A Fool for Sour Cherries

“Tragic,” my fellow-cook Anne said.

Tragic to us is what I did the other day.  I drove to Little Compton for a visit, going from one friend to another. On the way, I stopped at the Fruit Lady’s, and to my surprise, she still had sour cherries: living nearly an hour away on the other side of the bay, and being very busy in June and early July, I have missed them this year. So I was thrilled to see them.

There was only one pint, though, which I bought along with three colors of currants, and asked if there would be more later in the day: they put the fruit out twice a day.  The Fruit Lady makes no promises, but after stopping at Walkers on the way out for corn (gone—went to Karla for that and some fresh garlic) and lettuce and real cream (success), I stopped at the Fruit Lady’s on the way out and there, on the stand, were two pints!  Waiting for ME! I snatched them up, together with a cup of raspberries (I’d bought the currants and raspberries in the morning), and went to pay. Fruit Lady husband/farmer, Dick, was there, and though we’d spoken at length in the morning, we struck up a conversation again. I talked while rummaging around for more cash and bagging up my purchases, eager to get on the road back through Newport before the traffic got really bad. I hit the road, happy.

At home, I unloaded my treasures of lettuce, cream, milk, corn, garlic, some discounted perennials, currants, raspberries, and….cherries? Where are the rest of my cherries??

Left. Lost. A fool. Ergo: Tragic.

But I did have my one pint. Not enough for a pie, but still. What to make? A batch of cocktail cherries? Some little turnovers? Some of my favorite jam? I decided—it seemed fitting—on a fool. I had that wonderful cream, after all, and I could do a semblance of a cherry pie filling for the fruit.

It was trash day, and while the filling was doing its quick cooking on the stove, I did my usual survey of the refrigerator and freezer to see what, if anything, needed to go.  And there, lying right at the top of the freezer drawer, tightly wrapped, was something I’d forgotten about: a single layer of Mrs. Lincoln’s sponge cake . So maybe I’m just a trifle of a fool, after all.

Sour Cherry Fool or Trifle

You can make a close facsimile of a fool with just the cherries and cream, or turn it into a close relative of a trifle with the added cake.  A fool is usually made with fresh fruit, and a trifle with custard, but these are close enough. The trifle is surprisingly light and refreshing—a nice summer dessert.  This would be good with blueberries treated similarly.

2 c sour cherries, pitted

½ cup sugar

juice of ¼ lemon

1/8 tea cardamom

dash cinnamon

dash salt

1 ½ T corn starch

 

1 cup fresh, high-fat heavy cream

2 T + 2 tea sugar

½ tea vanilla

1 thin layer homemade sponge cake, or 1 pkg lady fingers

¼-1/3 cup white wine

2 T rhubarb or other fresh red-fruit syrup (optional)

For the cherries:

Place the cherries, sugar, lemon juice, spices, salt, and cornstarch into a heavy aluminum 2-qt saucepan.  Turn the heat on low, and after the sugar has begun to melt and the cherries to throw off liquid, turn the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened. This will take no more than 5 minutes; do not overcook. Cool to room temperature.

For the whipped cream:

Beat the cream with the sugar and vanilla until it forms soft (not stiff) peaks.

To assemble:

 

In a pretty bowl, preferably glass, make layers, beginning and ending with the cherries, as follows:

1. Tear about a third of the sponge into pieces and fit them around the dish fairly snugly. Sprinkle with a little of the syrup and the wine.

2. Spread a layer of whipped cream to cover (a little less than 1/3).

3. Spread about 1/3 of the cherry mixture over the cream, not quite to the edges. 

4. Repeat. You should have a little whipped cream left over for garnish if desired.  Layers will not be as visible as in a trifle made with firm custard, but will be nice when scooped out. Cover and chill for  3-6 hrs.   

Remove from the refrigerator about 10-15 minutes before serving (you do know how I object to anything too cold to taste). Serve in glass or white bowls if you have them, with a little extra whipped cream. Garnish with a little grated lemon zest, or with a little mint, if desired.

 

Locovore: Loco for Local

No, not a typo. I recently had friends over for the last largish meal I made before leaving Rhode Island to return to my desert home for the academic year, and realized that, without even trying, every single thing we ate was locally produced. On an island (Conanicut, otherwise known as Jamestown).  Don’t you just love that? 

It was hot in the morning, and the forecast was for thunderstorms. My friends don’t care for the heat. And my cottage is little and, of course, doesn’t have air conditioning. So I decided to make a dinner that I could cook before the rain and serve at room temperature. What a great excuse: that’s actually one of my favorite ways to eat.

My friend Wayne (source of the mussels) had called me up and offered me some fresh-caught Bluefin tuna “head steaks”; I learned that this was the meat right behind the head that was cut off in preparing a giant tuna to be sold. My friends may not like the heat, but I knew they liked tuna, so of course I said yes.  Wayne swung off the bridge to drop me the fish on his way out to another fish-spotting gig.

Now, Jamestown has a surprising amount of meat and poultry for such a tiny place: grassfed beef, pasteured pork, chicken, and lamb.  And your usual lot of summer vegetables, plus the early gift of fresh-dug potatoes. Surprisingly, tomatoes were early this year. Surprising because of the brutal winter—did that do something to speed them up?—and just because. I usually have to return to school before the really nice tomatoes are in—and these are field tomatoes we’re talking here, beautiful in early August.The meat and produce are from Windmist Farm,and Hodgkiss Farm.

So here is the menu, with some pictures of ingredients. While I made a very satisfying visit yesterday to our own impressive farmer’s market here in Tucson, I have to say, to paraphrase Dorothy, there’s no place like New England.

A Jamestown Dinner

Dinner for Friends on a Muggy Day Threatening Thunderstorms

Tuna Tartare on potato chips

Figs with goat cheese sweetened with honey and fresh thyme

Everything-grilled salad of chicken, beef, onions, peppers, yellow and zucchini squash, and corn (see this post)

Green beans marinated with olive oil and fresh oregano

Tomato and mozzarella (from Narragansett Creamery) salad  

Ciabatta from Venda Ravioli

Organic Blueberries and Peaches with Maple Sour Cream

Strawberries: The Real Thing

Well, this is a little out of summer sequence, because this is the first local product I bought when I arrived here in June, and this jam is the first thing I made. How could I forget that precious item that that I eat only in their native habitat in season—strawberries (not counting tomatoes, of course)—particularly when they are scarce to nonexistent in Tucson, unless it is the strawberries brought in from Yuma? Which doesn’t happen much.

The strawberries were amazing this year: a gift after a cruel winter. It is a ritual for me to make a small batch of jam with the first ones I get, and this summer was no different. I always makes something a little different—although strawberry-vanilla is a perennial favorite—and since I had just planted a little container herb garden, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had a nice lot of true peppermint on hand.

I suppose that my strawberry jams are really more like preserves. I leave smaller berries whole, and only cut larger ones in half. And of course, I like my jams cooked just long enough so that they have jelled but are still fluid. This takes a lot of practice—I am anti-commercial-pectin, as you may know—but is well worth the effort for a perfect, versatile product.

Strawberry-Mint Jam

I just throw the mint in whole and fish it out after the jam is done. Use as much or as little as you like. Makes a little over a pint.

1 pint ripe local strawberries
1 ¾ cups sugar

Pinch salt

3 or 4 nice big sprigs of peppermint, left whole

Juice of half a lemon, and the rind

Wipe strawberries with a paper towel, hull, and cut the large ones in half. Put everything into a minimum 2-qt saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring gently to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat somewhat, but keeping it at a low boil, and cook, skimming, until it is as you like it, testing by your preferred methods or temperature (about 220F at sea level).  Ladle into jars, and freeze one for a treat during the cold winter months.

Apple Cider Vinegar: What Grandma, and Hippocrates, Knew

I am never without cider vinegar. Because if I run out, I immediately need it again before I can even get to the store (word to the wise: Buy at least a half-gallon; it lasts).  Cider vinegar is that versatile, and that, in my opinion, nonsubstitutable. If that is a word.  You may sometimes see distilled white vinegar suggested as an alternative, but no, too sharp.  Apple cider vinegar is sweeter and more mellow—I’d go for my white balsamic, to which I am equally devoted, before that, at least for dressings and maybe some chutneys. But really, just have it on hand. It’s dirt cheap and always produces just the right subtle result.

Of course we cook and preserve with it. But it has been a kitchen and apothecary staple for many other purposes since ancient times—as a refreshing and healthful tonic (making a come-back today, bottled like water and sold, like water, at high prices to the susceptible); an excellent cleaning product and stain remover; a cool skin astringent; a rinse for squeaky clean hair; a pesticide; a disinfectant; a de-scaler; a weight-loss aid--and Colonial bakers understood that a little bit worked a tender magic on pie crust and bread, and that it was just as at home in a homey dessert as in a jar of pickles, as this unusual—and unusually good--roly-poly attests.

Vinegar Roly-Poly  With Corn

You can’t get more old-fashioned than my version of this old idea: truly, something my Pennsylvania German grandmother would have made, even with what turned out to be a somewhat inspired use, if I do say so myself, of Coll’s corn. I do sometimes think Grandma’s spirit lives on in me.  Serves 8.

For the syrup

¾ cider vinegar

1 ½ c water

1 cup sugar

2 tea cinnamon

For the dough

2 c sifted a-p flour

1 T bp

1 tea salt

1/3 cup (5 T) lard or, if you must, Crisco

¾ whole milk

For the filling 

1 ear fresh corn

4 T butter, divided

¼ c sugar plus a little more

2 tea cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Lightly grease a 9” round pan or pie plate and set aside.

Combine the vinegar, water, 1 c of sugar, and 2 tea cinnamon in small pan over low heat til sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to medium, and reduce by half or so to a light syrup, about 20-30 minutes. Set aside.

While making the syrup, shuck the corn and cut the kernels off; do not scrape the ear yet, but set it and the corn aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, bp, and salt. Cut in the lard or shortening. Scrape the milk from the reserved ear into the mixture, add the whole mile, and stir to make a soft dough. Lightly flour the counter or a board and roll the dough into a rectangle ¼” thick, about 9 x 10. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ sugar and 2 tea cinnamon over the reserved corn kernels. Sprinkle a bit of extra sugar over the dough, then distribute sugar-spiced corn over it.  Dot with 2 T butter.

Roll the dough gently from the longer side and cut the dough crosswise 1” thick, first trimming each end by about ½”. Place the slices cut side up, close together, in the pan. Dot with the remaining butter. Pour over all the hot vinegar mixture. I recommend  placing on a nonstick sheet pan or enameled broiler pan. Bake 30-40 min at 375, until lightly golden and dry to the touch, with no apparent liquid: a sauce will have formed on the bottom of the pinwheels.  Let sit for just a minute, then serve very warm, with some pan sauce and then some heavy cream spooned over, as a dessert or breakfast treat.

Note: Don’t be tempted to cut back too much on the 4 tea of cinnamon. It’s a lot, but not too much; it transforms quite a bit in the syrup. If you cut it down, cut a teaspoon from the sugar mixture that goes inside the dough.

Yours for the Taking: Mussels

Gathering shellfish in New England—clams of all sizes, mussels, scallops, oysters—is as close as you can get to a free lunch, especially when someone else does the gathering and gives you the benefit of their labor. I received such a gift the other day. My friend Wayne—a fish spotter and aerial fish photographer—called to ask if I’d like one of the three fish buckets’ full of mussels he had picked up after getting off a pilot boat early one morning in Snug Harbor to find them lying there at low tide, ready to scoop up. Big ones, too. Did I want some? Of course I did: wild shellfish is increasingly hard to get.  A bucket was way too much, but I did fill two bowls to the brim and headed home, thinking what to make. 

That was relatively easy.  While French in origin, the mussel soup Billi Bi shares our New England sensibility of simple elegance, and our fondness for mixing shellfish with dairy­—especially cream.  It has long been at home here, although I must say I don’t see it on menus as much as I used to.  Mussels make a good chowder, good salads, and of course the simplest preparation of all, Moules Marinière—but Billi Bi seemed the right thing to do with this large windfall.

The soup is quick to make once the mussels are cleaned, but cleaning does take a little time. They must be debearded, scrubbed, and checked to ensure that they are alive. Here is the method:

To clean and store mussels

Use your mussels as soon as possible. If you must store them for a few hours before cooking, put them into a bowl, cover with a damp towel, and store in the coldest part of the refrigerator.  You can scrub them, but do not debeard until you are ready to cook them.  When ready to use:

Put the mussels in the sink and rinse with water; do not let them sit in water, however. Sort through the mussels and discard any that are not alive. Mussels should be shut tight. If the shell is open, tap the mussel on the counter firmly near the mid-point; if it is alive, it will close up. A mussel whose shell flaps open and closed when you press it between your thumb and forefinger is dead.

Debeard the mussel. Hold the mussel, hinge down or toward you, in one hand; with a paper towel in the other hand, grasp the fibrous byssus, or “beard,” and pull toward the hinge firmly to remove. Do not pull up. Discard the beard. Debeard mussels as close to when you plan to cook them as possible

Scrub the mussels all over; I like to use one of those stainless scouring pads.  Remove any small barnacles with the inside blade of a pair of scissors or the back of a paring knife.

 

Storing cooked mussels

Mussels can be removed from their shells and stored in the refrigerator for a few days or in the freezer for a couple of months, ready to be used in salads or pasta dishes. Store in an airtight container with a little broth from the cooking or vinaigrette. 

Billi Bi

You will see that the first step to making this soup is similar to making Moules Marinière. If you want to make this several hours ahead to serve hot, leave out some of the cream and the egg yolk, and then finish it just before serving. Billi Bi can also be served cold; make it a few hours ahead and chill. Serves 8.

2 cups dry white wine

2-3 shallot cloves, peeled and sliced

1 large sweet onion, peeled and sliced

2 large ribs celery, slit in half and roughly chopped

4 T unsalted butter

4 sprigs parsley

2 sprigs thyme (or 1 tea dried)

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Freshly ground pepper

4-5 lb medium-large mussels, preferably wild

4 cups heavy cream

2 egg yolks, lightly beaten

Put the wine and all the vegetables, herbs, and seasonings in a 6-qt dutch oven or small stockpot. Put the mussels on top. Cover and bring to a boil; then reduce and, with the lid slightly ajar, simmer for about 10 minutes; the mussels should be open but still look moist. Strain through a fine strainer or cheesecloth into a large bowl or directly into a 3-4 qt saucepan.  Taste for salt; wild mussels in particular can be salty, but you can add a little salt at this point if you think it needs it. Set the broth aside. Remove the mussels from their shells and reserve for garnishing the soup. You could remove just some of them, and serve the rest in their shell.

When ready to finish the soup, bring the reserved broth to a boil. Over medium heat, add the heavy cream and let it come to a gentle boil, whisking. Ladle a cup or so of the soup into the egg yolks, whisking as you go. Slide the pan off the burner and whisk the egg yolk liason briskly back into the soup. Taste for seasoning. Keep it warm, but do not allow to boil again. It should be a lovely creamy yellow-white color.

To serve, ladle into small cups or rim soups. Garnish with two or three mussels (they will sink into the soup) and a sprinkling of very finely chopped parsley.

Don’t like mussels or have someone who doesn’t? Not to worry. This delicate cream soup is something almost everyone loves—just leave out the mussel garnish.

Radicalism Revisited: Small Batch Pepper Relish

It is Independence Day, that most American of holidays, and an unwavering tie with Thanksgiving for my favorite holiday. This is not jingoism, this pairing of holidays so associated with the U.S. of A. Rather, it’s about two wonderful days with absolutely no religious association. These days are all about the food and, not incidentally, the perseverance of individuals determined to have what is increasingly disappearing from even the birthplace of it all—personal freedom and self-determination. We need that now more than ever.

So on this 4^th, let’s remember that change is good. Things were never meant to be the same, and time does not rewind.  This, of course, goes for our rules of preserving, about as outdated as can be. So I refer you to one of my oldest posts, written on the 4^th back in 2007, on radical preserving.  Need a pepper relish for today’s iconic and essential hotdogs?  Make it now, eat it later. Only what you need.  Only what you want.

And speaking of the value of change for the future. It is pouring here in New England today, as a weakening Hurricane Arthur approaches. Everyone has moved their celebrations to tomorrow: the weekend is supposed to be beautiful. And we will celebrate our independence to celebrate when and how we want. With hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad—and this relish.

A Little Red Pepper Relish

One pepper, one onion, one hour.  A singularly radical relish. Here, too, is a variation from several years ago. Makes ½ pt.

1 medium red pepper, cleaned and diced
 1 medium sweet onion, peeled and diced

½ c apple cider vinegar

1/3-scant ½ cup sugar

2 T maple syrup

1 tea coarse sea salt or kosher salt

Optional: For hot relish, add a small chopped fresh chile such as a serrano to the vegetables, or a ¼ teaspoon of dried red pepper flakes to the sugar/vinegar mixture.

Bring about 4 cups of water to a boil in a 3-qt and drop in the vegetables. Remove from the heat and let sit 5 minutes. Drain and repeat. Let the veggies drain for at least a half-hour.

Combine the sugar, vinegar, salt, and maple syrup in the pot and bring to a slow boil, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Add the drained vegetables, and cook at a medium bubble for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until a wooden spoon dragged through the center leaves a clear path for a few seconds. Ladle into a clean 8-oz jar.

Artichokes: Grilling the Globe

The opposite of the baby artichoke is the giant globe. Years ago when I lived California, artichokes were a plentiful and relatively cheap staple, and were common on the restaurant menus and friends’ tables. I lived not too far from Castroville, the “artichoke capital of the world,” and would go to the annual fair and eat them, large and small, every which way. I took them rather for granted.

Since then—and it has been a very long time—I have largely bought artichokes when they looked particularly good, and were at a particularly good price, in the market. This was not all that often. When I lived in Nashville, I discovered a grilled artichoke at Bricktop’s that became one of my mainstays in that otherwise food-bereft and regressive Deep South town. Bricktop’s is a chain, which tells you something about the food scene in Nashville at the time, but it was a good, reliable place, and it and its grilled artichoke became something of a comfort to me during my years there. I would often stop in after teaching late—until 7:30 p.m.—on a Thursday night, the end of my teaching week, and order a grilled artichoke and a glass of red wine. That grilled artichoke, served with melted butter and remoulade (they have since switched to aioli, apparently), remains for me the gold standard of grilled artichokes.

So of course, I try to make mine taste just the same. While I don’t have their superhot restaurant grill, I can come pretty close. Here is how to do it, using globe artichokes purchased for $1.00 each at my local supermarket. They are a sign or spring. Like the gila monster, who comes out around the same time of year, and has similarly vicious tendencies in its natural state

Grilled Artichokes with American Remoulade

I like to have an artichoke all to myself, and make a meal out of it. If following with a steak, half an artichoke per person will do. And you can dip it into anything creamy mayonnaise-based sauce that suits your fancy: aioli, lemon mayo, ranch dressing, or this Americanized version (minus capers and cornichons) of remoulade. Just be sure you make it fresh.

1 artichoke per person                

Lemon juice

Flour

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

American Remoulade

1 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade

1 1/2 T mixed tarragon, parsley, chervil, chive; the tarragon and parsley are essential

1 T Dijon mustard or more to taste

1 anchovy filet, mashed, or 1 small garlic clove, crushed

1 tea minced shallot

Drop or two Tabasco sauce

1-2 tea lemon juice to thin

Salt and pepper

Lemon wedges

Melted butter

Trim the stems of large artichokes to about ½” and remove any loose lower leaves. Using a sharp knife, square off the top of the artichoke, cutting across the top spines, and then, using sharp kitchen shears, cut off the tops of the other leaves, removing all spines.  Put a few inches of water in a 3-4 qt saucepan with a lid, add a little lemon juice and a sprinkling of flour, and place in the artichokes, stems down, so the artichokes are touching and remain upright. Bring to a boil, covered, then reduce the heat and steam until you can pierce through the center straight to the bottom with a sharp knife, about 15­-20 minutes. Do not overcook.

Remove, allow to cool, then cut in half vertically. With a spoon, remove and discard the fuzzy choke. Combine all the remoulade ingredients to taste and set aside.

Brush the artichokes with olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper.  Grill face-down on a hot grill for 5 minutes; turn to grill  for another 3-5 minutes, until nicely charred. Serve with lemon wedges, the sauce, and some melted butter or more olive oil mixed with salt and pepper for dipping.

More Bread: Poolish Makes Perfect

Continuing with the Forkish book, I tried another bread, on a day with no expectation of power outage at baking time. This one was what he calls his "Harvest Bread with Poolish." The recipe calls for 10% whole wheat, for which I substituted organic pumpernickel, and 5% wheat germ and 2% wheat bran; I used all wheat germ, or 7%. I seem to like more hydration, or maybe I was a little sloppy when adding water, so increased that too—probably to 80%. This dough is about 50% poolish. Interesting.

Poolish after 13 hrs

The bread is just as Forkish describes: buttery and aromatic. It is soft, flavorful, with a moist open crumb and a nice crisp crust. In addition to being very good, this bread suits my lifestyle, at least on weekends. You mix the poolish at 6:00 pm, leave it on the counter overnight, mix the dough at 7:00 a.m. next morning, and bake around 10 a.m. A couple of folds early in bulk fermentation.  A total breeze. Much more convenient, and better taste and texture, than the Saturday Bread.

In fact, I am a little worried about just how easy and convenient. Bread like this is just about the best thing to have for breakfast, toasted or not, with butter, and jam or not. And just about the best thing to have for lunch, with a good cheddar or gruyere.  And just about the best thing to have for dinner, with a salad or some sautéed mushrooms and wine. Or both. Pretty soon you’ve eaten half a loaf in a day. Half of a two-pound loaf, that is. Yikes!

Thank goodness I have friends who like bread. 

Can’t Buy Me Bread

Last Fall the local French bakery, run by a young French couple, closed shop and, with it, their stand at the farmer’s market where I bought my bread, and moved onto the more appreciative climes of LA. That left what I consider to be the only worthy bread baker, but his business model doesn’t suit me: you have to remember, on Friday morning, to go online by 7:00 and wait for him to post the bread offerings for ordering and then pick-up the next day—at another prescribed time, 11:00 a.m.—at a different, less convenient local farmer’s market. If you are a little late, what you want may be sold out. Then of course you might forget to pick it up, if you, like me, get up early and are already well into your day by 11. Pity those who like to sleep late, too! They would have to set their alarm to order bread.

So while I have done this a few times, and it may all seem so quaint and local at first blush, I quickly tired of it. There was a tendency to feel like you had to order bread while you could, resulting in your buying too much—or settling for a bread you don’t really want if others were already taken. And of course, even when you set your phone alarm, missing either the ordering or the pickup for one reason or another. To say nothing of the somewhat soup-Nazi quality of the baker, complete with long—yup—bread lines for pickup. Not for me.

I absolutely adore bread, carbohydrates be damned, and from time to time over the course of the last 40 years or so, have made my own bread on a regular or semi-regular basis. Bread books take up a full shelf in my very large cookbook collection, and I can’t resist a new one (or a new old one if I come across something forgotten but interesting), and recently added the Forkish book after reading a lot of praise. I have several artisan books, so there’s not a lot new here, more of a synthesis, and I don’t know if it will become a favorite—won’t know ‘til I try the levains. But trying the first simple bread gave me a story to tell, so here it is.

Finding myself with a free day—amazingly, having finished project grading early—I thought, why not stay

home and bake bread? The whole thing is so simple that I had a lovely, relaxing day, reading and puttering between stages. I used a local Arizona heritage grain flour from Hayden Mills, mixed with a little first clear flour and dark rye, and adjusted the hydration to 80%. This was going to be good!

When the dough was perfectly proofed, I was just about to put it in the oven when: the electricity went out. Which means, of course, my oven did too.

I waited a few minutes—maybe this was just a blip?—but no. I looked out—everything, the entire city, was in the dark; we had been having a wild storm all day, the first rain in months. I put the proofed dough in the refrigerator. The oven went cold. Forty-five minutes later, the electricity came on, and I pre-heated the oven again.  By the time it was ready, my dough had spent about over an hour in the fridge, and it had suffered by becoming a little overproofed despite the cold. I knew what that meant.

aving

They say every cloud has a sliver lining. Here is a golden one, complete with rainbow, snapped from my patio while waiting for the lights to come back on. And here is the bread. Worth another try.

The Last Supper: In Memoriam

The last meal of the year should be special in some way, and I always make myself something of which I am particularly fond, like a good veal chop or an old-fashioned London broil; something symbolic, like lentils; or something I don’t often have time to do, like a classic lobster bisque with a New England twist.  Whatever it is, it is something comforting. This year, as all you true foodies know, was a year of lost luminaries in the food world, and two in particular, Marcella Hazan and Judy Rogers, were old kitchen friends of mine. What to make in memoriam for the year and these women whose food has comforted me and millions over many years?  I will save Judy Rogers’s roast chicken with bread salad for another tribute meal, soon. Marcella and I go way back, and it is one simple dish—spaghetti with smothered onions—that I have made and loved scores of times, that seems the perfect punctuation for the year, and the perfect emblem of the genius of Italian cooking.

After the news of Mrs. Hazen’s death, when everyone was talking about their favorite dishes, I realized that I had really learned to make Italian food from her books, The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking. This actually came to me as somewhat of a shock, because I had literally internalized so many of the recipes that I scarcely open the books anymore, which I bought when they were first published by Knopf: 1976  and 1978, respectively—I was still in my 20s! I had completely forgotten, for example, that I learned to make pizza, which I made every single Friday night for more than 20 years, and still do often, from her second book. I still make my dough, and my sauce, the same way. I could list dozens of dishes that are just as second-nature, and just as frequently made.

Marcella Hazan once said, “"I am never bored by a good old dish and I wouldn't shrink from making something that I first made fifty years ago and my mother, perhaps, fifty years before then.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Happy 2014. Eat well, and stay healthy.

Spaghetti col Sugo di Cipolle

(Spaghetti with Smothered Onions)

I have made only one minor change to this perfect recipe, indicated below. It contains lard, which you all know I adore; you can substitute butter or use all olive oil if you must. But do try the lard in Mrs. Hazan’s honor. Serves 4-6 as a first course.

1 ½ T lard

5 T extra virgin olive oil

1 ½ lb sweet onions, liced very thin

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Freshly grated nutmeg (my addition; optional)

½ cup dry white wine

2 T chopped fresh parsley

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Heat the oil and lard in a large sauté pan; add the onions, cover, and cool over very low heat for 45 min or more, til soft.  Uncover, raise the heat to medium-high, and cook until golden brown, scraping with a wooden spoon occasionally. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, and a whisper of nutmeg. Add the wine, raise the heat, and stir until the wine has boiled away and you have a golden, creamy-looking mass. Stir in the parsley and remove from the heat.

Cook the spaghetti until firm—about 10-12 minutes. Reheat the sauce gently. Drain the pasta and add to the sauté pan; raise the heat and toss for a minute. Serve with the grated cheese, tossing lightly. You can also have a little garlic bread, really a bruschetta, the way Mrs. Hazen directs: toast the bread lightly; rub with a smashed clove of fresh garlic; and drizzle fairly generously with olive oil so it softens nicely. Mangia!

Catching Up On Christmas

Sometimes the holidays sneak up on you—or rather, you are able to disregard their advancing pace—while you are getting your work done. I have gotten good at that—simply not thinking about Christmas until, well, I can: until all the grades are in, and I’ve given myself a day to recover. This seems to be a little later every year, as judged by the dwindling number of types of cookie I manage to make. This year, only two. Will there be, in some not too distant future, a cookieless Christmas? Or will I retire, and once again be able to bestow (to the worthy, of course, and assuming I still had the energy) tins bursting with an assortment of my critically collected, carefully curated favorites?

 

Time will tell what cookies lay in my—and your--Christmas future. But for 2013, Christmas was simple all around.  No fancy dinner like last year or so many others. In fact, Christmas Eve this year was almost like a weeknight supper—homey, comforting, easy-peasy, special only in that it was a little rich for nowadays. You all know this old-fashioned meal very well: a glazed ham (with a sauce made with preserved Little Compton sour cherries); scalloped potatoes; roasted cauliflower with hazelnut buttered bread crumbs; a Christmasy red and green salad. A deep fried appetizer, cheddar cheese puffs, for a little festivity, with champagne. My favorite chocolate cake for dessert, which we did not eat until last night, as it turned out. All in all, a pretty good dinner for a Christmas Eve that arrived early, or to which I arrived late. 

I hope you had a happy holiday, whenever yours began, and that you had time to make at least one cookie.

Scalloped Potatoes

Something creamy for Christmas is always in order; something that can be assembled ahead is doubly so. Here is how I make scalloped potatoes, learned by watching my grandmother. Do not expect measurements(and none needed)! Serves 2-3.

2 large russet potatoes (I urge this  variety on you.)

2-3 thin slices from a large onion, chopped

Flour

Unsalted butter

Salt, freshly ground pepper, freshly grated nutmeg

1 ½ cups light cream or half-and-half

Butter a 1-qt gratin dish. Preheat the oven to 300 F.

Peel the potatoes and slice them very thin, about 1/16.” Place a layer of potatoes neatly into the dish; sprinkle with a little of the chopped onion;

strew lightly with a little flour from your hand; dot with a little butter; sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and—sparingly—nutmeg. Repeat, filling the dish to within about ½” of the top.  You will use about 1-2 T each of butter and flour in all, but don’t measure, just use your judgment and keep a light touch with the flour.

Barely scald the cream and pour it over the layered potatoes; press the potatoes down lightly with the back of a wooden spoon. Bake about 1 ½ hrs (the cream will bubble up) until golden.