, or other dishes for a little Southwest flavor. This freezes well.

Ricotta on Top

2011-09-24T21:17:00.002-04:00

I came across this unfinished post when trying to think what I could do for the blog this weekend, so as not to fall hopelessly and irrevocably behind. I’m sure you will understand that even we over-responsible and over-perfectionist types must occasionally take the path of least resistance. A mostly written blog post, with a finished recipe and photos all done, is such a path—practically a highway.
So, I made what you see here sometime in July. As mentioned before, I do think that Olga’s thin pizza shells are a really good product; when I am in Little Compton, they are a freezer staple, and I can make a pizza in minutes. This is a good, but somewhat dangerous, thing. I eat a lot of these little pizzas, in infinite variation, when I am in Rhode Island.
Narragansett Creamery, which makes really good mozzarella, also makes nice ricotta; in fact, their hand-dipped cheese, made from unhomogenized milk, placed first in the Wisconsin World Championship Cheese Contest. So here is a white pizza using both their cheeses that can be assembled in seconds, not minutes. I prefer Olga’s white shells to the whole wheat, but the whole wheat works well here. You can use any leftover ricotta to make crostini with toasted French bread; sprinkled generously with salt and pepper, it is a light snack to have with a glass of white wine.
Rhode Island White Pizza
This makes two small oval pizzas, enough to serve 4-5 as an appetizer or 2-3 for a light lunch or supper.
2 Olga’s whole wheat pizza shell (or your own)
1 cup Narragansett Creamery or other fresh ricotta cheese
8 oz Narragansett Creamery or other fresh mozzarella
1 large egg
1-2 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced
1 oz parmaggiano reggiano, grated
5 or 6 large leaves of fresh basil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 450F, higher if it will go.
In a small bowl, mix the ricotta with the egg, salt, and pepper. Slice the mozzarella into 1/8” slices and grate the parm. Stack and roll the basil leaves tightly, then slice them thinly.
For each pizza: Place the pizza shell on a cornmeal-dusted pan or, if you are using a pizza stone, peel. Spread with the ricotta mixture, leaving a small edge. Distribute the mozzarella and the garlic over the pizza shell and sprinkle with the parm and a little additional freshly grated pepper. Bake 5-8 minutes, depending on your oven heat; turn on the broiler and brown the cheese a little if desired. Remove the pizza to a board and generously garnish with the chiffonade of basil; drizzle with extra virgin if you like. Cut and serve.

Blame It On Rio

2011-09-18T17:30:00.002-04:00

It is true that I always start slowing down on the blog at this time of year, when I leave Little Compton to return to the start of a new academic year. This is always a busy time, but this year it has been a bit more hectic than usual. I moved, as you know, to Tucson, which means I moved to a new university. This is the ultimate figure-it-out-yourself challenge, in terms of information about, well, anything. I’m fine with that, but it’s rather time-consuming and inefficient; seems there could be at least a tiny guide to tell you things like: here’s how you find your roster. Or that you have to request a course site because they are not, in contrast to prior experience, set up automatically. Or, here’s where we moved your room or your course time without telling you.
But I digress. The thing that really set me back is that I went to Brazil the second week of classes, and it took a lot of time to prep others for my being away, and then to regroup when I got back. So my absence from the blog: blame it on Rio. But thank Rio for the photo-essay.
The purpose of my trip was to give an invited keynote/lecture at a conference, but who goes all that way (it was about 30 hrs of travel door to door) without a side trip at small marginal cost? Not me. If you have not been to Rio, it is beautifully situated. I was fortunate to have met some academics at the conference who lived in Rio and who insisted on arranging a real tour of the city beyond the beach, and arranging a dinner at a restaurant along the lake. It was very nice.

Of course, for me the highlight is always the street. I like to walk around, and to eat odds and ends as I go. I came across a wonderful farmer’s market one day, and rather overdid it. Here are some photos, plus a few from the famous Feira Hippie (hippie fair), where hearty Bahia food is served. The green drink is caldo de cana—pure sugar cane.    As you sit there, they stuff huge sugar cane stalks into a machine sort of like a chipper (a la Fargo), which squeezes out the sugary insides and pops the empty skeletons out the back. Don’t try this at home; it looked dangerous. But the cold, iced green liquid was delicious and refreshing. Oddly, not super sweet, but smooth and vanilla-y tasting. The fried square is pastel de queijo (cheese in a pastry), and the big pancake thing is tapioca flour, sieved right there before it went into the pan, coconut, cheese, and sausage; that is mine in the frying pan on the right. Desserts in Brazil are excellent. Tropical fruits, eggs (flans, meringues), coconut, tapioca, and chocolate are common ingredients.
I will try to keep up the blog with all the good things here in Tucson.

Bookending Summer: Eggs and Blueberries

2011-08-21T17:25:00.001-04:00

When I first arrived in Little Compton this year, I was treated to a tour of the hen-house of the ex-husband of one of my best friends from college. He had dropped some eggs off to her house while I was there, and I said I’d love some too. So on my way out from her house to my little cottage in LC, I stopped by and met the girls. They were of assorted colors, ages, and sizes—a real harem to the large and pompous rooster who strutted about like he owned the place, such as it was.

Henhouses are not the most lovely places, but the eggs one finds still-warm in the nests sure are. A skilled water-colorist could scarcely match that palette of soft greys, greens, and blues, and no coffee with cream or perfect suntan can rival the warm brown hue of a RI Red brown egg. They are such a delight to behold, sitting on the counter, lined up in their cartons, ready to be as simple or as exotic as you choose. The perfect food, but also the perfect companion for any mood, space of available time (eggs are the ultimate, satisfying quick supper), or season. Wouldn’t we all like more of those? Or even one, let alone a dozen?

Eggs are always in inventory, and so when it was time to leave LC—yes, I am back in Tucson, and the semester starts Tuesday—there was no question of throwing them out. It was still blueberry season, and so I wanted to do something that would showcase both the eggs and the berries—the bookends of my summer. This custard tart, a more contemporary version of the pie my grandmother made frequently because it could be so quickly whipped up with what was on hand, is delicious plain, of course. But it takes nicely to ornament, as pairing it with a little quickly cooked blueberry sauce proves on first bite.

Custard Tart with Blueberry Sauce

Use an all-butter crust for this, and please use whole milk. Serves 6-8.

For the tart:

Pâte Sucrée for a 9” tart, here.

3 fresh large eggs
Scant ¾ c sugar
Big pinch salt
2 ½ c whole milk, scalded
1 tea vanilla
A little freshly grated nutmeg (optional if using sauce)

Preheat oven to 400 F. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and salt with a whisk. Scald the milk and remove from the heat; add the vanilla and the nutmeg if using. Set aside.

Roll out the pastry and fit it into a tart pan with a removable bottom, trimming the edge. Brush the bottom with lightly beaten egg white. Give the custard mixture a stir and pour it into the tart pan; I prefer to open the oven door, pull out the rack and put the pan with the pastry on the rack, and pour the custard in right there. You may have a little extra; pour it into a custard cub and bake it alongside the tart as a treat for the cook. Bake for about 30 min, until lightly golden on top and a sharp knife inserted half-way to the center comes out clean.

For the blueberry sauce:

1 pt blueberries, washed and picked over
¼-1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar, to taste
2-3” piece cinnamon stick
Dash salt
¼ lemon

Put the first four ingredients in a medium-size aluminum or stainless steel pan; squeeze the juice from the quarter lemon into the berries, then toss the lemon into the pan. Bring to a boil and then reduce, stirring, for 5 or 10 min, til it is thickened but still fluid and the fruit remains largely whole. Cool. You can also serve it over ice cream, of course.

Sunny Squash Blossoms

2011-08-14T12:34:00.001-04:00

For better or worse (often worse), I am one of those over-tolerant people. I am open-minded. I accept things. I make do. I forgive (except the unforgivable—yes, there is such a thing). I eat squash.

No, it’s not a favorite. But my Pollyanna tendencies, catholic as they are, are wide-ranging and expansive. As with a lot of things, and a lot of people, I look for the best in them. Surely the very best a squash has to offer is its flower.

To begin with, squash blossoms are as irresistibly sunny as Pollyana herself. They are pretty but fragile, so use them as soon after you buy (or if you are lucky, gather) them, before they wilt. Despite putting them in water (if on stems), they will fade fast, so stuff them right away even if you are going to cook them later. Naturally, I like to fry them. But you can poach or steam them, stuffed or not, if you insist.

Fried Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms, Mexican-style

They’re only Mexican-style because of the cheese and the beer. Treat zucchini flowers as their delicate nature demands: minimally. Serves 4 as an appetizer or a side to plain grilled chicken or fish.

One dozen fresh picked zucchini flowers, preferably with stems
½ cup queso fresco (or use farmers cheese, ricotta, or goat cheese)
1 ear corn
¼ tea salt
freshly ground pepper
1 large egg, beaten and divided
½ cup flour
3 oz, approx, Corona™ or other lager, enough to moisten
salt

olive oil for frying
salt
lemon or lime (optional)

Gently separate the leaves of the flower and, using your finger nails, clip off the pistil of the flower at the base of the stem; you should be able to see the hollow of the stem. If your flowers are dirty, wipe them carefully with a paper towel so as not to tear them; do not wash.

In a small bowl, cut the corn from the cob with a sharp knife, then scrape the cob to extract any milk; as mentioned last week, the corn is a little dry this year, so not to worry if there isn’t much. Add the ½ cup of cheese, crumbled well, and the salt and pepper; stir/break up with a fork. Add ½ the beaten egg, reserving the rest for the batter, and stir.

Using a small spoon—an iced tea spoon works very well, but so does a plastic picnic spoon—open the flowers with your fingers and spoon some of the corn-cheese filling into the cavity: how much will depend on the size of your flowers, which may vary. Fill them to the top of the cavity, where the blossoms separate into the darker petals. Pull the petals together into a point or, on smaller flowers, fold them over a bit. Set aside on paper towels.

In another small bowl, mix the flour and a little salt, and stir in the egg and beer until you have a batter about the viscosity of thick heavy cream.

Choose a heavy frying pan and pour in about ¼” of olive oil. Heat to medium high; you can also use an electric frying pan heated to about 360F, and if you can fry outside, do: these spatter. Holding a flower by the stem, put it head-first into the batter and twist/twirl it to cover; place it in the pan. Repeat with additional flowers, being careful not to crowd the pan. Fry the flowers until they are golden brown, turning once or twice; remove to paper towels to drain, and salt. Serve at once, as is or with a squeeze of lemon or lime, with a glass of white wine.

Late Corn, New Potatoes, Early Chowder

2011-08-07T21:59:00.001-04:00

As it was two years ago, the corn was late. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a little dry. It’s good, mind, but not iconic. When you go to scrape the milk from the cob after cutting off the fresh corn, there’s very little there. As I said, dry.

So the corn is not as good as I would prefer for fritters or other things where I like all that corny milkiness; I made some corn pancakes, and they were good, but not as infused as they might be. Still, the cobs boiled up into a pretty creditable corn stock, though I did cook them a little longer than usual to extract their flavor.

This week, following on the record-breaking heat that the East Coast and much of the country has experienced, has been rather cool—more like a nice June than a peak-summer July. I don’t know if it is a sign of a shift toward the end of a short summer. I did notice that the Joe Pye-Weed has appeared at the side of the road, always an omen. There was one night when I wished I had some socks. Perhaps I am just talking myself into end-of-Little-Compton-summer to ease myself out, heading as we are toward the start of another academic year. All good things. . . .

While the corn was late, the potatoes were, I think, a tad early. How I love them. I culled all the tiny ones to make cocktail potatoes (can I reiterate how much I love these and how perfect they are with a crisp white or champagne?), and have been making lots of potato salad as well. A few extras are just enough to combine with the stock to make a chowder.

Corn Chowder

This is a simple, straightforward soup. I like my chowder thin, not thick and pasty. Serves 6.

3 oz salt pork, chopped, or 2-3 T lard or butter
1 small onion, chopped fine
3 medium red skin brand new potatoes, diced
2 T finely minced celery
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 qt corn stock (follow instructions here)
2 ears corn
1 ½ c heavy cream
1 c whole milk
1 medium-large ripe tomato, seeded and chopped

½ tea Aleppo pepper (optional)
Dozen or so Ritz crackers, ground with a rolling pin
Chopped fresh cilantro or basil for garnish

Cut the salt pork into small dice and cook over medium heat to render the fat. Turn the heat up a little and add the onion, sautéing until translucent, then add the potatoes and cook, stirring from time to time, until they and the onions begin to brown. Add the celery and garlic, tossing for a few minutes; add additional fat if needed (lard or butter) to keep it from sticking. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the corn from the cobs and add to the potato-onion mixture. Add the stock, cover, and bring to a boil; remove the cover and cook, skimming until clear, for about 5 minutes; the potatoes should be crisp-tender when tasted. Remove from the heat and let sit for a few minutes. Add the tomato, cream, and milk; taste for seasoning, adding the Aleppo pepper now if using. Refrigerate overnight. To serve, reheat almost to a boil; serve in soup plates, garnished with a big tablespoon or so of the Ritz crackers, which thickens the soup just a little, and fresh herbs.

Blogging Blunder: Comments

2011-08-07T10:48:00.001-04:00

Here I am again having to apologize about comments on the blog. This time, though, I don’t think it is quite my fault. I mean, yes, I deleted about 30 comments, maybe more, but I think it was due to a change in the way blogger works since the time I started. Used to be, you could delete comments from the comment moderation page after they’d been published, and they would stay published. I liked that, because then you could always see what you had published, and which comments remained to be read and posted. So in a move I thought was equivalent to cleaning out my in-box, I deleted a lot of comments from the moderator page and, yikes, they disappeared—forever—from the blog itself. Can’t recover them (the system asked me if I was sure I wanted to delete the comments from the moderator page because it couldn’t be undone and I, of course, said “Yes!” And no, it didn’t mention that already-posted comments would be deleted as well. This my third problem with comments.

So: racheld, louise, dave, Megan, Chio, Alison, and others (I deleted so many, I can’t recall all…), I am sorry. You may remember, since I’ve talked about this before, that most of my readers email me rather than post comments, and I like that, but I also love getting the comments and posting replies. There were a few first-time commentors who were deleted, and a few long-time readers (especially on the recent peaches, sour cherries, and beets posts); to both, please don’t take the non-appearance of your comment as a sign that I am not listening and responding. I am. As the song says, try me again.

Karla’s Perfect Peaches

2011-07-30T09:48:00.002-04:00

It was one of those minor, but satisfying, coincidences: the first appearance of Karla’s peaches coinciding with a visit from my old friend, Lynne, who I hadn’t seen in several years. The important bit here is that Lynne is originally from the South—Birmingham and then Montgomery, Alabama, to be precise—and though she escaped at an early age and is a committed New Englander, there are a few things that are as died in the wool (as we would say here) about her as a Southerner as the love of the ocean is for us. One of those things is her adoration, and critical judgment, of a good peach. I remember her talking about peaches to me when I first met her—many, many years ago—and, like many Southerners, she often mentions them in the same breath as the words summer, childhood, Mother, and ice cream.
So I was excited to see the little sign saying “Karla’s peaches soon!” and then the YFF (Young Family Farm) sign with a price equivalent to those harking from, well, South, but I didn’t see them anywhere. Sold out, I asked? No, just hadn’t washed them yet—they were sitting, hidden, in a big flat out back, waiting for their pre-sale bath. I asked to take some as-is, and picked out about eight beauties. A few I would grill and put into our all-grilled chicken salad; the rest I would give to Lynne to take home to eat, leaning over, dripping out of hand.
Lynne and I had such a nice visit, but of course, when we parted after a long leisurely lunch, I forgot to give them to her, and she to take them. She emailed me when she got home—oh, no!—just around the time I discovered them on the counter when I went into the kitchen to do the dishes.
Next morning I walked into the kitchen and was immediately struck with the powerful perfume of perfectly ripe peaches. Such alliterative peaches will peel, effortlessly, without blanching. Their flesh is the ideal texture. Lynne would eat them just as is. But I, as we know, like my stone fruits cooked, with pastry. Here is the quickest way I know to have that combination, perfect for perfect peaches.
Peach Pizza
This is a galette (crostata), thin and simple as a pizza.
The pastry from the apple galette post
4 perfect, just-ripe peaches, medium to large
¼ large lemon
Pinch salt
3 T brown sugar
1 T flour
2 tea sugar
¼ tea cinnamon or nutmeg (optional)
1 T maple syrup (optional)
Preheat the oven to 425F. Make the pastry according to the directions and chill.
With a sharp paring knife, run the point down from end to end to slit the skin; peel the peaches and discard the skins. (If your peaches are not quite ripe, you may need to blanch them for a minute in boiling water to facilitate peeling; and you could leave the skins on, of course.) Slice the peaches about ¼“thick and arrange them in one layer on a plate; sprinkle with lemon juice and salt.
On a rimless cookie sheet or back of a sheet pan, roll out the dough into a rough oval, about 1/8” thick (i.e., very thin). Sprinkle over the brown sugar and flour and smooth it with the palm of your hand to within an inch of the edge. Arrange the peach slices in concentric circles on the sugar/flour, leaving space between them. Sprinkle the peaches with the white sugar, mixed with the spice if using. Roll the border of the pastry in toward the peaches into a little levee.
Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes; reduce to 350 F and bake about 10-15 min more (adjust cooking times according to your oven). You will hear the peaches begin to sizzle right away; when the tart is done, they will be embedded in a thin, slightly gelled sauce. Remove to a rack to cool. Brush with a little maple syrup while warm if desired. Cut with a pizza cutter or very sharp large knife when lukewarm. Serve plain the same day it is baked, preferably as soon as it has cooled.

That Sour Cherry Season

2011-07-24T14:56:00.001-04:00

The sour cherries are gone now—for the second time. It was an odd cherry season, puzzling everyone, including the farmers. You’ve heard me talk about how fleeting a gift sour cherries are, coming in right around the 4^th of July for perhaps two weeks, then over until the next year. This year, the cherries, like everything else, were late. They had suffered from the heavy spring rain, and the birds. The bird problem was compounded this year by the tough winter, which had two disastrous effects on the cherries: farmers didn’t bother to net the trees because they didn’t expect much, and the birds were ravenous.

So at conventional-wisdom cherry time, the cherries were sparse and water-laden. Working with the farmer to pick from my favorite old Montmorency tree, he instructed me to pull them off with stems intact—not the normal procedure—so that they wouldn’t absorb yet more water through where the stem had been when they were washed. The cherries had been left on the tree too long—again, the assumption that they were not as good as usual and that, after the winter, they were not ready—but they turned out to overripe as well as waterlogged from the rain. Down the road at Young Farm, they got only a few boxes off five trees.

Then something strange happened. The weather got nice—dryer, sunnier—and the cherries came back. A second (or maybe just the “real”) crop. These were primarily from the newer and infinitely less desirable hybrid trees, but still: fruit with some of the characteristics of the old sour cherries. For the first time that I can ever recall, there were sour cherries of any kind well past the middle of July.

Naturally the first priority of the season is to make a pie. My first one, made with those waterlogged cherries, was pretty enough, but not so good, at least by the standards of someone in the know. I always make some sort of preserve, perhaps the most special kind you can make (homemade strawberry being a close second as irreplicable on a commercial scale). This year, when I am flying rather than driving back to my academic-year home and am traveling light, I decided to make something versatile that could be used up by the time I left. No problem.

Cherry-Cherry Preserves

This should be cooked a little thicker than usual (my usual, at least, which is fluid) so you can use it as a garnish for cheese, meats, or sandwiches. Makes 3-4pints.

3 c pitted sour cherries
1 heaping cup supersweet yellow cherry tomatoes
2 ½ c sugar
½ c brown sugar
2 tea lemon juice
1 tea vanilla
¼ tea Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
Pinch salt

Blanch the cherry tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds; slip the skins off with your fingers or remove them with a sharp knife.

Put the cherry tomatoes, cherries, sugars, and lemon juice in a 3 qt pot and bring to a boil. Cook, skimming the white foam, until it sheets from the spoon. Add the vanilla, pepper, and salt. Cook for a minute or two longer, and remove from the heat. It should be clear. Divide among sterilized jars and cover with lids and loosely fitted rings. When cool, tighten the rings and store in the refrigerator or freezer. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Beets for Dessert

2011-07-16T13:23:00.001-04:00

I often write about my love for beets, and they’re due for a reprise on the blog again because they are so truly wonderful. And they are cheap and available. They were waiting for me when I arrived in Little Compton, and they continue to wave at me from their bin at the farm stand, signaling their suitability for a match with corn, or that they would make a very good cold soup.

As a reminder from my post on beet taquitos, this little known fact: beets are considered to be an aphrodisiac. So though I was thinking of making some Red Flannel Hash, a traditional New England dish, with the nice plump beets I bought, I started thinking about beets for dessert. My first thought was to pair the beets with another aphrodisiac, chocolate. A cake would be nice, I mused—and I will definitely experiment with that when I have both more time and access to my baking equipment; the LC cottage kitchen is rather sparse in that department. But the dessert idea persisted.

I’m not really sure what possessed me to switch from homey hash for breakfast to the idea of a seductive sauce for after dinner, but I decided beets would make a beautiful, and interesting, topping for ice cream. They are, of course, super sweet. When cooked, they bleed tons of brilliant purple color and become as smoothly tender as a ripe mango. Why not? And it fits nicely with one of my mottos: keep them guessing.

Caramelized Beet Topping

1 bunch (3-4) medium beets
1 c water
½ c sugar
¼ c maple syrup
3” piece stick cinnamon
Few drops lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400 F. Follow the directions for roasting beets here, except cook them for only about 15 minutes, until a knife will go in but does not automatically slide out when the beet is lifted. Cool the beets in the foil. (You can refrigerate them at this point and finish the sauce at any time over the next few days.)

Peel the beets and then, with a very sharp thin-bladed knife, cut the beets cleanly into 1/4” dice. Set aside.

Bring the water, sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon to a boil in a medium saucepan and boil for about 5 minutes; it will be a light caramel color. Add the beets, reduce the heat to medium, and cook until beets are very tender but begin to caramelize and acquire a slightly chewy bite. The syrup will remain fluid and become very purple. Add a few drops of lemon as you take it off the heat. Let cool, and serve over ice cream. If you don’t use it the day you make it, this should be refrigerated and used within a few days.

Rhode Island Red Fruit: Currants and Raspberries

2011-07-08T13:21:00.001-04:00

I stopped by the fruit lady’s this weekend, timing my visit from long experience with the hope of catching, not just the fruit before it was gone, but the farmer herself and her husband. It was nearly the 4^th, which means: time to negotiate the delicate dance of acquiring a share of the sour cherries. Over the years I have come to realize that one reason that this is so tricky is that they want some too. The nerve.

Fortuitously, the fruit lady was driving out in her golf cart from the field just as I got out of my car; when I pulled up, there was no fruit on the stand, and no one in sight, and I had determined to risk offense by venturing out behind the house. This is not always prudent, as, of course, neither am I. So I was glad to see her coming toward me.

We (her husband soon buzzed up on his little tractor) had the first of several conversations (negotiations) about the cherries that would culminate a week or so later in my securing, with great difficulty, two quarts of fruit, about which more next week. For now, there were the currants and the first raspberries, and I thought how early July truly is the time of red fruits in Rhode Island. Hence, the little in-joke of Rhode Island Red Fruits, and Rhode Island Red muffins. Couldn’t resist.

As you know from prior rants, I truly cannot stand the common bakery muffin—cake-like, sugary, huge. The one I offer below is an old-fashioned muffin of the non-mutant, non-cake type. It has a nice balance of crisp outside and tender, crumbly inside—as it should.

Rhode Island Red Muffins

No, not muffins made of chickens, or muffins for chickens—just a little play on words. These are all currants, but you could use half currants and half raspberries; I just happened to eat all of mine. Makes 12-15, depending on your pan.

Topping
1 c bread flour
½ c lt brown sugar, packed
5 T unsalted butter, melted
½ tea cinnamon
Big pinch (about 1/8 tea) baking powder
Small pinch salt

Muffin batter
2 c a-p flour
½ cup RI jonnycake or other white stoneground cornmeal
4 tea baking powder
½ c sugar
½ tea salt
6 T unsalted butter, melted
¾ c half and half
2 T pure maple syrup
1 lg egg
1 cup, generous, currants or half currants and half raspberries

Preheat oven to 375F. Generously butter a standard muffin tin.

To make the topping

Blend the flour with the cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Dump in the packed sugar, pour the butter over, and use a fork in a chopping motion to combine the sugar with the flour until the flour the mixture is moistened and crumbly. Set aside.

To make the batter

Stem and pick over the currants and put them in a small bowl.

Mix all dry ingredients in a 2-qt bowl. Remove a large handful of the mixture and add it to the currants, tossing gently with your hand to coat.

Pour the milk into a measuring cup; add the maple syrup and the egg. Beat with a fork til blended. Add to the dry mixture, stirring just long enough to combine, with a wooden spoon. Pour the currants and any excess flour mixture into the batter; fold it in using your hand.

Drop the batter into buttered muffin tin, filling about ¾ full. Sprinkle each muffin with some of the crumb mixture to reach the top. Bake about 18-22 minutes, rotating the pan once, until the tops of the muffins (a little will show through the crumbs) begin to turn golden and the fruit starts to ooze a little; the currants, though, will mostly hold their shape. Remove to a rack; let cool for 5 minutes; then turn out on the rack to cool ‘til warm enough to handle. Break with your hands and serve with butter. If you freeze the extras, be sure to re-warm either in the toaster oven of, if in the microwave, at low power as briefly as possible.

Peas Please: Fourth of July in New England

2011-07-02T10:09:00.001-04:00

The 2011 growing season seems to be shaping up nicely, with more, earlier—two good things—than expected. There have already been wonderful snap peas, so sweet and crisp-tender that I have been eating them raw more often than not; and now there are elegant, slim green beans and the paradoxically much maligned and much beloved English or garden pea. Today we will consider the pea.

I am not really sure why they are called English peas, because they are not native there and they have other common names, like garden or shell pea. But most of us just call these “peas” and everyone knows what we are talking about. Peas are high in protein and vitamin C—perhaps the reason children are always being admonished to finish them. They are eaten fresh with surprising rarity, in part because of their short season (they don’t like the heat) but mostly—given the now year-round availability of nearly everything, including other kinds of peas—because their sweet tenderness quickly turns to mealy toughness; they don’t travel well. They are like corn in this regard. As a result, only about 5% of all peas are sold fresh. Most peas are frozen (or canned), and fresh-frozen peas are one of the very few frozen items I ever buy. But if you see them fresh I recommend them, because they really are different when cooked because they can still be eaten crisp. I wouldn’t buy them fresh-shelled, which you sometimes see at good markets or farmers markets, unless you can confirm they were shelled TODAY. Otherwise, you are throwing that high price that you just paid away.

The shelling, in my opinion, is no big deal, and has its own pleasures. Holding them over a bowl, pull from the stem end and pop them open along the seam: the peas will come tumbling out with the gentlest brush of a finger. This is an excellent activity to do with a toddler as it doubles as a game and lesson in learning to count, and also in nature’s variety. How many peas inside? 5, 6, 7, 8? Today I had one pea with 10—a record. It is delightfully unpredictable, as there seems to be a rather imperfect correlation between pod size and pea count. The peas are shiny and pretty; pop one of these spherical seeds in your mouth. Apparently, the act of shelling peas is arousing as well; who knew? In the late 19th century, Harry Breaker Morant wrote in his poem A-shelling Peas:

      Old earth owns many sights to see
      That captivate and please; -
      The most bewitching sight for me
      Is Nell a-shelling peas.

This year’s peas have arrived on schedule, in time for the 4^th of July, when they have a long and venerable tradition on the New England table. One would scarcely know that nowadays by looking at the typical 4^th of July repast: burgers and dogs, lobster rolls, or ribs and pulled pork do not exactly shout “peas!” for a side dish. But of course, burgers and dogs, lobster rolls, and ribs and pulled pork did not used to be traditional in New England. Poached salmon was. And that was accompanied by boiled potatoes and English peas, and some sort of lemony sauce. Devotee of old traditions that I am, I used to make this myself every year. But frankly, I am not a huge fan of salmon, and who really wants to eat hot side dishes with cold food? For the 4^th, I like a good burger, or some grilled (or fried) scallops. And some potato salad.

So have whatever you want (it is, after all, Independence Day), but do mind your peas.

Fourth of July Potato and Pea Salad

This is more the colors of the Mexican than the American flag, but its 4^th of July credentials are true-blue. The garlicky mayonnaise sauce bears some resemblance in flavor to aioli, which you could use, but this is lighter and more subtle. And has the lemon. Serves 2-3.

1 lb small red-skin potatoes
1 cup shelled fresh English peas
½ c homemade or good-quality commercial mayonnaise such as Hellman’s®
1 tea extra-virgin olive oil
1-2 large, fresh garlic clove, peeled and smashed
2 T fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about ½ large lemon)
1/8 tea salt
7 or 8 twists of freshly ground black pepper
1 scallion, finely sliced, for garnish

Shell the peas as soon before cooking as possible. Blanch them in boiling water for about 3 minutes; do not overcook. Pour into a strainer, run cold water over, and let drain thoroughly.

Cut the potatoes in half (quarters if large) and boil until tender; they will slide off a knife inserted in the center, but will not fall apart. Depending on the size and age of your potatoes, this could take 15-25 minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking, put the mayonnaise in a bowl and add the whole smashed garlic clove(s), salt, and pepper; stir and set aside for at least 20 minutes.

Drain the potatoes. Fish out the garlic from the mayonnaise. Add the 2 T of lemon juice; it is a lot, and you can use less if you want, but I like it for this. The mayonnaise will thin considerably. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle but still warm, slice them into the sauce, and toss gently with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Add the peas and toss. It will be saucy, suitable for accompanying poached or grilled fish or shellfish. Or burgers.

Let sit on the counter for 30 minutes or so before serving; to repeat my mantra: do not refrigerate. Just before serving, taste for seasoning, adding additional salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle with the scallion and/or, if you wish, finely minced parsley or a little mint. Refrigerate any leftovers and bring to cool room temperature again before eating; the peas will have lost some of their bright green color from the acid.

Strawberries Are In—and They Are Fine!

2011-06-27T10:35:00.001-04:00

I had heard all about the brutal winter and soggy spring this year, and I thought, oh no, not another growing season (or lack thereof) like 2009. So I was really surprised when, driving right past the fruit lady on my way into Little Compton because I wasn’t expecting anything¸ I glimpsed little boxes of red in my rear-view mirror. I was too tired from traveling to turn around, but when I got to Walker’s I pulled in, hoping for lettuce. There was beautiful lettuce—more about that later—but also strawberries. Walker’s own: he used to buy them from others and they were always priced too high, but apparently has decided to add some fruit to his largely vegetable-focused farm. $3.50 a pint, and gorgeous.

The modern commercial strawberry has a lot in common with the modern commercial tomato: it’s huge and red. And also tasteless, pulpy, all-core-and-no-flesh inside, fragrance-free, and generally inedible. It has a half-life of about a zillion years. It is just a red, strawberry-shaped mutant, best relegated to a centerpiece or the decorating of hats. I never buy them. And certainly don’t eat them. Just like commercial tomatoes.

So is it too much to say that this year’s strawberries are iconic? Red right through, natch. Virtually core-less. Perfectly shiny-ripe. Naturally sweet. Strawberry-scented. Juicy. Juicy enough for—strawberry shortcake.

I know I’ve made it for the blog before. But this has a few little twists, so I hope you’ll forgive the repeat. The strawberries are worth an encore.

Strawberry Shortcake with Cheese Biscuits

I had some store cheese, so decided to make cheese biscuits to pair with the berries for a kind of sweet-salty match. Serves 4.

1 ½ c flour
½ tea salt
1 T sugar
1 T b.p.
5 T cold, unsalted butter
½ c whole milk
½ c grated store cheese

1 pt local strawberries
sugar

1 cup light cream or heavy cream, preferably unhomogenized
½ tea vanilla
2 tea superfine sugar
Mint for garnish (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sift the flour, salt, sugar, and b.p. Cut in the butter with a knife or your fingers until crumbly; do not overwork. Add the milk, blending with a fork or your hands until the dough just is almost together; add the cheese and blend until it is together but still rough; again, do not overwork. Dust the counter with flour and turn out the dough, patting and lightly folding it until it holds together, then pat it into a uniform rectangle about 1 ½” thick. Cut out biscuits with a 3” cookie cutter or glass. Gather the scraps, pat them together, and cut them out as well.

Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and let rest for about ½ hr. Brush lightly with cream or milk. Sprinkle with a little additional grated cheese. Bake 15 minutes, or until golden and crisp on the outside. Cool on a rack. I usually get about 5 high biscuits from this amount of dough, and eat one soon after they are done.

Hull and slice the strawberries into a bowl; add sugar to taste to draw out the juices and let sit for about 10 minutes.

In part because of the richness of the biscuit, these shortcakes are served a little differently—instead of with whipped cream, I pour lightly sweetened cream over it, as you know I often do with fruit desserts. You of course can whip your cream if you want, but don’t make it too sweet. Use light or heavy cream, mix it with a small amount of superfine sugar (2 teaspoons) and a little vanilla; just warm it a bit to help the sugar dissolve.

Split the biscuits, spoon some berries with their juices over the bottom halves; cover with the tops and more berries, then pour the cream generously over all. Garnish with the mint and serve. By the way, these biscuits freeze very well. A light toasting brings them back to nearly as good as fresh out of the oven.

Leaving (Left) Nashvegas: Pushing further South(west)

2011-06-26T14:47:00.001-04:00

I meant to send this a month ago. It’s news, capital N. It’s an explanation for all those endless drawing-down-inventory posts about cleaning out my freezer. And it is, quite possibly, motivation to get back to my blog.

I’ve left Vanderbilt, which means I’ve left Nashville (a little ‘Hurrah!’ is not out of place). Before I left I was going to blog a list of the top 10 things I won’t miss, but I couldn’t narrow it down. Besides, this is a food blog. So I decided to make a list of the top food things I would miss. This too proved really, really hard—in part related to what I won’t miss. I came up with one, maybe two things. Not exactly a list. So I’ll just tell you about the leaving part.

Leaving was fun. I had a great last semester of teaching, thanks to my uniformly wonderful students and my few sane and supportive friends. Lots of feting, drinks, dinners from both. As typical, there was food for my last classes. And as typical, I forgot to take photos, because I wasn’t specifically cooking for the blog. Fortunately, in my graduate ethics class, a few students snapped these photos with their phones. We had quite a spread, with many contributions from students. I made cold sesame noodles, summer rolls, Asian-style pickles, and orange-scented date bars with the gorgeous medjool dates I use for date-nut bread. Students brought everything from beer cheese and pretzels to sweet rice rolls, sushi, pasta, veggies and dip, and desserts—brownies, cookies, peanut butter bars, pineapple “casserole,” a kind of crumble. We fixed ourselves plates before sitting down to watch an ethics movie, The Insider, about a whistleblower (Russell Crowe) and the journalist who works with him to reveal his story (Al Pacino). For another class, I made a lemon meringue pie and a yellow 3-layer cake with buttercream fillng and a ganache frosting. Forgot to take a picture of the cake. But really good.

Leaving implies arriving somewhere; that was fun, too. I’ve moved to Tucson to join the University of Arizona faculty. Can I tell you how happy I was to see a chile roaster at the farmer’s market selling entire bags of fresh, warm-from-the-roaster bags of roasted and peeled poblanos and red peppers, maybe 8 to a bag, for $5.00? So many locally made tortillas, including these mesquite flour tortillas? The amazing El Super, where everything “cuesta menos”?

More about all that later, because now for the really good news…for me, but also, hopefully, for you:

I’m in Little Compton!

LCM 4th Anniversary Today: Reflections on my blog-child

2011-05-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

Like everything with children growing up, this 4^th blog birthday snuck up on me. Four years old! It seems like yesterday when I wrote the first post about morning in Little Compton—time to wake up and start thinking about what’s for dinner while drinking coffee, ideally while strolling outside, followed by a piece of pie for breakfast (and then for lunch…).

Naturally, I devoted motherly attention to my blog during its first year, learning as I went about how to make it work (getting the photos right, for instance). The doting continued well into the second year, but then the blog entered the metaphorical terrible twos (and threes). But I can’t really blame the blog for this; it’s more like I became a neglectful mother. A guilt-ridden one, of course, but neglectful nevertheless. Busy working (Moving! So many papers to write! Courses to teach! Grading!). I really wonder if people realize that the vast majority of consistently updated blogs are written by people who don’t work—or for whom the blog is their work. Maybe I’ll get to that point some day.

Of course, there are also those bloggers, including many fine ones, who do work, but are still so young (let’s say, under 40 or so) that they have the energy to do their cooking and blogging at night. I was like that once, but alas, no more—I do fade at the end of the day. So until I retire (ha), or am able to work from home to allow cooking-in-between (ha), a neglected, on-again, off-again blog it will be. I do try to compensate for all the silences and weak-sister posts during the summers when I have more time (and when there is more fruit and veggies and other bounty for inspiration), and for the most part, I think I’ve done all right on that score. Thank you for your patience.

Which I hope will be rewarded. For better or worse, I am one of those people for whom hope springs eternal, in a Pollyanna kind of way, so I expect the blog, as it enters its 5^th year, to smooth out a little, and to return to a more regular rhythm. I may not match the nearly 5 posts a month of the first couple years, but I am not ready to give up my child yet. I don’t at all mind not having lots of comments on my posts; while I’d like more because I think it would mean I’d be reaching a more diverse reader group, I get lots of emails instead; that’s the kind of reader I have, and I like the friendliness of it and the fact that people feel a personal enough connection to actually write. In fact, I’ve made friends through my blog, and good ones: who knew? I want to return not just to cooking for you, but to writing for you, well. I still have lots of New England specialties to cover. And pies to make before I sleep, and pies to make before I sleep.

Speaking of which:

New England-y Shoofly Pie

This is for you, racheld, as promised. Shoofly pie is one of the pies my Pennsylvania German grandmother used to make; I have made it a little more New England with maple syrup, completely consistent with its general genre of “syrup pie.” There’s lots of room for variation here, in both the sweeteners used and the spices. Shoofly pie is a classic pie-for-breakfast kind of pie, right up there with fruit pies, possibly because of its strong flavor that goes well with coffee. Serves 8—because it is rich.

Pastry for a 9” pie prepared according to your favorite recipe, or this one. Use a glass pie plate if you have one.

1 c flour
½ c firmly packed light brown sugar
4 T unsalted butter, softened
½ tea cinnamon
¼ tea cardamom
1/8 t freshly ground nutmeg
big pinch ground cloves
Pinch salt

½ c unsulphured molasses (mild or strong, to your taste)
¼ c pure maple syrup
¾ c boiling water, cooled slightly
1 large egg
1 tea vanilla extract
½ tea chocolate extract (optional, but nice)
1 tea baking soda

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Roll out the pastry and fit it into a standard 9” pie pan; crimp the edges, and chill the crust while you make the crumbs and filling.

Lightly mix the flour, sugar, and spices and work the butter in with your hands to form crumbs. Set aside.

In a small bowl or large glass measure, mix the molasses, the maple syrup, extract(s), baking soda, and hot water. Beat the egg and stir it into the syrup mixture. You can either pour this into the pie shell and top with the crumbs; layer it, beginning and ending with the crumbs; or about half the crumbs into the filling as I remember my grandmother doing. Doing this or layering makes for a slightly “dryer” versus “wetter” pie, as shoo fly pies are often described.

Bake the pie for 10 minutes; it will puff up (and some of the filling may rise above the crumbs as in the picture; that’s OK). Reduce the heat to 325 F and bake for another 20-25 (likely) minutes, until evenly brown and lightly firm but still springy in the center. Remove and cool on a rack to warm room temperature. You can serve it with whipped cream, ice cream, yogurt (which is good), or on its own.

And here, made with the re-rolled pastry scraps, is a jelly tart, just like my grandmother used to do, made with last summer’s seedless raspberry jam. Eaten hot out of the oven as the cook’s treat—delicious.

Almonds

2011-04-10T20:08:00.001-04:00

Yes, this is still about leftovers, but I’m tired of reminding myself, and everyone else, that I am still clearing out the freezer. It’s kind of fun, though, to discover things you’d forgotten about. Today it was 8 oz of the Mürbteig pastry from the Cuisinart/New York Cheesecake post, and a bag of almonds from the holdiays, both still in excellent condition (thanks to their fat, of course, and a very cold freezer). I didn’t really have a lot of time, so decided to use the pastry to make a few simple cookies. The dough is so rich and flavorful on its own that it needs little else but a simple garnish, something that almonds are perfect for. You could use these to make little sandwich cookies with buttercream or ganache, but you’d have to have the lightest possible touch, as they break under pressure. Besides, these are very good just as they are.

Tender Pastry Cookies

The fragility of these simple cookies makes them seem rather fancy. They are good on their own or with ice cream. Makes about 10 cookies.

8 oz Mürbteig pastry, very cold
2 oz whole almonds
1 oz (2 T) turbinado sugar
1 egg white
1 tea simple syrup (optional)

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Put the sugar and the almonds in a small food processor; pulse to chop medium-fine. Set aside.

Roll the pastry out between two sheets of wax paper to a thickness of between ¼” and 1/3.” Slide onto a baking sheet and chill again. Remove the top sheet of the paper. Using a 1 ¾” fluted biscuit cutter, quickly cut the dough into rounds and lift them gently, using a narrow spatula, onto an ungreased baking sheet. Form and re-roll the scraps, chilling again if needed, and cut the remainder. Brush the tops lightly with egg white, beaten with a teaspoon or so of simple syrup if you have it. Sprinkle generously with the almond-sugar mixture. Chill 10 minutes. Bake 18-20 minutes, turning once. Don’t try to edit a paper while they are baking, or you may let them go a minute too long, as I did. Carefully remove to a rack to cool.

Drawing Down Inventory V: Egg Whites

2011-04-03T14:24:00.002-04:00

In the continuing saga—or slog—of spring cleaning of the freezer, this week I used up all the egg whites. I had about 2 cups. I thawed them all, then used about a half-cup over the course of a few days for various uses (including a facial mask), and the rest for an angel food cake. Angel food cake is the perfect use for leftover egg whites. It meets the two crucial criteria previously discussed for freezer inventory: it’s quick, and it uses lots. In fact, an angel cake uses anywhere from 12-14 egg whites, or 1 ½-1 2/3 cups of egg white, depending on egg size. And it has the added benefit of being, of course, delicious. Because it requires so many whites, most people don’t make this old-fashioned cake anymore, and I only make it about once a year (freezer cleaning time). So it is sort of special.
Before getting into the cake itself, it might be worth talking about the storing of egg whites in the first place. Obviously, every time you make something that calls for an egg yolk, either for extra richness or to glaze something, you should put the unused white away in the freezer. I like to use a glass canning jar because you can more easily track how many you have as you go; I usually also mark the number on a piece of tape on the lid, sort of like keeping score in hangman, but this isn’t really necessary because in the end you are going to measure them anyway. But it’s kind of helpful for gauging what you have or need when they’re still frozen—e.g., if you have 7 notches on the lid, you know you probably need another half-dozen for a cake. Remember that 1 egg white is about 1 oz, depending on its size. I needn’t lecture you on the importance of separating your eggs cleanly so that there is not one bit of yolk in your whites. The secrets to this, of course, are: very fresh eggs; separating them when they are cold; and using your hands over a bowl as your separating tool. Now, about angel food cake. It should be very light, high, and tender. It is sweet, but not cloyingly so. You can, as I do here, reduce the sugar a bit with minimal trade-off in height, and partner the cake with something to offset or balance the sweetness. Angel food needs to be cut gently with a serrated knife and a gradual, light sawing motion; it is usually served in rather sizeable wedges, although it can be cut thinly, particularly after it is a day old (and still good).
Angel cake is, as I said, a very airy old-fashioned treat. Many newer recipes contain confectioner’s sugar (10x), which gives the cake a more velvety texture, and allows it to be sliced more like a conventional cake. Those cakes are excellent in their own way, but are not as traditional. Here is how my grandmother made angel food cake—a classic cake made with granulated sugar only, and then glazed with a quite bitter icing made with Baker’s unsweetened chocolate—all that was available for home bakers when I was growing up. We all loved it. Actually, everybody does. I serve it here with the coulis from last week’s freezer clean-out.
Grandma’s Angel Food Cake with Chocolate Glaze
Angel cake should be tender and moist, not dry. Serves 10-12.
Angel Food
1 ¼ sugar (to be divided as instructed)
1 ½ c egg whites, at room temperature
1 T warm water
2 tea vanilla
Few drops pure almond extract (optional)
¼ tea salt
1 ½ tea cream of tartar
1 cup cake flour
Preheat the oven to 350F. Use a 10” aluminum tube pan with straight sides (the specialty pan for this cake); do not use a nonstick pan.
Put the sugar in the food processor and whiz for 10 seconds or so (alternatively, you can use superfine sugar, but it is expensive). Remove ¼ cup and set the rest aside.
Take out 2 sheets of wax paper. Sift together the flour and ¼ cup sugar onto one sheet of wax paper. Place the sifter onto the other sheet, lift the flour-sugar mixture on its paper and pour it back into the sifter and sift again. Repeat this two more times.
Put the egg whites and water into a standing mixer fitted with the balloon whisk. Beat at medium speed until foamy. Add the vanilla, almond extract if using, salt, and cream of tartar. Turn the mixer on to medium-high and beat, gradually adding the remaining 1 cup sugar, until the egg whites are voluminous and voluptuous, forming soft, rounded mounds and medium-sharp peaks. The meringue should remain very shiny and homogeneous and moist; be very careful not to overbeat so as not to break the meringue into clumps.
Pour the flour/sugar mixture back into the sifter and sift it over the egg whites, gently folding it in with a rubber spatula, in 5 or 6 batches. Lift and turn the whites carefully, ensuring complete incorporation of the flour. Using the spatula, scoop the batter into the pan, mounding it evenly around the center. Cut through the batter once with a butter knife. Smooth the top.
Bake for about 35 minutes, until golden brown. The top will be cracked, but the cake will not pull from the sides. Remove as soon as it is done—if overbaked, it can collapse--and immediately turn it upside down on a rack or, as my grandmother did, a bottle. Let the cake cool completely. To remove from the pan, run a long, thin, flexible non-serrated knife (I use my French thin slicing knife, which can be pressed along the shape of the pan) around the outside edge of the pan and the center hole. Grasp the center tube and remove the cake from the pan. Then with one smooth motion, turning the cake as you go, slide the knife between the cake bottom and the pan base.
Lift the cake and place it on a cake plate lined with two pieces of wax paper that meet in the center. Glaze as follows.

Bitter Chocolate Glaze
3 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 T unsalted butter
2 tea corn syrup (optional—Grandma did not use)
½ tea pure vanilla extract
½-3/4 cup water
Pinch salt
Over low heat, melt the chocolate and the butter, stirring occasionally. Add the corn syrup if using, and the vanilla. Gradually add water, stirring, until smooth and pourable, but with enough body to spread—approximately like pastry cream. Pour and spread over the cake with an offset icing spatula or knife (my grandmother did not have an offset spatula), smoothing the sides and making sure to cover the cake in the center hole. Put it into the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to set; remove the wax paper strips.

To serve and store
Cut the cake with a serrated knife into large slices, using a gently sawing motion—no pressing down. They say those angel food cutters work well, but neither I nor my grandmother have/had one; I like the smooth-faced slices I get from a knife. Serve as is or with berry coulis or vanilla ice cream. Or both. Other nice accompaniments in place of the chocolate glaze are caramel icing (this makes for a rather sweet dessert) or lemon curd. Store on the counter under a glass dome, or freeze. If there is any left over and it begins to get too dry, try toasting it briefly under a hot broiler; the icing will melt, and form a sauce. But a well-made angel food cake actually keeps quite well for a few days.

Drawing Down Inventory IV: Frozen Strawberries and Raspberries

2011-03-27T15:18:00.001-04:00

For several reasons, I am under pressure to get the freezer fully cleaned out a little earlier than usual. More about that later. Spring is the time of anticipation, so that can wait.

Taking stock, so to speak, of the freezer, reveals an awful lot of frozen berries (it should be spelled aweful, not awful, because what could be bad about a lot of berries?). I often make muffins with frozen berries, an item to which they are well suited; muffins are quick, and when you are cleaning out the freezer, that is perhaps the most desirable feature in a suitable application. Another is recipes that use a large quantity—with muffins, that is usually not the case.

So I made some muffins—lemon-strawberry (lemons are cheap again right now). But also some coulis, which has the virtue of letting you easily use as much as you have and will keep nicely in the refrigerator for a few weeks to garnish other items made from other freezer inventory. Hmm. There’s something wrong with this picture, but I don’t have time to puzzle it through. I’m sure, however, that it has to do with some sort of major philosophical question about the weird cycle of hoarding and disgorging, or about pareto optimality—are we making things we would not otherwise make? Thankfully, I am not an economist, so don’t feel compelled to answer that one. And can take comfort in the knowledge that any answer the economists come up with will be wrong.

Frozen Fruit Coulis

I like to use a coulis for its fruity berry flavor, not for sweetness. This does not contain much sugar. The touch of pepper gives it a subtle edge. Makes about 2 ½ cups.

4 cups whole frozen berries (I used about half raspberries and half strawberries; the raspberries dominate)
1 ½ cups cane sugar
Juice of half a lemon (about 2 T)
Pinch salt and white pepper

Combine all ingredients in a nonreactive, preferably slope-sided, pan. Bring to a boil and cook, skimming and stirring, for about 5 minutes, breaking up the larger berries with the edge of a wooden spoon. Strain over a bowl, pressing the solids against the side of the strainer. Strain again to catch any escaped seeds (if you have a small strainer, you can do this directly into jars). Pour into jars or other containers; store in the refrigerator and use to garnish cakes, desserts, and cold meats/composed salads.

Pineapple: Sinful Pancakes

2011-03-19T12:24:00.001-04:00

Every March 1 the International House of Pancakes hosts National Pancake Day when they give away free pancakes. I’ve never been, but it’s a nice idea. National Pancake Day coincides, roughly, with Shrove Tuesday, a day of indulgence prior to atoning for one’s sins, by fasting, during Lent. Or so I’ve heard, being pretty much of a heathen myself. Fasting is not part of my moral outlook.

Nevertheless, I do like the idea of indulging in pancakes, so on March 1 I joined the party by making pancakes at home. Yes, it’s taken me that long to get around to writing this. It’s not that I’m not thinking about it, or not cooking and taking photos; it’s the sitting down to put it together that takes so much time. Thankfully, photos will wait.

I love pancakes, as other pancake posts on this site attest. I just counted them, and there are four: here, here, here, and here. (And that doesn’t even include the posts on thick and thin johnnycakes.) Since I try not to repeat myself too much (this gets harder as we get older, as we all know), that tally of posts is an indication of just how much I do love the fried little disks. I’d eat them every day, occasionally interspersed with French Toast (I really should do an entry on that) if I could. Or rather, if I didn’t think it would be better for me if I didn’t. Because of course, one could, and has. When I make pancakes, I eat them for days in a row, in part because the batter improves as it ages in the refrigerator. I confess I have gone through some periods where I ate pancakes every day for months. But yes, I did gain weight. Time to stop.

The run-up to National Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday also happened to coincide with a discussion I was following on the wonderful food forum, e-gullet, in which was described something I had never heard of before: a casserole made of pineapple and cheddar cheese. This sounded disgusting to me at first, and chemically suspect, from a food science standpoint. But I became persuaded from various comments that this was a combination worth trying. I also happen to be in the South at the moment, and since this casserole seemed clearly to be one of those Southern aberrations and I am very much a when-in-Rome sort of person, the deal was sealed. I bought the ingredients.

But then National Pancake Day came along to distract me, and the casserole idea went out the window, at least until the next time I make a ham (the dish to which the pineapple-cheddar casserole is purported to be a traditional accompaniment). Why not pineapple-cheddar pancakes instead? Indeed.

Pineapple-Cheddar Pancakes

These are a bit like my favorites made with farmer’s cheese. Like them, they contain very little flour, need to be cooked slowly and thoroughly, and are very moist inside. This particular batter will not keep; it would ferment. Serves 3-4.

1 cup fresh cored pineapple, cubed
½ cup 2% cottage cheese
1 large egg
1 T firmly packed light brown sugar
½ cup packed shredded very sharp cheddar, such as store cheese
½ c a-p flour, approx.
1 tea baking powder
¼ tea baking soda
¼ tea salt

Pulse the pineapple in the food processor with the cottage cheese until smooth (there will be some pineapple shreds remaining). Stir in the remaining ingredients in the order given, adding enough flour to make a soupy, thickish, but not stiff, batter.

Heat a griddle to medium (about 350F if you are using electric); you may need to lower it a little as you cook. Butter the griddle and drop or pour the batter into small rounds, about 3-4” in diameter. Cook for 1-2 minutes, checking by sliding your spatula underneath; if too dark, lower the heat. Do not try to turn until the spatula slides easily across the bottom. Turn, and cook until the second side is brown and completely cooked. Serve with maple syrup.

Stale Tortillas

2011-02-26T19:32:00.002-05:00

It is warming up a little now, but it has been cold, cold, cold, and I have been eating things like spaghetti and meatballs (my go-to snow-day dish), baked pastas, and soups. In the winter, I particularly love to eat spicy food—and a spicy soup like hot and sour soup, or tortilla soup, hits the spot. The quality of both are dependent on a good stock—one with good body and flavor but not quite as rich as I like it for, say, pasta e fagioli or even a good ol’ chicken noodle soup. This is one of the many reasons why stock has to be homemade; there is really no such thing as just “chicken stock”; it is light or not, rich or not, flavored (e.g., with ginger and other Asian seasonings) or not. Although you can of course add flavors, reduce your stock to change its concentration, and generally play around with it, I find I usually have something in mind when I make stock, and make it accordingly. Right after the holidays, I bought an old hen, and knew I was in the mood for some Mexican food to warm me over the ensuing winter months. Hence, a versatile medium broth seasoned with garlic, onions, salt, and cilantro stems. I’ve been using it in sauces, rice dishes, and other Mexican fare.
Last week I made tortilla soup. It was time: when you get to those last few corn tortillas at the bottom of the bag and find they are rather dry and tough, and there are not enough to fry up a big batch of chips, their last best use is for garnish. Tortilla soup is their perfect home. And perfectly homey in itself.

Tortilla Soup
Tortilla soup is sort of a broth stirred into a tomato puree, garnished with chicken, chile, fried tortilla strips, and a dry queso. I like to poach the chicken and then smash it with a cleaver into shreds. Serves 4.
3 or 4 small (6”) semi-dry best-quality corn tortillas
2 or 3 dried chiles pasillas, or 1 large chile ancho, seeds and veins removed and torn into small pieces
Lard for frying
½ chicken breast, about 6 oz

1 small onion, sliced
2 large cloves garlic, peeled
¼ tea allspice or cloves
1 medium-large tomato, roasted and core removed, or about 1 cup canned Italian plum tomatoes, drained
1 ½ qt homemade chicken stock, preferably seasoned with onion, garlic, salt, and cilantro stems only
Salt and freshly ground pepper
½ cup cotija or other dry, salty cheese such as dry feta or parmesan
With your kitchen scissors, cut the tortillas in half and then cut the halves crosswise into narrow strips, about ¼” wide. Heat about ¼ cup of lard in an iron frying pan to medium-hot, and quickly fry the tortilla strips until they are golden; remove, drain, and salt. Lower the heat somewhat and in the remaining oil, fry the chile pieces until they are just softened, about 5 or 10 seconds. Remove and drain. I generally mix them up with the tortilla pieces once both are dry. Set aside.
Poach the chicken breast in a little stock or water to just cover. Bring it to a boil, reduce and cook for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and cover, allowing the chicken to cool in the broth or water. When mostly cool, remove to a plastic bag and, with the side of your cleaver or a mallet, smash the chicken breast, which will immediately and beautifully shred. Set aside.
Heat about a tablespoon of lard in a frying pan over medium heat; fry the onion, garlic, and allspice til golden, about 10 minutes. Place it in the food processor with the tomato(es) and puree; it will not be completely smooth. Put it back in the pan into another tablespoon of heated lard, and fry for about 5 minutes.
Ladle a little stock into the tomato mixture, now a kind of thick sauce, stirring until it is pourable—about ½ cup or more. Pour this back into the remaining stock and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Taste for salt and add a little pepper.
Serve the soup in rimmed soup plates garnished with the shredded chicken, tortilla chips, chiles, and about 2 T cotija per serving.

Drawing Down Inventory III: One-off Cakes

2011-02-19T18:34:00.001-05:00

It’s that time of year again: time to make room in the freezer.

Every year I have odd quantities of dried and glazed fruits, nuts, breads, cakes, cookies, etc., leftover from holiday baking. Which they are, and how much of each, depends on what the focus of holiday baking has been that year. Or what I had planned to make but didn’t get around to. Or, what I haven’t eaten or given away.

Usually, I am polishing off the last of the cookies right around now. It is a great pleasure to, ever-so-slowly over the course of the months between New Year’s and March, nibble away at the cookie inventory. Cookies age very nicely; in fact, I think the freezer greatly improves many of them, as the flavors meld and intensify in storage. And of course, it is wonderful to reach into the freezer and pull a cookie out for dessert after dinner.

So, having eaten the last cookie a few days ago, a fair amount of space has been freed up. But still, there remained all those bags of fruits and nuts, and a little more than half an orange olive-oil cake. I ate a small piece of the cake—excellent, still—essentially evening it off to a neat half. Then I used everything to make the cake below, and took it to the office. I probably won’t have everything on hand to make this cake in exactly the same way again, but as you can see, the recipe could easily be adjusted according to what you do happen to have, producing a different cake each year.

One-off Post-holiday Cake

This is rich, moist, dense, and spicy. Serves 10.

3 cups medium cake crumbs—about ½ of a 10” tube cake (see Note)
1 cup candied citron
¾ c fresh crystallized ginger
½ cup raisins (I used mixed, mostly large flames)
2 T marsala or sherry (I used Spanish mistela)

¼ c light turbinado or pure cane sugar
½ c Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa
2 large brown eggs
Juice and grated rind of ½ medium navel orange
¾ whole milk
5 oz unsalted butter, softened
2 tea baking powder
3 tea mixed best-quality fresh ground spices, to taste (I used: 1 tea cinnamon, ½ tea cardamom, 1/3 tea cloves, ¾ tea nutmeg, 1/8 tea white pepper, big pinch salt)

1/3 cup blanched slivered almonds (chopped hazelnuts would do)

Pear or other fruit syrup for glazing (optional)

Use a deep 8” cake or springform pan. Butter it, line it with parchment, and butter and flour the interior.

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Divide the crumbs in half. Put ½ half into a medium bowl, the other into a food processor.

Soak the raisins in the alcohol.

To the crumbs in the processor, add the citron and crystallized ginger and pulse until the fruits are ground and crumb mixture looks medium-fine.

To the crumbs in the bowl, add the sugar, eggs, cocoa, milk, juice and rind, baking powder, and spices, and stir until smooth. Add the fruit/crumb mixture and the raisins and their liquid (if the raisins are very large, cut them in half using a wet knife), stirring well to blend. Beat in the soft butter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and scatter the slivered almonds across the surface (I sliced whole blanched almonds in half).

Bake at 325 for about 1 hour, until the surface is puffed and lightly cracked, the nuts are turning golden, and a cake skewer inserted midway between the center and the edge comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes, then turn carefully out. The cake will pull away from the sides as it cools. While still warm, you can brush the top and sides with a syrup if you wish; I had some leftover pear syrup from poaching pears for a pear tart for my students before Christmas, so was able to use some of it. But not necessary.

Note: I used a cake made with olive oil because that is what I had, but any plain, rich cake would do, such as pound cake. The cake does not have to be at its peak, but it should not be dried out—i.e., should not be stale.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

2011-02-12T17:36:00.001-05:00

It takes my loyal reader and fellow blogger about food and life, racheld, to remind me of my duty. It has been a long, hard winter for us all. Not as bad as in Little Compton, but even here in the South it has been pretty bitter. Cold, ice, snow. I have hunkered down, and though I have been cooking for myself, and sometimes for my students, I have neglected the blog, which means I’ve been neglecting you. I will be back soon—hopefully with, as racheld suggests, a pie. Meanwhile, treat yourself to something nice for Valentine’s Day. Per my custom, I will be buying myself a new cookbook. Or two. xxoo

Cooling Down: All Good Growing Seasons Must End

2010-11-14T20:02:00.001-05:00

Despite our great good fortune in the weather this year, and mine—I’ve had the benefit of two great growing seasons, one in Rhode Island and one in Nashville—it’s clearly over. I came back from a conference trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast the first week of November to nights in the 20s. First frost, indeed.

It’s a bitter-sweet time of year, this transition from the riotous plate of sunny summer to the more sedate and colorless winter board. It’s a little like the realization, on graduating from college, that you will never again have the summer off (until, of course, you realize at middle age that you could become a professor!), but at the same time are ready to move on to being a grown-up. We’ll miss the casual ease of tomatoes and basil and berries fresh from the field, but begin to crave the serious and soul-satisfying stews, soups, and breads purposefully made from a reassuringly well-stocked larder. We’re sorry to come indoors, but anticipate the holidays around the table with family, grateful to by cozy inside.

Farewell to another growing season, with thanks for all the bounty, much of it tucked away neatly in our freezers and cupboards. Here is the fourth annual review, in pictures, of some of this year’s seasonal production. On Friday I leave for New York to spend Thanksgiving with my son. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Second Time Around: Baby Zucchini

2010-11-07T23:56:00.007-05:00

I am not a big squash fan, but I do like the little finger-size zucchini and golden squash that are the first of the season—and, if we are lucky enough to have a final burst, the last. This year was such a year: a long, dry, very warm (OK, hot) summer. As a result, everything was early, and many of the things I enjoy most when they are small came along twice. Recently I bought some nice little zucchini of my favorite size, well under 1” diameter, from a local couple selling at least a dozen varieties of squash, mostly winter ones, laid out on tables. The little zucchini were snuggled in a basket like babies, which of course they were.

Given that squash is not a preferred vegetable, I tend to be as finicky about how I eat them as I am about their size. I like them split and grilled with olive oil, or stuffed with seasoned mashed potatoes and served next to a steak. When I lived in California, a coworker used to make a salad with zucchini, avocado, and cream cheese that was very nice, and that I still make a variation of occasionally. Just after I bought these zucchs I was looking through my newly acquired Oaxaca al Gusto cookbook by Diana Kennedy, which reminded me of another favorite way to cook them from Kennedy’s first book, Cuisines of Mexico: with cream, cinnamon, tomato, and chile. I had some of the high-fat cream sold at the farmers market —as it turns out, the season’s last. But I did not have anything suitable in the house to serve a zucchini side dish with, and I had been craving a pizza. So I made a kind of deconstructed version of Kennedy’s squash dish, a cream-zucchini pizza in the Mexican style, using the cinnamon- and chile-enhanced cream as the sauce and topping it with pan-fried zucchini.

Zucchini and Reduced Cream Pizza

Pizza Dough
1 ½ cups flour
½ tea salt
2 T olive oil
½ cup warm water
2 tea yeast
Dissolve the yeast in the water. Put the other ingredients in the food processor, and add the water/yeast while the motor is running until it forms a ball; let it run another 15 seconds. Remove and let rise til double, about 3 hrs. Punch down and one aside, covered, for about 15 minutes before using.

Cinnamon Cream Sauce
1 cup heavy cream, preferably unhomogenized
1 fresh, 4” piece stick cinnamon
½ small chile Serrano, seeded, or ¼ tea Tabasco
¼ tea salt
1/8 tea freshly grated nutmeg
Put all the ingredients in a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook until the cream is reduced by half. Turn off the heat and let sit a few minutes, or until the cream has a pleasant but not too strong cinnamon flavor. Remove the cinnamon and discard.

Zucchini Topping and Assembling the Pizza
About 4 small zucchini, trimmed and sliced ¼” thick
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Torn fresh arugula or basil
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pine nuts (optional)
¼ cup freshly grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese
Preheat the oven to 450F.
In a large frying pan, quickly sauté the zucchini slices with the garlic in a little olive oil, turning them, over high heat until they are lightly browned on both sides. Sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper.
Roll the dough out into a 12” round and place on a pan sprinkled with cornmeal. Spread the cream on the dough; top with the zucchini; and sprinkle with the nuts, cheese, and arugula. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, until lightly colored and somewhat bubbly.

Lemons: $1.97 a bag

2010-10-24T19:52:00.002-04:00

I cannot understand why, for years now, a single lemon in a grocery store costs 60 cents, sometimes more, but you can buy loads of them for a dollar if you happen to live in a city and go to an Asian fruit market. Actually, I do understand, and it is extremely annoying. Most American home cooks use one lemon at a time—to garnish a drink or a plate, to squeeze over a piece of fish, to stuff inside a chicken. They don’t want a lot of lemons growing moldy in their refrigerators. So grocery stores say, aha, we can charge a lot for one lemon, because when you need a lemon, you need a lemon—there is really no suitable substitute, not even a lime in many cases (which also is overpriced)—and you just need one. We end up paying a small fortune for a single lemon, and being resentful, and the store ends up making a huge margin. Thing is, we often buy only one because they are too pricey; we might buy more were they not. A vicious circle.

So when I saw an entire bag of lemons for $1.97 at my grocery store—yes, I know, very odd price—I did a double take, and of course snatched them up. Twelve lemons—that’s 16.4 cents apiece! And they were nice—relatively thin-skinned, smooth, full of juice, and a healthy, average, nonmutant size. I went to bed that night (yes, this is how I fall asleep) thinking about what I should do with them. Lemon curd? Preserved lemons, which I haven’t made in years? (probably because lemons got so expensive) Limoncello?

In thinking about what I might make, and what I haven’t made in a long time, I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in ages. Years and years ago, when my oldest sister Laura Torbet was still living in New York and was working on the Encyclopedia of Crafts, I and an assortment of other people used to go to her big loft studio on W. 23^rd Street every day to work on the book. I think there were 6 or 7 of us, and every day we would have some sort of wonderful lunch that my sister would sort of effortlessly throw together. We would gather at a table in the kitchen area and eat between bouts of serious research, writing, and editing about surprisingly technical and brain-frying material. Sometimes we would have a lemon pie made from whole lemons (often called a Shaker Lemon Pie). A friend had given my sister the recipe, as I recall, and she gave it to me and I wrote it down. I still have it.
I got a craving for that pie, thinking about it, and made it, or rather, a variation on it, the next day. I used four lemons, leaving me 8. Hmm, maybe I’ll make some curd after all. The holidays are coming, and I love to slather it between two ginger or spice cookies.
Shaker Honey Lemon Pie
This pie appeals to the waste-not, want-not, farm woman part of me; it is not for everyone, certainly not for anyone looking for something refined—it is not. But it has a sort of genius to it, and is good warm or cold. It should be sweet-tart, and the skins should have a little chew to them but be tender, not hard. It is very nice with ice cream. Serves 6.

Butter-lard or all-butter pastry for a 2-crust pie, divided (see note)
4 medium lemons, as thin-skinned as you can find
1 ½ cups cane sugar
1/3 cup honey
4 large brown eggs
Pinch salt
Preheat the oven to 450 F.
Cut a slice off the rounded ends of the lemons. Using a mandolin with a guard to protect your fingers and holding the lemons by the pointy end, slice them thinly into a bowl (if you don’t have a mandolin, use a very sharp thin-slicing knife and slice as paper-thin as you can). Put the sugar into the bowl with the lemon slices, and pick up the bowl and toss, coating the slices. Let them macerate for a couple of hours until the sugar is dissolved and the lemons are sitting in the syrup.
In a small bowl beat the eggs with the honey and pinch of salt. Using a slotted spoon, lift the lemon slices out of their bowl and add them to the eggs/honey. Strain and measure the syrup left in the bowl; it should be about ¾ of a cup. Add about ½ cup to the eggs/honey/lemons, and stir gently.
Roll out half the pastry and fit it into a 9” pie plate. Chill for 10 minutes, and roll out the other half while it is chilling. Pour the lemon filling into the pie shell, distributing the lemon slices evenly; it will be very liquid. Top with the second round of pastry, flute the edges to seal, and prick the top gently. Don’t worry if a little of the filling seeps through.
Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350F and bake another 30-35 minutes, until the crust is golden. Remove to a rack to cool until nearly room temperature; serve with ice cream. It is also very good cold. Do refrigerate any leftovers.
___
Note: I upped the fat a little and altered the butter/lard proportion to 8 T butter, 3 T lard; less water was required to bring it together. This makes for a richer, more tender crust that seems to suit and melt into the tart and creamy filling.

Fall Cleaning: Brioche, and A Few Apples

2010-10-15T20:36:00.001-04:00

You know you probably have too many odds and ends in your refrigerator and freezer when it starts getting difficult to find a place to put anything. Going through and using things to make, say, a nice soup, will free your freezer of some bulky stock, perhaps a bone or two, and your refrigerator of an assortment of vegetables, cheese ends, and dairy products. This is a good thing to do at any time of year, but none more so than late fall, when you look at the calendar and realize that holiday baking is just around the corner. You will need all the freezer space you can get, come November.

I made some chicken soup the other day, producing a satisfying amount of new freezer space. In the process of locating the multiple containers of stock, I found some brioche—quite a lot, actually. I had put it away a month or so ago so that I wouldn’t just eat it all, and then rather forgotten about it. In the frig I had three apples—three different kinds, orphans all. There were a few cups of cider left in a half-gallon bottle. I made this fruit pudding; bready, but not strictly speaking a bread pudding as we think of one, as there is no custard—no milk or eggs.

Brioche and Apple Pudding

Be sure to use tart cooking apples. Unlike with regular bread pudding, I think this is better cold. Serves 6-8.

¾ lb leftover brioche (you could use a rich challah)
3 tart apples
1 ½-1 ¾ cups apple cider or unfiltered apple juice
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
½ cup dried cherries or raisins
½ cup sugar
1 ½ T mixed cinnamon and cardamom, to taste
1 T butter

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Butter a deep baking dish, such as a 6 cup soufflé dish. Slice the brioche about 1/2” thick and toss the slices in a bowl with the lemon zest and dried fruit. Pour over the apple cider and press the brioche a bit with the back of wooden spoon; it should become fully moist, but not watery. Peel and chop the apples into medium dice, and toss in another bowl with the lemon juice. Mix the sugar with cinnamon and cardamom. Using a spoon, layer these mixtures a little at a time in the dish as follows: bread, apples, cinnamon-sugar—forming three or four layers of each. Dot with the butter. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove to a rack to cool.

The cider makes this sweet, so it is nice to serve it with sour cream or plain unsweetened cream poured over.

Rye Flour

2010-10-04T09:42:00.001-04:00

I did a lot of experimenting with making rye breads at home this past summer—or rather, in a summer cottage with a tiny, poorly insulated and poorly sealed old apartment-size stove. Not the best venue for trying to replicate the wonderful old world rye breads I grew up on. But I wanted that taste again, to eat thick slices slathered with salted butter, to make a really good ham and cheese sandwich, or a favorite of my father’s and mine, an onion sandwich with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, and I had some time. It was summer. Not the greatest bread-baking time, but time.

Surprisingly, recreating the taste was not as difficult as I had anticipated. It was getting the bread to bake to the right size and texture. For the moment, I am blaming the oven, as the breads always went in looking perfect, then generally deflated rather than rose with the initial high temperature, and the crusts became a little hard. There are actually several potential reasons for this, but for the moment I am sticking with the oven as culprit. Everyone who tasted them thought they were excellent—and as I said, the flavor was amazingly spot on—but having eaten pounds and pounds of the best ryes growing up, I knew. Not quite. So I plan to try again this winter, in a different oven and without the 100 degree heat and humidity of this summer. I have some sour, waiting silently in the darkness of the freezer. And I will make some fresh as well (it could, after all, have been my starter).

This is all to say that, in cleaning out my too-full freezer, I discovered a bag of rye flour containing barely enough to coat a countertop—a half cup. Not sure why I bothered to keep it, unless it is the hard-dying “waste not, want not” attitude instilled in me by my grandmother. I do find such things very, very hard to throw out. So compelled to use it, I made these rye popovers. Everyone knows that a popover is a very satisfying thing. A rye popover is different—less delicate--but retains the qualities of crisp exterior and partly hollow, tender and stretchy interior.

Rye Popovers

Use a cast iron popover or gem pan for best results. You could also use little ceramic custard molds if needed. Be sure your oven is fully preheated. You can whip these up for breakfast. Makes 6-8, depending on your pan.

½ cup rye flour
½ cup a-p flour
¼ tea salt
1 T unsalted butter, melted
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 450F. Lightly butter the pan if it is not well-seasoned, and put it in the oven while it is heating.

In a 4-cup measure or a small bowl, preferably with a spout, sift the flours together with the salt. Pour the milk into a 2-cup measure, add the eggs, and beat with a small whisk until lightly incorporated. Make a little well in the flour and pour in the milk/egg mixture and the melted butter. Whisk for a minute or so until thoroughly smooth.

Pour the batter into the hot pan, filling the openings about 2/3 of the way. If you are using a full size iron popover pan, bake at 450F for 25-30 minutes; they will be high. Reduce the heat to 350F and bake another 15 minutes, until tawny and shiny. If you are using an aluminum pan or smaller gem pan, the timing will be shorter, perhaps by as much as a a third. Bake them at the higher temperature until they are fully puffed, then reduce the heat and bake until they are nicely colored and dry; you can use a small wooden skewer to check them if needed. Watch them and use your judgment. Turn out immediately onto a rack, and poke them once with a tiny skewer or the tip of a sharp knife. You can eat them now, with butter and, if you like, jam. I do, and am partial to apricot with the rye flavor.

An Abundance of Apples

2010-09-25T16:25:00.001-04:00

We are long in apples right now. Sauce apples, eating apples, cider apples, baking apples, apples my grandmother loved, new-fangled apples (most too sweet for my taste). I stick to my favorites as I find them—I picked up some Jonathans, Cortlands, and Macintosh, last week—and then try local varieties that I haven’t seen before. Last year it was Arkansas Blacks. This year it’s the Wolf River. It looks very much like our Rhode Island Greening (hard to find, now), but not as versatile. Still, I was glad to find it.

The abundance of apples to be had for a very good price got me thinking about how much I absolutely love to cook and bake with this fruit. In fact—and I thought about this long and hard before putting down the words—if I had to choose apples over my other fruit obsession, sour cherries, I think I would have to go with the apples. This feels a little like choosing which of your children is your favorite. While everyone says that’s not possible, there is some recent research saying that, actually, you can—that people do have favorites among their children. So of my beloved fruits, I am a bit more partial to the apple.

This only makes sense, if we consider that, for me, the apple is something analogous to the first-born. I learned to make applesauce when I was very young; it was, if not the first, among the very first of my lessons in cooking at my grandmother’s side. The first pie I ever made was apple (the second, as I recall, was lemon meringue). I made apple butter for years and years before I ever made cherry preserves. Of course, availability has a lot to do with it, what with apples being grown everywhere in great quantities and variety, and sour cherries both few and far between. This is another reason for choosing them—if one had to choose.

Fortunately, I don’t. But while it is apple season and not cherry season, I will certainly put them to good use. And in honor of thinking back to baking in my younger and much younger days, I offer this quintessentially French apple tart. I made it all the time back in the 70s and 80s, when I cooked mostly French food. I haven’t made it in years, but it’s due for a comeback.

Country French Applesauce Tart

This homey tart combines an applesauce base with sliced apples and an apple glaze. Use an all-butter pastry for this. The directions are general; this is more of a method than a recipe. Serves 6.

Tart Pastry

2 cups a-p flour
8 oz (1 stick) cold unsalted butter
1 egg
½ tea salt
2-3 T ice water

In the food processor, pulse the flour and salt briefly. Place the butter into the bowl, cut into 8 pieces, and turn them over to coat; drop in the egg. Pulse until crumbly. With the machine running, add the water, a little at a time, until the dough comes together. Form into a disc and chill.

The Applesauce

1 ½ lb apples, cut in quarters
3 T butter
½ cup white wine
½ cup sugar
½ tea cinnamon
1 tea grated lemon rind

Put everything into a pan and bring to a boil; reduce somewhat and cook until the apples are soft. Strain, without pressing, the liquid, and reserve. Then put the apple mixture through a food mill. Taste the sauce and add a little more cinnamon if you want; this tart should not be as heavily spiced as an American apple pie, though.

The Tart

3-4 firm, tart apples
1 ½ -2 cups applesauce
1 egg"
The reserved liquid from making the applesauce

Preheat the oven to 400F. Roll the dough out to 11” or so to fit a 9” tart pan with a removable bottom. You will have extra dough, with which you can make little jelly turnovers or a mini version of the tart if you want.

Cook the reserved liquid from the applesauce down until it forms a light, soft, syrupy jelly; add a little sugar if needed. It should be fluid enough to use as a glaze. Thin it with hot water if you overdo.

Put about 2 cups of the applesauce into a small bowl. Beat the egg and stir it into the applesauce. Fill the tart shell about 2/3 full with the applesauce (perhaps 1 ½ cups or so; you will have leftover). Peel and core the apples, and slice them thinly. Arrange the apples in concentric circles, slightly overlapping each slice, working from the outside in and reversing direction of the slices with each circle. Form a little circle of apple and place it the center. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the edges of the apples begin to brown. Remove and let cool for at least 20 minutes; glaze with the apple jelly, slightly warmed. Remove the tart from the pan.

Contact Me: Who Knew

2010-09-25T16:18:00.001-04:00

Somehow along the way of doing this blog over the past three years, my email address disappeared from my profile information. I had noticed that not as many people were emailing me as during the first year or two that I started Little Compton Mornings, but it wasn’t until one of you mentioned recently that you could not find an email address for me that I realized that I had dropped the ball when I changed my account information. You may remember that sometime after that, I discovered I had dozens of unanswered comments. So apologies again; I didn’t realize there was still no contact information.

So I have put a little “Contact Me” button under my photo and, well, you are! I have gotten an amazing number of emails in a very short time (my readers have always been more the letter-writing than the commenting kind, it seems). I’ve had several nice notes, and requests for help sourcing ingredients. I got a request to re-publish some of my posts on a regular basis in The Sakonnet Times, Little Compton’s local newspaper, which I granted. And I got an invitation to judge the New England Dairy Cook-Off and Chef's Challenge, sponsored by Hood Milk, in Portland, ME on Oct 30. I have a prior commitment that date and cannot go, but perhaps you can. In fact, perhaps you can enter! Information is here.

Keep in touch, Jane

Baby Artichokes…and Fava Beans

2010-09-19T12:19:00.001-04:00

Baby artichokes have a brief season, and appear once or twice a year, usually around early September and/or in May. They are little and cute, and their chokes are undeveloped, making them easy to prepare compared to their larger counterparts. And as a consequence, they are more expensive. At $5.00 a pound, I bought four, picking out the nicest ones.

Fava beans also make a brief appearance, usually around April-May and into the summer. I bought some last month and promptly lost them in the refrigerator, forgetting about them in the crush of the start of the academic year. After I bought the artichokes, I remembered them—both are so ancient Roman, the association just jumped into my mind—and went hunting through the bins, ultimately finding them behind the bottles of cream and buttermilk, where they should not have been and somewhat explaining their oversight. A few I had to toss, but most were absolutely fine. After all, they are protected by a tough pod; they look a lot like big lima beans. This may be one of the reasons for their popularity back in the day—you know, when there was no refrigeration. They could be carried around for a long time, then ultimately shelled and dried.

Not that fava beans are not delicious in their own right; they are. Both favas and baby artichokes represent a different kind of seasonal treat than, say, berries or corn. Instead of juicy or sweet and refreshing they are earthy, meaty, satisfying. They lend themselves to long cooking and simple methods of braising, roasting, or boiling. They are good simply prepared on their own, or in a homey, saucy dish like a stew (they like lamb and beef as companions) or a pasta. A little goes a long way.

Pasta with Baby Artichokes and Fava Beans

Use a pasta with some bite to it. Serves 2.

4 baby artichokes
½ cup shelled fresh fava beans (about ½ lb)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 T olive oil
1 tea bacon fat (optional)
Juice of 1 medium orange
Water

1 cup good beef stock
2 T sour cream, preferably homemade
3-5 T unhomogenized heavy cream
½ fresh red, ripe chile pepper (I used Serrano), seeded and finely minced

1 cup dried tubular pasta, such as mini penne
Salt and pepper
Fresh mint, roughly chopped
Freshly ground imported parmesan

Remove the outer leaves of the artichokes and trim the stems and the tops so that the little artichokes are squat little blocks. Quarter them and put them in a small bowl with half the orange juice and enough water to cover. Break the pods of the favas, much as you would the pod of a pea, their cousins, and remove the beans.

In a chef’s or other heavy pan, heat the olive oil and the bacon fat if using. Add the drained artichokes and beans, and sauté for a few minutes over medium-high heat; when they begin to brown, add the garlic and sauté a few minutes longer, reducing the heat a bit so the garlic does not burn, until nicely golden.

Add the remaining orange juice, the beef stock, and 5 or 6 twists of the pepper mill. Bring to a boil, then reduce and cook at a low bubbly, partly covered with a lid, until the artichokes and beans are tender and pierce easily with the sharp tip of a knife—about 15 minutes. At this point the stock should be reduced by about half; if not, continue cooking, raising the heat a bit, until it is.

Cook the pasta in salted water according to directions, and while it is cooking, add the sour cream, 3 T of cream, and the chile to the artichoke/bean mixture, stirring. Cook until it reduces to a sauce that coats the spoon, then add a tablespoon or two more, repeating the reduction of the sauce.

When the pasta is ready, drain it, and toss it with the vegetables. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve with lots of chopped mint and a little parmesan cheese.

New Cuisinarts: Two!

2010-09-11T16:37:00.001-04:00

Good things come to those who wait.

I have been without a food processor, of any size, for about a year now. My little processor, which I love for making pesto, Mexican sauces, grinding nuts, mayonnaise, and any number of other small and 1-person-family tasks, actually died some time before that, so before it passed I had been doing everything in my larger one, not always with optimal results. My “big” machine was, oh, maybe 28 years old or so—a 7-cup Cuisinart® classic workhorse. A number of years ago the bowl cracked, so I ordered another, content with the machine, even though the switch had required me to hold it down to operate it for at least 10 years. Then last year I sort of killed it myself. I didn’t burn out the motor, which I’m convinced would have kept going forever, much like my Acura. I cracked the stem on which the blades fit—I can’t remember now how I did it, but it was while doing some utterly simple task like shredding carrots—rendering the loyal motor powerless (ha) to perform. I put the bowl and blades aside, figuring I’d try to see if I could just order the base with intact stem.

I kept putting off calling to see if that was possible, then began to look at full machines, thinking I’d buy one if the price to come down, but then becoming sidetracked by the bigger and shinier models that have since been introduced (over 30 years, that happens…), which of course are more expensive. So waiting for them to come down again…and hence, no food processor for a year. I reverted to doing lots of stuff by hand that I usually do with the machine—pastry, pizza dough, etc. OK, in small batches. But I also stopped doing things that are quick work with the machine and otherwise require pounding with a mortar, so last millenium, which meant that I stopped eating certain things.

Then, for my birthday this August, two boxes arrived from my son: a GIANT, beautiful 14-cup Cuisinart®, and a SMALL, cute 4-cup Cuisinart®. And guess what? The 7-cup bowl fits the large machine, essentially giving me the momma, papa, and baby bear of food processors. A few years ago my son also gave me a second bowl for my Kitchen Aid® standing mixer: happiness for the cook is multiple bowls for efficiency and minimal washing between tasks. We’re easy to please.

As you can imagine, pent-up demand took over immediately. Over the course of a single afternoon, I made 3 quarts of gazpacho (a snap in the new poppa machine), five different Mexican sauces in various quantities in the baby, a huge batch of fresh bread crumbs (once, and only once, did I sieve bread by hand during my processor lacuna—not recommended), and some pizza dough for the freezer. I made myself a fresh-chopped hamburger.

All this food processor richness reminded me that, among my outsized cookbook collection, I had a book that focused on making traditional pastry using the food processor and other “new” shortcuts, published in the 1980s when food processors were starting to make inroads in this country (coincidentally, at the time I worked for the brother of the prescient guy who founded Cuisinart®). The book was The New Pastry Cook: Modern Methods for Marking Your Own Classic and Contemporary Pastries by Helen S. Fletcher. I had never used it—in fact, I made pastry completely by hand for years after getting my first food processor before transitioning almost entirely to the processor—but had held onto it when culling my collection a few years ago. I decided to pull it out now, and christen my new Cuisinart with one of Fletcher’s pastry recipes.

I decided to make the Mürbteig pastry, a Viennese short dough that is very rich with butter and egg yolk. It is a breeze to make with the food processor, much trickier by hand. I used this pastry to make her European-style (what I would call “old New York”) cheesecake, which is sensational and authentic—the cheesecake of once upon a time. Here is the full recipe, with some minor changes and rewriting/updating of directions and additional notes. If you can find the book online, I recommend it—it is very well done, and Ms. Fletcher, considering the time, was a pioneer in giving weights in metric and U.S. standard measures for dry ingredients.

Helen Fletcher’s Cheesecake

This recipe calls for an 8” spring form pan. Naturally, I have a 4”, 6”, two 9”, and a 10”, but not an 8”—the story of my life in a nutshell. I used a 9”, and trimmed the pastry walls down about 1/3”. I really think the 9” is the right size for the amount of filling. Those of you who grew up in the area of New York City will recognize the very dark, shiny top of the cheesecakes of your childhood (for me, those from the gone-but-not-forgotten Claremont Diner). This is not baked in a water bath. Serve it on the day it is made if you can; you will not believe the texture. It is good for many days, if a little different. Serves 10 (Fletcher says 8).

Mürbteig Pastry

The finished dough will weigh about a pound and a half; you will need a pound (2/3) for the cheesecake. I suggest you divide it accordingly and freeze the rest, well-wrapped, which you can use to make rolled cookies or a few little tartlets.

1 medium lemon
½ cup sugar
2 ½ cups sifted a-p flour (10 oz)
½ lb (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter
Yolks of 3 large eggs (freeze whites)

Using a microplane, grate the lemon into the sugar in the bowl, fitted with the steel blad. Whiz to combine. Add the flour and process for 5 seconds. Cut each stick of butter into four pieces (8 total); arrange it in circle in bowl and process for about 20 seconds until completely incorporated but the mixture remains powdery. Add the yolks in a circle and process another 20-30 seconds until the dough forms a circle. Process another 10 seconds. Chill thoroughly.

The Cheesecake

2/3 recipe of Mürbteig pastry, divided in half, chilled.
2 tea citrus zest, half orange, half lemon
1 ¼ cup sugar
¼ cup a-p flour
2 cups (16 oz) cream-style cottage cheese (I used 4%)
1 lb (2 8-oz pkgs) Philadelphia cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces, softened
4 large eggs
1 cup sour cream (I used homemade)
¾ cup heavy cream, unhomogenized if available
1 T Grand Marnier or similar*
1 tea pure vanilla extract

Lightly spray an 8” x 3” springform pan with oil. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

To finish the pastry case

Place a piece of chilled dough between two sheets of wax paper and roll to a circle to fit the pan, lifting the wax paper carefully to smooth out any wrinkles if needed (I did not); turn it over occasionally as you roll. Carefully peel back one sheet of the wax paper and turn it over to ease the dough into the pan, peeling off the second sheet of paper. What I did is remove the bottom, turn the dough directly onto the bottom, peel back the paper, then re-insert the bottom into the ring. Bake for 18-20 minutes (I did 20+) until pale gold and thoroughly baked/firm in the center. Remove to rack to cool; can be done the night before and left on the counter in a cool, dry spot.

Divide the other half of the dough, and keep one piece in the refrigerator while you roll the other between wax paper into a strip about 13 x 3 ¾”. Place it on a baking sheet; refrigerate; and repeat with the other piece of dough. The strips will be very thing. Remove the first strip from the refrigerator, trim it neatly to 12 ½ x 3”, lift and lightly replace one sheet of paper, turn it over, remove the other sheet of paper, and then gently lift and fit the strip along one side of the inside wall of the pan. If the dough becomes too soft, refrigerate again after trimming. Repeat with the remaining strip, overlapping the edges slightly, and pressing the walls gently into the bottom crust to ensure a seal. You can patch if needed with any scraps; trim the top edge even with the pan. Chill while you make the filling.

For the filling

Grate the zest with a Microplane and pulse it with ½ cup of the sugar until combined. Add the flour and pulse 20 seconds. Add the cottage cheese and process until you have a smooth mixture (about 30 secs). Place the cream cheese sections in a circle around the bowl, and do likewise with the eggs (in the photo, 3 cage-free brown eggs and 1 conventional white egg, an obvious difference). Process another 30 seconds or so, til smooth. Add the remaining ¾ cup sugar, the sour and heavy creams, the Grand Marnier, and the vanilla. Process 10 seconds; scrape down; and process 10 more seconds til smooth.

Pour the filling into the chilled pastry and bake for 70 minutes. Turn off the oven, prop the door ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon, and leave the cake in the over for an hour. Remove it to a rack to cool completely. The top will be a dark coffee-caramel color. Refrigerate.

To serve, remove from the refrigerator at least ½ hour before serving; it should not be too cold when eaten. Slice with a serrated bread knife; it slices beautifully. Accompany with black and blueberry sauce if you have any hanging around, or just as is. You could fill the center indentation with something colorful, like raspberries standing up with whipped cream piped between them or Amarena Fabbri cherries if you don’t have your own preserved cherries in syrup.

*Fletcher calls for 3 T Grand Marnier. I thought this was too much, possibly a typo. I started with a tablespoon, generous, and decided it was enough.

Muscadines and Scuppernongs

2010-09-04T10:57:00.001-04:00

Now here is something we don’t have in New England. They look an awful lot like our gooseberries—same colors, similar translucence, bigger, although the smaller ones close to some of our giant gooseberries—but they are no family relation, genetically speaking.

The muscadine is a large grape with a very tough skin, sometimes referred to as a hull, that is native to the South. It is primarily used for making jams, jellies, and wine, although some people eat muscadines as table grapes; apparently, there is a local art to using the teeth to puncture the skin, suck and scrape out the flesh, and, presumably, spit out the seeds. I haven’t seen it done, and haven’t tried to master it myself. There are many varieties of muscadine, and for some reason the green ones are always called scuppernongs, even though they are, like the others, technically muscadines. Not sure why it’s not just black (or red) and green muscadine, but the South, like most regions, works in mysterious ways when it comes to naming its food. New Englanders being among the most egregious of odd food-namers, I accept the distinction and use it here out of respect.

In a side-by-side test, the scuppernong is intensely sweet and simpler and more straightforward in taste, while the darker (red/black) muscadine has a, well, musky undertone and is slightly less sweet. The scuppernong flesh is also a little greener, the muscadine flesh still green but a little subdued. When I first tasted muscadine jam at a James Beard Foundation dinner at the Belle Meade Plantation during my first week living in Nashville, I really wasn’t sure what it was made from; “grape” did not immediately spring to mind, so I now think it may have been made without using the skins, which hold a tremendous amount of unusual but markedly grapey flavor. Many jam recipes call for chopping up the skin and blending it into the preserve. In the recipe below, not liking the idea of lots of bits of skin in the final product, I pureed them. As I was making this, originally with the objective of a jam, I loved the look of the green flesh in the red syrup so much that I decided to allow the fruit to remain whole and cook it just to a saucy consistency. This meant that I wouldn’t mush up the fruit first and strain out the seeds. Never having made anything with muscadines/scuppernongs before I’m not sure whether I will come to regret making an aesthetic choice. I suppose I can always put the sauce through a food mill again and sieve out the seeds if they turn out to really be unpalatable; I will keep you posted as I use it. But for now, the sauce is very pretty.

Tennessee Muscadine and Scuppernong Sauce

2 cups skinned (hulled) muscadines (from about 1 ½-2 lbs muscadines)
The hulls of the muscadines
1 cup sugar
2 tea freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ tea cardamom
Pinch salt
1 tea Jack Daniels

Cover the hulls with just enough water to cover them and bring to a boil, cooking until soft, about 10 minutes and being careful not to scorch (add more water if necessary). Put the hulls through a food mill directly into the pan holding the muscadine flesh—it will equal about a cup of purple puree. Add the sugar, salt, lemon, and cardamom, stirring gently. Bring to a boil and then cook, lowering the heat somewhat so it boils but not too wildly, stirring occasionally. Add the whiskey, and continue cooking until it reaches a soft gel stage, about 10 minutes. Put into jars.

To skin (hull) muscadines: Using your fingernail, pull a slice of the skin back from the stem end and then squeeze out the fruit; do this over the pan in which you will make the sauce to catch the juice. Scrape as much remaining flesh from the hull in the process. Set the hulls aside in another pan. Another method is to whack the muscadine with the flat side of a heavy knife, splitting the skin and popping out the fruit, but I think using your fingers is more efficient.

Blackberries and Blueberries: Blintzes

2010-08-28T19:05:00.001-04:00

When I arrived back in Nashville this August I met a friend for breakfast at Noshville, the closest thing in Nashville to a Jewish deli-restaurant (not deli as in place to buy all your cold cuts, salads, hard rolls, bialys, rye breads, pickles, and cheesecake, because that doesn’t exist, but deli-type restaurant à la the Carnegie or Stage in NYC). They have H&H bagels! I never order them—they can only have been frozen, I figure, or at best Fed-Exed, and I do like mine warm and fresh from the store when I’m in NYC—but laud them for going to the trouble. What I order, without fail, is the blintzes. Only once have they been off the menu, when farmer’s cheese was nowhere to be found. Noshville serves their blintzes with sour cream and a somewhat gloppy and sweet but pretty decent blueberry sauce. The blintzes themselves are homemade, and they are good.

So I don’t usually make blintzes at home. But this week, a confluence of events and ingredients just begged for me to make them. I had bought some blackberries at the farmers market—the season was brief, due to the heat and humidity in August—and then saw, to my surprise, some wild blueberries that the people selling them had no idea where they came from except that “a Mexican man” brought them to them. These blueberries were the best I’d ever had—and that is saying a lot considering where I come from. Sweet and spicy, with true blueberry flavor. I thought I’d make a pie.

But then, while making room in the freezer (I froze some of these amazing berries, of course), I found a jar of crepe batter. Hmm, I thought, I really should use this. And then I opened the refrigerator and saw the left-over homemade crema from a Mexican luncheon this week—basically, homemade sour cream, made from the good high-fat heavy cream and buttermilk I buy at the farmers market from a Kentucky dairy farmer who drives down on Saturdays. I also had some of his whole milk, and thought I could make some fresh curd cheese. It was a confluence of signs, all pointing to one thing: blintzes. Here they are. Make at your own risk, as you may not be able to go back.

Black and Blue Blintzes

You can make these over the course of a few days. In fact, both the blueberry sauce and crepes (or crepe batter) will freeze well, allowing you to have them on hand to make blintzes on short notice. Serves 6.

Crepes

This is the batter I have been using since I was in college, and I’ve never found a reason to change it. It came out of Redbook Magazine in 1970, and this is it exactly except for changes in method. Makes about 14-16 7”crepes; freeze the extras.

1 cup sifted a-p flour
Dash salt
3 large eggs
1 ½ cups whole milk
Butter for frying

Combine flour and salt in a 1-2 quart bowl. In a small bowl, beat the eggs lightly with a whisk or electric mixer, then beat in the milk until well blended. Gradually add the egg-milk mixture to the dry ingredients, beating vigorously until smooth; it will have the consistency of heavy cream. Strain into another bowl or large measuring cup and chill 1-2 hrs.

To cook the crepes, lightly butter a crepe pan, preferably a well-seasoned iron one, and heat to medium high. Pour about 2 T of batter into the pan, tipping it to spread the batter evenly to coat, adding more batter if needed but keeping the crepe as thin as possible. Cook about 1 minute until the bottom is lightly speckled and the top looks somewhat plastic-y. Turn the crepe—I use an offset icing spatula to lift it from below the center and fold it gently over—and cook it for another 20 seconds or so. Crepes should be lightly browned.

The Filling

The filling is malleable—you can make it with farmer’s cheese, cottage cheese, store ricotta, cream cheese, your own fresh cheese, or a combination. Drain store-bought cottage cheese or ricotta well; some people add an egg yolk when using commercial cheeses, but it is not necessary if you use homemade cheese or farmer’s cheese. Makes about 2 1/2 cups.

2 cups homemade fresh curd cheese or true farmer’s cheese (see below for how to make fresh cheese)
8 oz Philadelphia® cream cheese, softened
1 T good honey, preferably wildflower
1/8 tea pure vanilla extract

Add the fresh cheese, breaking it up loosely with a fork, or farmer’s cheese to the cream cheese and blend well. Stir in the honey and vanilla—you want only a hint of sweetness.

To make fresh curd cheese: Heat 2 qts of minimally pasteurized whole milk in a bowl in the microwave for 5-7 minutes, or until an instant read thermometer registers about 160F. Stir in ¼ cup cider vinegar; it will immediately form curds. Place a strainer, lined with cheesecloth or a coffee filter, into a large bowl. Ladle the majority of the curds into the lined strainer to avoid splashing, then pour in the rest of the curdy liquid. Let it drain for perhaps 10-15 minutes, until quite firm. You can save the liquid (whey) for use as your liquid when making bread, or discard it. Makes 2 cups.

Black and Blueberry Sauce

1 heaping cup blackberries
1 cup blueberries
¾ sugar
¾ cup water
1 tea fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Pinch salt
Few dashes cinnamon or mixed cinnamon/clove
2-3 tea cornstarch

Put the berries, lemon, spice, salt, and sugar over low heat, stirring gently, until the berries begin to exude their juice. Add the water and cook, allowing it to bubble but not boil hard, until the sugar is completely melted and the berries are sitting in a light syrup but are still whole. Mix 2 tea of cornstarch with a little cold water, add to the syrup, and stir gently, still on a soft bubble, until the mixture has a saucy consistency; if needed, add another teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with a little water and cook a bit longer. Remove from the heat and cool. May be frozen.

Crema (Homemade Sour Cream)

1 qt high-fat, barely pasteurized heavy cream
¼ cup good-quality buttermilk or natural plain yogurt with active cultures

Stir the buttermilk or yogurt into the cream in a glass jar and set it, covered, in a warm spot (on a gas stove is ideal). Leave it overnight; it should have thickened, but if not, leave it another 8 hours or more, then refrigerate, where it will further thicken to the consistency of sour cream, but will be lighter and creamier. Makes 1 qt.

Assembling, Cooking, and Serving

Place a crepe on a board, speckled side down. Place 2 tablespoons of filling in a neat column in the center of the crepe. Working from the side closest to your waist (bottom), fold the crepe up over the filling to the center, and fold the top down to meet it; try to enclose the filling without a gap. Then fold over the edge from the left, and roll toward the right, tucking the ends in well, until you have a neat package. Repeat with the remaining filling.

Lightly grease a griddle or heavy pan. Place the blintzes seam-side down and cook until lightly browned; turn and cook the other side, tipping the blintz up onto its sides to brown those as well if desired. Remove to a plate and garnish with the crema and black and blueberry sauce.

Constant Craving: Chinese

2010-08-22T15:38:00.001-04:00

It seems that August has been Anne month on the blog. My last two posts were about Anne’s cooking, and this one is too. A pleasure to eat, and a boon to me as I traveled back to Nashville then began the work of getting ready for another academic year. Classes start this coming week, and I have been preparing courses of another kind than I do in my kitchen, limiting my cooking to my own dinner. But I should be back into the kitchen next week—and meanwhile, you benefit, as I do, from the work of my old friend Anne.

Anne and I are obsessed about a lot of things when it comes to food—I think I’ve written before about our tendency to analyze everything that passes our lips when we are together—but we are obsessed about nothing so much as Chinese food. More than baking, although that’s close. And recently Anne seems to be joining me in my devotion to Mexican. But it seems that when we ask the question, “what should we make?” if we are getting together to cook for ourselves, we usually settle on Chinese. Over the nearly 25 years we’ve known each other we’ve had a number of amazing Chinese meals, from simple suppers to full-blown banquets.

One evening this summer we had these spring rolls and noodle pancake (a particular favorite of Anne’s). There were so many vegetables in season that it seemed a crime not to use them all, so Anne did. She made the rolls while I stood around handing her the skins and drinking wine, and then I fried them outside while she finished up her noodle cake. She arranged everything beautifully, liberally scattering the rolls with the beautiful scallions that are Anne’s version of parsley; she thinks everything is improved by scallions, and it is hard not to agree. We ate every excellent morsel. My fix for this coming academic year in Nashville, where there is not a decent Chinese meal to be had for love or money—except from one’s own kitchen, that is.

Second Annual Fish Fry

2010-08-15T10:11:00.001-04:00

Eating fish within hours of its being caught is similar to eating corn minutes after it is picked. Both have a taste and texture so fresh, sweet, tender, and pure that it is identifiably different from the same corn or fish eaten a short time later. So much so that, not being much of a fish fan, I rarely order it at a restaurant or buy it unless I am cooking for someone who is. But fish straight from the water is truly amazing—a different kettle of fish, I almost said. And if the fish has been fried—well, you know that a thing fried is always a wonderful thing.

My last evening in Little Compton before heading back to Nashville was spent eating such pristine, fried fish. Almost better, it was prepared by someone else, friend and fellow cook Anne: the perfect combination of good food and no work. It was caught by her husband and brothers and their kids, and yes, that striped bass in the photo that looks like a trophy is one of the actual fish, digitally captured by Anne’s father Frank Parker of Bookstand World fame. In fact, the photos here are a mix of mine and Frank’s. There was flounder, too.

The fish was dredged in a flour/cornmeal mix and simply fried, served with homemade tartar sauce, corn on the cob, a perfect lettuce salad, and cole slaw. We had divine stuffed squash blossoms with tomato sauce to start. Every component of the meal was local and new. I made the cole slaw, from a Walker’s cabbage, Karla’s carrots, and the Fruit Lady’s apples. There was a very good cake and good wine. The evening was lovely, winding down around the fire pit, a glowing memory of summer to tide me over ‘til next year.

LCS

LCS means Little Compton Slaw or Local Cole Slaw, whichever you like. I make my cole slaw similar to my potato salad, with the addition of mustard, celery seed, and buttermilk instead of cream; directions are general and proportions are approximate and to taste. I added the apples at Anne’s request; just leave them out if you don’t have or want them.

1 Savoy cabbage, outer leaves removed, cored, and finely sliced with a knife
2 or 3 large carrots, 3 or 4 times more if they are little new ones, peeled and grated
1-2 T very finely minced onion
2-3 small tart apples, peeled and grated (optional)
2 cups homemade mayonnaise or Hellman’s® only
1 T sour cherry cider vinegar from the pickled sour cherries or cider vinegar
Few small splashes of buttermilk
2 tea Grey Poupon® Dijon mustard
1-2 tea Celery seed
Salt, freshly ground pepper

General notes: Cut the cabbage in half with a large, heavy cleaver or chef’s knife; be careful. Slice finely crosswise, preferably with a Japanese Usuba or a very sharp chef’s knife. Your onion (and apple if used) should be so fine that it disappears. This cole slaw’s outstanding flavor is achieved through the right balance of seasoning, which is onion; vinegar; mustard, celery seed , salt, and pepper. Start with less, add more to taste. It should be fresh and tangy, but not sharp or sour; don’t overdo, particularly on the vinegar, mustard, and celery seed, none of which should be pronounced. It should be creamy but not watery, so be cautious with the buttermilk and use only very fresh onions and apples, and pat them and your carrots with a paper towel before grating. Absolutely simple, but everybody loves it.

Karla’s Peaches, Anne’s Kitchen

2010-08-08T16:31:00.001-04:00

The local peaches are in from Young Farm. They are amazingly good, with the kind of all-too-rare correct texture that makes even me, who generally prefers her stone fruit cooked, happy to eat them raw and dripping. But of course, like all fruit, they are wonderful cooked with a little sugar, and I am very fond of them with pound cake.

In the process of cleaning out my freezer in Little Compton, I came across a single chicken breast, and a little rye bread that I had made this summer. I had two peaches on the counter, so I decided I would make a last lunch for Carlton with it all before I left. I toasted the bread and pan-grilled the chicken; peeled and sliced the peaches; and sautéed them in some butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper, and a splash of lemon. I topped the chicken crostini with the peaches and walked them over to Carlton with a half-full bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. We had a very nice chat and I had a needed break from packing.

My friend Anne loves Karla’s peaches as well. They were part of her Southern ladies’ luncheon a few years ago, and of course, we both like peach pie when the spice and thickening are just so. Peaches are made for preserving, and Anne told me that when she looked at a peach the other day she thought it was so beautiful that she decided to make some jam and leave the skin on. I do that when I make jam with local cherry tomatoes, so this made perfect sense to me. Here are Ann’s iphone photos, which I fooled with a bit, and how she made her chunky preserve. As she said, all pink and yellow and lovely.

Ann’s Peach Preserve

6 cups sliced and roughly chopped peaches
3 cups sugar
¼ vanilla bean (the long ones), split and scraped

Mix and boil, skimming, until it reaches about 220 F.

Already, the Apples—and Leaving

2010-08-01T18:08:00.002-04:00

There are several faithful, or fateful, signs of waning summer. One that never ceases to catch me off guard is the dusky lilac-pink of Joe Pye-weed looming, portent-like, by the side of the road—how is it that something so large and attention-demanding can rise up so suddenly, seemingly overnight? The Queen Anne’s Lace, far more quiet, just as if it had been there all along and you had been too fool to notice.

At my old house I could measure the pace of summer on my early morning walks down the farm road behind my house, counting the season from wild iris to berries, to thistle and goldenrod and sunflowers, to Queen Anne’s Lace, Joe Pye-weed, and rose hips. Now I rely more on the farmstands to tell me where we are in the swift gauntlet of summer, to signal me with a sign in the form of a red-ripened pepper or an early apple. The peppers are still to come, but the heirloom Yellow Transparents are in, a steal at $1.00 per bag, summer on fire sale to make room for fall.

The air has changed. Nights are cooler, and the sky at evening has a wistful look, its radiance faded from the intensity of just a few weeks ago, its colors muted as if to more age-appropriate hues. In the morning when I take my coffee outside, the sun’s slant barely reaches the table top, quitting its old job of cup warmer, and telling me to trade in my hat for a sweater. Even the sounds are different. They seem to say, it’s time to go.

Country Apple Cake

I like the light texture and unusual flavor of this moist cake made with whole wheat flour. Like one of our family favorites, Dutch Apple Cake, it is homespun but special. You can also make it with dried apples or pears. Serves 8.

3 whole eggs
3 eggs, separated
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar (preferably pure can sugar)
1 tea baking powder
½ cup lard, softened
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
Pinch salt
2 small apples (about 1 ½ cups), diced, or same amount of dried fruit
Additional T of sugar

Brown sugar or 10x for dusting
Heavy cream and/or fruit for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and coat with sugar a 9” pan, preferably springform.

Beat the eggs, egg yolks, and sugar together until light. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix until combined; beat in the lard and the butter.

Peel and roughly chop the apples into about ¼ dice; stir them into the batter.

In a small bowl beat the 3 egg whites til foamy; add the additional tablespoon of sugar and continue beating to stiff peaks. Fold gently into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 45 minutes. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before releasing from the pan to cool to warm room temperature. Serve with fruit or just with a dusting of light brown sugar or confectioner’s sugar, perhaps some heavy cream.

Cornmeal: Where the North and South Lay Down Their Arms and Embrace

2010-07-24T10:46:00.001-04:00

OK, as a writer, I know that’s a mixed metaphor, or at least a trick with homonyms. But as someone who divides her time (no pun intended) between the True North and the Deep South, who is a RI Yankee in Jefferson Davis’s court, and is all too aware of the political, religious, and cultural differences, it is nice to have something on which we can agree. Cornmeal is that something.

Rachel, one of my most loyal readers—and eloquent commenters—recently bestowed upon me an honorary G.R.I.T.S. designation, which I humbly accept. For you Yankee readers who, like me, had no idea what this meant when I first heard the acronym, it means Girl Raised in the South. This, apparently, is akin to a secret society, is a high honor, and may even entail ancient rituals into which, if so, I hope to be initiated. There might even be hazing: I suspect that this might include baptismal dunking in buttermilk or partially set Jell-o®, force-feeding of fried chicken, memorization and recitation of the methodology, highly refined over generations, for making the men think they are in god-like charge while the women actually control everything and do whatever they want (a practice for which I may be constitutionally unsuited, but that fascinates nevertheless), and marathon shopping in endless strip malls containing surprisingly exclusive boutiques. Sounds like fun.

In any case, neither true Yankees nor Southerners would be caught dead using anything but stone-ground cornmeal—here in Rhode Island we even have our own revered strain of corn—and we both use it for everything from breading and breads and sweet cakes and some variant of jonnycake to our own forms of mush, which Southerners call grits. And we both mix the latter with cheese, a meltingly good, somewhat decadent, combination. Here, cornmeal is cooked to a polenta-like stage, fried up, and topped with whatever you may please.

Little Cornmeal-Cheese Cakes

You can serve these as cocktail appetizers (topped with, for example, a little chopped tomato sautéed with pancetta; chopped marinated roasted red peppers; roasted figs and onions; or a little corn and tomato cooked in cream), or for breakfast with bacon. Leftovers reheat acceptably in the microwave. Serves3- 4.

1 cup boiling water
½ cup stone-ground yellow or white cornmeal
½ tea salt
½ cup whole milk
1 cup store cheese (good-quality aged cheddar), grated or cut in chunks

Flour for dusting
Butter and oil for frying

Mix the cornmeal with the milk. Bring the water to the boil with the salt; add the cornmeal mixture, stirring, and let it boil and bubble for about 5 minutes, stirring as needed so it does not scorch. It will have a pasty consistency. Cover and steam on low or over boiling water for a few hours, or steam it in a microwave. When quite stiff and pulling away from the pan, remove and add the cheese, stirring until melted. Grease 6 or 8 compartments of a muffin pan and divide the mixture among them, pressing it down evenly with the back of a spoon. Chill for a few hours or overnight. Turn out and let sit a bit to take the chill off. Flour lightly, and sauté in a mixture of butter and oil until golden brown, turning once. You may keep them in a warm oven. Serve while hot.

Pickin’ Time II: Blueberries

2010-07-16T11:53:00.001-04:00

We have all been gathering, baking, and putting things by (preserving) to beat the band, as when the fruit is in, there truly is no tomorrow: it will be gone if you don’t use it now. So the Fourth was picking time not only for cherries, but for blueberries, those grown by my friend Linda’s husband Bob, also my source for striped bass.

Linda and Bob were out house-hunting when I went over to pick berries to make dessert for a barbecue at their house—excellent ribs and dogs, supplemented by my potato salad—to celebrate the Fourth. The blueberry patch was neatly netted against the birds. And me, as it turned out: I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get in. I was beginning to worry that I was in fact overeducated, and not the practical, competent, can-do sort of girl that I liked to think of myself as, when I figured out the simple and ingenious system Bob had rigged. It took me about 10 minutes of walking around, pulling on the netting, and testing the staples (immovable) to discover a cord, a sort of soft version of a Colonial door bar, strung across one side and knotted to nestle into eye-hooks. I undid that, but the opening it produced was too small; probably I could squeeze through, but surely 6’3” Bob could not get in this? Hunting more, I found a piece of molding down lower that fitted into nails on either side and lifted easily away and up, giving access.

With the castle breached, I faced another problem: there seemed to be very few ripe berries. Had they just picked the night before, I wondered? Whatever the reason, I thought I’d be lucky to get a cup or at best two—not enough for a pie, I thought, but perhaps I could forage enough for a simple cobbler. Pushing on down the rows, it was not until I went around to the other side—the shady side that blueberries prefer, I later learned--that I found one bush that was just bursting with blue. I began to pick, discovering something I had quite forgotten: blueberry picking is back-breaking work. You have to lean over, and delve deep into the bushes in that crooked pose. But my labor was rewarded with a generous bowlful of perfectly ripe (I picked only the most uniformly blue) fruit. Yes, enough for a pie.

Blueberry Pie

Bob’s blueberries this year were delicious, juicy and spicy as they should be. Serves 6-8.

9” pie plate
Pastry for 2-crust pie, divided in two: my recipe for pastry for fruit pies is here. It’s been unusually muggy in LC; use less water if it’s muggy where you are too; start with 3 T and work your way up as needed.

5 cups blueberries, picked over but not washed
Scant (about 7/8) cup sugar
½ tea mixed cardamom and cinnamon, a little more to taste but don’t overdo
1 tea freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 T flour
2 T cornstarch
Pinch salt
2 T unsalted butter, melted

Heat the oven to 375 F.

Roll out half the pastry into a circle of about 13” and fit it into the pie plate, smoothing it along the bottom and leaving any overhang. Put in the refrigerator to cool.

Prepare the filling by gently folding the sugar, spice, salt, lemon juice, and starches into the berries using your hand. Add the melted butter and toss lightly, with your hand.

Roll the remaining pastry out to 12” and, using your eye to judge or a ruler, cut it into 1” strips with a very sharp knife or pastry wheel. Scrape the filling gently into the pan, evening it out. Weave a lattice over the filling with the strips. Trim the bottom and top pastry strips as needed to within 1” the rim of the pan; turn both under together, and flute to seal. You can use any left-over scraps to cut decorations if you want.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until the juices bubble up and the crust is golden. If the crust begins to darken too much before the pie is done, protect it with a pie protector or a few strips of foil loosely curved around the pan.

Let cool completely before cutting. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Pickin’ Time I: Sour Cherries

2010-07-10T09:06:00.001-04:00

I got a call around 8:00 on the Fourth of July. It was Dick Hart, the fruit lady’s husband, asking if I wanted to come pick cherries. In my sour-cherry-obsessed world, this is what is known as a rhetorical question (of course I want to pick!). He told me that he and his wife had picked about 8 quarts the night before, pitted, and frozen them. Best to get them before the birds carried them all away (he hadn’t put up a net this year). Why didn’t I come over around 9:30? Whatever you say.

An already perfect Fourth had become more perfect still. Arriving at the farm, we had the usual discussion on the treacherous subject of how much I wanted. I had learned well that underbidding was safest. A quart was expected, three would be seen as pushy. Would two quarts be all right? As it turned out, yes and then some. While dropping my pickings into my can on a string, Dick brought me some quart baskets, and encouraged me to pile them high. I ended up with about 5 pounds, or two and half quarts, plus an overflowing cup of currants, for $13.00.

An embarrassment of riches is its own kind of quandary. What to make? It was hot, hot, hot, not the best day for preserving, but I would have to be a fool not to make my favorite sour cherry preserves, which sustain me through the winter with not only memories of summer in Little Compton but also a taste pleasure, spooned over good vanilla ice cream, that is a kind of happiness. They took forever to gel in that relentless humidity, but they eventually did, and they are wonderful. I also decided to make the other sour-cherry preserve that I really like to have on hand, some pickled sweet-sour cherries; they are marinating away as we speak, the vinegar having been poured off and bottled. I had been fortunate enough to have had a goodly share of cherry pie, thanks primarily to Anne, over several days, so thought I’d do something different. I settled on a sour cherry upside-down cake, a kind of experiment. It came out pretty well.

That about did it for my pickings. But when I was leaving the Hart Farm that day, Mr. Hart suggested that there might be more—that they would see how they went after he and his wife and some other unnamed person got some, and that we might divide up what remained. When the call comes, I’ll be ready.

Sour Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Upside-down cake is best served while it is still warm from the oven. It can be reheated briefly in the microwave if there is any left over. You can, of course, make this with almost any other fruit. Serves 9 (squares) or 8 (wedges).

For the caramel layer

3 T unsalted butter
¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
¼ tea cardamom

Generous pint of pitted sour cherries

For the cake

4 T unsalted butter
4 T lard
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tea vanilla
1 ½ cups a-p flour
1 ½ tea baking powder
¼ tea salt
½ cup buttermilk

Heavy cream or ice cream for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Lightly spray an 8” square or 9” cake pan with Pam. Place the 3 T butter, the brown sugar, and the cardamom in the pan on the stove. Melt, stirring together, until the mixture just bubbles. Remove from the heat. While it cools, make the cake batter.

Cream the butter, lard, and sugar; beat in the eggs and vanilla with a wooden spoon. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to the creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and stirring until just combined.

Arrange the cherries, pitted side up (good side down) very close together on the caramel (it may be firm—that is OK). If you use a square pan, arrange them all around the outside edges, then work your way into the center in smaller squares; if you use a round pan, arrange them in concentric circles.

Scrape the batter over the cherries, smoothing it gently and evenly into the corners and along the surface. Bake for about 45 minutes. It will be golden brown; the sides will begin to pull away from the pan; and the center will spring back to your touch. Remove and cool on a rack for 15-20 minutes.

Cover the pan with a platter or plate larger than pan and, grasping both firmly with potholders or a towel, turn over quickly and confidently. Serve immediately with good, unhomogenized heavy cream poured over, or with vanilla ice cream.

Frying: Frittered Feast

2010-07-03T17:54:00.001-04:00

One of the things that people either love or hate about me is that I am a person of strong convictions. I have principles that underlie my judging and deciding, and that guide me in all things. Food is no exception. And really, what could be more subject to nuanced judgment than the question of what is the proper thing to eat? To serve?

A principle that I live by, and that has been adopted by and become somewhat of a joke among my friends, is that “you must have something fried” in order to call an eating occasion a party. Otherwise it’s just supper, or a few friends over. A cocktail party must have one or two items (out of 6 or 8) that are deep-fried. A large dinner party—let’s say, 10 or more—must have something fried: appetizer, main course, side, dessert—your choice. For some paradoxical reason, the most simple, down-home of all cooking methods is also one of the most special and even elegant. Frying is festive, and can be, culinarily speaking, low- or high-brow.

Now, an entire fried meal is something else altogether. It is pure indulgence. It is sublime excess. It is summer on a plate. And as we all know, this is high summer.

So the other night we fried. The impetus began with a lament about the general inability to get good onion rings anymore; apparently, it is too much trouble for most so-called restaurants to cut up a few onions, dip them in a simple batter, and lower them into a fryer. There are estimable old-time hold-outs, including the Common Lunch in Little Compton, Nooley’s in Nashville, Pal’s Cabin in West Orange, NJ, among my own haunts. I’m sure, and fervently hope, you have yours. But what is really galling here in New England is the disappearance of real onion rings (and real French fries) at the fried fish shacks, the so-called temples of fried food. I’ll name names. Evelyn’s. Flo’s. Aunt Carries. Champlin’s. Etc. They’re frying the fish and shellfish, and doing a very good job with it. But putting that pristine, golden-encrusted fish or clams next to a sorry frozen fry or ring defies logic. It’s sacrilege. It’s self-destructive. I don’t go anymore.

OK, back to the meal. We had little golden puffs of cheese to start. Sea scallops caught 30 or 40 miles off the coast of New Bedford. And the raison d'être, onion rings. Accompanied by homemade tartar sauce, malt vinegar (this is New England, after all), lemon, ketchup. Cole slaw prepared by my friend Mary, and apricot and sour cherry pies prepared by Anne. It was incredibly windy, so we ate inside. Ideally, fried food of the low sort, of which this was, should be eaten outside. But you can’t always have everything.

Frying is easy, if a bit messy when you do it for a crowd. Its key is fat at the correct temperature, first and foremost. This ensures the golden, crisp seal to the tender, moist but fully cooked interior of whatever you are making. Most items are fried at a temperature of 350-375 F. Batters or breadings are simple—as simple as plain flour if you want. Salt as the food comes out of the fryer, unless you are holding it briefly in a warm oven (which you can if you must), in which case I recommend salting right before serving.

You can fry without a thermometer, learning to judge the fat temperature through various tests like frying a cube of bread til golden in one minute, or visually recognizing the shimmer of heat at certain temperatures before it smokes, or using the palm of your hand to estimate as you would an oven or grill. This is what I had to do for the cheese puffs and scallops, sliding the pan around to control the temperature, as I forgot to bring my thermometer with me to Little Compton. But a thermometer is more reliable, and safer. I recently gave my incomparable Betty-G Cooker-Fryer away for the White Elephant table at the local church fair. The Betty-G, essentially a large pot with a big basket insert and a thermostat—was basic and functional. But it was bulky, and I was moving, and no longer had room for it. A pity, as I had it for 33 years and it had been a loyal workhorse, especially considering that I paid perhaps $15 for it. But the parting of me and my Betty-G allows me to drive home the point that you can fry in anything: a deep cast iron frying pan, a stainless steel or aluminum saucepan, or a Dutch oven on the stove are all fine, provided your pan is heavy, has high sides, is securely flat-bottomed, and well-balanced. Also serviceable is a deep chicken fryer, both the electric kind with a thermostat and the kind that sits on the stove. You don’t need a basket, just a nice sturdy long-handled slotted spoon or Chinese wire skimmer. Most fryers for the home these days are overpriced contraptions with small capacities, and I would not bother with them.

What type of oil? It depends on what you are making, how much you feel like splurging (spending more is often economical in its own way), and how you feel about animal fats. I happen to like them. So: Chinese food is usually fried in peanut oil, which is generally considered a good all-purpose frying oil, if an expensive one, because of its relatively high smoking point, but which I tend to use primarily for Chinese. For doughnuts and dessert fritters with fruit I like lard. For fries with freshly dug potatoes, olive oil or fat from a goose or duck or beef, often combined with some other vegetable oil. For other vegetables (e.g., squash blossoms or zucchini or onions), vegetable oil such as corn or canola, or olive oil or a combination. For fish, a clean-tasting light vegetable oil or corn oil. For Mexican things, corn oil or lard. We cooked the onion rings and scallops in corn oil and the cheese fritters in a combination of olive and corn oil.

Depending on what you are cooking, you will need 4-6” of oil; the volume of oil you will need will depend on the diameter of your frying vessel, but I recommend having a gallon or two on hand during frying season to accommodate all needs, and that you never fry with less than about 5 cups of oil. (Unless, of course, like me, you are doing small-batch appetizer frying for one in a little heavy 1-qt saucepan, which I do pretty often; don’t hesitate to fry yourself up two or three wonton.) For onion rings, small appetizers like the cheese puffs, most vegetables including fries, shrimp and small scallops, 4” is enough, sometimes 3” for little, lightweight things. More depth is needed for whole pieces of chicken or other heavier, dense items. Leave a minimum of 3” of head space for displacement, more for heavier items or large capacities. Do not overcrowd the pan, both for safety and for proper frying. Too much in the pan will lower the temperature dramatically, increasing absorption of fat and cooking time, which will make your food soggy. Turn the food with your skimmer or a long-handled fork or curved spatula to ensure an even, golden crust.

Another key to successful frying, besides temperature and the right amount of food in the right amount of oil, is organization. Prep the food to be cooked according to directions, paying particular attention to consistent size. Lay out the sequence in which you will do things in advance. For example, if the recipe calls for flouring, egg wash, then breading, have these three things set up in a row, the flour and breading on wax paper or in bags, the wash between them in a dish or bowl. On the far right, closest but not too close to the fryer, your layers of paper towels for draining. If you are putting things into a warm oven for holding, you can put the towels on a sheet pan; for delicate things, I put them on a rack in the pan. If you are serving a very casual meal, passing food as it comes out of the fryer, have your plate or platter at hand, covered with a napkin, to which it can be immediately transferred after the first quick draining and salting.

With frying as with lots of cooking, safety is a matter of preparedness and prudence. When frying on the stove, place the pan on a back burner and be sure the pan size fully covers the burner it sits on. When frying outside, place your fryer well away from a traffic area; always keep the kids and clueless adults out of the kitchen or away from where you are working. Keep a large lid handy (or a cookie sheet), and if you ever have a flare-up, put the lid on the fryer and carefully slide the pot to another area of the stove until it subsides. Never pour water on a grease fire. Smother it or, if it gets out of hand, use your kitchen fire extinguisher (you do have one, right?). But if you are careful and follow the safety rules, you will have no problem. I never cover a fryer while the food is cooking. Some say it helps control the temperature or is safer. I say it reduces crispness and that safety is as safety does. If you use a heavy, well-balanced pan; don’t overfill your pan; watch the temperature; lower food in gently to prevent splashing; have a lid nearby; use a sturdy long handled slotted spoon or skimmer; use a flexible small pot holder, like silicone, or small folded towel to handle the pot (don’t let anything drag), you will be fine.

The weather is lovely for this Fourth of July. Frying outdoors is the fat-lover’s version of grilling. How about some onion rings with those burgers and dogs?

Onion Rings Three Ways

These three methods build on each other to produce excellent versions, from very delicate to heavier coating, of crisp, shattery, battered onion rings. Try them all and see which you prefer. If you can decide. Method 3 is my all-purpose frying batter, sometimes with the addition of cornmeal, but I am marginally inclined toward one of the others for rings. Directions are general and will serve about 4 as a side dish or appetizer. Adjust according to the number of people you are serving.

2 very large Spanish onions, peeled and sliced into ½” slices. Slice thicker if you like, or a little thinner, but not too thin. Have extra onions on hand.

Vegetable oil of your choice, heated to about 365 F.

Method 1

1 quart buttermilk
¼ tea Tabasco, or to taste
¼ tea salt

1 cup bread or all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
½ tea baking powder (optional)
½ tea salt

Mix the buttermilk, Tabasco, and salt; submerge the onions, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours. Mix the flour, cornstarch, and salt. Remove the rings from the buttermilk and dredge in the flour mixture. Fry until golden. Salt.

Method 2

The above flour mixture
12 oz lager or club soda, approximately
Freshly ground pepper (optional)

Stir the beer or club soda into the flour mixture until it is the consistency of a thin wallpaper paste (not real appetizing, but that’s how I would describe it). Set aside for 15 minutes or so. Dip the onions in the batter until well-coated. Fry until golden. Salt.

Method 3

The above simple beer batter (method 2)
1 egg, separated

Stir the egg yolk into the beer batter. In a small bowl, beat the egg white to soft, shiny peaks—stiff but not dry. Fold gently into the batter. Dip the onions in the batter until well-coated. Fry until golden. Salt.

Early Raspberries

2010-06-26T15:44:00.002-04:00

I’ve been considering a revision to Mark Twain’s oft-repeated words about New England weather—to paraphrase, if you don’t like it, just wait a minute. A little arrogant, I know, but surely anyone in New England would agree to a change, or at least an alternate version, of “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a year.” Last summer was an unmitigated disaster for everyone from farmers to merchants and restaurants and vacationers. It rained. It was cold. And it never stopped. We went from winter to winter with scarcely a break, with only the calendar to tell us what season it was. This year is its polar (ha) opposite: sunny, warm, already bursting with bounty. Everything is early.

My father, trained as an Air Force pilot in World War II, used to look up at the sky and say things like, “It’s going to clear in an hour” when it was deeply and threateningly gray, or “it’s going to rain at around 3:00” when it was sunny and pleasant. I have my own version of that predictive skill. I can tell, based on spring weather, what summer is going to be like, and based on early summer weather, what fall will be like, and by late summer, what winter will be like. Actually, it’s not skill; it’s the product of close observation, my more than 40 years of living in New England and being someone who is very sensitive to weather (simply put: thrive in summer, hibernate in winter).

Two scenarios present themselves at this moment in time. One, and currently what I consider to be most likely, is that “summer,” weather-wise, will come to a close by mid-August, when it will turn so-called unseasonably cool and rainy, a harbinger for a not-so-nice fall and a hard winter. Always hopeful, however, there is the possibility that our present glorious weather will persist through the summer, a good sign for a nice fall and mild winter—and extended agricultural bounty until the end of October. We’ll know soon enough.

Either way, I kind of win, weather-wise, because I will be departing in August. Meanwhile, the raspberries are in. (The strawberries, which improved over the weeks as the weather became dry and sunny, are in their final picking.) The currants are here, and the gooseberries, and, amazingly, the first sour cherries. The Harts of fruit lady fame say that even the blueberries are ripening way ahead of schedule.

One might well fear that this sudden and rapid abundance will be followed by a long stretch of nothing before the peaches and apples come in. But compared to last year, when all we had was nothing, I’ll take that. And doesn’t that mean the peaches and apples could be early too? This could be my best summer yet.

Just a prediction.

Raspberries with Pourable Tapioca Cream

It is hard to do anything else with the first raspberries than eat them out of hand. But this old-fashioned dessert treats them lightly and maintains their fresh state. Good for breakfast, too. Serves 4.

Tapioca Cream

2 cups milk (2% is OK)
1 generous T instant tapioca
Pinch salt
1 egg, separated
¼ cup, scant, pure cane sugar
¼ tea vanilla

Fresh raspberries or other juicy fresh fruit such as strawberries or peaches

Scald the milk; add the tapioca and salt and cook, stirring, over medium heat for 15 minutes. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolk with the sugar. Stir a few tablespoons of the milk- tapioca mixture into the egg and sugar, then stir the entire egg-sugar mixture back into the pan of milk-tapioca. Bring to a low boil and cook, stirring, for a minute or so, until it begins to thicken. Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl, and add the vanilla. Beat the egg white stiff and fold into the tapioca until completely incorporated but still airy. Chill. Pour the cream over raspberries or other juicy summer fruit, or layer in a coupe or wine glass. Leftovers may be refrigerated; just stir lightly to reincorporate any liquid that has settled.

P.S. Anne just brought me a piece of sour cherry pie for my breakfast. Life is good.

Strawberry Fields—Not Forever II

2010-06-20T09:38:00.001-04:00

Did I mention that strawberries, indeed berries of all kinds, cry out to be matched with corn? Strawberries are very nice as an accompaniment to this little cake, a plain, slightly sweet, eminently sliceable little summer dessert. This has the added benefit of being gluten-free and has no leavening aside from beaten egg whites. Made with stoneground Rhode Island jonnycake cornmeal, it has a satisfying bite and could not be more local. For a finer texture, use regular yellow cornmeal.

Little Corn Cake

1 cup RI jonnycake cornmeal or yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tea salt
3 eggs, separated
1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Butter a 6” cake pan, preferably aluminum. Line with wax paper and butter or spray with Pam.

Combine half the cornmeal with the sugar and salt; make a little well in the center and drop in the egg yolks. Slowly add the melted butter, stirring to incorporate until all is absorbed. Add the rest of the cornmeal. Beat the egg whites until stiff and shiny, and fold into the batter. Pour into the buttered pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until brown and a skewer comes out clean. It should be very brown, and will look sort of like a big Thomas’s corn toastie (don’t let it get as dark around the edge as in the photo; I don’t have the right pan with me). Turn out onto a rack to cool, and cut into thin slices, and serve with strawberries or other fresh fruit, and a little Vin Santo or other light dessert wine.

Strawberry Fields—Not Forever I

2010-06-20T09:32:00.001-04:00

Nothing lasts forever. For example, I am back in Little Compton (hurrah!) and you can bet that the time will fly and I will be headed back to dreaded Nashville well before the tomatoes hit their glorious peak in September. And the local Little Compton strawberries are here—it is June, after all—and those will soon be gone.

But fleeting pleasures are to be savored, so I am already deep into rural, coastal life and into the strawberries. I’ve made a small batch of strawberry jam, eaten a bunch of berries out of hand, used them to make the really nice Welcome to LC cocktail below, and garnished lots of stuff—cereal, salad, cake. And I’ve only been here four days. Maybe it’s just as well that strawberry fields are not forever. On to the blueberries!—next month.

Welcome to LC Cocktail

I adore Campari in the summer; it is remarkably refreshing on a hot day (we are in the 90’s this weekend) garnished with soda and lime, and it is a fabulous match with orange. This cocktail combines all. Serves 1.

Strawberry Syrup

1 ½ cups sliced strawberries
½ cup pure cane sugar or regular sugar
½ cup water
¼ cup Campari (optional)

Put everything together into a saucepan, bring to a boil, and boil for two or three minutes, chopping the strawberries with the edge of a wooden spoon. Remove from the heat and let sit until it is clear and settled, about 5 minutes. Strain, pressing down with the back of the spoon but not so hard that you force the seeds through. Makes about 1 cup.

The Cocktail

1 ½ oz Campari
¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
3 T strawberry syrup
3 oz, approx., brut rosé champagne or club soda
1 small sliced strawberry

Stir the first three ingredients in a cocktail shaker or jar with ice until cold. Strain into an 8-oz capacity glass. Top with champagne or club soda and garnish with strawberries and a slice of lime.

Last Class: Food for Students

2010-05-31T21:24:00.001-04:00

I am astonished to be posting for the first time without photos and a recipe, but also in a small way consider it a personal breakthrough for having transcended guilt over not doing everything, and also determined to be as reliably posting every week as I was for years. So. A post with no photos, but still, something. And it is, at least, about food.

At the end of every semester, I make a meal for whichever of my graduate classes falls on the last day of term. I of course did something different every time, until enough students who had taken classes with me previously started asking for the same thing again. That thing was: pulled pork with the fixins’: homemade barbecue sauce, my inimitable cole slaw (nothing, really, but for some reason the people who don’t like cole slaw love it), homemade rolls, pound cake—sometimes pimiento cheese to start. I am, after all, in Nashville during the academic year.

I teach my last class before leaving for Little Compton on Thursday, and I am way too busy to cook tonight (OK, I made a piece of grilled chicken and some lemon-parmesan rice, but that’s not blog-worthy). But nevertheless, I am thinking about what I can make for the students for lunch on the last day of class. Something simple, that will not take too long. I am determined not to do the pulled pork again, despite the pleas. But most of all—and those of you who know me will know the horror with which I say this—I am trying to think of something that can be refrigerated. Without being ruined, that is.

This rules out chicken salad--completely. Quiche. Potato salad. Grilled lamb or flank steak. Enchiladas. Shrimp. OK, pretty much everything worth eating. What does one make when it must be done the night before and not served until Noon the next day, after teaching since 9:30 in the morning?

I am going to go for the notion that the last thing eaten will be the most remembered, and make my friend Trina’s Greek Lemon Nut Cake. Deceptively simple and delicious. But for the main event? Still struggling. Leaning toward a pasta salad of some sort, even though they are plebeian and I never really enjoy them (because they are, well, refrigerated). Some grilled red peppers, onion, and radicchio, maybe some asparagus, some grilled chicken, lots of olive oil and lemon and parsley and parm, perhaps a little smoked country ham and some nuts. At least it’s do-able under the circumstances. I content myself with the knowledge that the students will, for the most part, not know the difference from refrigerated chicken or not.

Or maybe I should just do the pulled pork?

Red Romaine: Bloody Caesar

2010-05-23T23:51:00.001-04:00

It’s hot, hot, hot here—still 82 degrees at 10:00 at night, after a blistering 90s earlier today. Not complaining: I love the heat. But when it came time to turn on the grill to cook my pork tenderloin, I decided I just wasn’t that hungry. I was planning to make a salad anyway, but decided to make it my meal. One of the very best stand-alone salads, in my opinion, is a Caesar salad. It’s got protein. It’s filling. It’s got lemon and garlic. It’s tangy and delicious. And it’s finger food. My favorite way to eat.

OK, I may have just lost you at the finger food part. Yes, Caesar salad can, in fact was meant to be, eaten without utensils. You can dunk the whole leaves into the dressing, like giant crudités. Or you can do what I do—at least when I’m alone—and dress the leaves, then pick them up and eat them. It’s a bit messy, like eating ribs or something, but only a bit. And it’s very satisfying.

There is very, very nice red romaine lettuce from California available now. We’ll have our own within the month, but for now, imported will do.

Bloody Caesar Salad

I mix this is in a lasagna plan so the leaves don’t get bruised. Serve it in individual flat bowls or small oval platters. Use only good quality bread for the croutons, or skip them. Serves 2.

8-10 perfect leaves of red romaine or romaine, washed, dried, and chilled
1 clove garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, placed in a glass measure
Enough lemon or lime juice to reach the ½ cup mark when added to the oil
1 large egg, beaten
½ tea salt
8 or more twists of the pepper mill
½ cup freshly grated parmesan

Homemade croutons—sliced French bread, salted, peppered, and toasted

Add the garlic, salt, and pepper to the oil and stir; set aside for about an hour.

Just before serving, toss the lettuce leaves with the egg in a lasagna pan or other large shallow dish. Add the lemon/line juice to the oil/garlic mixture and whisk to emulsify; remove the garlic and pour the dressing over the coated lettuce and toss well; taste for seasoning. Lift the leaves out, shaking them a bit, and place them in the serving bowls. Garnish with a toasted crouton or two; you can toss them briefly in any dressing remaining in the lasagna pan if you like. Generously sprinkle the salad with the parmesan, about ¼ cup for each serving. Theoretically, of course, you could mix the egg, the vinaigrette, and the cheese all together and toss it with the leaves. I just like it this way.

Asparagus for Supper

2010-05-16T21:30:00.001-04:00

May is asparagus month. Get it while you can.

But dare I say it? Asparagus is not one of my favorites. I do like the looks of asparagus, though. I like its pointy little crowns, its combination of green and purple, set off by a purple rubber band holding the spears into a bouquet of not-too-thin, not-too-fat, spears. I like the little thorns that are not thorns, more like triangular petals. I like their presence on a platter, garnished with egg or red peppers, or fencing a big steak; they are a good accent, like a nice bag or pair of shoes. Food cuteness, or sexiness, or color, or luster, is always important to me, and can compensate enough for the meh taste that I will eat it. At least, occasionally and when, like now, it is at its peak.

Looks, of course, will only take you so far. Asparagus has a dull personality—always the same, not very versatile. I’ve learned not to expect too much from it. If I am going to eat asparagus—not too often—it needs to be quickly and simply cooked; it’s just grass, isn’t? OK, that’s unfair. But just as well that the season is short. I’ll cook it now, in honor of the novelty and its looks. By the time boredom sets in, it will be gone.

Browned Buttered Breadcrumb Asparagus Omelet

Buttered breadcrumbs improve everything. Serves 1.

7 or 8 small asparagus spears, broken off so that they are about 5-6” long
½ cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 very small clove garlic (from the inner bulb), crushed
2 tea unsalted butter plus 1 tea more
1 tea olive oil
1 T, generous, freshly grated parmesan
2 large eggs, beaten with 1 T milk or cream
Salt and pepper

Melt the 2 tea butter and the olive oil in a small (9”) pan until hot. Add the asparagus and cook over high heat, tossing around with tongs, for a minute or two. Add the bread crumbs and the crushed garlic and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the crumbs are brown and have dried out a bit but are still moist. Salt and pepper to taste near the end of cooking, and remove to a plate. Add the parmesan and toss.

Wipe out the pan, and melt the other teaspoon of butter over medium heat until sizzling. Pour in the eggs, lightly salt and pepper, and cook, without stirring, until mostly set, lifting the edges and tilting the pan as needed to cook all the egg evenly. Place the asparagus and about half the crumbs into the center of the omelet and fold the edges over. Remove and scatter the remaining crumbs on top.

Celebrate With Strawberries: Mother’s Day, and LCM 3rd Anniversary

2010-05-09T16:24:00.001-04:00

It is Mother’s Day, and as typical since I began spending the academic year in Nashville, I am alone in my kitchen, without my son, who is a thousand miles away in New York, to cook for. Now, I know that most people don’t want to cook on Mother’s Day, but being in the kitchen is my idea of relaxing. And cooking for my son…well, that’s the best.

It is also the third anniversary of Little Compton Mornings this weekend. Looking back on my first anniversary post, I feel the way I suppose most mothers do from time to time: that they have, in some way, failed their offspring. Since moving to Nashville during the academic year, I have been less attentive to my blog-child than I would have liked, and feel guilty and neglectful. Or perhaps it is just that my blog has been going through the terrible two’s. Fortunately, many of you seem to understand that, like all mothers, I do the best I can. Thankfully, it’s not children who expect you to be perfect.

Today, I cook what I like, and for no particular reason other than the fact that there are local strawberries, and very good ones I might add. One compensation for spending September to May in Nashville is that I enjoy two growing seasons, one here and one in Rhode Island. I get “the first strawberries” twice. I bought enough to make some preserves, to eat some out of hand, and to make this classic strawberry tart.

To all of you mothers among my readers, Happy Mother’s Day. Now that I’ve made this tart, shown next to the beautiful flowers my son sent me, I think I will go to the movies.

Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry Tart

This tart involves a few steps, but is very easy; you can even make some jam while the pastry is chilling. It is a celebration in itself.

Chocolate Pâte Sucrée

1 cup less 2 T a-p flour
2 ½ T cocoa
8 oz unsalted butter, cool room temperature
½ cup + 2 T confectioners’ sugar (10x)
1 egg yolk (freeze the white)

Sift the flour and cocoa and set aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, place the butter, cut into 4 or more pieces, and sift the 10x over it. Cream together on medium speed until the sugar is blended. Add the yolk and mix again until completely incorporated. Gradually add the flour/cocoa mixture, stopping after you have added about half it to scrape down the bowl with a spatula, then continuing until the dough comes completely together. Remove, pat it into a disk, and wrap in wax paper and chill for at least 2 hours.

Remove the dough and soften enough to roll by cutting it into several pieces and kneading them with your hand, then forming them back together into a disk. Tap the disk with your rolling pin, then roll it out quickly on a floured surface; once soft, it gets really soft. Lift the dough carefully into your tart pan, trimming the overhang to about ½”, and turn this overhand to the inside against the edge. Chill again for 30 minutes or so, preferably in the freezer. Preheat the oven to 375 F while it chills.

Remove the pan and flute the edge or press it with a fork. Prick the bottom with fork, and line the pan with foil and some weight (beans, rice, etc.) or a smaller-size pan, lightly greased. Bake 10-12 minutes; gently remove the foil/weight or pan, and bake another 3 minutes or so, until you can smell the chocolate and it the interior is mostly dry. It will look a bit like a large brownie. Cool on a rack.

Vanilla Pastry Cream

I use a standing mixer for this, but it can be done entirely with a whisk. I don’t strain it; you can if you want. Makes a generous 2 cups.

2 cups whole milk
½ vanilla bean, split and scraped into the milk
6 large egg yolks (freeze the whites)
2/3 cup sugar
2 T flour
2 T cornstarch

Bring the milk and vanilla bean to a boil in a 3-4 qt saucepan. Remove, cover, and keep hot.

Ribbon the egg yolks and sugar on medium-high speed; it will become pale yellow. Sprinkle the flour and cornstarch over it and beat at low speed until incorporated.

Fish out the vanilla bean pod from the milk and discard. With the mixer running on low, pour the hot milk into the egg and sugar mixture until combined, then pour the entire mixture back into the saucepan; you may need to wash the pan first if it has milk residue. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly and vigorously so it does not burn or stick, and boil for about one minute until it is thick and creamy and any foaminess is gone. Pour into a bowl and rub the surface with butter. Cool completely in the refrigerator.

Assembling the tart

While your pastry shell is cooling, core the most perfectly ripe, heart-shaped, medium-small strawberries in your batch; you will need about 40-50 for a 9” tart. Set them, peaks up and with space between them, on a towel.

When the pastry is completely cool, fill it with the pastry cream, smoothing with spoon or spatula, and set the strawberries, peaks up, into the cream, pressing down a bit. Begin at the center with one or three larger strawberries, then work out toward the rim in concentric circles, trying to match the berries by size.

Optional (recommended if your strawberries are not real red, or if you just like the shine): Melt a little strained strawberry jam; I make very fluid strawberry preserves, so just pour off a little and heat it. Brush the tops of the berries with a thin jewel-like layer. Chill for an hour or so before serving.